by Lucy Lennox
“C’mere,” I murmured. “Want to hold you.”
He eyed me suspiciously.
“Baby, please. I promise not to touch your dick, okay? Just let me wrap my arms around you for a little while.”
He crawled in close and rested his head on my chest, resting one arm on my front with his index finger near the divot between my collarbones. The pad of that finger toyed with my skin so lightly, I felt goose bumps prickle all over my body.
I had one arm wrapped around him under his back, and my other hand was sifting through his hair.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Maybe now I can sleep.”
“What if I want you to touch my dick?” I could hear the teasing in his voice.
“Don’t start with me,” I grumbled. “I’m like a hair trigger for you right now. You don’t even know.”
I tried not to notice his breathing pick up, but I couldn’t ignore the thunder of his pulse against my rib cage.
“Stop thinking and go to sleep, Felix Wilde,” I said with a yawn. “No hanky-panky.”
I must have fallen asleep quickly because the next thing I knew, the weak winter sunlight had moved across the room and there was a warm wet mouth on the inside of my thigh, trailing slowly up toward my cock.
“Mppfh!” I practically jackknifed up in bed and stared down at his sleep-rumpled hair. The carefully styled look had been obliterated, and his thick dark hair stood up everywhere in product-stiffened spikes. When he looked up at me, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright.
“Oh god, baby,” I moaned, staring at Felix’s wet, red lips. “Please don’t stop.”
Chapter 36
Felix
All of my self-discipline went out the window the minute I woke up and found myself rutting against Lio’s hip. My dick was so hard, I thought I might die of blue balls if I didn’t get off, and his perfect body was right there for the taking.
I wanted to taste him.
After slipping beneath the covers and sliding Lio’s black underwear down his muscled thighs, I stared at the semihard cock left behind. God, it was so nice. The surrounding patch of dark curls lay tidy and neat, and as the warmth of my breath landed on his exposed skin, Lio’s cock twitched. I ghosted my palm down the length of his cock, the head still hidden from view inside its soft sheath. It filled and expanded under my touch, and I moved my hand over to push one of his thighs open before dropping a trail of wet kisses up the inside of it.
That woke him up.
After begging me to keep going, Lio threaded his gentle fingers into my hair and cradled my head while I sucked along his length. He smelled amazing and tasted even better. I ran my tongue around the sensitive ridge of his cockhead until he was whimpering and begging me to take it all the way down.
Finally I did as he asked and began to deep-throat him as well as I could. I wasn’t very good at it, but god, I wanted to make him feel amazing.
“That’s… oh god… that’s perfect, baby. Just like that, fuck.” Lio’s words babbled out, and his fingers shook in my hair as his cock hardened more and more against my tongue. I ran my hands down to play with his balls and felt them draw up tight and wrinkled against his body.
“Fee,” he hissed, trying to pull my head away. “Baby, gonna—”
One of his hands tore out of my hair and flew to his mouth to muffle his cry as his hot release spurted against the back of my throat and on my tongue. I was practically fucking the mattress between Lio’s legs but suddenly found myself on my back with Lio’s tongue down my throat.
“Oh my fucking god,” he panted against my lips between pulls on my tongue. “That was amazing, Felix.” He drank from my mouth like it held the only air he could breathe, and then he shimmied down my body to lay claim to my own aching dick.
His mouth was so hot and wet, his lips practically dripping with spit, that I damned near came on the first pass. I arched my back and reached for the headboard for leverage before thrusting up into that sucking heat.
“Ungh,” I cried in a high keen. One of Lio’s large hands came down on my mouth to stifle my cries as his mouth took no mercy on my body. Within seconds I was screaming into his palm and trying to blink away black spots in my vision. Through it all, Lio’s talented tongue caressed and cleaned me.
My chest was still heaving when he pulled away, and my brain didn’t have nearly enough blood supply to put words together. I thought maybe if we hadn’t just taken a nap, I could have fallen asleep and slept like the dead. For the first time in over ten days, I felt completely at ease and sated.
Lio nudged us both back under the warm covers and pulled me into a spoon with our heads on the same pillow and his lips next to my ear.
“I want to come out, Felix,” he said carefully. “Publicly.”
I froze, sure the words had gotten jumbled up in my brain.
“Huh?”
“I was a fool to think I could spend the entire rest of my life living a secret. What, was I just not going to ever have satisfying sex again? Never give another person a blow job again? Never make the kind of connection that you and I have made in such a short time? Now that I know what it’s like, how can I even consider spending the next fifty years without it? I have to just tell the truth and let the chips fall. Either the people will cry for a change in royal leadership, or they’ll get over it.”
My brain scrambled to think of something to say while my heart scrambled to decide how the hell I felt about what he’d said.
Soft lips grazed the shell of my ears. “Say something, please. You’re making me nervous. I didn’t mean for my declaration to make you feel pressure. It’s not really about you.”
I took a deep breath, but he spoke again before I could.
“I mean, I’d like it to be about you,” he added quickly. “But it doesn’t have to be. If… if that’s not what you want.”
He sounded nervous, and I turned in his arms to face him. Deep lines scored worry between his eyebrows.
