Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LEXI
The second I step into the bedroom, I run to the four-poster and fling myself on the mattress. “Oh my God. That was absolutely excruciating.”
Oliver closes the door behind us, crosses the room in a more sedate manner, and sits on the edge of the bed beside me. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Easy for you to say.” I push myself up on my elbow. “You didn’t have to sit through dinner with my parents right after my mother walked in on you seemingly blowing me on the library sofa.”
I’m just absorbing how the pale blue of his Boston Commoners sweatshirt makes his fair skin and devilish smile seem even brighter, when he falls down on his back next to me.
Being on the bed together is suddenly different.
We might have slept here next to each other last night, but now, after that kiss—that amazing, incredible never-want-it-to-end kiss—even being fully clothed and on top of the covers has so much more weight to it, more meaning.
It also feels like him flopping down beside me is the most natural thing in the world.
And it would be silly for him to go back to sleeping on the chaise when we’ve already shared this bed. Especially now that we’ve kissed.
But how the hell do I stop myself from jumping on him now that I know what his hands and mouth feel like on me?
When he gripped my ass and I felt his hardness pressed against me… Jesus, I’m wet again now just thinking about it.
“I’m sure my mother didn’t think you were blowing me,” he says.
I bolt upright and tuck up my legs to kneel beside him. “Of course she thought that. And not unreasonably since, from her angle, that’s exactly what it must have looked like.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He pats the outside of my thigh with the back of his hand. Kind of like he wants to touch me but doesn’t want to make any assumptions that it’s okay for him to do it.
Theoretically, it’s very much not okay for him to do it.
If my boss knew I’ve kissed the man whose memoir I’m writing, his annoying little glasses would fly off his face in horror.
Not to mention, it’s a truly asking-for-trouble thing to do.
I might have come to realize that Oliver isn’t exactly what I’d assumed him to be—that he’s thoughtful and generous and that he has as much disdain for symbolic figureheads paid for by the state and for nepo babies who get their own way due to connections and cash rather than hard work and talent as I do.
But he’s still a part of this family. Of this world-famous institution.
Of this societal system that I fundamentally disagree with.
Oh, who am I kidding? Even if he were a super-smart-but-underpaid barista working every hour of the day to set up his own nonprofit saving abused puppies around the globe, this still can’t be anything.
I’m heading off to Eastern Europe as soon as this book is approved. I can’t have a man in my life, be he barista or prince.
And there I go again, jumping the gun. Maybe Oliver doesn’t even want that. Maybe all he wants is a fun roll in the hay while we’re working together. Or maybe, to him, that whole kiss thing was a big mistake that he has no intention of repeating.
But it was the third time he’s tried to kiss me, so—
“I said don’t worry about it.” His hand settles on my thigh. It’s warm. And tingles are radiating from it. And those tingles are ending up in places that no prince should be making me tingle. “But all you’re doing is looking more worried.”
I need to remember what I’m here for.
I swing my legs out from under his touch and jump off the bed to grab my laptop from the desk.
Despite my insistence earlier that our interviews need to be recorded, because I can’t take notes and ask good questions at the same time, right now I need to occupy my hands with something that isn’t clawing them through Oliver’s hair.
Or pulling his shirt out of his jeans. Or running my fingers across the stubble on his jawline.
Returning, I sit up at the head of the bed—farther away from him—prop pillows behind me, extend my legs, and open the computer on my thighs.
Opening the “Oliver Notes” folder I created this morning, I find the solitary file that resides in there—a document named “Mother”, which contains everything I could remember of what he told me last night about how she thought that because she’d had to tolerate the ravages of the press it wouldn’t do him any harm to follow suit.
I don’t doubt that particular document will end up with a lot more notes in it—she seems like quite the psychological goldmine.
“Okay.” I create a new document and call it Good Things.
“The manuscript you’d already written was mainly sad stuff about the bad side of being born into this family.
And last night we talked about the awful things your mom went through.
” I lower my voice lest the bug in the bathroom or anyone passing by the door might hear us talking.
“So now how about you tell me a couple of good memories.”
“Oh God.” He groans and rolls onto his side to look up at me over my feet. “That’s way harder to remember than the bad stuff.”
“There must be something. A happy family memory?” Surely, he has at least one. “Or an opportunity to do something that made you feel good, an opportunity that no normal person would have?”
Maybe he has a secret habit of doing special things for strangers, like sending Kirsty and her dad to see the polar bears, that he could tell me about. That would certainly help to rehab his public image.
“Ha.” He shakes his head, then gets to his hands and knees and crawls up the bed toward me, exactly like he did last night—but this time with clothes on. Which is more disappointing than I’d like it to be.
When he sits beside me, the bed shakes and sends an inexplicable little shiver of pleasure through me.
Then he shifts onto his hip, digs an elbow into a pillow, rests his head in his hand, and looks at me.
The remaining light from the almost-set sun coming through the window catches his face, highlighting the coppery flecks in his sandy hair and stubble and making his eyes glow with the brightness of fresh spring leaves.
