by Misti Murphy
“Mmm.” She wakes, lifting her head to stare at me. “For a minute there I thought I was dreaming.”
“No.” I clasp her face between my hands. “Do you feel me, Allie? What you do to me? This thing between us is more than I ever expected to find.”
She drops her gaze to my chest, her fingers playing over my skin. There’s a shine to her eyes and a subtle waiver in her breath before she climbs off me. Turning her back to me, she pulls on a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top she grabs from a drawer. “Perhaps it would have been better if it had stayed a dream.”
Hearing her say that stings. I’m here, putting my heart on the line for her and she’s hurling it back in my face. I jump up and drag on my pants before marching out to the kitchen where she’s setting the kettle on the stove. “Are you always this fickle? I thought you wanted the truth. Isn’t that what you’ve been begging me for since we met?”
“I thought that’s what I wanted.” Her throat tenses as she swallows. She keeps her gaze downcast, staring at the damn stove instead of me. Then she shakes her head, her hair swaying against her shoulders. “But if what I know of you is true then isn’t this stupid? I mean, you have a life to get back to, one that won’t have any ties to this one. Remember, you said that?”
“I did.” I growl. “Because it was the truth.”
“Exactly. Which means this is-is… nothing.”
“It was true at the time.” She cracked me open like a piñata and now she wants to push me away? I cover the distance between us, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her into me. “God, it should still be true, but it isn’t, because I’m not going to let go of you.”
“How can you say that?” She’s stiff in my arms, unyielding. “What if all of this is just some by-product of the game? These things I’m feeling, you’re feeling?”
“Is that what you think?” I turn her around and caress her cheek. She winces, her lips parting. “I don’t believe that. Can’t imagine you really do either.”
She gives a half shrug, and then the edginess leaves her. “How would we even know?”
“Because I’ve played these stupid Vice games for a couple years now, beautiful. I’ve played a lot of them. Too many.” I run my fingers down the side of her neck, and along her collarbone. “Do you know how many times one of these simulated fantasies has ended up like this?”
“No.” She shifts closer, her pupils dilating as my knuckle grazes the curve of her breast.
“Once, and not for me. None of the women I’ve been with, none of the situations I’ve played my part in have ever made me feel like this, none of them compared to you. Not even before Vice, when I was who I’m supposed to be.” I lift her up, settle her on the kitchen table. “You drew me in even before we started on this crazy rollercoaster.”
She sucks in her bottom lip. I can see the uncertainty wavering, her desire to believe me melting through. “You’re certain?”
“Of you? Yes.” I grip the table’s edge, leaning over to tug her bottom lip free and lick inside her juicy mouth. She touches me hesitantly, her hands on my chest, and I deepen the kiss, demand more from her, until she moans for me. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
I tug her tank top up over her head, and push her gently onto her back, so I can take off those silly little shorts too. “That’s fact, Princess.” I push her legs apart and step between them. “As much a fact as how hard you get me, and how impossible it is for me not to want to be inside you.”
Gripping my erection, I rub the head of it over her clit until her eyes go big, and her lips part on a gasp. Slowly, I stroke her until her hips rise from the table and she gives a little cry. Watching her get wet for me, the way my cock slides through her arousal and over her slit makes my balls tight. I stroke myself until pre cum drips from the tip and then massage it into her wetness over her clit and the line of her cunt until I can’t keep myself from plunging into her. She’s covered in me, used up inside and out, much the same way I am for her, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The table squeaks with every thrust as I fuck her in long, deep strokes, my arms braced above her shoulders, her mouth under mine. I watch her face, the slow change, the pinking of her cheeks, the way her eyes darken, her lids getting heavy as she clings to me, drawing closer to the sweet pleasure of orgasm. I drink in the quiver that racks through her cries. This woman has destroyed every barrier I put up. She’s forced her way inside me, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure I’m as deep in her as she is in me. Her hips arch underneath me as she tightens on my cock, and I cum, her orgasm milking me until I’m spent.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Allie
I can feel his cum dripping down my thighs with every step I take as we head into the bathroom. Starting the shower, I find an extra towel and hang it on the door handle.
