“Contrary to popular opinion, I have far more on my plate than to be at your perpetual beck and call, mother dearest.”
“Mother dearest? Since when do you disrespect me?”
“I wasn’t disrespecting you, just driving home the point. I’m a grown man now. Please respect that I am my own person.”
“Of course I respect that,” she responded. “But you need to understand that as the ruling monarch, I must run a tight ship. I need to know everything that is happening, where and with whom. It’s my job to be on top of every microscopic detail.”
“Actually, Mother, that’s why you have staff. They’re there to do those things. It’s why you have Lady Sarah at your disposal. There are people you pay good money to take care of the minute details of your life on your behalf.”
“But it’s not the same, Adrian. You’re my firstborn son. You’re my heir.”
“Look, Mother, of course I’m your heir. But I’m also your son. And I just need some space,” Darcy typed into Adrian’s phone. “Please, I beg of you, just give me a few days to clear my head a bit.”
He waited a few minutes until her reply dinged through.
“And then you’ll agree to Serena without any more argument?” the queen asked.
“I won’t make any promises about anything right now, Mother. I’ve already told you that.”
“But what about this childish nonsense, wanting to get away from me so much that you’ll not communicate with me? You’re a grown man. Act like one!”
“Firstly, I am communicating with you. Just not in the manner in which you demand of me. Secondly, most grown men have the opportunity to make their own decisions. You make it abundantly clear that I certainly don’t,” Darcy typed. This was getting easier by the text message. He’d practically say the same thing to his own mother. Well, maybe not precisely. But if he could give a voice to his friend when his friend most needed it, what was the harm?
“Why, I just cannot believe you are behaving so scurrilously. This is not the son I raised!”
“It’s late. I’m going to sleep now. Good night, Mother. I love you.”
“This isn’t the last of this conversation, Adrian.”
Chapter Fourteen
ADRIAN woke the way most men did in the morning. At attention. As if it wasn’t bad enough practically on public display last night in front of her parents, he now had to have a command performance, alone with look-don’t-touch Emma, in her psychedelic pink bedroom? To compound matters, he still had nothing but that darned sheet as a barricade.
He tried for a few minutes to wait patiently until he heard Emma stir, to no avail. He didn’t dare get up and wander into the hallway in search of a bathroom, in order to avoid coming face to, well, you know, with her parents. That would be a bad plan, under their current guise of Adrian batting for the home team. Though in truth it would be a bad plan even if they were they not feigning this ridiculous story Emma hatched on the spot last night. God, what in the world had he gotten himself into? Maybe his mother was right. Maybe he should just go back home and succumb to her irrational wishes.
But no, actually. That would be the stupidest thing he could do. And for what it was worth, while this current situation was certainly a bit of a sticky wicket, it was actually rather challenging. And interesting. Even fun, if he were to admit it. All sorts of intrigue, minus the danger of anyone getting hurt, or stuck in a bad marriage. All good. Well, if only he could take care of this immediate inconvenience.
~*~
For thirty minutes Emma waited in the dark beneath the relatively chaste safety of her grandma’s quilt, not sure of the appropriate protocol when sharing a bedroom in such close proximity to a European prince on whom she had a royal (excuse the pun) pain-in-the-ass crush while her curious parents slept within shouting distance, under the mistaken impression they let loose a royals-obsessed gay grad student into their presumably heretofore pristine daughter’s bedroom. Knowing all the while if it was purely up to Adrian’s libido, removing his (and of course her) common sense from the equation, the two of them would have been going at it like rabbits the whole night long and at the moment be sweat-drenched and only finally drifting off to a very satiated sleep. As it was she was thoroughly exhausted, considering it wasn’t exactly easy to sleep practically next to a very gorgeous, very eligible, very receptive and very naked man as she had while fighting natural instincts. Ooohhh, what was a girl with too much common sense and bad romantic history with a long succession of losers to do?
