by Ella Brooke
At long last, the king and queen returned to their seats, hand in hand, and Emrys prepared himself. His mother looked to him, and so he rose, smoothed the front of his suit jacket and waistcoat, and offered Caitlyn his hand.
“I-I don’t know if I want to dance yet.”
“We won’t. But I do need to introduce you formally to the king and queen.”
Caitlyn nodded and took his hand. “I’ve met your mother, though.”
“Nothing really counts until the king knows about it and approves.”
Now was the dangerous moment. He approached the two thrones slowly, and then gave a half-waisted bow. Caitlyn awkwardly did the same. Emrys suppressed a wince, since she ought to have curtsied. King Eldon raised a brow in near amusement at the gesture, while Eliana clicked her tongue. His mother was likely annoyed that she hadn’t had enough time to prepare Caitlyn for proper greetings. Emrys could imagine Elsa smirking to their side; she always bowed rather than curtsied out of sheer contrariness.
“Come forward, my son. Let me get a look at you.” King Eldon beckoned them with one gloved hand.
Emrys nodded to Caitlyn, drew closer, and waited patiently for his father to give them permission to speak. The man scanned his eyes over the two of them critically. Finally, he lay one finger by the side of his mouth and nodded resolutely.
“Speak, Prince Emrys."
“I would like to introduce you to Caitlyn Durst,” Emrys said with another bow. “I have known her for several years, and she has long been a good friend.”
“I see.” The King waited and stared at Caitlyn. “Well, speak, child.”
“I-I, um, it’s a pleasure to be in your kingdom, sir. I mean, Your Highness,” Caitlyn managed.
“But of course. What causes you to come visit us?” The King leaned forward. As though Queen Eliana wouldn’t have already briefed him on what Emrys was going to speak to him about.
“I’m here because Emrys asked me to come,” Caitlyn replied.
“Yes,” Emrys agreed. “I simply had to spend more time with her, and I needed for you to meet her.” He gestured to Caitlyn in an elegant motion. “Caitlyn Durst, of Pettysburg, Ohio, has been asked to be my wife.”
Caitlyn’s eyes were already wide from the excitement of standing in front of the king. They couldn’t get any rounder, so her surprise wasn’t immediately evident, even though her lips parted and she seemed like she might say something to ruin the whole plot, like, “You never asked me at all, and you had plenty of time to do it!”
But she remained silent, looking between the king and queen.
“Close your mouth, dear. You look like a codfish,” Eliana said mildly. She smiled at her husband. “Please do say something before the poor girl collapses from nerves.”
King Eldon narrowed his eyes and gestured toward her. “You have known my son for some time? For how long?”
Caitlyn’s opened her mouth again to speak, closed it, and then opened it again. “W-we met five, um, five years a-ago. In Nice.”
“An American girl in France,” the King said, as though amused.
“I was, um, studying abroad, and…” Caitlyn looked to Emrys, and he could tell that she could barely breathe from how fast her heart must’ve been beating. “W-we hit it off.”
“You hit it off with her five years ago, and you’re bringing me to her now?” the King asked.
Eliana was not so amused, however. Emrys could see that she’d put the timeline together.
“We met again at my latest premiere,” Emrys told them. “I simply couldn’t let her go again.”
Caitlyn flushed, looking up at him with a little smile. She creased her brow in confusion, but there was no resolving it for the moment. Emrys did feel guilty for springing this on her, but he would make it up to her later.
“Well, isn’t she adorable,” Eliana said dryly.
“She is indeed. I fail to see, however, what a prince of Cabeau sees in this stammering commoner,” Eldon drawled.
Emrys tensed. “Your highness,” he objected.
“It is my decision, ultimately, who my children wed. Does she have anything else to her credit besides being adorable? Someone you simply couldn’t live without?”
Emrys felt his face burning, but before his temper could get the better of him, Caitlyn picked up the sides of her dress and took a step forward.
