Prince's Babies: A Royal Baby Romance Boxed Set

by Ella Brooke

  Once she was upstairs in the lounge, however, sitting by his side and kissing him, May hesitated. What was she doing?

  Her heartbeat surged in her ears. “You really think there are women out there who would tell you no?’

  “I just want to make sure everyone is able to say yes.”

  His smile, that little smile that was at once hopeful and open. His brows rose slightly in question. It sent a chill of excitement through her. How often had a guy genuinely taken the time to check in with her before satisfying whatever urges he had?

  “Doesn’t everyone want to believe that people choose to be around them?” Louis continued.

  May had to wonder if he believed they didn’t. She took his hand, and time seemed to speed up. Staring into one another’s eyes, his hand cupping her face, and then their lips meeting . . . The way their bodies came together seemed inevitable. She murmured her answer to his question as his lips came down her neck, layering kisses and gentle sucks along the tender flesh there. This man, who had looked like such a player entering the club, was gentle and attentive.

  May let out a soft sigh as he kissed the underside of her chin. She ran her hands down his strong arms. They swept up and encircled her waist. May felt overwhelmed by his scent and his strength. Louis both so strong and vulnerable, and so very practiced at his craft here. She slid into his lap, straddling his thighs and leaning in to deepen their kiss. His hands moved down over her backside. A soft noise slipped from her as he squeezed and murmured his appreciation in her ear.

  “Is this okay?” he asked as his hands slipped under the waistband her tight shorts.

  May unbuttoned the front of her shorts and whispered, “Yes.”

  As her shorts slipped off, she guided his hand over the birth control patch on her left cheek and bit her lip as their eyes met. He kissed her again, squeezing her ass firmly and rolling his hips up against her. He was growing hard already, and it had been a long time for her. Long enough that she had considered not renewing her patch subscription, but as he swelled beneath her, she was very grateful she had. Their lips came together over and over, and soon her shorts and panties had been tossed over the side of the piano and his hands were under her shirt grasping for her breasts.

  Unbuckling his belt, May slipped out of his lap. His pants dropped as he stood, and with ease, he lifted her up and headed for the long, leather couch. The lights of L.A. shone through the glass doors of the balcony. Louis draped her over the back of the sofa and began unbuttoning his silk shirt. Just as May had expected, every inch of skin he exposed was glowing and gorgeous.

  May reached up and ran her fingertips over his abs. He laughed softly and brought her fingers to his mouth for a kiss before lowering himself over her. Louis caressed her cheek and looked into her eyes with a softness tempered only by the clear desire radiating from him. She cupped both sides of his face and stroked his calf with the arch of her foot. She wanted him so much; her core was throbbing and her thighs were growing hot. When his fingers moved to tease between her legs, she shuddered, her body coming to life at his touch. They kissed as his expert fingers whipped her up to a froth, and finally, he slid his considerable length inside her.

  Gasping, May curled one leg around his and pushed her hips up to meet him. Her insides were already quivering. She gripped his shoulder with one hand and the back of the sofa with the other.

  “Harder,” she instructed, and he readily complied. He’d been too attentive, too gentle. At her word, he gripped her hip, and his thrusts grew stronger, faster. Her back arched involuntarily as her orgasm began to build, welling up and radiating through her body. A second wave hit her, and she clenched around him, panting heavily and letting it ride out as he dove deep inside her.

  A moment later, he grunted and jerked his hips forward. May blinked slowly up at him and stroked his arm as he came. For a moment, his expression was wild and unfocused. Those stormy eyes seemed nearly black in the heat of the moment, and it fascinated her. Was there something darker beneath this handsome man she’d ended up under, simply due to whim, animal attraction, and a twinge of sympathy?

  He let out a heavy breath as he pulled out of her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She sat up, looking at him tentatively.

  “I should go, I suppose,” he said, but did not move.

  “You have some woman waiting for you?”

  “Not even in the slightest, but I do have some business I should prepare for.”

  “At this time of night?” May wasn’t going to push him, but it did seem odd that he wanted to run off immediately. She shrugged. “I’m going to freshen up. If you’re still here when I get out, we can keep talking. If not—” She rose and kissed his lips tenderly. “That was amazing.”

  May winked at him, collected her clothes, and headed for the bathroom. As she suspected, he had left when she returned, but she was still a bit disappointed.

  The following day, May felt a few pangs of regret. Louis was, beyond the surface perfection, a kind and funny man. May could see herself actually going out with him, having long talks, bringing him back to the apartment or on the set when she was filming her indie noir piece. However, she didn’t know Louis all that well. He’d seemed genuine, but it could’ve been an act.

  She suited up for her job at the hotel and got to work. It was tough going from one job to the other, but at least she didn’t have to be up as early as some of the girls, and she could take a nap before she went back to the bar. Her thoughts, which were normally focused on the ghost stories of her audiobooks or the details of whatever script she happened to be writing, kept drifting to Louis’s smile. His laugh. Even that distant, sad look he’d gotten sometimes when he had thought she wasn’t looking. It was hard to be disappointed. That was how guys were, sometimes, she supposed.