“I think that’s amazing, Lio. My heart broke at the thought of you denying this part of yourself for the rest of your life. I’m so fucking proud of you.”
My heart was thundering with a cross between excitement and dread. This decision carried the mother lode of pros and cons—too many to list. I tried giving him my most supportive smile.
“You look like you just swallowed a slug,” he said.
I lifted the covers and glanced down at his shriveled cock, resting limply against one thigh, before I looked back up at him with a raised eyebrow.
His bark of laughter made me indescribably happy, but he quickly settled down and poked me lightly in the chest with his finger.
“Talk to me, Felix. Tell me what you’re really thinking.”
His eyes were pools of deep blue. They searched me for any hint of reaction.
“I think I love you, and it scares me,” I blurted, feeling suddenly so light-headed at the realization of what I’d done, I thought I might actually black out. “Oh god.”
Lio’s face lit up like the brightest sun. Eyes sparkling and bright, smile wide and sweet, and excited hope written all over the fucking place.
He leaned in to kiss me then, starting with the most tender press of lips and ramping up into a fever pitch before pulling away abruptly.
“I think I love you too, Felix. Pretty sure about it actually. I’ve never felt this way before. I want to tell the whole fucking world how amazing you are, and the very thought of denying those feelings has been making me sick.”
“It’s too soon,” I said before he could continue. “You can’t. We can’t. This isn’t the time. With everything else going on, I think you need to focus on you right now—the coronation and your new duties. There’s the thing with Hen and Jon, and your dad and Eleanor. I know the last thing you want is to be part of a trifecta of royal sex scandals. And I don’t think this country deserves that either.”
I could see his disappointment, but I could also see the part of him that agreed wi
th me, that knew waiting was the right thing to do.
Lio placed his palm on my bare chest and held it there.
“You’re freaking out. I can feel your heart trying to beat out of your chest.”
“I don’t quite know if I can handle being part of all this,” I admitted in a whisper. “It terrifies me.”
He gathered me against his chest and wrapped both arms around me. “Me too, but isn’t it so much better being terrified together? I’m so damned lucky I met you.”
“I just don’t see how it’ll work. Even if we wait,” I began, but he cut me off.
“No way. You do not get to decide it’s not going to work before you’ve even given it a try. No. Forget it. We are going to talk it through while we wait for this other shit to settle down. We’ll come up with a plan, okay? Something that works for both of us. Just don’t… please don’t give up on me before we have a chance to think it through together, okay? You can’t break up with someone you’re not even dating yet. Promise me.”
I reached my hand up and ran a fingertip along his jaw. “I promise.”
There was no way for me to know by the end of the following night, I’d break my promise and run home to Texas.
Chapter 37
Lio
Walking into my coronation ball the following night, I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. I had the love of the one person on earth I cared about most of all, and I could for once in my life envision having everything I’d ever wanted.
The ceremony itself had gone through as smoothly as I could have hoped. There was something about an official royal ceremony that brought the hairs up on your skin and a swell to your chest. The import of the moment was not lost on me. I was taking my place in a thousand-year-old line of rulers, all of whom shared a part of my DNA.
As I’d stood at the front of Saint Nicholas Cathedral for the mass led by the archbishop, I thought of the many coronation masses that had come before mine. I had studied them in great detail as part of my education, but the only one I’d attended, of course, had been my father’s.
When my beloved grandfather had passed away, my father had officially mourned for three months before his own investiture ceremonies. Even when it had been time for his coronation, I’d been so overwhelmed with sadness upon losing my hero, I’d spent the festivities in a fog. I’d been eighteen at the time and had been flown home from boarding school in the States to attend his funeral and subsequent official ceremonies to seat my father on the throne.
I remembered everyone greeting me with sadness and pity in their eyes. It had been no secret how much my grandfather had meant to me. He’d been kind and loving, funny and irreverent. But most of all, he’d seen me—the real me. He’d reminded me as often as possible to be myself and let my heart shine through to the people of Liorland.
He’d said, “All they want is a leader to look up to. It is our job to model genuine goodness. To set the example of what it means to help others, to accept people’s differences, to allow our strengths to complement others’ weaknesses, but more than that… it is our job to recognize when others can lend their strength to complement our own weaknesses. No one wants perfection, Lio. They want real, fallible leadership. They want to know they are not alone and that when we fall, we dust ourselves off and stand again. It is our job to show others how to handle hard times with grace. And when it is your turn on the chair, you will promise to do your best. You will not promise to be perfect. You will promise to live truthfully and with great heart and a strong spirit, yes? If you do this, they will follow you with their whole hearts, Lior.”
It was the only time he’d ever called me Lior. I laughed now, remembering how he’d only ever referred to the throne as “that chair,” as if it was just a regular thing. It was nothing special, just the place where the man sat. Remembering his words as I spotted the throne at the front of the ballroom, I realized he’d been giving me the right words for this very moment in time.
He’d told me to be a leader who lived his truth, trusted his heart, and remained strong through adversity.
I’d walked into the cathedral a prince, a child. When I’d walked out of it, everything had changed.