“It probably means nothing to you, but I run my own web design business,” Caitlyn said. “Maybe Cabeau doesn’t value entrepreneurs; I couldn’t speak to that. But I make enough to have a few employees, and I manage almost a hundred accounts now. Where I’ll end up, I don’t know, but in America, we at least pay lip service to the idea that even commoners like me can and should find a way to contribute to the world.”
Emrys felt his heart in his throat. His mother was sitting very, very still and kept her eyes on Eldon.
The king laughed.
“We do appreciate entrepreneurship here. However, technology has not been a large part of our economic growth, unfortunately,” he said, leaning forward on his throne.
“Well, not every country can or should try to make money that way.” Caitlyn shrugged. “Technology isn’t good in itself. It’s expensive and is too often treated as a buzzword for increasing business without any real understanding of what that would require. I’m sure your advisors and parliament know best how and when you want to develop in that area.”
“She’s clever.” Eldon looked to Emrys. “The connections aren’t what we’d like, but she is clever, I’ll give her that. We will think on the matter, Emrys.”
“That is generous,” Emrys said, with a final bow.
***
“I’m your fiancée!?” Caitlyn hissed as she pulled Emrys into a room down the hall from the ballroom. He’d been reluctant to leave the ball at all, but after an hour, her curiosity and irritation were reaching their peak. Whatever the official protocol for the ball was, he could slip away for a few moments to explain an outright lie to the king that he’d expected her to play along with.
“Well, I can explain that.” Emrys checked to make certain the door was closed, and then returned to her side and took her hand.
“It’s a bit late to propose now. Apparently I missed it!”
Emrys frowned at her. “Please, just listen.”
Caitlyn pulled her hand away and crossed her arms. “I wait with bated breath.”
“You really do belong here, you know,” he drawled. “I was speaking to my mother when we arrived, and she incorrectly assumed that you were here as my fiancée. I should have explained right away that she was mistaken, but…”
Caitlyn sighed and let her arms fall to her sides. It was so hard to stay mad at him when he did foolish things trying to please his parents. Her own parents were just tickled pink that she’d graduated from college and gotten out of their little town. Nothing else seemed to faze them, aside from her perpetually single status.
“In any case, if you were my fiancée, everything would be much smoother. People wouldn’t question your presence here or the time we spend together. We’re much freer this way. I am sorry that I didn’t bring it up to you before now. I wasn’t certain how to do it or how you might take it.”
Caitlyn lifted her chin. “What do you mean?”
Emrys put his hands on his hips. “It would be very beneficial for me to marry. My trust fund doesn’t release until I’m forty. I’m not hurting for money, but at the same time, it’s galling to be held back in this way. My father is very controlling.”
“I can see that. But you’re not actually marrying me. Won’t that put a kink in the plan?”
“It would. But would you like to?”
Caitlyn thought her heart might have actually stopped. “L-like to? What, marry you?”
“If you go along with the plan—” Emrys came to her side again and put his hand on the small of her back. “We could make our engagement real. If you want to.”
“We’re not getting married!” Caitlyn la
ughed before she could think about it. Emrys’s lips twisted in displeasure and she grabbed his lapels before he could pull away from her. “I’m begging you to be serious here, Emrys. I care about you a lot. But I’m not going to marry someone just to help out with his trust fund! And we’ve just barely reconnected.”
“Well. I suppose that much is true.”
“We work well together,” she admitted. “Better than I’ve ever worked with anyone else. But we can’t do it like this. I’ll play along. It’s fun, being the fiancée of a prince, and I wouldn’t want to make anyone’s family drama worse.”
“Fair enough.” Emrys leaned forward and kissed her lips lightly, to avoid mussing her lipstick. “Play along this week, while my father is here, because I cannot smooth anything over with my mother while that man is at the palace. And then what?”
Caitlyn shrugged and pressed her palm to his chest. “If you fall in love with me, we can make our engagement real.”
“You don’t ask much, do you?”