He’s standing in the doorway, taking in every move I make. A feral gleam in his eyes, he pads into the room. “Spread your legs for me.”
Without question I do as he says, stepping out to the side with one foot. He doesn’t touch me, just drags his gaze down my body to my thighs while he bites his lip. “Fuck, you’re pretty with my cum dripping out of you like that.”
I can feel the chill of the air on my sensitive skin as he comes closer, crouching so that he can run his knuckle through the wetness on my thigh. “Perfect, Allie. That’s what you are. I love the way you look wearing me like that.”
He stands, his finger between us, coated in a shimmer of our climaxes. I grasp his finger and suck it into my mouth, caught by the sudden urge to taste him, us, this thing we have between us. As though knowing its salty, sweet taste can make it more real.
Biting back a groan, he stares at my mouth wrapped around his finger. “So beautiful and erotic.” He pushes me against the shower glass, his cock already half at attention. “Do we taste good? My cum in you, does it taste as good as it feels?”
I let his finger slide from my mouth, and he mashes his lips to mine, licking inside me with long lingering strokes. “I’m never going to stop wanting you. Wanting this, us. I hope that’s how you feel too.” He pulls me into the shower with him, into his arms, his hands tight on my ass as he winds my legs around his waist. “I want to hear you say it, Allie.”
I clasp his face between my hands. I’m still not quite certain this isn’t fantasy, but he wants me here and now, and that is enough. “Always.”
***
I can barely drag my eyes open. Or maybe I don’t want to. Except that Kaiser’s chest is pressed to my back, his leg thrown over mine, and I can feel the unsubtle prodding of his erection at my hip. Last night really happened. All of it. And shit, that man has more stamina than I thought possible.
I screw up my face, and open one bleary eye. Only mere hours ago, he’d pressed my palms to the wall, my back to him as he spread my legs and entered me from behind, whispering dirty things in my ear and ordering me to play with myself. And I hadn’t even recovered from what he’d done to me in the shower, but somehow it didn’t matter. My body responds to him in a way I didn’t even know was possible.
“My beautiful Allie.” He trails his fingers up and down the outside of my thigh. “Tired, love? Sore?”
My legs feel like jelly, like I ran a marathon and didn’t just have the most magnificent, erotic sexual experience of my life. “A little.”
With a squeeze to my hip, he nips my neck and brings his mouth to my ear. My body responds with an immediate shiver of arousal, and I turn into his chest. He strokes a hand through my hair, a soft smile tugging at his lips. “I want you so much I’m having trouble controlling myself, but perhaps we should get some breakfast instead?”
“Mmm.”
My stomach growls, and he chuckles as he lifts my mouth to his. “Come on then, Princess. There’s somewhere I want to take you.”
After we shower and dress we catch a taxi, stopping to get coffee and donuts on the way to wherever we’re going
. With one arm around me, he taps his knee with the other. He doesn’t tell me where we’re going, and I don’t ask, though I want to. The closer we get to his destination, the quieter he gets. His muscles tighten up, his mouth becoming more and more of a firm line.
My pulse picks up as we turn from the hustle and bustle of inner city roads onto a quieter street lined with giant elms and high rises. The cab trawls along for a little while longer before pulling to a stop in front of an apartment building. It’s the complete opposite of mine. Sandstone and carefully preserved architecture instead of broken concrete and dirt encrusted windows.
“This is where you live?”
“It’s my place. I own it.” He jumps out of the cab and waits for me to join him. Then he takes my hand and leads me up the wide steps, past concrete planters full of flowers to the giant front door with its lions-head brass knocker. He hesitates for a minute, staring at the door. “I don’t stay here, though.”