Dammit, he looks good. In a rugged, unkempt, and completely un-royal kind of way.
“You think I’m not normal then.” His tone is soft, almost a little hurt.
“Why would I think that?”
“You asked if I’d had an opportunity to do good that no normal person would have. Which means you think I’m not normal.”
“Oh, Oliver, come on.” I gesture to our surroundings.
“We’re sitting on a four-poster bed that might date back centuries, in a castle that definitely does, on multiple acres of land that your family owns.
Some of which is carved out into formal gardens that must take God knows how many people for upkeep.
The gardens and castle are open to the public for part of the year.
And the building itself is like a museum of royal artifacts.
It has an armory, for God’s sake. This is demonstrably not what any reasonable person would describe as normal. ”
He snorts and looks down, rubbing his finger over the raised scroll pattern embroidered on the weighty bedspread.
My heart goes out to him. “But you, you—not your surroundings, not your circumstances, not your destiny, just you—I’d say you are as grounded as anyone raised in this weird environment, with these pressures, could hope to be.”
He lets out a whistle of air. “I guess that’s a huge compliment coming from you, the rich-person-hater.”
“I don’t hate rich people.”
A loud laugh throws his head back.
“Not all,” I protest. “I can only judge by my own experiences. And let’s say the hit rate isn’t good.”
“And I sense there’s a story behind that.” His words are soft and full of concern.
My shoulders hitch, as if pulling me away from him, at the same time my stomach flips at the thought that he can see the things I’m always trying to hide.
“A sense?” I ask. “What’s given you a sense of that?”
He lifts his finger from the bedspread and slowly drags it down the pants seam at my outer thigh.
“I think you have a reason for everything. You really don’t want to write this book, but you’re doing it because it will get you the job you want.
So, I reckon there’s a deeper reason you want that job than solely for the glory of it. ”
His finger reaches my knee and stops, but the electrifying tremors shooting from it do not.
“This is not about me. And we really need to work on this book.”
“And I’d bet,” he continues as if I’ve not spoken, looking at me from under his raised brow as he wraps his hand around my knee before sliding his fingers up my leg, “that there’s a reason you kissed me earlier.”
His touch skirts the edge of my laptop, sending sparks dancing up my inner thigh, straight to an inconvenient and unauthorized destination.
“Like I said.” My voice catches in my throat, making me cough when his hand comes to rest at the crook of my hip.
I scroll and swirl the cursor around the blank document on my computer like I’m busy with very important things.
“This is about you. So how about you tell me a happy story from when you were a kid. I need something to balance out all the shitty ones.”
He picks my hand off my keyboard and pulls it toward him.
And I let him. I fucking let him. Why am I letting him? An interviewer should not hold hands with their goddamn subject. Not even if the subject has highly holdable hands whose touch has made their panties damp and their chest tremble in an unfamiliar way.
“Tell me why you kissed me.” He draws my hand toward his mouth. Oh Jesus, he’s going to kiss it, isn’t he? My pulse can’t take the anticipation and is threatening to burst from my wrist and my neck and wherever the hell else my pulse pulses.
Now my hand is close enough to his mouth for his breath to warm it.
My heart thumps against the inside of my ribs, and damn that increasing wetness between my legs. How can someone doing nothing other than holding your hand and breathing on it be such an extreme turn-on?
“You answer my question.” As he speaks, his lips brush the back of my hand with a tantalizing tickle. “Then I’ll tell you a happy story. Deal?”
He presses his lips against my skin. The contact is soft and filled with affection, yet somehow also the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.
I drop my head back against the headboard and close my eyes. “You’re killing me, Oliver.”
“Good,” he whispers, gently turning my hand over and dotting a line of delicate kisses across the sensitive skin at my wrist.
How is this making my clit throb so hard? How is this making me want to throw my laptop onto the floor, rip his clothes off, and straddle him?
It’s ridiculous, and I need to get a goddamned grip.
In one swift move, I pull my hand from his, tuck my legs underneath me, and turn to face him.
“I kissed you because I wanted to. Like really fucking wanted to. Because you’re ridiculously attractive.
And smarter than you think. And a better person than you think.
And pretty great company. And all those things make you even more ridiculously attractive.
But it’s irresponsible. And unprofessional.
We can’t be kissing or holding hands or tickling each other’s thighs—”
“It tickled?” He wiggles his eyebrows and gives me the hottest smirk that makes me want to slam my mouth on those delicious plump lips again.
I tilt my head and give him an exasperated sigh. “We can’t do any of those things.”
“No more kissing?” He pushes out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout that reveals the shiny, pink, damp part and makes my mouth burn with the need to be on his again.
I resume my previous position but pull my laptop farther up my thighs so it virtually covers my crotch, as if it’s some sort of chastity belt to save me from myself.
I’d move to the desk if it wouldn’t mean we’d have to talk at a volume that the bug might pick up.
“No more kissing.” I stare at my blank screen. “Now you have to tell me a happy story from your childhood so I can write this damn book and then we can both get on with the rest of our lives.”