She had to pee so badly, but didn’t dare get up for fear of waking him. Though on second thought, perhaps slipping out while he was asleep made more sense. Talk about awkward, being there when he did finally get up. And then she heard it.
“Pssssst.”
“Is someone there?” she asked, not knowing how to respond to his whispered contact.
“Psssst,” he repeated. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah. You?” Nothing like asking the obvious.
“You could say that,” he said, looking down at what was without a doubt quite wide awake and ready to take the world (or at least Emma) by storm.
Unfortunately for Adrian, Emma chose then to click on her bedroom lamp. Bathing him in more than enough light to betray that morning wood, better known in his neck of the woods (heh heh) as morning glory. Glory indeed. Would be far more glorious to be able to put the damned thing to use.
Emma glanced over at Adrian, then immediately looked away, awkwardly and transparently pretending she hadn’t looked in the first place.
“I sort of need your help,” Adrian said. “I haven’t got any clothes here, and I left my washing-up things in your parents’ room. I’m not quite clear on what to do with myself right this moment.”
Lord she could think of a thousand things but she wasn’t going there. For that matter he could think of an equally vast number of diversions that would make them both far happier. Instead they each remained perfectly still in their respective beds. Until Emma took the hint and got up, revealing her cute little pink boy shorts pajama bottoms had wedged up her perfectly rounded behind while she slept, leaving Adrian to groan in misery.
“I’ll just excuse myself to the restroom and retrieve your things, then you can take a turn,” she said, blushing.
“Take your time,” he said, not at all meaning that.
While she was gone he stood up, wrapped the sheet around himself like Tarzan, and wandered her room, noticing all sorts of details he hadn’t seen before: a picture of her playing tennis with her mother; a photograph of her standing next to a plump, gray-haired woman with the sweetest blue eyes and a crown that said “World’s Best Grandma”; a picture of her parents and grandmother flanking a very young Emma dressed like a bride, with white dress and veil on.
“My first communion,” she said, surprising Adrian by barging in on him mid-snoop. “Mother refused to submit to my demands for a tiara. Instead I had to settle for the veil.”
“You look adorable,” Adrian said. “Clearly you’ll make some man a beautiful bride.”
Emma shook her head hard. “Uh-uh. No way. Not gonna happen,” she said, balking. “My life is fine just the way it is, thank you.”
“But weren’t you just saying you were in a funk? Or was that some other photographer I’ve kidnapped in order to facilitate my sudden flight from responsibility who told me that?”
“So glad you have an elephant’s memory,” she said. “I tell you something, assuming you’ll forget it in an hour, and instead you throw it back at me when I least expect it.”
“I’m not throwing anything at you! I simply said you would be a beautiful bride. And you would be.”
“Except I’m not going to be a bride. But thanks for the compliment.”
“So if not a bride, then what?”
Emma lifted an eyebrow. “Must I have a man to make my life complete? Maybe I’ll take some time off to go work in a refugee camp in Hungary. Would that make me a more worthy human being?�
��
“There is no worthy or unworthy here, Emma,” he said. “It’s only about what you want. What’s right for you. And only you can decide that, which of course you know full well, based upon the overheated reaction I am getting by merely referring to the concept of being a bride to you.”
“Overheated?”
“Perhaps that’s too harsh a word. Defensive, maybe?”
If she was being completely honest with herself, upon further consideration, perhaps he should have said “undersexed,” which could possibly explain the overheated reaction of which she was sort of guilty.
“Oh all right. Maybe I’m being a bit prickly. But I get frustrated with people always asking me ‘When are you going to get married?’ or ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ The fact is I am doing something with my life! I have a job, I own a home. I’m already living a life. It’s just not fitting into the cookie cutter mold that society seems to want to impose upon me.”
Adrian turned to face Emma, and, placing his hands on either side of her face, pulled her closer to his.
