Royal Baby

by Layla Valentine

  Ari chuckled. “Not always, but often,” he admitted. “Though Eleni gave me a run for my money sometimes. She’s the CEO of one of my father’s subsidiary companies now.”

  “Is it better that you were successful on your own, or did they hope for you to stick with the family business?”

  Ari shrugged. “I think they still hope that I’ll come back at some point, take things over,” he said. He shrugged again. “Nico is doing a good job following in my father’s footsteps. I don’t see any reason to knock him off of the throne.”

  “You must have argued a lot with your siblings,” Eva observed. “Being so competitive—I feel like I could never trust my own family if I was pitted against them like that.”

  “I could trust them not to tell my parents certain things,” Ari said, looking off into space. “And they could trust me not to tattle. We knew that we needed the cover sometimes—all of us.”

  “It seems kind of…cold,” Eva admitted.

  “It was effective,” he pointed out. “Look how successful I am now; I can’t say that I would have been if I hadn’t been taught to consider my self-worth based on what I achieved.”

  “I guess the only thing separating you and me is the fact that my parents wanted me to love myself no matter what.”

  “And several billion dollars,” Ari told her. “I have to acknowledge that if my parents hadn’t been rich, it would have been more difficult for me to come here, and start my own business.” He paused and smiled slightly. “You might have met me at the call center instead of the open house.”

  “Ouch,” Eva said, flinching at the assessment.

  “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad,” Ari told her. “There’s nothing bad about having an honest job.” Eva raised an eyebrow and Ari grinned. “Or a dishonest one, as long as you don’t get caught at it.”

  They finished off the food but continued to talk throughout the afternoon, comparing their education: Eva’s in public schools, and Ari’s in the most elite private schools throughout Europe. He’d spent years in Switzerland, in Germany, in Denmark. He’d studied at Cambridge before moving to the United States. In comparison, Eva felt positively provincial. As the hours passed, Ari called his assistant to deliver them both coffee in the park, barely taking a break from their conversation to take care of their flagging energies.

  Eva filed away every detail that Ari told her, beginning to form a portrait of the man in her mind, above and beyond what she needed for the scam they planned to perpetuate. As she and Ari exchanged the details of their lives, she found herself more and more intrigued by him; in spite of the coldness of his upbringing, Ari seemed to have no problem being warm, even affectionate. He was charming. Keep your head in the game, she reminded herself more than once; it wouldn’t do to take his charm personally.

  She sipped the coffee that Ari’s assistant had brought and they quizzed each other on what they had learned that day, correcting the occasional error. “You’re a quick study,” Eva told Ari; he had remembered almost everything she’d told him, save for her brother’s name.

  “As are you,” Ari said, smiling at her. Eva had needed a few tries to get the names of all of his cousins correctly, and it was practically impossible to remember all of the places where his family had estates.

  “You don’t need to flatter me,” Eva countered.

  “Not flattery,” Ari insisted. “There are more details to my life story than yours, and half of them are in foreign languages. You’ve got the much harder job.”

  Eva was torn between frowning and smiling at his justification. “I sound so boring next to you,” she observed, and Ari laughed.

  “Well, you’d sound less boring if we could tell them about your criminal career,” he pointed out. “But since that’s out of the question, boring is good.”

  “We can come up with a story about how we met tomorrow,” Eva suggested. “I think my brain has taken in as much as it possibly can for now.”

  It wasn’t entirely the truth; she had bought flash cards on the way to meet with Ari, and she fully intended to make use of them as soon as she got home. She would write out the important place names, the names of his cousins, the most relevant events in his life, and she would study them before she went to bed, every day that week. “Proper preparation is the key to any successful operation,” Jared had told her, and he’d been proven right; the job that had gotten him and half of their phony consulting company convicted hadn’t been one of the ones they’d over-prepared for. It had been the one time when they’d thought they had a lock on the mark they were after with only a dozen or so hours of research.

