“Sometimes it was the only way I could be alone,” he goes on. “There have always been a lot of expectations on my time. But everyone needs to be alone to think once in a while.”
“I can relate to that,” I say, thinking of the many Royal Blue parties I’ve ducked out of early.
“So,” he says. “You know about Uncle Enzo.”
“I know what the internet says about him,” I clarify. “I’ve been in Hollywood long enough to know that the internet doesn’t always get it right.”
“True enough,” Alex agrees, “but in Enzo’s case, the public story is the true one, at least in broad brushstrokes. He and Aunt Giovanna—”
“Countess Mancini?” I ask.
Alex smiles. “That’s right. Well, they’d been together forever. Everyone knew they were getting married. When she got pregnant, she didn’t even consider trying to hide it. They were happy. They were celebrating. They even announced the news publicly. And that was probably their big mistake.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Parliament got involved,” he says. “I wasn’t even born when all this took place, of course, but I’ve heard the story often enough from my father. Our country’s stability depends on a good relationship between the ruling monarch and Parliament, and when there’s conflict, it leads to trouble. When some of the old traditionalists in the House found out about Enzo’s child, they were outraged. They insisted that a king producing a child out of wedlock was a scandal that couldn’t be borne.”
“And so they forced him out of power,” I say.
He nods. “But the tragic thing is that it didn’t have to be a scandal at all,” Alex says, sounding frustrated. “It was two people in love who had always planned to marry and have children. And since marrying, they’ve had three more children together. My cousin Lauro, the eldest, is the only one who’s looked at differently by the people of Avaran. Because of what happened to his father, he’ll carry that so-called ‘scandal’ with him for the rest of his life.”
I’m touched by Alex’s compassion for his cousin.
“If it hadn’t happened, though,” I point out, “you wouldn’t be next in line for the throne. Your father wouldn’t have become king.”
Alex shakes his head. “It’s a dirty way to come to power. I would rather give up my rule than see my family harmed.”
Instinctively, my hand goes to my stomach, where I still haven’t felt any change. He would rather give up his title than see harm come to his family. I wonder if that includes this baby. I wonder if he’d really choose us over ruling his country, if it came to that.
God, I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Alex seems to sense what’s on my mind. As he gazes out at the horizon, he wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close.
I lean into him willingly. It feels so natural to be close to him. It’s hard to believe we’ve only ever spent one night together.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It won’t be like that for us.”
“You don’t know that,” I protest. “Your country still has a parliament in place, doesn’t it? That hasn’t gone away.”
“No,” he admits. “But we’ve held elections many times over the last thirty-five years, and most of the old men who banded together against my uncle are no longer in office. Their antiquated ideas left with them. It’s a different parliament now, a younger body with fresh ideas and an attitude of acceptance.”
“Really?” I frown. I find it a little difficult to take at face value. “Acceptance? But thirty-five years isn’t that long a time. Do you really think things can change that fast?”
“Of course I do,” he says. “It’s a new group of legislators now. Young people. People our age. The mood of the country is different now. We’re no longer subject to a bunch of old men who are more interested in protecting traditional attitudes than in showing respect to a family.”
He shakes his head. “My father said once that if Enzo had denied Aunt Giovanna’s baby was his and turned her away, he might have kept his throne. Can you believe that? Who could think that kind of behavior was less disgraceful than standing by his partner and unborn child?”
I can’t believe it. “Would that really have happened? That’s horrible.”
“I don’t know it for sure,” Alex says. “It’s what my father believes. As far as I know, it’s not an offer Parliament actually extended, but maybe it was unspoken. Maybe it was understood in some way. I’m sure Father and Enzo discussed it at the time. After all, they would both have known that Father would assume the throne if Enzo abdicated.”
“Your uncle must be a good man,” I say. “If he believed he had that choice and did the right thing anyway, it speaks well of him.”
“Yes,” Alex agrees. “He’s honorable. He was a great king, and it’s Avaran’s loss that they forced him out. Even Father says so. Father is a good king too, but Enzo was groomed for it his whole life.” He gazes out at the ocean again. “When you’re in line for the throne, much of your life is spent preparing.”
“Your life has been spent that way, hasn’t it?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ve been taught the history of my country and the nature of its politics. I’ve learned how to work with our allies, and how to keep the peace with our enemies. Most of all, I’ve learned how best to serve the people. It’s important to me to do that well.” He hesitates. “I’m sorry for what happened to my uncle and to his family, and I’ll never think it’s fair, but I am glad to have the opportunity to serve as king someday.”
“You’ll be a good one,” I say.
It’s a strange thing to say since I haven’t known him that long, but I feel the truth of it. Alex cares for his people, and I know he’ll serve them well. Provided he has the chance, that is.
“Alex,” I say softly. “I don’t want you to lose your opportunity. I know you’re confident Parliament won’t put you in the same position your uncle was in, but I’d feel terrible if you had to give your crown up because of me. I can’t let you do that.”
He turns and places a soft kiss on my temple.
