Surprise Packages

by Layla Valentine

  Then all my what-iffing is driven away as quickly as it began. Alex rises from his seat, takes a seat on the side of the booth next to me, and returns his lips to mine.

  And I know. I know I wasn’t wrong about that last kiss. I can feel the intensity, the passion, pouring from him, crashing into my own passion like two waves colliding and sending up a spray.

  My thighs clench, and I’m suddenly aware of my own mounting desire. I want to press my body into his. I want to climb on top of him, right here in this bar. I feel lit from within, like I’ve swallowed a star and it’s settled somewhere deep within my core. Surely he can see the need shining out of me.

  Do I dare make the move my body is yearning for?

  It’s been so long since I let myself become entranced by a guy like this. It’s not a sensible way to behave, not when so many people are just interested in dating me because of what I represent, as opposed to the person I am. But I’m confident that isn’t the case with Alex. He doesn’t want me because I’m famous or because he has some kind of fantasy about Aeryn he wants to live out.

  Ordinarily, I’d like to have a few dates with a guy before taking him home—Jay was a prime example of the thinking behind that approach. But this is different. This isn’t a potential relationship. It’s just an instance of physical chemistry like I’ve never encountered before.

  I take a break from kissing and lean my forehead against Alex’s, my chest heaving. Everyone in this bar must have noticed us by now. I can’t bring myself to care.

  He’s a prince. That’s the thing I can’t allow myself to lose sight of. He’s royalty. He’s not just some random dude I met at a bar. He’s been kind to me so far, and easy to get along with, but if I ask him back to my house, he’s just going to laugh at me, isn’t he?

  I feel another rush of heat. God, I’ve never wanted someone like this. It feels necessary. It’ll be a waste if I don’t see this through. I’ll never experience chemistry like this with anyone again in my life. I need this.

  “We should go,” I say. My voice sounds like a gasp. I can’t help it. “We can go to my place.”

  And Alex is nodding, fast and eager. “Yes. Please.”

  The world seems to shimmer around me, and I lose track of how things are progressing, how we’re moving from place to place. Because we can’t be moving to these places. It’s surreal. It’s like something out of a dream. And I can’t focus my attention on my surroundings at all, and I can’t keep events in their proper sequence, and I almost don’t know where I am. All I know for sure is who I’m with and how he’s making me feel. Does the rest of it even matter?

  We’re outside the hotel, in front of the valet stand, and we’re not touching each other because if I touch him at all, I’m going to start tearing his clothes off.

  I don’t care that we’re at a massive luxury hotel and that people are coming and going and perfectly able to see us. I don’t care that all my coworkers are right inside and could walk out here at any minute. How am I supposed to think about any of that at a time like this? I can barely keep my legs under me.

  We get a cab—waiting for my driver will take too long.

  Not to mention that the anonymity of the cab is soothing. Here, we’re just two people melting into the darkness of the interior, trying our best to keep from touching one another.

  The cab ride takes forever. I sit as far away from Alex as I can, and a part of me is yearning for common sense to restore itself.

  I know what’s going on here. I’ve gotten carried away by my hormones.

  I haven’t had sex in a while—it’s been months—and now here I am with this attractive guy, this guy who seems to understand things about my life that no one else ever has, and my mind is playing tricks on me. Of course I’m attracted to him, with those hands and that chest and those deep, soulful eyes. But that’s no excuse for the way I’m losing my head. I press my forehead to the window of the cab, trying to cool myself down.

  But all my attempts fail, and by the time we reach my house, I’m more turned on than ever.

  I’m glad Alex takes responsibility for paying the cab driver, because I’m not sure I could handle counting money in my current state. I fumble my keys out of my purse, feeling helpless and caught in a tide I can’t resist. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get the door open.

  Then Alex is there, pressing my back into the solid wood of my own front door, his leg sliding between mine, his mouth covering mine, and it occurs to me that I’m not driving this train at all.

  “We need to get inside,” I gasp. I’m not telling him so much as I’m telling myself. If we don’t keep moving, if we stop and let ourselves indulge in this, I’m not going to be able to stop and we’re going to end up naked right here on my front porch. “I have neighbors.”

  I feel Alex’s hand cup against my stomach. “Keys.”

  I drop them into his hand. Without releasing me, he reaches around and fits the key into the doorknob. I feel the door give way behind me and I’m moving backward, stumbling as I go, into the familiar bright light of my foyer.

  “Bedroom?” Alex asks.

  “There.” I point to one of the doors behind me. I can’t even form full sentences.

  He steers us toward it, our hands now finding their way under each other’s clothes.

  I want his shirt off him so badly that I feel a sudden urge to tear it, an urge that surprises me—my passion has never manifested itself so aggressively. I grit my teeth against my urges and hook my fingers in the meat of his back, tugging there instead, bringing him closer to me.

  Alex, meanwhile, has found the zipper of my dress and pulled it down. The garment spills to the floor like liquid, pooling around my feet, and it is just such a relief to finally be unclothed that I kick off my own panties to finish the job. I slide my hands down his torso and tug at his pants, but he’s already helping me, fumbling with the button, sliding them down.