“More than you do, apparently. Why would you ever marry anyone other than the woman you loved, after everything you went through with Miranda?” Caitlyn shook a finger at him.
“I’m not much of a reasonable man within these walls,” Emrys admitted.
“Let’s get back.”
“Will you dance with me?”
Caitlyn considered it as she took his arm. “Only if you go slow and don’t mind my heels digging into your feet.”
“I’ll instruct the orchestra to play us a sonata. Everyone else will fall asleep, so no one will see you dancing.”
Caitlyn laughed and rested her head against his arm. The things she did for this man.
Chapter Nine
In the end, the king elected to stay longer than he’d originally indicated, and as that was his prerogative, Emrys and Caitlyn could do nothing about it. Their “trial run” week passed, and then another, and during that time, Emrys was wound so tightly that Caitlyn thought he might snap in his father’s presence any moment. And the king had still not offered his official blessing on their union, even if it was now common knowledge in the kingdom and beyond that the prince was engaged. Even the queen encouraged him, subtly and very politely, to make an explicit statement about it. As September drew to a close, Caitlyn got on the travel forums that she frequented for planning trips—usually with a much smaller budget—to ask about good places to visit in October.
When Emrys started talking about a new movie he would have to shoot soon, Caitlyn pulled him into her rooms the moment no one was looking and sat in a large chair with him, discussing the possible places they could go out of sight of the royal family’s judging eyes. He seemed delighted by the idea and told her to leave it all to him.
Within a week, they were off to Greece.
It was a point of pride, Emrys had said, to spend several days in Athens, and there they took in the museums and went to the Parthenon. For Caitlyn, the highlight of this trip happened on the street, where buskers stood playing guitars, lyres, organs, and drums. One day, the buskers were playing, and a man walked into the street to begin a dance. After a bit of encouragement, two tourists had joined him, and then several more. Within a few moments, all kinds of people filled the street to dance together. After watching Caitlyn clapping and laughing, Emrys had bounded off to join them, and he’d done remarkably well beside the others. An older woman patted his arm and smiled to him.
Caitlyn wished a little bit that she had joined in too.
From there, Emrys had taken her to Mykonos, saying that a proper Greek vacation had to include the islands at some point, and he particularly enjoyed Mykonos for the kind of relaxation they were after. The hotel where they stayed had technically shut down for the season, and they were the only two there. The décor was very crisp, with white walls and white linens. Their suite opened into a large living room, off of which branched a small bedroom featuring a king-size bed and a balcony overlooking the ocean. From the balcony, Caitlyn could see the stretch of shops and clubs along the beach, and in the distance, a line of windmills.
They arrived very late at night, and Caitlyn was both tired and hungry. Their early dinner in Athens, delightful as it had been, had worn off long ago. Emrys slipped a bill to their bellboy to ask the kitchen for some service.
“I should have vacationed with a prince sooner,” Caitlyn said as she sifted through her clothes for a nightgown. She paused to adjust her bra, which didn’t seem to fit right. It must have warped, because her cup size hadn’t changed since she was in high school.
Emrys swooped in behind her and kissed the back of her neck. “This is our holiday before I go back to filming. You get anything you want.”
“And you?”
“I get you, don’t I? You’ve allowed me so much more than the one week you promised.” Emrys kissed up her neck until she turned her head to meet his lips. “I am properly spoiled.”
“I’m glad we decided to do this. Your father was ruining your time off,” Caitlyn declared.
She rubbed her stomach, feeling hunger pangs again. This Greek food was so strange. Some of it was very rich and filling at the time. Then she found herself hungry again after a couple hours. But it all tasted so amazing. Caitlyn had always labored under the assumption that she disliked tomatoes until the moment Emrys had fed her a slice from his plate. Juicy, ripe, and red, the flavor burst in her mouth. It was nothing at all like the watery offerings that people had tried to force on her for most of her life in Ohio.