“Oh.”
“It didn’t really fit with the lifestyle I was living.” He unlocks the door and ushers me into the foyer. Our steps are loud on the marble tiles, and my head spins as I take in the three paintings, the thousands of dollars worth of famous artwork, the marble statues that sit sentry to the double staircase sweeping up to a terrace overhead. “This is…”
“A taste of what my life is really like.” He pulls me up the stairs, and into a living space that could fit my entire apartment twice over. “I wanted you to know that I’m not lying to you. That I’ve never told you anything but the truth.”
Somehow my feet don’t work anymore. There’s more wealth in this one room, this fraction of his world than I’ll ever see in my life. My heart thuds painfully, as though trying to kick start itself into remembering to beat. He’d told me he was wealthy, he’d told me, but being faced with it makes me wonder what possible reason could compel him to slum with a girl like me.
“I hadn’t realized.” I trail off as he leads me past a grand piano to sunk-in leather seating that faces an open fireplace. I’d believed him, but this is too much.
“I brought you here because it’s time I told you who I am.” Sitting with me on his lap, he tightens his arms around me, his chin pressed to the top of my head. “I’m not sure how to explain what I’m about to tell you. It’s not something you would imagine.”
I’m struggling with the reality of him being a millionaire. I can’t imagine anything he tells me now can make this situation any more crazy.
He clears his throat, his pulse picking up under my palm laid over his. “I told you about my brother, and that my family is wealthy. I told you they expect me to take over the family business.”
“You did.” Remembering how he’d told me he wouldn’t take any of the life he led now with him. And although he’d told me otherwise last night, being here, seeing this part of him makes me realize how true it is. How could he possibly think I could fit into his real world?
“That business is in the form of a country. Karovka’s only a tiny speck in the middle of the map of Europe, but it’s there, and my family have run it for centuries. My father, he’s the king. My brother was the heir apparent.”
“Wait. What?” I blanche. I can’t possibly have heard him correctly. I can barely breathe, let alone speak, “Did you say king?”
“Yes. My father’s the king of Karovka. My brother as crown prince would have carried the royal line on. He was destined for it, in a way I never can be. But his death means that I’m my father’s sole heir.”
I struggle in his arms, trying to face him. It isn’t just hard to imagine. This is pure fairy tale fantasy. It’s not real. It can’t be. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. I thought the fantasy was over.”
“It is, Princess.” He exhales. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m telling you I’m a prince. Wilhelm Alberto Frederick Kaiser, Prince of Karovka, heir to the throne.”
He has a title. Hell, he has— wait, how many? — One, two, three— four first names. Who has that many first names? If this is real, he wasn’t lying about having responsibilities and expectations. He’s a freaking prince? Oh God, he’s an actual real live prince. This is insane.
“After Leo’s death, I couldn’t handle the idea of having to take his position, of the responsibilities I’ll have to shoulder that should have been his.” He pauses to take a breath and continues, “I up and left, starting life over as someone else, but I knew it wasn’t forever. At some point I have to fulfill my obligations.”
He leans forward, his gaze so serious, but I’m lost in the fact he’s a prince, an actual prince. I’ve fallen for a man who is so far above me that I can’t even come to grips with the idea of who he is. I chuckle nervously and pick at the seam of his T-shirt, running along his shoulder. “This isn’t real. I’ve never heard of Karovka.”
Pushing me carefully off his lap, he gets up and goes to a wall of shelves that hold books, memorabilia, and other bits and pieces. He comes back to me with a passport, a photo album and a couple other items that he spreads out on the coffee table in front of me. “Fact.”
I gingerly flick through the album, pictures, I assume, of his family. Photos in front of a palace, newspaper clippings with captions like Young Princes at Play, Karovka Palace 1990, and Prince Wilhelm to Join Older Brother at Oxford University. Then I pick up his passport, his Karovka held passport and flip it open.
