Claim Me

by Geneva Lee

  “Hold on, Poppet.” My arms hooked under her flipping her onto her back. Pushing onto my arms, I thrust inside her. “Look at me.”

  Her eyes opened, so full of love that I nearly came.

  “You. Are. Mine.” Then I filled her with the proof.

  Chapter 16

  Clara

  I was dreaming of Alexander’s mouth when a shrill thief stole him from me. Pulling a pillow over my ears, I fought being taken from him. The world dragged me to consciousness against my will, and I struggled to sit up. I blinked blearily as I began to process Alexander sitting on the side of the bed whispering into his mobile.

  “Give me a moment. I’ll be there.”

  “What’s going on?” I yawned. “Why am I surrounded by pillows?”

  I finally managed to extricate myself from the small fort my husband had built around me.

  “I wasn’t certain how you’d be comfortable.”

  I tossed one to the floor. “I think you had every angle covered.”

  “That was the goal, although I don’t think you’ve moved once.” He circled around the bed and kissed my forehead. “Go back to sleep. I need to deal with something.”

  “What’s wrong?” My mind snapped on instantly. I grabbed Alexander’s arm.

  He pried himself loose with a hollow laugh. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

  “Try again.”

  He heaved the sigh of a man who knew he’d lost this round. “Brex is bringing Sarah into the house. Apparently, she’s worse than last night.”

  I’d ventured out of the house yesterday to a larger than usual crowd of reporters hanging around our gates. One look at the trending stories told me why. I couldn’t imagine that she would be worse than that. I wriggled out of bed, my eyes scanning the floor for my nightgown. I pointed to it.

  “There’s no reason—”

  I delivered a glare that shut his protest down. He picked up the nightgown and handed it to me. “I’m getting your robe.”

  There was a deliciously dark possessiveness to how his gaze raked over me as he said it. It sent my thoughts to a few hours earlier. I still felt the slick proof of his attention between my legs and the sensation woke up another part of me—one that didn’t want to put on a robe and see to his prodigal sister.

  Alexander held out my robe. Unfortunately, duty called.

  We heard her before we saw her. For the second time, I was grateful that Edward had suggested we give her a suite on a different floor. If she’d come through my home making that ruckus and waking my baby, she’d find the welcome mat pulled out from under her.

  “A cunt from Devonshire!” She cackled as we caught up with the group. Brex and another man were supporting her as she stumbled along, her ankles betraying her with every step “Can you imagine? And another one is gay. I should have seen that, actually.”

  Brex had the look of a man who had seen war and suddenly missed it. He was easily two times her size, and most of that was muscle. Given her remarkable impression of a boneless heap of a person, it was proving a struggle to keep her upright. Georgia stalked into the room looking more disgusted than usual as she apprised the situation.

  “Why are you here?” Alexander snapped. “You’re Clara’s bodyguard now.”

  “He called me.” Georgia hoisted a thumb at Brex.

  “You didn’t answer the first call.” Brex tried to shrug and nearly lost his grip on Sarah, who seemed to notice us for the first time.

  “Oh! Alexander. I was looking up old boyfriends, so I could move on and grow up and make you proud or whatever shit you wanted—and I discovered that I must go find new boyfriends.” Her finger wagged in my direction. “Not every girl gets a Prince Charming.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, crossing my arms over my robe and wondering how to sort this mess.

  “Two nights in a row?” I recognized the unnervingly even tone in Alexander’s voice. He’d turned himself off emotionally. It was what he did whenever he had to mete out a response to a situation.

  “I have ten years to catch up on.” She lunged away from Brex and veered into me. I caught her with Georgia’s help.

  “Let’s not do it all at once,” Georgia suggested, handing her back off to Brex.

  He seemed to consider the situation and made a decision. Instead of continuing to help her, he ducked down and threw her over his shoulder. She tried to kick him, but her aim was lousy.

  “Put me down!” She smacked his back. “Put me down! Put me…”

  “I think she passed out,” the other security guard said gratefully. Judging by his round eyes, he was new to this gig. I could only hope he was loyal. Not that selling this story would be an option. I doubted she’d kept a low profile wherever she’d been.

