by Lucy Lennox
I felt a familiar panic well up in my gut. Was this the moment I confessed who I truly was? He deserved to know.
But the minute he knew my identity, things would change between us. It was inevitable.
“Grimaldi,” I said quietly, wondering if it was enough for him to put two and two together. “My last name is Grimaldi.”
Chapter 14
Felix
Something about the name was familiar, but I was too distracted by the man in front of me to figure it out. Worry lines etched between his eyes, and the eyes themselves were deep blue pools of… something.
Longing.
But he’d been right. It could only be physical. Once I left Gadleigh, I’d be heading thousands of miles away, back to my regular old life. And he’d be winging back to fancy Monte Carlo—to whatever life he had there.
“My last name is Wilde,” I offered in return. “Felix Wilde.” I stood still, wondering if by any chance he’d mention the famous actress with the same last name.
He didn’t.
Instead, Lio’s face melted into a relieved grin, and he held out a hand as if to shake.
“Nice to meet you, Felix Wilde.”
I rolled my eyes but took his hand, only to have it yanked forward so Lio could pull me into a tight hug. The clean scent of the skin on his neck drew my nose to it like a flower.
“Mm, you smell good,” I murmured against him. “I’m getting you all dirty.”
“I like you all dirty,” he admitted in a low voice.
The sound of a throat clearing came from the direction of the doorway, and I jumped back from Lio as if we’d been caught necking in the high school corridor.
It was Lio’s friend Jon.
“Call for you,” he said to Lio, holding out a mobile phone. I noticed Lio’s nostrils flare in irritation and wondered why Jon was carrying Lio’s phone.
“Tell them I’m busy,” Lio said.
“No sir…ree bob, it’s your sister,” he stammered. The man was clearly a little slow in the head.
Lio looked at me with an apology in his expression. “I need to take this. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, there isn’t much left to take care of anyway. Thanks for sticking around to help me put everything away.”
Lio approached Jon for the phone as I gathered my coat and hat and made my way out the front door. Jon shot me an apologetic glance, and I wondered for the millionth time who the man was to Lio. Were they friends from home? From college? From work? Had they ever slept together?
After finishing cleaning up the shop, I returned to my guest apartment and took a long, hot shower. Scrubbing off the sweat and dust felt amazing, and I enjoyed the feeling of sore muscles after several hours’ making glass. When I stepped out of the shower, I heard banging on the door.
“Coming. Hold on,” I called, wrapping a thick towel around my waist and grabbing a second one to rub the water out of my hair. “Who is it?” I asked as I approached the door.
“It’s me,” Lio said. I felt the grin pull at my cheeks.
As I opened the door, I saw Lio’s face change from pleased to full-on hungry. His eyes raked over my exposed chest, and his fingers twitched where they hung by his sides.
“Well, now. That’s the way you should always greet someone at your door,” he drawled.
“I’ll remember that the next time Mari comes to offer me a meal,” I replied with a cheeky grin.
“Dammit, I missed the sweat,” Lio growled as he stalked me, closing the door behind me with a kick. “The dripping water will have to suffice. Tell me I can touch you, Felix.”
His eyes were so feral, the words stuck in my throat. I nodded instead.
I expected him to attack—to maul me to within an inch of my life. But he didn’t. He ran one index finger along my collarbone. His eyes remained riveted on mine.
“You drive me crazy, you know?” His voice was low and rumbly, sending shivers through me straight to my toes. I felt my cock push against the terry cloth of the towel around my hips.
“Nngh,” I managed around the lump in my throat.
Lio’s eyes brightened and his lips curved into a grin. “Cat got your tongue, Felix?” His finger lowered and circled around one of my nipples.
“Eungh.” It came out high-pitched and needy, but when it seemed to only egg Lio on, I decided to not let my desperation embarrass me.
“Fuck, those noises make me crazy,” he murmured before leaning in to drop kisses along my jaw. His mouth nibbled its way over to my ear and clamped down gently on the lobe. The feelings he was bringing out in me were so hot, I was surprised there was still water on my skin that hadn’t evaporated yet.