“It won’t come to that,” he says gently. “We’re going to learn from Enzo’s mistakes. We’re going to do it differently. We won’t release a birth announcement like he did, forcing Parliament’s hand. I’ll go to them directly. I’ll summon the members to a session and explain our situation.”
“And you think that will work?” I ask. “They’ll accept that?”
“If I’m honest and straightforward, I don’t see why not,” he says.
I wish I had his confidence.
I plant my palms on the rock behind me and lean back, letting the wind off the sea blow my hair back from my shoulders. I breathe in deeply, trying to believe, trying to absorb some of Alex’s surety that everything will be fine.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re troubled.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It seems like so many things can still go so wrong. It’s hard to believe that everything’s just…going to be fine.”
“It will be,” he says firmly. “I’ll see to it, Erica, I promise. That’s my child. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to either of you. I couldn’t.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to risk yourself for me just because…just because of this baby,” I say.
It’s hard to force the words out. Of course I want him to do it. I want him to be in this with me—with us. I want us to be a family. But I don’t want him to do it out of obligation or duty. I want him to be sure.
“We’ll be all right on our own,” I say. “It’s not as if I don’t have money. And I have a supportive family, and friends who can help me. If I have to do this on my own, I can.”
“No,” Alex says. “Erica, no.”
“I don’t want you to stick with me because you feel like you have to.” My voice falters. Suddenly, I’m feeling tearful. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to. Erica�
��”
“When you left LA,” I say, cutting him off, “you said we shouldn’t try to be together.”
I hate that I keep bringing this up. He hasn’t latched onto it yet, and God, I just want to let it go, but it stays there in my mind, like a splinter I can’t stop picking at.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the first few tears spilling over at last. “I know it sounds like I’m angry with you for that, or…I don’t know. Maybe it just sounds bitter. I don’t have bad feelings toward you, I promise. It’s just that I don’t understand how all that could have changed. I don’t understand what’s different now.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing’s different now.”
My heart drops.
His hands grip my shoulders. “Understand me, Erica, please. I never wanted to leave you. I’ve thought of you every day since we’ve been apart. The night we spent together was the most amazing night of my life. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I don’t just mean the sex was great—although—”
He lets out a low whistle, and I laugh a little through my tears.
“But it was more than that,” he goes on. “I actually felt as if I knew you. We’d known each other such a short time, and yet I felt so close to you.”
“I felt the same way,” I whisper.
“I left because I thought that if I tried to make it work out, I’d tear myself apart,” he says. “How could I go back to Avaran and leave my heart with you? Not knowing when we’d next be able to be together?
“I was afraid, Erica. I was a coward, I admit it, but I was afraid it would hurt me too much to try. I believed that if I left you behind, I’d be able to move on. I believed we both would, and that it would hurt us less in the end.”
“I haven’t moved on,” I tell him. “I haven’t been able to leave you behind.”
“Neither have I,” he says.
I shift closer to him.
“And I think this baby is a sign,” he says. “It’s a sign that I went about the whole thing all wrong. I should never have left. I should have been stronger. Bolder, like you.”
“Like me?”
“You were bold enough to walk into the palace and demand to see me, after all.” He shakes his head admiringly. “And we’re both lucky you were. Because I think you and I are meant to be together.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My hands are shaking, and I find myself gripping the edge of the rock I’m perched on, trying to keep steady.
“Is that really how you feel?” I ask.
“All this time,” he says, “I’ve been kicking myself for failing to get your phone number. I spent weeks trying to put you out of my head, Erica. When the final episode of Royal Blue aired, I couldn’t watch it. I couldn’t even bear to look up the plot online, because even reading about Princess Aeryn would have forced me to think of you.”
“You should have tried turning to other girls,” I say, chuckling a little.
“It would have been monstrously cruel to them if I had,” he says, shaking his head. “When all I could think of was you? I couldn’t use people that way, as distractions. And no one else could possibly have distracted me anyway. It would be like…” He pauses, searching for an apt comparison.
“Like being distracted from gravity,” I supply.
“Exactly!” he says, slapping his hand against the rock. “No matter what you turn your attention to, gravity will continue to exert its force.”
“That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling,” I say.
“And I can only beg your forgiveness,” Alex says. “It was wrong of me to leave the way I did—it might have been the biggest mistake of my life. And thank God you decided to come and find me. I don’t deserve this second chance. But I’m asking for it anyway.”
“God,” I say. “Alex. Of course. You don’t have to ask. Of course.”
He catches me up in his arms at that, and I feel as if I might drown in my relief and gratitude. So long I’ve worried about what would happen when I found him again, when I told him the truth. But this couldn’t have gone any better. He’s not just accepting me and our baby. He wants me. He’s glad about it. And he’s put to rest all my fears about his government rejecting him because of me.
Sitting in his arms on this rock, looking out at the waves, I feel safe and secure for the first time in a long time. I know everything’s going to be okay. Better than okay. It’s going to be wonderful. Alex and I are really going to be together.