  As Eva took the train back to her apartment, she thought about Ari; it was easy to see why he would be a magnet to women of all kinds—not just those interested in his wealth. He was stunningly good-looking, and the easy charm of his demeanor, coupled with the light accent in his voice, was enough to make any woman melt—even she had fallen for it at first. Eva pushed the memory of their tryst out of her mind; she had to stay focused. She had to keep on task.

  That morning she’d gotten a call from the realtor’s lawyer, stating that they were interested in proceeding against her. She hadn’t mentioned it to Ari, but Eva told herself that she would tell him before they got into the meat of their next meeting. She reminded herself that even if the realtor were completely set on suing her, it would take longer than a week.

  You’re just assuming Ari’s as good as his word, Eva thought grimly, listening for the announcement of the next stop. She shook her head and dismissed the idea of distrusting Ari. If you can’t trust him you shouldn’t be in the plot with him, she told herself, standing as her stop came up.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day, Eva went to the Park once again; Ari was five minutes early, bearing more food—this time from a Moroccan place near the first hotel he’d lived at in New York.

  “First thing’s first,” Eva said when they found their spot in the green, dappled depths of the wooded area where they could be alone.

  “What’s that?”

  Eva licked her lips, taking a quick, deep breath.

  “I got a phone call from a lawyer yesterday,” she said. “Apparently…I’m going to be sued.”

  Ari’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “I’ll make a phone call tomorrow,” he said.

  Eva held his gaze for a long moment, caution warring with hope.

  “Okay,” she said. “So the next order of business is figuring out how we met, and the story of our great and timeless romance.”

  Ari snorted. “We don’t want to make it too romantic, or too great and timeless,” he pointed out. “Believable is best.”

  “Of course,” Eva agreed. “Spontaneous and believable.”

  Ari served up the food, dividing it between them. “How about this: we met on a plane, on the way to a music festival,” he suggested as they began to eat.

  Eva laughed. “Too obvious,” she said, shaking her head. “It should be more mundane. Like…” she considered, savoring the flavors of the vegetable tagine. “We met at a pharmacy. Both of us were looking for allergy medicine—and there was only one box left of our preferred brand. We haggled over it and eventually decided to split it, after you graciously attempted to insist that I take the whole thing.”

  Ari snickered. “No—because then we’d have to remember what each of us is allergic to,” he pointed out. “What about if we met at some kind of charity event? We both ran the same 5K and got to talking, spurring each other on when we faltered. Love and sweat and bloody nipples?”

  Eva almost choked on a bite of cucumber salad.

  “I don’t think bloody nipples are an image you want to give future business partners,” she countered. “We could say that we met in a café. Some guy was aggressively hitting on me, getting louder and louder as I tried to tell him to leave me alone. You intervened, saving my precious virtue, and we got to talking after you bought me a latte.”

  “And you said my first
story was too obvious!” Ari shook his head. “We can do better than this.”

  “Let’s go over our biographies for now; something will come to us,” Eva said. She and Ari quizzed each other, and Eva wondered if the Greek had taken the same tactic that she had with flashcards, or if he just had an innate good memory.

  They finished off their food and moved back onto the subject of their cover story. Ari wiped his lips with a napkin. “What if we said that we met here? At the park?”

  “Go on,” Eva said, smiling slowly.

  “We were both here on miserable blind dates,” he continued. “You somehow got set up with just—the most terrible guy ever. Total asshole. And the girl one of my friends set me up with was just awful; she hated all of my favorite bands, only interested in my money—all of those things.”

  Eva snorted. “So there we were, having the worst dates of our lives,” she said. “How did that end up with us meeting?”

  “That’s where it gets good,” Ari said, grinning. “You got into a fight with your guy. Couldn’t stand his attitude, or whatever. The girl I was with saw it going down, and rushed over to cheer you on.”