I finally managed to find my tongue. “I want… oh god… I want you to… jesusfuckingchrist right there,” I stammered. “Want you to fuck me so badly, Lio.”
As he continued to run his fingers lightly over my wet skin and kiss along my throat, I wondered if I’d even make it to any actual fucking or if I’d blow it right there by the front door in my towel.
“And what if I said you were in luck?” he asked, pulling back to gaze at me. “I brought a condom.”
My stomach dropped to the floor, and before I knew it, I’d dropped the towel as well and hot-footed it to my bedroom. I heard the sounds of Lio’s laughter echoing behind me. I lunged onto the bed and turned around to lie on my back, knees folded toward my shoulders in the sluttiest offering I could think of.
I had no idea what had gotten into me, but I wanted Lio to fuck me so badly, I wasn’t at all willing to pretend otherwise.
When he stepped into the room and saw me like that, his eyes widened and pupils darkened. “Christ, Felix. Look at you.”
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t make me beg.”
I was completely bared to him—as vulnerable as I could possibly be—while he remained fully clothed and standing.
Lio pulled off his shirt and approached the foot of the bed slowly—slow enough to make me reconsider my position. I let go of my knees, but before I could put my feet on the mattress, Lio stopped me with a command.
“No. Put them back. I want to see you.”
I closed my eyes and arched my head back in anticipation, his deep, commanding voice like a tight, slick hand to my cock.
Suddenly, I felt his grip on my hips as he hauled my ass close to the end of the bed. His hot, wet mouth descended on me, and I felt his tongue hit my hole with even more aggression than the day before.
I cried out in relief and pleasure as his teeth gently nipped and his tongue sucked. My nerves were lit up like a Christmas tree, and the sparks traveled through my entire groin. My cock leaked all over my stomach, and my balls felt heavy. I wondered if it was all going to be over before Lio was even naked.
“Don’t come,” he warned, pulling back just enough to make eye contact with me.
“But I—”
“Felix, baby, please don’t come yet,” he said in a more gentle, pleading tone. I felt my stomach flip at the endearment and couldn’t take my eyes off his. Something seemed to pass between us then, and I wondered at it until I felt the slick coolness of a finger enter me.
“Oh god,” I whimpered. “Please. Please, Lio.”
His finger began moving in and out of me until he added a second. “Love it when you beg me.”
“Now. I’m ready,” I pleaded.
“No, you’re not.”
“I am. I promise.”
“Baby, I don’t want to hurt you.”
My eyes rolled back in my head, and I stopped breathing for a moment while his fingers danced along my prostate like a motherfucking pro.
I wasn’t going to last. I would embarrass myself in front of him, and he’d think of me as even more of an inexperienced idiot than he probably already did. I tried to think of complex chemical formulas to stave off my orgasm.
“Formers, fluxes, and stabilizers,” I murmured. “Silica, soda, lime…”
“Felix, look at me.”
I opened my eyes to see Lio propped above me, grinning from ear to ear. I could feel the fat head of his cock pushing against my hole. Thank god. It was time for the really good part.
“Welcome back,” he teased. “You ready?”
“Uh-huh,” I said with an overly enthusiastic nod.
Lio’s warm palm came up to smooth over my jaw in a gentle touch. “You’re so beautiful, Felix,” he murmured. I felt my eyes widen at the compliment and wondered if he had any idea what his words did to my heart.
I turned and pressed a kiss into his palm before tilting my pelvis toward him in invitation. As his cock began to stretch me out, I winced and focused on relaxing. I hadn’t been telling the truth earlier, obviously. Of course I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t had anal sex in ages. I’d probably revirginated in the time since I’d last had it.
The burn and stretch reminded me of just how long it had been, but I tried to keep it from showing on my face. I must have done a terrible job because I saw Lio’s face crinkle into worry.
