I wasn’t lying when I told her she seemed nice. I’ve been with plenty of women in Europe, enough to know that Jane-Ann is wholesome and sweet. But as she pulls me toward the dance floor, her back pressed against my front, her body circling into me more than necessary, I’m beginning to realize wholesome and sweet doesn’t mean Jane-Ann isn’t a whole lot of fun, too.
The song changes as we reach the center of the dance floor, switching from a twangy line dance to something with a bit more beat. Everyone partners up, and Jane-Ann wraps her hands around my neck, arching her body into mine.
I can feel her ex-boyfriend watching us from his stool, but I can’t bring myself to care much. She feels too good in my hands to worry about anyone or anything else.
“You know ‘nice’ wasn’t meant as an insult?” I say, clenching my teeth as she does her best to grind away my first impression of her.
Are jeans supposed to be so sexy? Usually I’m drawn to skin. To short skirts and low-cut tops. But Jane-Ann is covered, and yet I can’t take my eyes away from her. Perhaps it is the allure, the mystery lurking beneath. Maybe that mystery is why her ex-boyfriend is sulking in a chair in the corner rather than moving on.
“Men always think they’re talking in some kind of code,” she says, leaning away from me, her hands still twined behind my neck.
I can feel one of her fingers sneaking up to circle in the hair at the back of my neck, and it is absurd how good it feels.
Jane-Ann continues, “Calling me nice is a way of saying I’m low-risk. There is no threat of being swept off your feet, of catching feelings for me.”
“Catching feelings?” I ask, smoothing my hand down her spine.
“Isn’t that a common phrase among the royals?”
I shake my head. “Not among the adult royals. My younger brothers have been known to say it.”
She slaps my chest and then wraps herself around me again. “Telling me I’m nice is the same as me saying you have a nice personality.”
I wince. “Ouch.”
She gives me a knowing look. “Exactly.”
“Okay, but that is not how I meant it. Being nice is a good thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” she insists. “It means you could take me home to your parents, and everyone knows the girls you can take home to your mom and dad are not the girls you take home for a bit of fun at the end of the night.”
My pants suddenly feel tighter, and I’m having anything but nice thoughts about Jane-Ann. The alcohol has loosened whatever grip I had on my self-control, and I can feel something animal growling beneath my skin. I slip my finger beneath her chin and tilt her face up to mine.
“My parents would hate you, Jane-Ann.”
She rolls her eyes. “Parents love me.”
She tries to look away, but I grip her face and lean forward until our lips are inches apart.
We’ve essentially stopped dancing, but our bodies are still pressed together below the waist, swaying slightly to the music while everyone else swirls around us. I can’t be bothered, though. I haven’t been able to pay attention to much beyond her heart-shaped face since she first walked up to me.
“I’m being honest when I tell you my parents would be anything but pleased if I brought a woman like you home.”
I can hear my mother’s voice in my head, commenting on the tightness of her jeans and her hair being pulled back in braids. Her red lipstick is strictly against the all-natural makeup style of the royal family, and Father would balk at her incredibly high tolerance for liquor. Jane-Ann would be added to the long list of women I’d been seen with who were considered inappropriate matches for the Prince of Sigmaran.
Rather than being discouraged by this, Jane-Ann’s eyes widen with a mixture of surprise and hope. There are yellow and green flecks in her irises.
“Are you just saying that because you feel bad?” she asks.
I laugh and pull her against me, resting my chin against her temple as I run my hands down her sides. Her waist is small and flares into larger hips, perfect for holding onto.
“I feel like I’m insulting you. But no, I’m not just saying it. My family wouldn’t approve one little bit.”
She sighs. “Wow. It’s a weird feeling being the bad girl.”
When I laugh, she slips out of my arms, crossing her own over her chest. I reach for her, but she dodges me.
She tilts her head to the side. “You were lying, weren’t you?”
