Marie was amazed. She hadn’t seen her father give way to anyone in years. She wasn’t sure if the fact that this someone was an eleven-year-old and not, say, a member of parliament who held an opposing view, made it more or less remarkable.
Either way, dinner was less fraught than last night’s.
And the best part of it was when it was over. They parted ways with good-night greetings, but when she said hers to Leo, he licked his lips and said, “Yes, I think it is going to be a very good night.”
The text arrived an hour after Gabby had gone to bed. Would you like to come to my suite and see Buffy?
Leo: Buffy? Is that a euphemism?
Never in a million years would Leo have pegged Princess Marie as the type to name her vagina.
Marie: What would that be a euphemism for?
Leo: Do you really need it explained to you?
She sent him a photo of a DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It made him laugh out loud as he typed Yes, I would like to come to your suite and see Buffy. And hopefully a few other things of the noneuphemistic variety as well.
Marie: Buffy was one of my mother’s favorites. We watched it together when I was a teenager. I’ve been rewatching it recently.
When Leo arrived, Marie ushered him past the sitting room he’d been in before—the room in which they’d conducted their dancing lessons. On its far side was a small hallway.
“It’s a whole apartment in here,” he remarked, registering that she was still dressed in the jeans and blazer she’d worn at dinner. He’d been hoping to see the white nightgown again. Or maybe the black panties.
Or maybe both?
She was confusing.
“Yes and no,” she said. “My suite is not like the large-scale apartments in the famous British palaces, which are effectively self-contained residences. It’s merely a semiformal sitting room, where I receive personal guests, and a few other rooms.” She gestured at an open doorway as they passed it. “This is my office.” He peeked in. It was a small room dominated by a large desk and a wall of built-in shelving. That must be Kai’s handiwork. Leo would have called the room fancy—the walls were papered in an elaborate floral pattern and the desk was as ornate as they came—but it was strewn with papers and books. He would even go so far as to call it messy. Which surprised him.
“This is the small parlor.” She gestured into the next room as they continued down the hall. “I think perhaps you would call it a den.”
A glance inside confirmed her interpretation. There was a sofa on one wall and an entertainment system ensconced on the opposite one nestled in a perfectly sized built-in shelf—probably more of Kai’s work. “We can watch in here, or . . .”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Another option is to watch in my bedroom. I have a small television in there.”
Was she propositioning him? It was hard to tell. She might just be genuinely—and innocently—inviting him into her inner sanctum.
Heh. Her inner sanctum. Was it just him or did everything tonight sound like innuendo?
“I also thought it would be the more efficient option in the sense that if we want to have sex, we’re already in the bedroom,” she said almost brusquely.
He burst out laughing. Well, that solved that.
“I’ve said something wrong.” There was a hint of dismay in her tone.
“No. Not at all.” He made a shooing motion down the corridor. “I vote for the bedroom.”
“Would you like me to have something sent up to eat? My suite doesn’t have a kitchen. Are you hungry?”
He winked and said, “I am hungry, but not for food.”
It was one hundred percent cheesy but one hundred percent true.
Thankfully, one hundred percent cheesy plus one hundred percent true worked on princesses of bonkers Hallmark-style Alpine countries.
She perched on the end of the bed in front of a small TV mounted to the wall. “As it relates to Buffy, I’m in the middle of season four, which, frankly, is the long slog on Riley.”
“The long what?”
“To my mind, be Team Spike or be Team Angel—I suppose. I don’t really get the latter, but I respect it. But Riley? That’s like being pro-beige.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was, however, aware enough to understand that the princess was talking about American pop culture—and was talking circles around him. It was amusing.
Ignoring him, she picked up the remote and started the show.
The opening sequence seemed to be a girl engaged in hand-to-hand combat with vampires, but she would stop every now and then to trade banter with them. “What is this?”
“It’s about a high school in California that happens to be built over the hellmouth, and all manner of vampires and other unpleasant creatures need to be slain, but handily one of the students happens to be the Slayer. It’s like being the chosen one, and . . .” Marie trailed off, perhaps because she had registered the confusion on Leo’s face. “This isn’t the best show to pick up in the middle.” She hopped off the bed and opened a cabinet underneath the TV to reveal rows and rows of DVDs, most of them titles he was vaguely familiar with but had never seen. “Let’s watch something else. You pick.”
“You’ve seen these all?”
“Yes. I grew up watching several hours of TV a night.”
It was hard to wrap his mind around. It was so incongruous with the idea of her as a princess, as a highly educated person who did things like address the United Nations.
“I learned English in school, of course—everyone here does. But I learned idiomatic English mostly from 1990s television.” She pulled out a disc called The Nanny and held it out to him with her eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”
He put his hand over hers and guided the disc back to its place on the shelf. “I think I didn’t come here to watch TV.”
She said, “Oh,” but she said it on a shuddery exhalation, and that was all it took to make him hard. “I have secured prophylactics.” Marie spoke initially with the utmost seriousness, but then she cracked a smile.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The way she talked. Why did it drive him so wild?