  He wants me just as much as I want him. I can see it whenever our eyes meet. I can hear it in his ragged breathing. I can feel it in the grip of his hands on my arms, my hips, my ass. It feels too magical, too big and too beautiful to be believed. Do things like this really happen between strangers? They can’t, can they?

  They must.

  They are.

  He lifts me in his arms, gently kicks aside the door that leads to the bedroom, and tosses me almost carelessly onto the bed. I rise up on my elbows just as he covers me with his body.

  Suddenly his mouth is everywhere and I can’t stay upright. The pleasure surging through me is too much. I fall back, desperate for more, arching into him with every kiss or lick.

  “God,” he breathes. “Erica.”

  I link my leg around his to pull him even closer to me.

  “Where did you come from?” I whisper against his cheek. “Are you really here?”

  He doesn’t answer, and I understand. There’s no real answer to what I’m asking. I want to understand how this isn’t a fantasy. I want to know what happens at midnight when the magic spell breaks and the prince turns back into a frog.

  But I don’t want to know any of that right now. Right now I want his skin on mine, his mouth on mine, my legs hitched up over his hips and my ankles locked behind his back, and he’s lifting away for a moment, a long, terrible moment when I’m sure he’s decided to stop—

  And then he’s inside me.

  His hands cradle my face for a moment. My mouth is open, some combination of amazement and trying to catch my breath.

  Always before I’ve worried about how I look during sex. I’ve always tried to make pretty faces, even in the throes of passion. I suppose it’s the actress in me, trying to imitate the sex scenes I’ve seen on TV. But there’s nothing performative about this. I don’t have the presence of mind to worry about how I look. All I can think about is Alex, big and strong and absolutely dominating me, hands roving over my body, face now nestled in the crook of my neck.

  Too slow. He’s moving too slowly
. I plant my heels against his butt and pull, trying to increase the pace.

  He pulls back and presses his forehead to mine.

  “Easy, Erica,” he whispers. “We have all night.”

  No, I want to protest. I don’t have all night.

  I don’t know how to explain how badly I need more more, more, more of him, right now, how badly the idea of waiting hurts. I can’t do it. I arch, lifting my hips, grinding into him, needing—

  He groans, hips snapping forward, and I know I’ve broken him. I’ve overcome his control. I feel a surge of pride and satisfaction. It was easier than I thought.

  Now we’re both moving desperately, hands all over each other’s bodies as though fumbling for anything to hold onto, and I know this isn’t going to last much longer.

  “Erica—” he groans again, “Erica—”

  “Do it,” I grit out and lock my teeth around his earlobe.

  As much as I want this to keep going, I can’t bear to pull back even a little from him. I can’t stand to delay the pleasure I know is coming.

  And he does. One more thrust—hard, gasping, intense—his arms now threaded under mine and his hands locked on top of my shoulders so he can pull me down and into him harder.

  I feel like a rag doll in his arms. Waves of pleasure surge through me, and my head falls back onto the pillow, but I’m barely here at all anymore because my body is coming apart and Alex is the only real thing in the universe, the only thing I know is true—

  When I return to myself, I’m gasping, nearly crying from the intensity of it. I bury my head against his chest and wait for my heart to stop pounding. I can hear his heart matching mine beat for beat, hammering away, unable to recover.

  “Wow, Erica,” he says finally. “You’re really something.”

  I close my eyes, basking in the warm glow of his approval, reveling in his pleasure and in my own.

  Slowly, delicately, sleep comes to carry me away, but I stay curled in the warmth of Alex’s arms as I go.

  Chapter 6

  I drift slowly between dreams, aware, always, that I’m dreaming. It’s strange. Usually, I’m not so certain about that fact. But now I’m completely grounded by Alex’s hand on my hip while I sleep. His touch is the only thing that’s real.

  But how can he be real? Once or twice I question it. He must be the dream.

  I dream I’m on set, that the filming of season three is beginning and someone has decided that the king’s heirs should compete in a battle for the throne. There’s a rush of pride. I’m a good fighter already. The others will have to train, but I’m ready.

  Behind me, Alex breathes softly, contentedly, his face pressed into the crook of my neck, and no, no matter what the world around me reveals, I know I’m asleep, the battle is only a dream.

  Alex. Alex is what’s real.

  I can’t possibly be getting a good night’s sleep. I must be riding the edge of waking, given how attuned I am to every move Alex makes and every sound he utters. Would I ever get used to this? Would I ever be able to sleep properly in his arms, or would the mere fact of him always be enough to keep me alert?

  All this wondering has me more in my conscious mind than in my dream, and it pulls me gently back to full wakefulness. Alex’s hand is on my hip, exactly where I’ve been aware of it resting all night, but now I feel other things. His breath, soft and even, on the back of my neck. His feet, nested beneath mine.

  I remember how animalistic I felt last night, how desperate I was for this man, and I wait for embarrassment to come, but to my surprise, it doesn’t. We’re lying here in bed together, fully naked, having been absolutely wanton just a few hours ago, and I’m as comfortable as I’ve ever been in my life.