  “Totally ignoring you—that’s interesting,” Eva observed. “And was I in over my head? Is that where you saved me?”

  Ari shook his head. “You knocked him flat on his back. Someone called the police, and I stayed behind to be a very, very helpful witness for you.”

  Eva laughed out loud, considering the story.

  “I think that will do it,” she said after a moment. “It’s not too boring…it’s interesting and believable all at the same time.”

  “Thank you,” Ari said, inclining his head towards her.

  They fleshed out their story from there, each of them coming up with ideas for dates. As the afternoon dissolved into evening, Eva found herself torn between extricating herself from Ari and coming up with a reason to stay with him, in spite of the fact that she had told herself—again and again—that she would keep the situation between them professional and businesslike. Their conversation began to stray from the scheme at hand, and Eva found herself remembering the club they’d gone to the night she’d asked Ari for help, the way he’d charmed her, the way he’d invited her back to his hotel room.

  “Did you know you were going to ask me to pretend to be your wife when you first invited me back to your place?” Eva’s heart beat faster in her chest and she wasn’t sure how she wanted him to answer.

  “I was starting to think along those lines,” Ari admitted. “But I hadn’t outright decided.”

  “So having sex with me made you decide you wanted me to pretend to be your wife?” Eva raised an eyebrow, feeling oddly unsettled without knowing why. “Was it some kind of audition or something?”

  Ari shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “But the fact that we obviously had chemistry told me that we’d be more likely to pull it off than if—say—I’d found someone from one of the talent agencies to play the role.” He held her gaze for a long moment. “I think we still have plenty of chemistry, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Eva said. She could feel her cheeks burning as the blood rushed into her face. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve gotten ugly since I found out that you used to prank Eleni by putting shells under her mattress and telling her that it was the boogeyman.”

  Ari laughed. “And you haven’t gotten any less beautiful, even after you told me about cheating on your Algebra final,” he told her, and Eva’s heart beat faster in her chest. Ari looked around them. “It’s dark,” he observed.

  Eva glanced around, realizing the truth of what he’d said. “We should go home,” she suggested.

  Ari stared at her for a moment. “Or you could come back to my place,” he countered. “We could keep working on our backstory. I don’t have anywhere to be in the morning.”

  Eva pressed her lips together; she knew that if she went back to his hotel with him, she would end up having sex with Ari. She had sworn to herself that she would keep the situation platonic; but it had been impossible not to remember what he looked like naked, what he felt like inside of her, what he’d tasted like with her fluids on his lips.

  “We do have some powerful chemistry,” Eva said tentatively.

  “And one night together isn’t enough to convince an entire group of people that we know each other’s bodies in and out,” Ari agreed.

  Ari took Eva’s hand as they made their way out of the park, towards the entrance. Eva’s mind reeled as he hailed a cab and ushered her into the back seat, directing the driver to the hotel he was staying at.

  Before Eva could wrap her mind around the decision she’d made, Ari kissed her hungrily, letting his hands wander all over her body in the safe darkness of the cab.

  “God, I’ve been thinking about this ever since…” he shook his head, brushing his lips against her jaw. “I’ve barely been able to think straight.”

  “If you’re able to remember everything…” Eva bit back a moan as one of Ari’s hands slipped up between her legs, caressing her inner thigh. “And you haven’t been able to think straight…”

  Ari chuckled lowly. “About anything other than you,” he told her in a whisper. He kissed her again, and Eva pushed aside any thought of what his words might mean, instead giving into the heat of the moment.

  “Sir? We’ve arrived,” the cab driver said, sounding uncomfortable. Eva’s cheeks burned with a blush of embarrassment, but Ari seemed utterly at ease with the situation. He handed the cabbie a large bill—Eva couldn’t see the denomination, but the driver’s eyes widened at the sight of it—and told the man to keep the change, before claiming her hand and leading her out of the car.