Well, whatever, he didn’t feel like examining it right now. He felt like going with it, allowing the rush of affection her earnestness—which was somehow, paradoxically, also very sexy—inspired to propel him toward the bed. He heaved himself onto the mattress, leaning back against a mound of fluffy pillows and crooking a finger at her.
She flashed him a shy smile, but she came. He was sprawled on the bed, and she kneeled between his splayed legs, but she didn’t touch him.
He eyed her, all bundled up in her “casual” clothing that wasn’t casual.
He wanted to see her. All of her.
And he wanted her to see him.
So he sat up, inserted his hands into her blazer, and pushed it off her shoulders to reveal a white blouse done up with what seemed like a hundred buttons. They looked like tiny pearls. “That’s a lot of buttons you’ve got there, Princess,” he said, surprising himself with how low his voice had suddenly gone. He spared a moment to take off his shirt while he pondered this maddening little engineering problem.
She looked down. “It’s not very practical for our purposes, is it?” She started working on the buttons, her small, nimble fingers entrancing him as they moved with the same efficient precision she applied to so much of her life.
He also liked disrupting that precision. So even though it risked coming across as brutish, he reached out and applied his own brand of efficiency to the one-million-buttons problem and ripped the last several of them open. He used enough force to make her gasp—he was pretty sure no one had literally torn off Princess Marie’s clothing before—and to send some of the buttons over the edge of the bed where they made satisfying pings as they hit the wood floor.
Her eyes opened wide—and sparked. Taking a hold of one side of her now gaping blouse with each hand, he pulled her on top of
him. She shrieked as she toppled and smiled so widely she practically blinded him with her dimples. Those fuckers were lethal.
He only had a moment to admire them, though, before she kissed him.
Her kiss was familiar by now. It started softly, her lips moving against his gently, but rapidly escalated until she was sighing into his mouth, opening for him and moaning as his tongue shamelessly slid inside, stroking hers. They kissed for a long time, and he got more and more wound up. He had to make himself pause, remember his larger mission: to see her.
So he tore his mouth from hers, relishing the little moue of displeasure that resulted. He fumbled with the clasp at the back of her bra, and once he had it unhooked, pushed her back so she was sitting astride him. She was backlit by soft lamplight, and she was perfect. Teardrop-shaped breasts with small, pink nipples at their tips made his jaw slacken like he was a goddamned caveman.
“I want to see all of you,” he rasped. “Will you let me see you?”
Without hesitation, she pushed herself off him and started wiggling out of her jeans. “I want to see you, too.”
Sliding his own jeans over his hips to free his aching cock was an enormous relief. So much so that he groaned and closed his eyes, needing to stem, for a moment, the sensory onslaught. When he opened them, she was naked and was crawling back from the edge of the bed. She was small and lithe and perfect.
“Oh, Princess.”
She climbed right back on top of him, except this time there was nothing between them, so it was her, the slick, soft heat of her, that slid against his thighs as she straddled them. She tilted her head and did that thing where her brow knit—just a little, almost not even enough to notice—as she braced herself on his chest and leaned forward.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, suddenly feeling like she was trying to see into his soul or some shit.
She leaned a little closer, and her attention intensified. “I’m thinking how much I enjoy looking at this lip.” One of her hands floated up, and she rubbed her thumb over his lower lip, letting its tip make an incursion into his mouth. “Sometimes I want to bite it.”
He huffed a startled chuckle. Startled was the word of the day, apparently. She was constantly startling him.
“So why don’t you then?”
She leaned forward and did just that—and he was startled anew.
He’d been expecting a little nip, and that maybe she’d then soothe that nip with another kiss, but no, not his princess. She did exactly what he’d told her to do—she bit him. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt.
The quick infusion of pain was a jolt to his system. It ratcheted up his need. He growled and flipped them. Covered her with his body and took control. He dragged his mouth along her throat, enjoying the feeling of her pulse thundering under his lips.
She threw her head back and moaned, arching her chest. He reached for her breasts, and the sound she made as his hands made contact was half relief, half dismay. She was so soft. But also so hard. He’d thought her nipples had gotten so hard earlier because they’d been out in the cold, but it turned out it was just her. He adored the way the little nubs grew sharper and sharper as he twisted them gently between thumb and forefinger.
“Leo,” she gasped. “Leo.”
“You like this, Princess?” Experimentally, he twisted a little harder.
“Yes!” she cried.
“What does it feel like?”
“It feels like . . . too much but also not enough.” She wiggled underneath him until she was splayed open beneath one of his thighs. “And, when you touch me there”—she nodded at the nipple he was still working over—“I feel it here.” She ground up against him. She was so slick, so warm, he suddenly felt like he would die if he didn’t get his hands or his mouth on that incredible softness. Not wanting to stop with the nipple onslaught she seemed to be enjoying so much, he replaced one hand with his mouth, which made her jerk.
“Shh,” he soothed, before he refastened his mouth over a perfect pink peak. He sent his now-free hand between her legs, parting her folds and stroking her. After a few minutes, she was restless again. It took a moment for him to register that she was trying to get out from under him. With regret—sharp, metallic regret—he rolled away, panting.