I was the king, and it was time to act like it.
With one foot in front of the other and medals clinking on the front of my formal dress, I strode into the room with confidence.
It wasn’t until after my speech and the sit-down dinner that I saw Felix for the first time that day. I’d known in theory he was at the coronation mass, but with everything going on, I hadn’t actually seen him. The crowd was massive, and, knowing him, he’d hidden in the very back so as not to attract attention. I could only hope he hadn’t somehow missed seeing it.
I was dancing with Sabine on the wide wooden dance floor when her face lit up. “Oh! There’s my new friend Felix. I can’t wait to introduce him to you. He’s the sweetest thing.”
My heart jumped into my throat when I turned to follow her gaze.
There, in one of the arched doorways of the ballroom, stood the most gorgeous man to ever enter a room.
He was dressed in a form-fitting, custom-tailored tuxedo. His face was clean shaven, and his hair was styled like a movie star’s. As he entered the room, I felt like all the oxygen was sucked out of the building. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look away. His eyes were bright and sparkling as he laughed at something my sister had whispered in his ear. The sight of him happy and relaxed caught me around the ribs like a boa constrictor.
That was my heart right there, and it was walking around free as if it didn’t belong in the center of my chest.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a trio of young women staring at him in obvious enthrallment. I wondered if I was just one of a hundred people in that ballroom who wanted him. Once my eyes caught sight of the stunning man, they couldn’t stop tracking him if I’d wanted them to.
“Lior?” Sabine asked, dragging my attention back to her earlier words.
“We’ve met, actually,” I said as calmly as I could. “At Gadleigh. He was there over Christmas.”
She was clearly surprised. “I knew he met Hen there, but he never mentioned meeting you as well. It’s not every day you meet a prince. You’d think he would have said something to me when he found out you and I were… I mean when he found out you and I knew each other.”
I ignored the attempt to define our relationship. “I believe it was common knowledge I was hiding away from the media. Maybe he was deliberately valuing my privacy.”
“Hm. That makes sense. He seems like a quiet sort anyway. But really lovely. Did you have a chance to get to know him at all? He said he spent lots of time in the glassmaking studio while he was there.”
I noticed Hen whisper in his ear again. His head tilted back to laugh, exposing part of his creamy-skinned throat.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked. I was fairly sure Sabine had asked me another question.
Her eyes flicked from Felix back to me. “He came to some dance lessons with me here and mentioned having gotten to know Hen while he was at Gadleigh. They must have become quite close for your sister to have invited him here, especially for the coronation ball.”
“Felix is her escort for the ball tonight, I believe. Jon is working, and our public relations people weren’t keen on the optics of him escorting her to an official event this soon anyway,” I said without thinking. My eyes were still tracking Felix as he pulled Hen out onto the dance floor. Had this been a movie, I would have excused myself from Sabine and tapped my sister’s shoulder to cut in.
How I would’ve loved to pull Felix into my arms and dance with him.
“Shall we switch?” Sabine asked.
I snapped my eyes back to hers. How the hell had she been able to read my mind so easily. “What? Jesus, no.”
“Why not? Felix promised me a dance tonight. Surely you don’t mind dancing with your sister,” she said with a teasing glint in her eye. “She may be your sister, but she doesn’t have coo
ties, Lior.”
I swallowed my embarrassment for being so obtuse before casting her a smile. “Yes, of course. Let’s switch.”
We danced over to where they spun in each other’s arms, and instead of tapping Felix’s shoulder, I placed my hand on it and gently squeezed.
“May I cut in?” I murmured as close to his ear as I could get without drawing attention.
Chapter 38
Felix
That deep, familiar voice next to my ear dripped sex straight down into my cock. Great, now I had a goddamned boner at the ball. I shuddered and clenched my teeth to hold back the undignified whimper that threatened to escape. After clearing my throat, I mumbled something suave like, “Uh, sure.”
I gave Hen a smile before turning to greet Sabine and give Lio a nod. But when I saw him up close, I almost swallowed my tongue.
He was magnificent.
The man in front of me was not the Lio I’d met a few weeks ago. He was poised and upright in full formal regalia. Polished medals, smooth ribbons, countless insignia, and even a silk sash all declared him to be someone of great power and accomplishment. I’d learned from our discussions at Gadleigh that he’d spent a few years in the French army, but now I saw evidence of his service on his chest along with who knew how many additional honors and awards.
This man in front of me was a king.
A king, and the reality of his situation came down on me like an imploding super dome, leaving me crushed under the dusty rubble. I was nothing. I was no one of importance. The bastard son of a selfish fame whore. A man so scared of his own shadow, I’d barely left the comforting scent of textbooks and Bunsen burners in the past decade.
“Felix,” the king said, his tone flush with meaning.
“Your Majesty,” I choked out before bobbing my head the way I’d seen everyone else do all evening and the way the etiquette teacher had instilled in me the day before.
I quickly turned and pulled Sabine into my arms and twirled her away to the other side of the dance floor. I hadn’t even looked back to see his face. There was no way I was taking the chance of someone, even the king himself, seeing me so overwhelmed by the day’s reality crashing in on me.