“Baby, talk to me. Are you hurting?”
“It’s okay, just been a while. Keep going.”
He slowed down his movements and pulled back before pressing slowly forward again. This time he went at a snail’s pace, which was both good and bad. Good in that it gave my body time to accommodate him, but bad because, despite what my ass wanted, my libido wanted a pounding. I wanted Lio to fuck me into the floor.
My hands gripped his arms where they held him up on either side of me. I saw the tendons and muscles vibrating with his efforts at holding back. Clearly I wasn’t the only one with pounding in mind.
Finally, I felt my body give way, and the burn changed from unpleasant to acceptable, bordering on good.
“Go. Yes,” I stammered. “Move.”
Lio’s lips crushed mine as his body surged forward. He caught my yelp in the kiss and began to explore my mouth as thoroughly as he fucked me. I felt the delicious sensation of his cock sliding past my prostate, and the sounds that came out of me were incoherent—babbling, begging, whimpering.
Lio had his own incoherent sounds between kisses. I caught expletives and words like tight, perfect, hot, need you. His mouth moved to my ear as he began to urge me toward my own climax. His hand moved between us to grab my cock, and my eyes, yet again, rolled back in my head. It was a sensual overload of the very best kind.
“Not gonna la—” I began.
“Come for me, Felix,” he groaned into my ear. “Want to see you let go, baby.”
That low grumble was all I needed to push me over the edge. My entire body contracted and arched into him—my head went back on the pillow, and my mouth dropped open in a guttural cry. I felt my ass clench around Lio, and his hands tightened under my shoulder blades in response. My brain stuttered and shut down for a moment while the best vibrations of pleasure I’d ever felt washed through my entire body.
“Holy fuck, Felix. Ahh.” Lio exploded into me, clutching me even tighter as he came. I noticed a slick sheen of sweat on the skin of his back when my hands moved up and down his spine. It was several moments before he managed to move off me to dispose of the condom. When he rolled back against my side, I peered over at him.
His eyes studied me like I was an unexpected data point in a predictable experiment. My hand reached out to sift through his hair, causing his eyes to soften.
“That was… that was…” I tried, unable to put words to what I was feeling.
“Yeah. It was.”
Lio ran a thumb along my cheekbone and across my lower lip. I felt the heavy weight of his leg across mine and enjoyed the masculine roughness of his leg hair on my skin.
He was propped up on an elbow, gazing at me, and I couldn’t take my eyes away. We just stared at each other for a while as our breathing leveled out and our skin returned from nuclear levels of heat.
All the while, Lio’s thumb lightly traced my features, my hairline, the angle of my jaw, the cords of my throat, the curve of my collarbone. Goose bumps prickled over every inch of my skin.
Finally, Lio lowered his mouth onto mine, and I slid my arms around his neck, pulling him down to lie on top of me. We kissed lazily for a while, exploring each other’s mouths with gentle lips and tongues. Hands wandered down each other’s sides and across curved shoulders and muscled thighs.
It was the single most intimate and erotic experience I’d ever had.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if it would remain so for the rest of my life.
Chapter 15
Lio
Even though we eventually got up to find something to eat for dinner, the atmosphere of quiet intimacy surrounded the two of us. I held Felix’s hand while we walked to the kitchen and only leaned over to distract him with kisses when I thought he’d catch sight of Jon trailing behind us from the carriage house to the main building.
I’d insisted on Mari taking the night off to spend it with Bert, and she’d promised to leave the fixings for a homemade pizza behind in one of the refrigerators. She knew how much I loved making a pizza in the brick oven built into the main fireplace.
Sure enough, she’d left the fires going, and Felix was more than happy to help move some of the embers and hot logs up into the pizza oven. I arranged all of the ingredients on the huge wooden table in the center of the room and teased Felix about his taste in pizza toppings.
“I should make you an American pizza,” I joked. “Bet you’ve never had one quite like mine.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Dude, I live on American pizza. And might I point out that, technically, all pizza is American?”