Emrys slipped his hands under her blouse and unhooked her bra. She sighed as he massaged her breasts, and she cupped the back of his head and kissed him again. Her appetite for him had increased as well. Now that they were on their own, every room of every hotel suite they’d stayed in had been a possibility for their lovemaking. Even now, she felt a bit swollen from three vigorous sessions in the jet over here.
“Unnn,” she whined. “I want to, but my body is weak.”
Emrys bowed over and kissed the tops of her breasts. “Then just let me worship the perfection that is you.”
“Stop!” Caitlyn laughed and swatted him off.
She had to admit that she felt very sexy. Part of it was his gushing attention, yes. But it was also how her clothes were fitting. She felt slinky, but weighty. She felt like her clothes hugged her body in a good way, her breasts bouncing more with each step. It was like his love had taken root in her body and begun to bloom. Because he wanted her, she had become more and more of what he wanted.
Caitlyn removed her blouse and jeans and slipped on a long, silky pink nightgown. Emrys sat on the edge of the bed watching, and so she dressed just a little bit slower, with a few extra motions, feeling over her own plump backside, a hand down her stomach. Once her gown was on, she ran her hands up her sides and cupped her breasts, causing Emrys to gasp and lean forward.
On a whim, Caitlyn slid her hands back down her sides, wiggling her hips and swaying to no tune but the sounds of the ocean and the fan spinning lazily above them. Emrys folded his hands between his legs. His eyes followed the gyrating of her hips, her arms moving over her head, and the swishing of her hair. He reached out for her, and she took his hand before turning and rotating her hips around and around. When she stilled, his other hand squeezed her hip, and she bent over at the waist, swishing her ass from side to side.
“Have mercy,” he muttered.
She bounced her ass up and down a little, giggling when his hands finally gave in to temptation and reached forward for a squeeze. She sat in his lap, spreading her legs wide, and stretched her arms over her head, dancing in his lap against his rock-hard erection.
“You’re going to destroy me,” Emrys declared.
“What do you suppose we can do with this?” She ground against him.
“It’s looking like we’re going to have to send these pants out for cleaning.”
Caitlyn reached back, touching his hair as she continued to rub herself against him. After a moment, he grabbed he
r around the waist and pulled her to the side, where she laughed and kissed him.
“Okay, okay. Let me find another way to torture you.”
Caitlyn unbuttoned his pants with one hand as they kissed eagerly. Then, she slipped down onto the soft rug by the bed and jerked his pants down.
“I am starving,” she declared.
She freed his erection from his briefs and held the thick length of it in her hand. She met his eyes before giving it a kiss on the head, and then swirled her tongue around the tip. Emrys groaned and clutched the bedspread. Her lips wrapped around the shaft, and she made her way down with a series of wet sucks. Impatiently, he reached behind her head and grabbed her hair. There was a twinge deep in her own groin, and she squeezed his thighs as she took more of him in.
Humming determinedly, Caitlyn milked his shaft in long sucks and fondled his balls with one hand. That only made him grab her harder and let out what sounded like a growl. She repressed a laugh and squeezed him harder. He cried out. She dragged her teeth very gently down the length of his shaft. Emrys was shuddering now.
Soon Caitlyn was engulfing his entire organ, sucking it greedily, and massaging his balls. His feet lifted upward, pressing his toes into the rug, and he let out a roar. Come flooded into her mouth, and she drank every thick, sticky drop of it. When he’d finished, sagging back against the bed, she patted his thighs and sat back on her heels. Caitlyn looked up with a smirk as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Come here,” Emrys ordered.
She obeyed, rising and lying beside him. Emrys pressed a kiss to her forehead and tugged his briefs back into place before pulling her flush to his chest. Caitlyn curled into him, taking in the smell of him, his warmth, and the simple energy he exuded. With a yawn, she thought maybe they could just stay here forever, enjoying one another and making love in as many ways and as many places as they could imagine.
There was a rap on the door, and Emrys groaned.
“You’d better get that.”
“Do you still have an appetite after that?” he teased.
“Feed your princess to be,” Caitlyn ordered.