  Halfway through her day, with a fresh migraine brewing, May was replenishing towels in a family’s room, and as she came out with the remaining towels, a young man rushed past her, causing her to lose her balance. But before she crashed into the floor, strong arms caught her and lifted her to her feet. May glanced up and flushed a deep red. It was Louis. Of course, why would anyone else run into her at work?

  “I’m sorry that happened,” he said. “I can report that to the manager, if you like. That boy is too old to be careening around the halls. Dangerous, too, if you’d been closer to the balcony.”

  “No, it’s fine.” May was so embarrassed that she didn’t look up very much, but once Louis had assured she was okay, he was on his way.

  And he still didn’t really see her. Granted, she’d kept her eyes averted this time, but how distracted did you have to be to see someone multiple times and not know who you were speaking to?

  May curved her lips, put her earbuds in, and got back to work.

  May very rarely dressed up for the bar beyond the requirements. Bar staff weren’t under the same pressures as waitstaff, and that was because the latter served both drinks and entertainment in the form of occasional dance numbers, so they were paid more than your average waitress. That meant that May didn’t have to wear heels to work, but it also meant she could get away with “bartender sexy” on most days. Today, May had busted out her platform boots and taken an extra 20 minutes doing up her eyes and pulling her long hair into a twist instead of her usual ponytail. Guys didn’t need to be forgetting who she was tonight.

  Louis was at Astra’s table when May walked in. She’d half-expected he’d be here, but irritation rose up within her anyway. Gliding past the tables, May headed to the back room to make sure everything was set up in the bar. She put her head down and started cutting up limes.

  “Look at you.” Tanner came behind the bar with her and started setting up glasses. “You look like a girl.”

  May narrowed her eyes at him and cupped her breasts. “What, did you think I was a drag queen? Twerp.”

  “Drag queens don’t look so busted.”

  “You clearly haven’t been to that many clubs yet.” May whipped her
dish towel at him.

  Tanner caught it and came over to the counter. “Who’s the snack with Astra?”

  “Old friend. He was here last night, too.” May bit back her words after that. She didn’t want to give the staff here anything to gossip about.

  Tanner raised a brow. “They definitely look friendly. You think they were more than that?”

  “With Astra, probably. Friends, old lovers . . . basically the same thing with her, right?” May smirked and scooped the cut limes up and put them in a dish in the fridge. She touched her lips, tasting the tart juice, and then went to get some whiskey tumblers.

  She glided over to the table with two drinks, prepared just as Astra and Louis preferred, and set them down without a word.

  “Thank you, dear.” Astra took the glass. “You met May yesterday, didn’t you, Lou?”

  “I did.” Louis offered her a charming smile with no hint of smarminess.

  May appreciated that. He was a gentleman. But an unruly part of her was rising to the top, fighting to push back that placid surface that kept her employed and set fire to everything. Her smile teased across her lips, and she crossed one leg behind the other, tilting her head to the side. “Oh, we’ve met a couple of times. I suppose snobby rich people don’t really pay much attention to the help, though.”

  May winked broadly at him and made a swift turn back to the bar.

  Chapter Three

  Louis

  Louis followed May with his eyes as Astra let out a delighted cackle of a laugh.

  “Don’t annoy my girls, Lou,” Astra warned. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you taking her to the upstairs lounge. What did you do up there?”

  “Nothing she didn’t want to do.” He looked suspiciously at his drink. “You think she poisoned this?”

  “No,” Astra scoffed. “It would be too traceable. Sugar might try, though. If she didn’t owe me as much as she does, you might not be getting any time with her at all.”

  “What exactly did she tell you? We didn’t part on bad terms, and I’m not going to ambush her with a priest in the middle of this club,” Louis objected. “I just want to talk. If she’d made herself available sooner, we could have addressed the matter and been done with it already.”

  “The girl is busy these days. What can I say? It’s tough being a star.” Astra took her whiskey and raised a brow. “But don’t be banging any more of my staff while you’re here, honey, or my goodwill is going to evaporate faster than a teardrop on the Beltway in July.”

  Louis frowned at her. Astra rose, amusement still written over every line of her face, and left with her drink to go about her business. Louis glanced back at May, who was now back behind the bar, talking to her coworker as though their confrontation had never happened. Clearly, she hadn’t been as breezy about him leaving the night before as she had let on, but that was hardly his fault. He’d made no promises. Regardless, he wanted to go to her and make things right.

  However, at that moment, Sugar DeLaude strolled into the front of the club. The place had just opened a few moments ago, so the crowd was not a very large one, but at least half came up to try to talk to her or get autographs. The other half were looking on from their tables and taking pictures with their phones. May watched curiously from the bar and spoke to her coworker for a moment before readying a couple of drinks. To Louis’s considerable consternation, May made her way over to Sugar with the drinks on a tray.

  With an image in his mind (not entirely unpleasant) of May and Sugar going up to the lounge together, Louis went over to intercept them. Sugar had accepted a martini and was smiling at something May had said when she caught sight of Louis. Her expression soured.