She crawled over to a heavy oaken nightstand, yanked open a drawer, produced a box of condoms—prophylactics, to use her term—and tossed it at him. He sucked in a breath as he was overcome with . . . something. Lust, yes, but not only that. His chest felt light. It felt like . . . joy?
Okay, enough of that. There was no call for melodrama. He was just really glad she wasn’t calling a halt to the proceedings.
“Well?” she said, drawing him from his uncharacteristic bout of self-examination.
The impatience in Marie’s tone made Leo smile. It made him feel like a million bucks, actually. He tore open the box, then an individual condom packet, and sheathed himself.
He reclined on the mound of pillows against the headboard and held out a hand.
“I’m meant to be on top?” she asked.
“You’re meant to be whatever you want, but if you’re on top you’ll have more control.”
Her eyes widened and a slow smile blossomed. She took his hand, and he had the sudden, absurd notion that he was helping her into a carriage that would take her to a ball or some shit. She reached for his dick with her free hand and he groaned just at that. She kept hold of his hand with her other hand, and slowly, slowly, guided him inside her.
“Oh, fuck, you feel good,” he ground out, and she let loose a needy moan. “You’re so wet, I fucking love it.”
She started moving, and soon they’d established a rhythm, a slow, steady . . . dance, almost. That, along with the fact that she hadn’t let go of his hand, sort of reminded him of when they’d actually been dancing.
Except dancing hadn’t made him feel like he was going to explode. He tried to slow himself down, but it was no use. The pressure gathering was an unstoppable force.
So as with the dancing, he moved her where he wanted her. He slid himself down on the bed so he was lying flat, taking her with him. She’d been sitting up, grinding herself on him, but he pressed on one thigh to indicate that he wanted her to straighten her legs and lie on him. “C’mere,” he said gruffly, and she did, tipping forward until she was stretched out on top of him, those maddening, sharp little nipples scratching his chest. He slid himself down a bit, aiming to line up their bodies so her clit made contact with the base of his dick. Another of her moans told him when he’d hit a good spot, and he let one hand settle heavily on the curve of her ass to keep her in place. “Rock yourself on me.”
She did, burying her face in his neck. The hand that was still holding his pressed his own down on the bed next to his head, her fingers laced in his. Pinned down by the princess.
There were worse places to be.
He rocked in sync with her, resisting the urge to thrust in opposition to the movement of her hips and letting his free hand slide back and forth over the curve of her ass.
“Leo,” she panted against his neck.
As with the times she’d come before, her breathing changed. Her fingers tightened around his, and a shudder ripped through her as she came. He could feel her inner muscles spasming around his dick. He couldn’t hold himself back anymore. His hips had taken over, and they were going to move. With a groan, he snapped them up, a big, almost involuntary thrust that turned her moan-in-progress into a surprised-but-delighted yelp. It only took one more thrust, and he was emptying himself into the condom.
She pushed herself back up, and he grabbed the base of the condom, thinking she was going to climb off him, but she just sat there grinning at him, her face red and her braids mostly undone, looking both thoroughly fucked and thoroughly self-satisfied. She lifted their entwined hands, and suddenly, he didn’t want to let go. So he pulled her hand back. Brought it to his lips and kissed it.
“You are a very interest
ing mixture of qualities,” she informed him as she took her hand back—he had to let her—and slid off him.
“What do you mean?”
“You are very chivalrous, but you have such a dirty mouth.”
He shrugged. He liked sex and he had manners. He didn’t think that was such a remarkable combination.
Marie flopped down on her back next to Leo. “I can’t usually come with a man.”
“You mean from just dick?”
She sputtered with laughter and turned her head toward him. “No. I gather that’s not that unusual? I meant with a man at all. From his ministrations—regardless of which appendage is being employed. Yet that was the third time with you, so clearly I was mistaken.”
“So what you’re saying,” he asked, to make sure he had this right, “is that you can rub one out but you don’t come when you’re with a partner?”
“That might not be how I would phrase it, but yes. Usually when I’m having sex, I get the same feeling I do when I have to dance in public—like I’m the object of too much scrutiny to fully relax.”
He took that in as he stared at the—gilded—ceiling. He couldn’t have wiped the grin off his face if he tried. It was stupid to get such a boost from something as mundane as making a woman come. In addition to being good manners—literally, the least he could do—in his experience, reciprocity usually meant better, more frequent sex.
He supposed he was disproportionally pleased by the princess’s praise because it had been so long since he’d done anything that felt like more than merely surviving. And even then, he usually ended up feeling like he was falling short.
Regardless of his feelings on the matter, though, Marie should know that expecting an orgasm out of sex was not an outlandish demand. “What the hell were those Casanovas from your past doing? Besides selling you out to the school newspaper?” She made a noncommittal murmur. He could imagine what they’d been doing. “I’m no rocket scientist, but even I know that most women can’t come from a guy just hammering away at them with his dick.”
A Princess for Christmas Page 23