“You’re a prince. A real life royal?” I stare at him, his passport clutched tightly in my hand, his photo and title staring me right in the face. “It sounds insane.”
“A little.” He half-shrugs. “But I didn’t ever think I’d be telling anyone this. I never planned to meet someone I’d want to take back to Karovka with me. I was always going to go home and settle for a woman bred for the position of my wife. Which is why I had those rules. The ones you tore right through to get inside me. But that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“How can it not?” I drop his passport on the couch and pull my knees up under my chin. He should be looking for a woman who belongs in his world, a woman who would make sense to have by his side. Not spending time with someone as inconsequential as me, but finding himself a real life princess. “You’re a prince. I can’t even imagine what that life must be like.”
“It was all I knew.” He pushes aside the album and sits in front of me, clasping his fingers together between his knees. “There was a lot of privilege, but a lot of protocol too. I never wanted for anything, but I was groomed to live up to the commands of the king. It wasn’t so difficult when my life was in most ways still my own. For twenty-one years, I was free to make my own choices. When Leo died, I realized that had been taken from me.”
“No wonder you didn’t plan on getting involved with anyone. No normal woman would be good enough.” No normal woman could be adequate for him. I still don’t know why he thinks I can be.
“That’s not true. Though I would have said so before I met you.” He exhales and grips the edge of the table. “I want you, Allie. I can’t help that. God help me, I tried to stay away from you, tried to convince myself this was nothing. But you’ve made it impossible. I want to marry you. I want you to come to Karovka with me. I need you.”
I gasp, choking as I press my fingers to my mouth. This is too much. It’s going too far. “You can’t.”
He locks a hand around my wrist, and I wince. But he doesn’t let go, just methodically takes both my hands between his. “My beautiful Allie, I need you to understand how serious I am.”
Reaching behind him, he picks up a small, dark wooden box and holds it between us. With one hand he flicks open the lid.
I die a little at the sight of the heirloom ring he shows me. A large round sapphire, surrounded by diamonds set on the most intricate white gold filigree band.
“This was my mother’s,” he says. “The sapphire came from a tiara that belonged to my grandmother.”
My chest is so tight, I might actually be in danger of passing out. Is he reall
y asking me to marry him? How could he possibly think I’m the girl he wants to spend his life with, that I could ever fit in with royalty?
“One day soon, I’m going to have to go home, and it won’t be without you. I need you to be my princess. I need you to marry me and help me be the man who can live up to the responsibilities I must shoulder.”
My eyes burn as I stare at the ring, and at him while he tells me he needs me. There are very few times in my life in which someone has told me they needed me. And never by someone who holds my heart the way he does, which is why it hurts to see in his eyes how much he means it. He thinks I can help him be the person he needs to be, but I can’t, because he’s already that man.
“You’re kidding,” I whisper.
“This is real, Allie.” He lets out an exasperated huff, gesturing around us. “All of this is real. There’s no game here. No make-believe. Say yes.”
I yank away from him, shoving him as I jump out of my seat, my eyes watering. “No.”
“No?” His voice is burred, questioning.
“No.” Standing up, I fiddle with the hem of my top. My heart is doing a one-two step in my chest, that doesn’t want to be contained. How was I so stupid to let my feelings get away on me? Why did I think I could be around him and not get swallowed up? “But you don’t really want me. Not like you think you do.”
“I know what I want, Allie. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He grasps my elbow, his voice a smooth murmur. “You know that. I tried to push you away, but I couldn’t, and now I don’t want to let you go.”
I wish he wasn’t so damn convincing. It would be easy to give in to him. To say yes to anything he asks. But I’m just a girl. I’m not a princess. I’m not anything he needs.
I rake my fingers over his chest. I wish I could be what he wants. “What happens when you realize you don’t want me? When it becomes as clear to you as it is to me that you can be the man your position requires? Do you think you’ll still care enough when it’s obvious I don’t belong beside a prince?”