  “Hello, Sugar. Good to see you,” Louis said brightly. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Has it? Seems only yesterday,” Sugar said flatly. Her accent had disappeared. When they were in school together, her English had been, like his, flavored with a bit of British seasoning.

  May kept a blank expression as she offered the other drink—a whiskey with lime—to him without a word. Louis nodded to her and lifted his glass.

  “Astra reserved a booth for us,” Louis said.

  “Let a girl breathe,” Sugar practically purred. She looked at May as she sipped her drink. “How long have you worked here?”

  “For a couple of years. Astra poached me from a different bar,” May said. “I hadn’t even been in L.A. for three months at that point.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Austin, Texas.”

  “And you came out here to be a star?” Sugar winked at her, causing May to blush a bit.

  “Oh, God, no. I mean, I’m not really an actor. I do scripts and direct. I had a pretty popular web series a few years ago that we shot around Austin.”

  “How cool! I’ve never been on the creating end of it. Of course, every actress wants to direct, but that’s years down the line for me,” Sugar rubbed her finger around the rim of her glass. “What kind of movies do you make? And what was the name of your series?”

  May’s smile started to grow, urged onward by Sugar’s easy demeanor. Seeing Sugar so forthright and friendly with May, seeing May so friendly with Sugar— It galled Louis in a way. He’d done nothing wrong that these two women should treat him like a third wheel in their conversation, and yet he was left just standing there as Sugar opened May up and got to her to share everything about herself.

  “Where’s that booth? Let’s go sit,” Sugar suggested.

  May glanced back at Louis and shook her head. “Sorry. I do need to get back to work, but I’ll check in with you in a few minutes. You two should catch up.”

  Saved by the woman he’d inadvertently spurned. How humiliating. May slipped toward the bar as Sugar rolled her eyes and followed Louis to their booth.

  “There’s no need for you to be so prickly with me. I didn’t engineer this situation.”

  “But you’re going along with it, I presume.” Sugar pushed her mane of white-blonde hair, accented with streaks of red around the tips, back over her shoulder. “I don’t have any intention to give up my career and fly to Nowhere, Europe, so I can pump out heirs for you and make your asshole father proud.”

  “My asshole father is dead, so he doesn’t have much to say about it these days,” Louis snapped.

  Sugar’s defiant expression faded a bit. “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t your doing. Obviously.” Louis sighed. He stood at the side of the booth and gestured for her to sit first. She did, and he sat across from her and folded his hands. “It’s my grandmother who wanted to sort things out with you. It isn’t as though my older brother isn’t married already with two children. At best, any child we had would be sixth in line for the throne . . . Well, seventh, if you include me. The family isn’t hurting for another broodmare, Sugar.”

  Sugar leaned back into the booth and let her gaze drift back over to the bar. “And yet your family has sent you over here to broker this deal our parents made when we were tweens.”

  Louis leaned forward. “Does that mean you are officially calling this engagement off? Have you spoken to your parents about that?”

  “I haven’t spoken to them since I got my first People’s Choice award. They still want the perks that would come with having ties to the royal family.”

  The other bartender came by with a few more drinks and a small bowl of cherries. Sugar thanked him and winked broadly.

  “And you don’t want to do that because then you won’t be able to flirt egregiously?” Louis pressed.

  Sugar split one of the cherries in half with her perfect nails. “I don’t want to do that because I can’t be a member of the royal family and an actress the same time. That’s idiotic. Do you know how much the insurance liability for something like that would be? Even Meghan Markle had to give up her career, and that was just television.”

  “Just television,” Louis scoffed.

  “Oh, don’t be that way. Everyone knows blockbusters
and long-form television through one of the popular streaming services are where it’s at right now.”

  “Everyone knows that?” Louis shook his head. “A pity for books, I suppose.”

  “Hush. I read. It’s just a different job.” Sugar took another sip of her drink. “You wasted your time coming out here, y’know.”

  “If you were easier to get a hold of, I might not be out here.” Louis paused and took a cherry, which he slipped into his drink with a smirk. “The tabloids seem to think you’ve been a bad girl lately. Is that from alcohol, or is it something else?”

  Sugar flushed. “No one cares about the rep of an action star. They let Robert Downey, Jr. back in the game. I don’t even do coke.”

  “I’m not sure that standard would hold for you. Especially, given how easily fans ‘cancel’ an actress, and sometimes over so little.”

  Sugar’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Not that I would consider anything you’ve done worth losing your career.” Louis took her hand and noted the scowl on her face. “I’m not asking for much right now. Just that you spend some time thinking about what you want. And if what you want happens to align with what would make the queen happy, well then, goody for us. For now though, maybe for PR purposes, an announcement of marriage to a devastatingly handsome man—”

  “You’re a pearl, Louie,” Sugar drawled.

  “—would look good for you. You wouldn’t have to commit to me. Just be discreet, for appearances’ sake.”

  “I came out here to get away from this kind of bullshit,” Sugar said.

  “You wanted to get away from a place that judged appearances, and you came to L.A.?”

  Sugar pulled back her hand and swatted his. “You know what I mean. I have plans for my life. And I know my parents made promises, but you don’t get to tell someone else how to live their life.”