Chapter 49 Something Just Like This
Something Just Like This
Emilia sat frozen, her tea long forgotten, as the interview played on her laptop screen.
“No one should be forced into marriage for any reason, let alone as a requirement for leadership.” Alexander’s voice was steady, clear. His expression was unreadable, yet somehow filled with conviction. “Not me. Not anyone.”
She had expected careful, strategic answers. The kind of polished responses meant to appease the public while revealing nothing. But this—this was something else entirely.
Then came the moment that truly shattered her composure.
“She is a talented professional, a historian in her own right, and she deserves to be recognized for more than just her association with me,” he said.
Emilia’s breath left her in a rush. He hadn’t even said her name, but he didn’t have to. He had protected her. He could have brushed past the question, could have denied it outright. But instead, he had made it clear—she was not some passing scandal, not a footnote in his story.
She realized in that moment that she needed to see him, to talk to him.
The decision crystallized instantly. Emilia closed her laptop, grabbed her coat, and was out the door before she could second-guess herself. She hailed a taxi with unusual urgency, her fingers tapping restlessly against her thigh during the entire ride.
The palace gates loomed ahead as the taxi approached. Normally, she’d take in the grandeur, the weight of history embedded in every stone. Today, she barely noticed. Her security clearance was still active—a small mercy that saved her from what would have been an excruciatingly long wait.
“Miss Carter to see Prince Alexander,” she told the guard, her voice steadier than she felt. “He’s expecting me.” A small lie, but one that would expedite matters.
The palace corridors seemed longer than usual as she strode through them, her footsteps echoing against marble floors.
Staff members nodded respectfully as she passed, but she barely registered their presence.
Her mind was fixed on what she would say—what she could say—after what she’d just witnessed.
Alexander barely had time to register the knock before Emilia was pushing open the door to his office.
She looked flustered, her eyes sharp with something he couldn’t quite place.
“Emilia—”
“Why did you say that?” she interrupted, her voice quiet but insistent.
He blinked. “Say what?”
She huffed, stepping forward. “In the interview. About—” She gestured vaguely, as if she didn’t quite know how to phrase it. “Me.”
Alexander exhaled slowly, closing the file he had been pretending to read. “Because it was the truth.”
She stared at him. “You didn’t have to—”
“I did,” he cut in, his voice firm but gentle. “Because I meant it. And I won’t let them reduce you to just being my historian. You are more than that. You always have been.”
Her lips parted slightly, something unspoken lingering there. He wanted to reach for her, to close the distance between them, but he didn’t. Not yet.
“You know what this means, right?” she finally said, voice barely above a whisper.
He nodded. “They’ll speculate. They’ll twist it into whatever story sells best.”
Her expression grew hopeful. “And you still said it anyway.”
“Of course I did,” Alexander murmured.
She exhaled, shaking her head like she didn’t quite know what to do with him. Then, in a voice much softer than before, she admitted, “I saw you.”
He frowned. “What?”
“At the gala,” she clarified. “When you danced with Genevieve.”
Ah.
His expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes. “And?”
She let out a quiet, almost bitter laugh. “I hated it.”
His expression softened.
“I knew it wasn’t real. I knew it was for show,” she continued, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “But it tore at something inside me.”
Alexander moved then, standing so quickly his chair scraped against the marble floor.
She didn’t back away. “You don’t have to hate it,” he murmured, voice low. “Because it doesn’t matter.”
She swallowed hard. “Alexander—”
“But you—you do matter,” he said, his fingers brushing against her wrist, tentative but warm. “And I’m so tired of pretending otherwise.”
Suddenly, it felt like the air had changed—charged, heavy with something inevitable. “If we do this,” she whispered, “there’s no going back.”
His lips curved into something small, something almost tender. “Good,” he murmured. And then, he kissed her.
The world dissolved around her. His lips, impossibly soft against hers, moved with a delicate precision that made her breath catch.
She hadn’t prepared for the way his hand would cradle her face as if she were something precious, something that might break under too much pressure.
The restraint in his touch was maddening.
She smiled against his lips, enjoying him trying so hard to be gentle when she could feel the tension in his body.