And I don’t know what that means exactly. I don’t know what it’s going to look like. Alex is royalty, and that’s going to make things complicated. I’m sure there will be things expected of me, and of my unborn child. But right now those worries feel far away, unable to touch us. I feel just as distant from the concerns that once plagued me about how we would balance our lives. I have Royal Blue to think of, and he has his country, and neither one of us can just walk away to be with the other.
And I can’t make myself care about that at all. Not now.
All I care about are his hands, now turning me to face him, now tipping my chin up to him. All I care about are his lips as they find mine.
The salty air swirls around us, lifting my hair off my shoulders. Alex’s hands slip beneath the hem of my shirt and up my back as he pulls me to him. I feel that I’m at the edge of the world, where it no longer matters who’s a prince and who isn’t, who’s from Avaran and who’s from Ohio. All that matters are our bodies finally finding each other, despite all the factors that have conspired to pull us apart.
I’m crying as we’re kissing, overcome by a mess of emotions that will probably take days to sort out. Alex strokes my hair and murmurs things I don’t understand. I don’t need to understand. I have no doubts left. Everything he’s feeling is exactly what I’m feeling, and everything he wants is exactly what I want. I can feel the joy and the relief in his touch, the giddy excitement in his kiss.
For the first time since we parted, the future looks bright, and suddenly it’s almost too bright to look at.
If this is going to be my life—a family, just like I’ve been wanting, with Alex by my side and a baby of our own—then I can die happy, because what else is there in the world? What more could I possibly want?
Chapter 13
I’m expecting Alex to pull away and wait for me to gather myself, because I’m sure there isn’t anything attractive about watching me go to pieces like this, but to my surprise, his kisses don’t stop. They trail away instead, down the length of my jaw, allowing me space to breathe. But he doesn’t want any distance between us any more than I do.
At some point my tears dry. It’s hard to say when, exactly, because my breathing never levels out. I’m still taking in air in great gasps as he finds sensitive spots along my shoulder, in the crook of my neck, behind my ear.
Every other man I’ve been with seems to have had the belief that all women’s bodies are exactly the same, leading them to spend hours doing things to me that their past partners liked but that do nothing for me. But Alex is different. He’s attuned to my responses. Every time my breathing quickens or a tiny moan escapes me, he knows he’s found something and focuses his attention on it.
He pulls me astride his lap. I’ve never been so glad to be wearing a skirt in all my life. It would be a simple matter to reach down and shift my panties aside, but before I can do that, he catches both my wrists and holds them, gently but firmly, in one massive hand.
I whine a little and grind my hips forward. The rocks are hard under my knees in this position, but I don’t care. I want more.
Alex chuckles lightly, his face still nestled against my neck, and I’m infuriated. I want him to feel just as strung out and desperate as I do. I want him to need me as badly as I need him. But with his hand on my wrists, there’s nothing I can do. He’s in full control of the situation.
My only recourse is to keep pressing my hips into his, but that’s driving me just as crazy as it is him, and I’ve had a head start.
&nb
sp; “Take it easy now,” he murmurs in my ear, and wow, that does not help.
“Take me back to your cottage,” I growl back at him.
“You don’t like it here on the rocks?”
Damn it, he’s toying with me. How dare he?
I lean forward, elbows out, hoping to catch him in the chest and knock him onto his back, but he’s so much stronger than me that it has absolutely no effect. I might as well be attacking a brick wall.
A thrill of excitement courses through me. I’ve never been in a situation like this, where everything is completely out of my control.
It’s a stunning thing to realize, and as I acknowledge the fact that whatever happens next is in his hands, I cease struggling to knock him over or get closer to him. Whatever’s going to happen will come when it does, and there’s nothing for me to do but wait.
“Let’s go back to the cottage,” I say one last time, but I’m not growling now, not demanding. I’m begging. I want a bed and pillows and Alex, miles of clean sheets and hot skin and nothing else in the world.
He turns me in his arms so I’m facing out to the sea.
“Look,” he says quietly. “Just look at the water.”
I look out, watching the waves chop their way toward us. Alex’s arms encircle me, one wrapping my torso from hip to shoulder, the other tight around my waist, and then he lifts me from the rock and stands me on my feet. He takes my hands again and places them, palms down, on the gritty surface of the rock, so I’m still staring out at the sea.
He wraps his body over mine. “I want you,” he whispers. “I want you right here.”
He can have me anywhere.
“Take me, then.”
I feel the rush of sea air as he lifts my skirt and slides my panties down to my ankles. I don’t bother to step out of them, and he doesn’t bother with the rest of my clothes. We’ve been waiting too long for this moment, and now I feel like it was bound to happen, like nothing on earth could have kept us apart.
And I understand, now, why he wanted to be here, as he moves in time with the crashing of the waves. It’s as if the chemistry between us is as natural and organic as the ocean itself, and as powerful, too. Everything feels big and strong, desperate and crashing, and the sounds of the sea swallow my cries of pleasure.
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