“Emma, you know what’s best for you. No one else. Don’t let people’s opinion undermine what you want and need,” he said, feeling the pull of her hazel eyes, the golden flecks in them practically sparkling. And then he leaned forward just a little bit more and pressed his lips to hers. Just enough for Emma to be forever grateful she’d just brushed her teeth, while not giving a care he hadn’t. And hoping that he didn’t have to excuse himself to the bathroom too quickly, especially since she’d forgotten his stash as promised. So instead of worrying about all of that, she just yielded to the moment and the impulse and the really amazing feeling that marooned her whenever she was in such intimate contact with him.
Adrian snuggled in closer to Emma, his hands guiding her lower back so that there was no mistaking they were warming up to one another. Yet again. Make that grinding up against one another. Yet again. Before they knew it, Adrian had Emma up against the bedroom door as she hushed their silent gasps against the potential of parental interception, which could come at any minute, while her one leg tried to jimmy up Adrian’s body as if she were climbing a fire station pole. Make that a stripper pole. Emma pulled him closer by grabbing onto his lovely behind, just beneath his bunched-up Tarzan-style sheet pajamas, which elicited a giggle.
“You’re laughing at me at a time like this?" he asked, rubbing his nose to hers.
“I’m not laughing at you, it’s more of a laughing with you,” she said. “This sheet is sort in the way.”
“We can do something about that,” he said, trying to reach down with one hand to loosen it up in the hopes it would drop of its own volition.
“Here, let me,” she said, trying to untangle it, made all the harder because she was pressed into it. And him. And it. Oh, God.
“Yoo hoo! Emma?” she heard from just down the hall. “Emma Leigh! Did I hear you up?”
With that sounding alarm, Emma practically pushed Adrian onto the ground, nearly taking his sheet with him. Which on the one hand would have been a good thing – had her mother not been just feet away from her bedroom door.
She had to think fast. “Mother! Shhh! He’s still sleeping!” Emma’s mother would feel awful if she woke their houseguest yet again, so she knew that would keep her away.
“In that case, I’ll leave you to sleep longer. Let me know when you’re ready for breakfast!"
Not again. Thwarted just in the nick of time, dammit. Emma stared at Adrian, whose ever-so-earnest deep blue eyes implored her to pick back up where they were so rudely interrupted. Those eyes, those very, very, blue eyes.
“Did you know your eyes turn to sapphire when you’re, um, horny?” she asked him, which caused him to burst out laughing. She had to put her pointer finger to her lips to warn him to quiet down to keep her folks at bay.
“What is this American word you’re saying?” he said with a crooked smile, deliberately putting her on the spot.
“You know! Hot and bothered. Hot-to-trot. Amorous.” She always knew how to deflect an awkward situation, just by making light of it. Which might be why she hadn’t been getting past the awkward roll-in-the-hay phase lately. That and her determination to avoid any sticky emotions and even stickier hurt feelings.
Adrian got up and pulled Emma back toward him, as they tumbled against her bed. “It’s true. You make me hot,” he said. “I wouldn’t say you bother me, but I will be bothered if I can’t do anything about how hot you’ve made me.”
“But my mother’s right down the hall,” she said, her voice pleading. “She can’t know anything. She thinks you’re gay! How would it look if all of a sudden she caught us like this?”
“I’m willing to take a chance on that,” he said, chuckling. Which must have meant he was desperate, putting his reputation on the line with his gracious hosts. Even though he didn’t actually have any particular reputation while posing as the faux student Emma had purported him to be. In which case, there wasn’t much image to destroy, was there?
“Oh, no, no, no,” Emma said, opting to be the party pooper. “My mother’s timing was impeccable, just as I was losing self-control. I have to remember I’m not swimming in this pool anymore!”
“Oh but swimming is so much fun. So many strokes to learn,” Adrian said. “You don’t want to stay out of the water because you’re too scared to splash around a bit, now, do you?”
“It’s not that I’m scared. It’s just that I’m, oh, I don’t know what I am. Maybe I just don’t know how to swim.”
