by Lucy Lennox
“Felix, are you okay?” Sabine asked sweetly. Concern wrinkled her brow enough to cause me to slow down and focus on her.
“I’m sorry. Yes. It’s just… well, I guess I’m just a bit overwhelmed. I feel… out of my depth, to be honest,” I admitted. “I left my hometown a few weeks ago to study glass, and now here I am at a royal coronation ball.”
While it was the truth, it clearly wasn’t the real reason I was so upset. The real reason was knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that I didn’t belong in this place. I didn’t know the first thing about politics, diplomacy, or any of the other issues a royal family would have to deal with on a daily basis. What in hell had I been thinking? Daydreaming of a future with Lio had just been that—daydreaming. I couldn’t possibly contribute anything of value to this world.
It was a fairy tale only. It had all been just a damned fairy tale—the stuff of children’s dreams and young women’s fantasies. I was an imbecile.
While leading Sabine around the throngs of dancers in their formal finery, I tried my hardest to fake friendly interest in her chatter. She told me about the dates she and “Lior” had been on and how she couldn’t believe she was dating an actual king. She gushed about how sweet he was, how courteous he acted toward her. She even made a half joke about him being too gentlemanly at times, “If you know what I mean, Felix.”
Were the tears in my eyes ones of relief or unmanageable jealous rage? Hard to tell.
I’d been the one to encourage Lio to put off his difficult discussion with Sabine until after the coronation. There was no sense in dashing her hopes before giving her the night of her dreams. But now I was having a hard time with seeing her on his arm.
When the song ended, I practically chucked the poor woman back at her table before striding as quickly as possible for the door. I needed to go home. Now.
As soon as I exited the ballroom into the vast corridor, I spotted a door to the wide balcony and knew that’s what I wanted. Fresh air and solitude.
I crashed through the double doors, and by the time I hit the balcony railing with my palms out, I was heaving in breaths, trying not to freak out.
“Come with me,” a steady voice said from behind me. Arthur grabbed my elbow and steered me through a side door, down what looked to be a service corridor, and into a small sitting room.
Where sat the king of Liorland.
My panic disappeared at the sight of him in the stately chair with ornate carved wooden handles and gold and burgundy upholstery. Suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I crossed the room and knelt at his feet.
His eyes widened as he looked down at me.
“Felix, baby, did something happen?”
I stared up at him in all of his royal regalia. Finally, I managed to suck in enough breath to answer him.
“Yes, dammit. You became a king! I… I… I mean, Your Majesty…”
My words echoed in the small room as his eyes widened. But when he spoke, his voice was eerily calm.
“Yes, Felix. I did become a king. And I’m not going to apologize for it. But if you ever call me ‘Your Majesty’ again we will have to explore a spanking kink. Your pale ass might look nice with a bit of pink on it in the shape of my hand.”
His eyes were intense as he leaned back in the chair. The power emanated from him in heady waves, making my cock hard and hidden confidence simmer under my skin.
I wanted to show him how strong I was so when I was no longer here tomorrow, he’d know I would be okay.
Without moving my eyes from his, I reached out and unfastened the lower buttons of his coat before opening his belt and pants. I heard the sharp intake of his breath and saw his eyes dilate.
Lio’s fingers came up to slide my glasses off before placing them on a side table. As soon as my mouth dropped into his lap, his fingers returned to fist in my hair. It was quick and dirty. Part of me wanted him to go back into his formal coronation ball with my spit dripping along his skin like a brand. So he would know that beneath the clinking medals and the royal sash, he was still mine.
And when we couldn’t dance together in front of a thousand witnesses, I’d still have the taste of his climax on my tongue.
There was no sound other than the muffled moans and gasps coming from both of us. His were noises of pleasure while mine were sounds of goodbye. If I was going to leave him, I wanted one last taste of him. One last moment of being completely his. A final acknowledgement that the man in front of me was the king I wanted to serve for the rest of my life.
When it was done, and I’d returned his clothing to its proper readiness, I stood up and walked over to a corner of the room, stupidly wedging myself face-first into the silky wallpaper there as if the silly gesture would hide me from his intense gaze and my own sadness.
He came up behind me then and pressed his warm, strong frame against my back. His arms slid around my front, and he tucked his nose into the side of my neck. “I’m still your Lio,” he whispered in a strained voice.
I turned in his arms and buried my face in his chest, trying very hard not to interfere with the hardware there. “I’m so sorry, Lio,” I breathed. “I didn’t mean to pull you out of the dance. I just needed some fresh air.”
“You must be joking. First of all, that was amazing. Second, I’ve been counting down the moments since I saw you in the ballroom, desperate for an excuse to touch you. And when I danced the first dance with Sabine earlier, all I could think was that I wished it was you instead. It should have been you, Felix.”
We looked at each other then, so many words unspoken.
Lio reached out his hand to me, white gloved and steady.
“Felix Wilde, may I have this dance?”
There stood William Triannon Frederik Harald Christien Grimaldi, Crown Prince of Monaco and King Lior IX of Liorland, in all of his glory. And he wanted to dance with me.