  Eva barely noticed the details in the lobby of The London as Ari guided her towards the elevators, his hand tightening on hers with the urgency that Eva could feel just as certainly as he did.

  As soon as they were alone, on their way up to the penthouse suite, Ari discarded any pretext of propriety, pushing Eva up against the wall and kissing her once more, his hands wandering hungrily over the curves of her body. Eva moaned against his lips, pressing her body against his, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, feeling the heat in him and almost completely oblivious to the progress of the elevator.

  When the doors opened, Ari broke away from her lips, and Eva followed in his wake as he steered her down the short corridor that led to his suite. Unlike their first tryst, Ari seemed to have no patience whatsoever as he unlocked the door and pulled her through it. Eva nearly tripped over her own feet and stopped him for just a moment, kicking off her shoes in the entryway and pulling herself up to kiss him quickly on the lips.

  “Aren’t I supposed to be the impatient one?” Eva raised her eyebrows.

  Ari grinned wolfishly. “I did say we were both impatient.”

  Eva’s clothes fell away as Ari led her across the living room area and towards the bedroom, and she struggled—but succeeded—in peeling off the suit that he wore piece by piece. Eva yelped as Ari threw her onto the bed, launching himself after her. He kissed her again and again, his hands gliding over her naked body, caressing and teasing her.

  Eva realized with shock that in spite of the lack of prolonged foreplay, she was already tingling all over, already soaking wet, slick with desire. Ari’s hand slipped up between her legs and he teased her with his fingers, barely avoiding her clitoris.

  “You don’t seem to need much patience,” Ari murmured against her lips.

  “Not this time,” Eva agreed.

  Ari shifted down between her legs, his fingers withdrawing, and every nerve in Eva’s body seemed to tingle with anticipation as she felt the thick, hard heat of his erection rubbing against her labia. She moaned out as Ari thrust into her all at once, filling her up in an instant.

  “Oh—oh, fuck.” Eva wrapped her legs around his waist, pushing her hips down to meet his thrust. Almost immediately, Ari began to move inside of her, rocking deeper and deeper, rubbing along her inner walls.


  Eva fell into his rhythm, thinking once again—for as long as she could think—that it was amazing how well they moved together, how perfect he felt inside of her. She trembled in Ari’s arms, touching and kissing him everywhere she could reach, twisting and writhing underneath him as every movement of their bodies together brought her closer and closer to orgasm.

  Ari kissed her again and again until she was breathless, trailing his lips down to her breasts and back up to her lips. “God, Eva—you feel even better than I remembered,” he murmured against her neck as he began to thrust harder and faster inside of her.

  All at once, the tension deep down between her hips seemed to almost snap, and Eva cried out, words tumbling past her lips as wave after wave crashed through her. She barely felt Ari’s cock inside of her beginning to twitch, she was so lost to the sensations coursing through her body; but when Ari moaned into her shoulder, shuddering against her, Eva felt the sticky-slick gush of his climax inside of her.

  She gasped and panted, slick with sweat and trembling with the aftereffects of her climax. On top of her, Eva felt Ari’s delicious weight, the heat of his body sinking into her.

  “That was amazing,” he murmured.

  Eva nodded breathlessly. “It was.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes and we can do it again,” Ari suggested.

  Eva chuckled. “I need twenty at least.”

  Instead of going at it again, they slowly maneuvered themselves, shifting until Eva found herself wrapped up tightly in Ari’s arms, eyes closed, enjoying the delicious crackle and tingle of pleasure still coursing through her nerves. Her breathing slowed, and while Eva told herself that she should go back home, it didn’t seem at all urgent; the bed was so comfortable, and Ari’s body felt so good pressed against hers that the thought of getting up was impossible to entertain. She slipped from a doze into a deep, contented sleep.

  Hours later, she woke up. For a moment, Eva was completely disoriented, but then the events of the night before crackled through her brain and she turned over in the bed, looking at Ari, still asleep. Oh God. This was a terrible idea.