Adrian drew her chin toward his face with his hand. “I know what you are. An intelligent, beautiful, fun, warm, generous woman to whom I am impossibly attracted.”
Gulp.
Impossibly attracted? That sounded like exactly how she’d describe her feelings.
“I want you, Emma,” he said, running his tongue along her lips, moving toward her ear, nibbling on the lobe, following the shape with his tongue, breathing so closely to her it could only arouse her already overly stimulated feelings even more.
Emma groaned. “I’m not being clear-headed,” she said. “Despite my better judgment, I’d love nothing more than to see where this could go. But the sensible part of me knows it can’t go anywhere, so I can’t set myself up for hurt. I’m sorry, Adrian. Really I am. Because under other circumstances…”
Adrian inched one hand beneath her tank top, which was already riding up, and the other reached down to just where those bottoms had disappeared between those adorable cheeks. And he thought he was going to die, first because he couldn’t believe how amazing his hands felt precisely where they were at that moment, but then also because he remembered he still hadn’t made it to the bathroom from the night before. But he was willing to sacrifice for the cause, if the cause was willing to yield to the sacrifice. His upper hand reached around, finally at its destination, and he weighed her soft breast in his palm, his fingertips toying with her hardened nipple. She gasped.
“You are so not playing fair,” she said in between shortened breaths.
“All’s fair in love and war,” he whispered as he made his way down her neck with small kisses and tiny nips. As he maneuvered his hands on either end he insinuated his knee between her legs, allowing her free reign for her to press down on him and relieve her need.
“You’ve got your technique down to a science,” she said as she moaned as quietly as possible.
He knew he didn’t want to chalk that up to many years of experience. Talk about a buzz-kill line.
“You inspire my creativity,” he said instead, giving a little mental pat on the back for that one.
“Isn’t creativity what killed the cat?”
“I think that’s curiosity.”
“I could argue that you’re being awfully curious right now,” she said, letting out a tiny groan as his fingers finally reached their destination, at the warm, moist juncture of her gorgeous, toned legs.
“Ah, but isn’t curiosity the mother of
invention?”
“That’s necessity,” she said.
“And it seems to me that necessity means need, and right about now I need you and you need me, so what a perfect pairing!” He slid his fingers between her slick folds and she could have about killed herself for being such a sucker but oh, wow, that was so perfect. “God, Emma, you’re so wet for me.” His breathing was getting harder, neck and neck with hers.
“You’re turning me into a shameless hussy,” she said, moaning yet again as her head fell back in sheer pleasure. Between Adrian’s mouth and hands she figured she had all of about thirty seconds before she went over the top.
“I would argue you’re anything but shameless,” he said. “You’re practically glowing you’re so perfect. No shame in enjoying a little pleasure. No shame at all.”
Emma’s instincts were telling her to grab a hold of that sheet and rip it off and mount the man, stat, but then again her instincts clearly left a bit to be desired. Plus, he was taking care of her just fine, so maybe she could let him finish his business and she’d worry about the rest if she could just—
“What was that?” she asked, her ears perking up, sure she heard someone outside the door.
Adrian, meanwhile, had begun inching down her body, landing small kisses and licking a trail right to where his hands had been masterfully working their magic.
“Did you hear that?” she asked again.
But Adrian ignored her, shimmying those boy shorts off in one swift move, spreading wide her legs, and when his tongue finally, finally found that perfect spot, she nearly screamed out loud, which would surely have been the worst day of her life, sending her parents rushing in, fearing as they would for her safety, only to find their on-second-thought-maybe-he’s-not-so-gay houseguest with his head buried between their daughter’s most willing legs. Instead she pulled a pillow over her head and bit down on part of the pillowcase while she pressed Adrian’s head closer still, telling him in no uncertain terms that what she said and what she meant might have conflicting intentions, but to just do what he was doing and the rest they’d worry about later.
Something in the Heir (It's Reigning Men Book 1) Page 12