  The hand on my hip moves, suddenly, slipping down so his arm encircles my waist and pulling me back into him. Sometime in the last minute or so, he’s woken up, and maybe I’m not the only one who was aware of our closeness all night, because he’s already hard, lifting his hips into me and making me gasp.

  “Morning,” he whispers, directly into my ear.

  “H-hi.”

  How quickly I become unglued in his arms! How little it takes for me to lose myself completely. I’m not the kind of woman who turns into a mess around a man, but this is something else altogether. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life.

  He hums a little. “Did you sleep well?” he asks.

  “Not very,” I admit, surprising myself by telling the truth. I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe it’s just the fact that I feel so close to him right now. It’s as though any deception would be putting up a wall between us.

  “I didn’t wear you out enough?” he asks, a laugh in his voice, pulling me closer. “Do we need to try it again? I hate to leave you disappointed.”

  “I wasn’t disappointed—” I break off in another gasp as his hand slides up my stomach and cups my breast.

  I know what he’s doing. I know this is banter. Ordinarily, I’d enjoy it, wordplay back and forth like this, but my head is too scattered to play along.

  “What should we do today?” Alex muses. “Should we go out to brunch? Is there a good place near here? I could really go for some bagels and lox. My treat, of course…”

  “Bagels?” I practically whimper.

  He’s not seriously talking about bagels at a time like this, is he? The very idea of putting clothes on and sitting across from him in a diner booth seems impossible. How can he be thinking of breakfast when we’re right here, when we’re this close to each other and that beautiful bliss we created together last night? We’re already naked. It’s just a matter of making the right moves at this point.

  I press back into him, trying to make it plain that bagels are not what I want right now.

  He huffs out a little breath of air, and my heart sings.

  “Well,” he says huskily, “maybe brunch will have to wait.”

  Relief floods me. I roll over in his arms and press my lips to his. His hand cups the back of my head, holding me close.

  We can stay here all day, I think to myself, molding my body to his. Forget brunch. We can just stay here and do this. It’s hiatus, so I don’t have to be on set, and he’s on vacation and probably doesn’t have anywhere to be. There’s no reason to leave this bed for the next twelve hours.

  Then a phone rings.

  It’s like a bucket of ice water has been thrown over me, bringing me crashing down from my high. At first I think it’s my phone, and that I’m somehow about to be called to set after all, but then it rings again, and Alex mutters a curse under his breath. I recognize that the chimes are different from the pattern of the chimes on my own phone. The call is not for me.

  “You can get that if you need to,” I say.

  He shakes his head and kisses me again, more urgently, as if the force and fire of our passion could make the phone disappear.

  But it rings again, and I pull back.

  “Really, it’s fine. I’ll be right here.” I push him away from me gently, even though every fiber of me is screaming to pull him closer instead. “Find out what they want.”

  He gets to his feet reluctantly.

  “Stay,” he says, holding a hand out to me, as if I might possibly decide to go anywhere else knowing that he’s coming back.

  He steps into his boxers and pants, immediately disrupting my view, and scoops his phone out of his pocket.

  “Hello?” he says easily.

  I wait, hoping whoever’s on the other end of this call can be gotten rid of quickly.

  He frowns. “I told you my itinerary—”

  Then the frown deepens. He glances at me and holds up a finger, indicating that he’ll be a minute.

  I nod in what I hope is an agreeable way. I want to make things easy on him. I don’t want to be the girl who demands constant attention, even when other things are going on in his life.

  After all, this was just a one-night stand.

  Right?

  Of course, the
night is over now, but he’s still here. We still want each other in the light of day. That doesn’t have the feeling of a one-night stand. That feels like…well, it feels like something with the potential to be more. Is it possible that this could be, not the end of something, but the beginning? Is it possible that Alex and I could have a future together?

  No. That’s crazy. He’s royalty.

  But he sees me as royalty, too. He said so himself. Celebrities are America’s royalty.

  That’s ridiculous, though. He meant that we seem that way to the public. He meant that we’re treated with over-the-top amounts of adoration, and we get the royal treatment from businesses. Things like that.

  Being royalty is more than just being worshipped by fans. I know enough to know that. He has responsibilities I don’t have in life. He can’t feel that we’re peers just because I’m famous.

  And I’m barely famous. I mean, one TV show, two seasons—yes, it’s been successful, but at the end of the day, it’s one role. Without Royal Blue I’d still just be Erica from Ohio, going on auditions for TV commercials.

  The sound of my balcony door sliding open brings me back into the present. Alex is stepping outside. He slides the door closed behind him but leaves it cracked, and a few words float back to me. “Urgent” and “parliament” and “make sure you inform.” It’s somber, serious, and nothing like the Alex I’ve gotten to know over the past twelve hours.

  Something has changed in him. What is it?

  He’s pacing back and forth, as if he’s stressed to the breaking point. Once, he stops and grips the railing on the balcony’s edge, his shoulders hunched and leaning forward. I feel a desperate yearning to throw off the blankets and go to him, wrap my arms around him, and ease his suffering. But I can’t. He went outside because he wanted to have a private conversation, and I know it would be invasive and inappropriate for me to following him out there.

  The only thing I can do is to sit here and wait, and hope I’ll be able to do something when he comes back in.