“Actually, that’s a myth. It started thousands of years ago in the Middle East.”
Felix lifted a brow at me. “Ah, know your pizza history, do you?”
“I’m extremely well educated in the area of history,” I admitted. “It’s one of my special skills.”
“Yet, you don’t know much about the stained glass here in the castle,” he teased. “How is that? I’d never even set foot on the island before and I have all kinds of theories about Gadleigh glass.”
I poured the tomato sauce over the two dough rounds laid out on the table while Felix sliced the mozzarella. “I know some think the maker is a mystery even though it was credited early on to da Lodi.”
Felix looked up at me in surprise. “Shit. You really are a history buff.”
I shrugged. “That’s about all I know. Well, I know where most of the hidden glass is, only because I’ve spent so much time here.”
I thought about telling Felix the truth of who I was. There was something about the new closeness we’d begun in his apartment earlier that made me feel like I was lying to him now. Every moment I withheld the truth from him felt like a kind of nasty betrayal.
After we finished adding toppings to the two pizzas, I showed Felix how to use the pizza peel to slide them into the oven.
While we waited for them to cook, I found us some bottled beer and sat down at the large table next to Felix. Mari had left a stack of mail and magazines on the table, and Felix pulled a copy of GOTCHA! Magazine from the stack. On the cover was a photo of my parents coming out of the hospital with the headline “Is the King of Liorland hiding a terminal illness?” emblazoned across the photo. Even though it was an old shot taken after they’d visited sick kids as part of some charity work, I felt my gut clench. Those kinds of covers and articles were nothing new, but I realized now might be as good a time as any to tell him who I was.
“Felix, I—”
“This is absolute shit,” Felix spat. “This poor family is dealing with a health scare, and the fucking tabloid press turns it into a circus.”
I watched him to see if any part of what he was saying was insincere. He seemed really upset. He began leafing through the magazine for more information.
“It says here that the king claims it was only a panic attack, and yet the reporter is convinced it’s all some big cover-up. He even goes on to say this panic attack was brought on by
some secret shit going on in the king’s personal life. As if anything going on in the man’s personal life is any of our business.”
“You’re right. It’s not,” I agreed. “I’m glad to hear you say that because—”
Felix looked up at me, and I noticed his eyes were full of tears. The sight caught me completely off guard.
“Felix? What’s wrong? Why is this upsetting you so much? It’s a tabloid. This is what they do.” I reached out to pull the magazine away and bury it under the stack of mail before pulling him into my arms.
“What if they have kids, Lio?” he asked with a sniff. “That’s not fair to those kids. Being dragged through the press like that. What if there’s a story there and the press gets a hold of it? What would it do to their kids? It’s not like anyone asks to be born into royalty.”
I wondered if he knew who I was and that’s why he was taking this so hard. Was it possible?
“They do have kids,” I said quietly. “But maybe their kids are used to it by now.”
Felix pulled back and looked at me with a lifetime’s worth of anguish on his face. “They can’t possibly be, Lio. You don’t ever get used to it. It’s impossible.”
My heart slowed to a crawl as I realized he was speaking from personal experience. I brushed the hair from his face and placed a kiss on his forehead.
“Tell me,” I said.
He turned away and began to fiddle with the corner of an envelope on the top of the mail stack, flicking it with his thumbnail back and forth with a ticktick sound.
“My mom is an actress.”
I thought about what he’d already told me about his personal life. He was raised by his grandfathers and didn’t know his dad. Suddenly, I recalled that his mom hadn’t wanted a child to hold back her career.
As an actress.
There was only one actress I could think of with the last name Wilde. Jacqueline Wilde. The age would fit with being Felix’s mother, especially if she was young when she’d gotten pregnant. Jacqueline Wilde was the Sharon Stone of our generation. She was known for being beautiful but ruthless—a power player in Hollywood. Despite a now highly publicized early career in porn, she’d wound up earning hundreds of accolades including Golden Globes and an Oscar nomination.