I try to bite back the smile that insists on spreading across my face. “I wasn’t, but I never said you were a bad girl. That might be taking it a little far.”
She pops her hip out and plants a hand on it, squaring off with me, and I hold my hands up in surrender.
“I’m sorry, but I think we’re at a place in our relationship now where we can be honest with one another. You aren’t a bad girl, Jane-Ann.”
“You don’t even know me,” she says. “We aren’t at any place in our relationship. You don’t get to tell me who I am.”
She’s clearly upset, but I can see the amusement under it all. I’m getting under her skin, but she likes it. Maybe Jane-Ann isn’t so nice after all if this kind of back and forth gets her riled up.
She glares at me in a challenge, daring me to say something else.
Jane-Ann wants to play.
I shrug. “You’re right. Let’s just dance and have a nice night.”
She hisses at the word “nice.”
“You said you came here for a good time.” She raises an eyebrow in question. “Is that still true?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say, looking away from her. I scan the crowd as though maybe I’m looking for someone else. As though there could be anyone more interesting in the bar.
She sees what I’m doing and presses her hand to my cheek hard enough that it’s almost a slap. Her expression is hard and alive and mischievous, and I desperately want to know what is going on inside her head. Her red lips pull up in a sweet smile that sends a shiver down my spine.
“Then let’s have a good time,” she says before biting her lower lip.
She stretches onto her toes, and her lips are on mine.
I saw it all coming, knew where it was headed, but the kiss still takes me by surprise. My breath whooshes out of me like I’ve been kicked in the chest, and I grab onto her waist just to have something to hold on to. Just to keep myself from falling over.
Jane-Ann is warm and soft in my hands, and I feel her muscles shifting as she pulls herself closer to me, as she presses her hips into mine and arches against me.
The music changes from one song to another, but I don’t think about what it means. Don’t think about the people who might be watching us, about her ex who is probably staring daggers into me. All I can think about is her hands in my hair, my hands on her body, and the feeling of her tongue as it swipes into my mouth.
I grab a handful of her shirt, and I can feel it come untucked from her jeans. I slide my hand into the opening and almost sigh at the feel of her skin against mine. She is smooth and warm like a good drink, and I am dying of thirst. My hand moves higher and higher until I feel her fingers around my wrist, pushing me down.
Something snaps and my eyes pop open. The room is hazy, and I feel like I’ve just been pulled out of a good dream. When my eyes are able to focus, I see Jane-Ann looking up at me, her lips swollen from kissing, her cheeks stained pink.
“I’m not that bad,” she says through a laugh. “You can’t undress me.”
I blink a few times and manage a smile. “Right. Sorry, love.”
She grabs my hand and wraps it around her waist, her eyes narrowing. “Not here, at least.”
I tense, but before I can find the courage to ask, Jane-Ann pulls me through the crowd and toward the front door.
Summer in Texas is hotter than I’m used to. I expect the night air to be cool, but it’s still sweltering, and I can already feel sweat beading on my forehead. Jane-Ann doesn’t mention it as she pulls me around the corne
r of the building and presses me against the bricks.
“Are you trying to prove a point?” I ask even as I’m berating myself for saying anything at all. Whatever I’ve said to rile her up, I don’t want to undo it. I want forward motion. I want to maintain this trajectory until we both land firmly in “bad” territory.
She licks a line across my neck and presses a kiss beneath my ear, effectively severing the connection between my mouth and my brain. Then, she whispers against my skin.
“Are you trying to talk me out of this?”
God no. I don’t say the words, of course, because I’m physically incapable. But I answer by cupping her rear and dragging her hips up and over mine. Jane-Ann wraps her legs around my waist, and I spin around, pressing her spine against the bricks.
This is something I’ve never been able to do. Being with a woman in any kind of public setting is a risk. Even in the back of a private club, everyone has cell-phone cameras and the press can manage to sneak in. But here? In the outskirts of Austin, Texas? There is no one.