“I’d be honored,” I said with a shaky smile, reaching out to take his hand. With no way to hear the music from the tiny, enclosed room, we just swayed together in each other’s arms for several long minutes. I ran my hands up and down the luxurious fabric of his coat and nuzzled my nose into his Lio-scented skin.
He whispered words of love and devotion into my ear—enough to thicken my throat and tighten my arms around him. The moment was magical… no, it was majestic.
But it had to end.
I pulled back from his embrace. “You need to go back in there,” I said with as bright a smile as I could fake. “There are hordes of people waiting for an audience with the new king. You are going to be the most amazing king Liorland has ever known.”
“Where are you going? Can I come to your room after the night is over?”
I thought about how I wanted to leave things with him, how I wanted him to feel once I was gone. He needed to be able to focus on the job ahead of him without the distraction of someone five thousand miles away. If I told him I was departing for home right after I left him there, he would beg me to stay. The ensuing argument would interfere with his evening even more than my presence already had. If I didn’t tell him I was leaving, he’d be pissed at me for lying. But at least he’d manage to get through this important evening before discovering my absence.
“Yes. Now go have fun. I’m going to leave the ball early so I don’t shoot puppy eyes at you across the crowd all night, okay?”
His own dark blue eyes bore into me. “I love you,” he said. “Of all the vows I spoke during my coronation mass and all the promises I made to the people of Liorland in my speech, do not doubt that those three words I say to you now are the most important ones I said today. Do you understand?”
My chin trembled as I nodded.
“Say it, baby,” he breathed. “Tell me you understand how important this is to me. How important you are to me. Please.”
“You love me,” I repeated. “But you have to understand I feel the same way about you.”
“I do. I know how much you love me, Felix. That’s what I’m
afraid of.”
Before I could ask him what he meant by that or even steal a final kiss from him, there was a commotion outside the door. Jon cracked it open just enough for us to hear him tell Lio’s mother the king would be out momentarily.
“See you soon,” Lio said with a grin before dropping a quick kiss on my forehead and sliding out the door.
I waited at least fifteen minutes to ensure the coast was clear before sneaking out into the hallway and finding my way back to the guest suite where Grandpa and Doc were packed and waiting.
“How did you know?” I asked, pulling off my clothes as quickly as I could before slipping on comfortable sweats for the long flights home. I left the custom-fitted tuxedo laid out on my bed and turned to my grandfathers. It was impossible to ignore the looks of pity etched in both of their faces.
“We raised you, son,” Grandpa said in a quiet voice. “Of course we knew. Let’s get you home.”
I didn’t say a word as we snuck out of the palace, out of Lio’s home.
And I tried not to feel as though I was closing the book forever on my real-life fairy tale.
Chapter 39
Lio
“That fucking coward!” I hissed the words at my sister before slinging my phone across the room toward the sofa. It missed by a mile, clattering to the ground and sliding to a stop under an antique blanket chest my sister had stolen from my mother’s apartment after she moved into her house in town. I’d asked her to stay as long as she wanted to at the palace, but she’d declined. It had taken me a few weeks after the coronation to figure out that she was relieved to have a break from everything Grimaldi for a while.
I could hardly blame her.
My father had retreated to the house in Grasse and was secretly ensconced in the countryside with Eleanor. I’d begged him to go public with his situation so that our public relations people could manage the fallout our way, rather than being responsive when it inevitably came out anyway. Despite Eleanor’s begging him to do it too, he’d refused. While I was still supremely pissed at my father, I was secretly a little happy for Eleanor finally at least getting his full attention. I’d hated seeing her exhaustion and sadness that day at the palace.
I’d tried for the millionth time to reach Felix, but he wasn’t answering the damned phone.
“Lior,” Hen said to get my attention. “Can’t you see Felix is trying to do the right thing? He’s trying to give you some space while you get your legs under you in your new job.”
“It’s been three months since he fucked on out of here, Hen! And he sends me another fucking text asking for more time? What the hell? He can’t just talk to me on the damned phone for five minutes? We had a deal. What if something’s wrong with him? What if he’s not okay?” The very idea he could be sick or hurt—
“He’s fine. I talked to him last night. Stop being melodramatic.”
I snapped my head around to glare at her. “What? He talks to you?”
“Not willingly. I have to call Doc and get him to force the phone into Felix’s hand.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “What? You can do that? How did you get Doc’s number?”
She stared at me. “My brother is the leader of an entire freaking country. I can find out the phone number of a man named Dr. Wilde in Hobie, Texas, for god’s sake. I think it took all of two seconds on Google.”
“Dammit!” I paced back and forth in my sister’s cozy family room. Jon had moved in with her quietly about a month ago and was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, dozing off in front of the television. At my shouted curse, he jumped awake.
“What the hell?” In true royal guard fashion, he came fully alert in half a second, ready for action.
Hen laughed at him. “Stand down, sweetheart. It’s just Lio bitching about Felix again.”
Jon rolled his eyes before closing them again. “Wake me when something new happens.”