The kiss deepened, heat rising between them in waves. His lips traced the corner of her mouth, her jaw, then lower.
A thud sounded from the hallway.
They froze.
Alexander pulled back slightly, his gaze flickering toward the door. Footsteps echoed faintly beyond it. Someone lingering. Someone listening.
Emilia exhaled sharply. “Right,” she murmured, voice still breathless. “The palace.”
Alexander’s jaw tightened. He took a step back, running a hand through his hair, clearly trying to think.
She watched him, still trying to steady herself. “Do you—?”
A soft knock interrupted them, followed by the clearing of a throat.
“Your Highness,” came Thomas’s steady voice through the door. “Lord Davenport is looking for you regarding tomorrow’s charity committee meeting.”
Alexander’s eyes met Emilia’s. Relief and frustration warred in his expression.
“Thank you, Thomas,” he called, voice remarkably composed. Then, lower, only for her: “Come with me.”
She blinked. “Where—”
“Somewhere private.”
He moved to the door, opening it just enough to address his equerry.
Thomas stood there, posture perfect, expression neutral despite the faint flush coloring Emilia’s cheeks. If he noticed anything amiss, he gave no indication.
“Thomas, please inform Davenport I’ll review the notes first thing tomorrow. And ensure we’re not disturbed as we exit.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
Thomas nodded, turning smartly to create a buffer between them and any prying eyes in the corridor. Even at this hour, the palace walls had ears.
Emilia let Alexander lead her, their footsteps soft against the polished floors. They slipped out of his office without another word, the air between them charged, thick with something that had no place in palace corridors.
She realized where they were going only when he pushed open a different set of doors.
His palace apartment.
A room no one would question him retreating to.
A place where no one would interrupt.
She hesitated, just for a second, lingering at the threshold.
Alexander turned, watching her with something unreadable in his gaze.
“We don’t have to—”
“I know,” she cut in, stepping past him, past the point of hesitation.
The second the door clicked shut behind them, Alexander’s control—the same rigid self-discipline he’d maintained through council meetings and diplomatic negotiations—shattered completely.
No hesitation. No second thoughts. No carefully measured words.
Just need. Because they’d waited long enough.
They’d had their stolen moments—desperate, fleeting kisses behind bookshelves in the archives, whispered confessions on the palace rooftop, that devastating goodbye when they thought there was no hope. Restraint that had cost them both more than they could bear.
But there was no pulling away now. No pretending they weren’t already too far gone.
“Emilia,” he breathed, her name like a plea as he moved toward her with the certainty of someone who had made his decision long ago.
Emilia barely had time to register the raw intensity in his eyes before he was kissing her, backing her against the door with a quiet thud. Not careful. Not planned. Just as desperate and consuming as that first kiss in the archives after they argued.
Her hands instinctively found his shoulders, steadying herself as his body pressed against hers. She let herself sink into it—into him—with reckless abandon.
“You are going to be the death of me,” he muttered against her lips, his voice somewhere between a growl and a prayer.
Emilia laughed breathlessly, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt just as they had that first time. “That’s nice, Your Highness, but I’d rather be the reason you live a little.”
His pulse hammered against her palm, and she felt a surge of satisfaction at the effect she still had on him, even after everything.
Alexander didn’t waste time with a retort. Instead, his lips found hers again, harder, hungrier, as if making up for every moment they’d been forced apart. His hands slid down to her waist, fingers digging into the fabric of her blouse as he pulled her impossibly closer.
And she let him.
Because Emilia was done pretending that Alexander wasn’t all she’d wanted since that moment in the archives when everything between them had changed.
His fingers worked at the buttons of her blouse with the same focused intensity he brought to everything that mattered to him, and Emilia tilted her head back against the door, eyes closing as his lips traced a path down her throat.
This was Alexander as she’d rarely seen him—not the careful diplomat, not the dutiful prince, but the man who, when pushed to his breaking point, had kissed her with a desperation that matched her own.
Emilia shivered as cool air hit her skin, quickly replaced by the warmth of his palms sliding over her ribs, her waist, tracing patterns that made rational thought increasingly difficult.