The parking lot light above us gives a dim flicker occasionally, but otherwise we’re alone and in the dark, and it’s good because I don’t think I’d have enough self-control to stop. And I can only imagine what my parents would say over breakfast if they saw this picture in the paper.
Then, Jane-Ann slides a hand down my chest and lower and lower, her fingers tickling and teasing their way across my body, until I’m not thinking about anything except how much distance remains between her fingers and the top of my trousers.
“Where is your limo?”
I freeze, forgetting for a minute where I am, who I am. “Limo?”
She pulls away, breathless, and gestures toward my head where the chauffeur hat had been perched when she’d first seen me. The hat that is now sitting at the bar.
“I figure you’re a driver, right? Do you have a limo or a car around here somewhere?”
“Oh. No. I took a cab.”
She gives me a weird look and then her lips pucker to one side. “My car is too small.”
Too small. I roll the words around in my head before I understand their meaning. My eyes widen.
“Oh.”
She blushes and then reaches into her bag and pulls out her phone. “I can order a car. We’ve had too much to drink for either of us to drive. If you want to come back to my place, that is.”
I’m nodding before she has even finished the sentence. “I want to.”
I run my hands down her body and kiss her neck while she giggles and orders the car.
“It will be five minutes,” she says after ending the call.
I groan and bury my face in her neck. She smells like fresh morning rain and vanilla.
“That’s too long.”
She presses on my chest, putting a few inches of space. “Down, boy.”
“Everything okay over here?”
We both turn at the voice but make no move to separate or jump apart. When I see who it is, I’m glad. Jane-Ann’s ex.
“Oh, Colby,” she says, standing a little straighter, but keeping her hand on my chest. “This is Christian.”
Colby gives me the most cursory of looks before his eyes track back to Jane-Ann, searching her face, her body. “You good, Jane-Ann?”
She looks up at me, an unspoken apology written on her face. “Yeah, Colb. Everything is great. We’re just waiting for a car.”
I see the disappointment ripple through him, and I feel bad for the guy. Being her friend would be torture. I’ve only known her for an hour, and I can’t imagine it.
“Okay,” he says, sounding like a disappointed child. His jaw clenches and he nods to me. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” I lift my hand in a wave.
As soon as he turns the corner, Jane-Ann sags against the wall and groans. “God. So awkward.”
I kiss her temple and her cheek. “You’re breaking his heart.”
“I’m not trying to.” She presses her hands to her face for a minute, taking a deep breath.
No matter what Jane-Ann says, she is good. She’s the kind of girl who is friends with her exes, who doesn’t want to hurt their feelings, who tries to keep the peace. She’s a good person who I am about to do very bad things with.
I lean forward and whisper, my lips brushing against her ear. “Bad girls don’t have to try to break hearts.”
My words send a shiver through her and she fists my shirt. I’m thinking about how much time we have before the car arrives, whether there is enough of it to enact even one of my fantasies, but before I can risk it, I hear the crunch of gravel beneath tires. Jane-Ann hears it, too, and takes off for the car, hauling me after her. She climbs in the backseat, and as soon as I’m in the backseat, she’s on my lap.
Oh, the things our poor driver has to see. I hand him a wad of cash and see confusion cross his features at the foreign currency, but Jane-Ann is already crawling out of the car and tugging on my arm. I do not resist.
Chapter 4
Jane-Ann
If Christian wasn’t latched onto my face, bestowing kiss after toe-curling kiss on me, I’d be embarrassed about the state of my apartment. I don’t have to open my eyes to know there is a pile of clean laundry on the end of the couch that I’d meant to fold but decided not to. Or to know the sink is full of dirty dishes and the trash can is full of paper plates and bowls that I’d swiped from a potluck at the sofa store to save myself from having to do dishes for a few days.