“What did he say?” The question was directed at my sister, and she knew I was asking about Felix.
“The usual. That he’s trying to give you space to get accustomed to your new role. But the truth is, he’s feeling unworthy, brother. I think he’s scared.”
I knew she was right. I’d seen it in his face that last night before he bolted. The coronation had overwhelmed him, leaving us in a stalemate.
He was avoiding me because he worried about not being good enough to be the king’s partner, and I was hesitant to push him because I worried about forcing him into a life under the microscope.
Which meant we were right back where we started, except we’d switched sides. Now it was Felix who feared tarnishing the monarchy, and me who feared attracting the tabloid press.
“I have to do something,” I roared. “This is bullshit. I’ve spent three months with my head down proving I know what I’m doing, when all the while I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing! It’s like I can run a fucking country, but I can’t get one damned glassmaker to return a freaking phone call!”
Hen’s eyes sparkled at me, and I could tell she was trying her best to hide a smug grin.
“Stop being a pest,” I grumbled. “You don’t understand what it’s like not to have the person you love in the same continent as you.”
“Why do you think I came to Gadleigh for Christmas,” she teased.
I looked over at Jon and saw him gazing at her with a stupid lovestruck puppy face.
“Don’t make me puke,” I warned them both. “Help me solve this, dammit.”
This time, it was Jon who spoke up. “Why don’t we just fly over there and get him?”
I opened my mouth to tell him how ridiculous that was when I realized he had a point.
“No,” Hen said firmly. “You need to come out first. I think half his fear is ruining things for you here. He feels responsible for messing up the plans you had for taking the throne and marrying Sabine like a good little king. He needs to know that you coming out to the country is for you, not because of him.”
“But it is because of him,” I argued. “If not for him, I would have never even considered it. He needs to know it’s because of him, I realized it’s worth it.”
“What if he rejected you now? Would you stay in the closet forever?”
Her question made me stop and think. “No. I don’t think I could pretend again the way I tried to with Sabine. Knowing there is someone out there who makes me feel the way Felix does… no. I think I need to come out regardless of what Felix decides to do.”
“So, you see,” Hen said proudly, “I was right. You need to come out. Prove to him this is the right thing for you, regardless of what he decides. It might take some pressure off him to be worth it all the time. Does that make sense? What if you came out ‘for him’ but then things didn’t work out? If he felt like he was the reason you came out, he might feel pressured to stay.”
The thought of things not working out made my stomach turn. Regardless, Hen was right.
“Okay. Yes. As much as it pains me to admit, dear one, you are right. I’m going to talk to Milane.” I turned to walk to the door of her apartment when she stopped me and threw herself into my arms.
“I’m so proud of you, Lio,” she said thickly into my necktie. “I love you. When you’re ready to fly to Texas, I’m there.”
“Thank you for helping me see reason, Hen. He needs to know how much I love him, but he doesn’t need to feel responsible for what’s going to happen when I come out.”
After dropping a kiss in her coconut-scented hair, I turned and left her residence, making my way down the long halls until I arrived at my own office. I’d learned early on that the king did not just turn up in his employees’ offices unannounced without causing massive stress and chaos.
“Oh good, Lucas, you’re still here. Please ask Milane to come see me as soon as she’s free, and when she arrives, come in with her. It’s going to be a long night.”
I didn’t wait for an answer before striding through to m
y private office. Lucas had made it very clear that for this first year of my reign, his time was mine, however much I needed it to be. We both knew that the long nights and weekend work would be frequent, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad he was single. I didn’t feel quite so guilty about keeping him at the office so late.
Once both of them were seated comfortably across the desk from me, I began.
Chapter 40
Felix
Once I returned home to Hobie, I hid myself away in the glass workshop on the ranch. Whenever one of my family members expressed concern about my solitude, I explained I was practicing the new techniques I’d learned at Gadleigh.
And that was the truth.
But not all of it. Mostly, I wanted to be alone with my thoughts so I could feel sorry for myself in private. I spent hours reliving my time at Gadleigh with Lio. Every touch, every kiss, every shared childhood story or debated item in the news played back through my mind like a highlight reel of our time together.
When I wasn’t remembering Lio, I was concentrating on creating the most beautiful, unique glass I could. I wanted to show my grandfathers that I’d done my time at Gadleigh proud, that the money they’d invested to enrich my education specialty had helped me come away a better glassmaker than I’d left here.
I perfected the technique used in making the knotted puzzle ornaments and created a stash to save for special occasions in the coming year. Once finished with that, I played around with some of the other advanced maneuvers to work on my own original pieces. I was proud of the work I was doing even though my dedication to the studio was keeping me away from my family.
Finally my cousin Saint called me on it one Sunday morning just before lunchtime. It was early spring, and the day was warm with a cool breeze blowing across the ranch.
“Get the fuck in the house, we’re here for an intervention,” he barked. I could immediately see how he’d succeeded as a Navy SEAL and wondered if maybe they wanted him back. We needed another bossy Wilde man around the ranch like a hole in the head.