The saving grace is my womanly touch. Bright orange and yellow throw pillows on the couch, a throw blanket over the chair, a candle and a stack of books on the coffee table. On some level, if Christian ever bothers to take his eyes away from me and my body, he’ll see that I care about my home.
I wonder if that’s important to him. I’d played up the bad-girl vibe at the bar, hating the way it sounded when he’d called me “nice.” Even the memory of it feels like a vice around my lungs. How many times in my life have I been told I’m too nice, too much of a tomboy, too Texan? To hear it come from the beautiful stranger’s lips in his strange accent, it was too much. I am tired of being boring and average. I want to be the American who rocks his world.
And yet.
The sensible part of me wonders where this is headed, how long Christian will be in the country, and whether he will ask for my number before he leaves. I can tell by the feel of his clothes under my hands that he is wealthy.
The chauffeur cap now officially makes no sense to me, and I’m glad we left it behind at the bar. He looks way better without it. But he comes from money and he’s in my apartment, peeling my shirt over my head, and I’m moaning against his lips like a caged animal getting their first taste of freedom. What does it all mean?
“Love,” he whispers against my mouth.
I freeze. Did he just read my mind?
“Love, is something wrong?” he asks.
I unclench. He is using it as a pet name—love, sport, honey, dear—not a noun.
I grab the back of his neck and try to pull him against my lips again, grinding my hips against his. “No, why?”
He nibbles on my chin, and I’m amazed that I never thought that could be a sensual spot before because right now it is on fire.
“You seem distracted, and I want to ensure I’m not taking advantage of you. I’d hate to be the guy who gets a girl drunk and then—”
“I’m not drunk,” I say, quickly tapping my finger to my nose several times. “See?”
He wrinkles his forehead. “What are you doing?”
“Field sobriety test.” I step out of the circle of his arms, placing one foot in front of the other down a straight line. “Not drunk.”
He stares after me for a second and then runs toward me, grabbing me around my waist. The action reminds me that my shirt was discarded in the living room as soon as we got through the door, and I’m currently standing in front of him in a white lacy bra that is more for looks than support. Christian seems to enj
oy it. He brushes his thumbs across the sides before sweeping down over my ribs.
“Thank God for that.”
Then we’re kissing again. Christian pushes me against the wall, caging me in with his arms, and I allow my fingers to explore the rise and fall of his biceps and his forearms. Wherever in the world he is from, he has a gym membership back home. These are not the kind of muscles that one is born with. He earned them. Images of him sweaty and draped over a weight bench doing arm curls fills my head.
“See, I feel like you might be a bit distracted,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine like he wants to get inside my head.
“Okay, yes. That time I was distracted, but it was about you. Does that help?”
He hums in thought. “Maybe. What was it about?”
“Do you have a gym membership?”
“The palace has a private gym. No membership required.”
I’m impressed he is able to maintain the royalty gag in the midst of everything we are doing to one another, but I don’t mention it. “I was picturing you curling dumbbells.”
He raises an amused eyebrow. “Big dumbbells?”
I lick my lip and hum. “Yes.”
“What was I wearing?” He leans down and nibbles on my ear lobe.
“Less than you’re wearing now,” I say, dragging my hand down his chest.
He kisses the skin beneath my ear. “Show me.”
I make quick work of the buttons on his shirt. My mind tells me that a bad girl would rip his shirt off, buttons be damned, but it seems like an expensive shirt, and I haven’t exactly noticed any luggage with him. What would he wear if I ruined his shirt? So, I unbutton it slowly, hoping my caution is a kind of foreplay in anticipation. As soon as the last button is undone, he shrugs out of the shirt, and I stand back to admire.
Over the couple of hours since I first saw him, I’ve grown accustomed to Christian’s good looks. It’s like taking the first drink of juice and being sucker punched with the sweetness, but by the end, you hardly notice it. I adjusted. But now that his shirt is off, I’m getting a sugar rush.
Prince Baby Daddy - A Secret Baby Royal Romance Page 4