  Brex carried her to the bedroom, and her involuntary entourage followed. As soon as we reached it, he dumped her on her bed.

  I stopped, shocked to discover she’d managed to tear the place apart in such a short period of time. Clothes were strewn everywhere along with books and magazines. It looked as if she’d dumped the content of every drawer and shelf on the floor and then done snow angels in the middle of it all.

  We couldn’t ignore this behavior. We couldn’t all go along pretending that she was an adult, or that we could catch her up on what she’d missed. Doctors were going to need to worry about more than physical therapy, and until her head was on straight, we needed to keep her busy.

  I stomped over to her bed, determined to deal with it in the morning. At the moment, her needs were much simpler. The acrid scent of gin and being nearly nine months pregnant didn’t mix well, but I forced my stomach to obey me. I pointed at the door. “Out!”

  “This shouldn’t be your problem,” Alexander said.

  “Are you going to undress your sister and put her to bed?” I planted my hands on my hips and waited for his answer. This seemed to get through to him. “Georgia and I will take care of it.”

  “Someone should stay with her,” the rookie security guard said, eyeing the chair in the corner.

  Alexander rounded on him. “Do you think I’m going to let you sit in a dark room with my drunk sister?”

  He backed up recognizing the alpha male in front of him. “I was just pointing out…”

  “That someone needs to stay with her?” Georgia’s glare could peel paint from the walls. Alexander wasn’t going to trust a man, but he was in no shape to sit here himself. The sooner we got him out of the room, the better. “I’ll stay with her. Happy?”

  No one looked happy about any of it, but Alexander jerked his chin in agreement.

  “You and I need to talk.” Alexander shot Brex a look. I couldn’t tell which one of them was angrier, and since the object of their fury was deep in dreamland, they redirected it at each other.

  “At least she isn’t wearing much.” Georgia observed, looking at Sarah like someone was forcing her to unwrap an unwanted gift.

  I’d already resigned myself to this fate. “I’ll get her shoes.”

  I sat on the end of the bed and began to unbuckle the strappy heels. She’d probably drank too much trying to dull the pain they caused. Georgia urged her up, ducking as Sarah flailed wildly, half asleep and mumbling to herself.

  “If she hits me, I’m hitting her back,” Georgia warned me.

  “Consider it an official duty.” Sarah had only been home a few days but she was clearly vying to be the next Royal scandal. Alexander had enough to deal with between Parliament and Jacobson. If his sister kept this up, public favor would skew even more heavily against us. We couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “She’s going to be trouble,” Georgia said as if reading my mind, and I nodded.

  “I thought Brex would be able to handle her.” I knew just enough about his military training to know that he didn’t shy away from life and death situations.

  “Brex isn’t going to last much longer,” she informed me. “Alexander keeps putting him in impossible positions. How
is Brex supposed to handle an adult woman who never matured past sixteen? He can’t say no to her. He can’t ground her.”

  “Neither can Alexander.” It was the crux of our problem. We’d invited Sarah back to London without considering how to help her acclimate to life. We were all tiptoeing around the fact that she wasn’t a twenty-six year-old woman—not mentally at least.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what Alexander should do. But pretending it’s everyone else’s problem isn’t going to solve it.”

  “I just keep trying to think of how she must feel.” Maybe that was the key to figuring this out.

  “I do imagine how she feels. It’s what keeps me from smacking her.”

  “I wondered how you were doing it.” It might have been all that kept me from doing it myself. “She just keeps going back to where she was before that night. Back to the clubs. Back to drinking.”

  I could only hope drugs weren’t involved this time, too.

  “It’s like she’s searching for something. Like she’s going to find herself there.” But someone was going to have to make her face reality: she wasn’t going to find the ten years she’d lost there. They were gone forever.

  “She sure knows a lot about London nightlife,” Georgia said, examining a stamp in the shape of a posthorn on the back of Sarah’s wrist. “She’s already found the hottest club in town: Lot 49.”

  “I’m guessing we have Pepper to thank for that.” I was going to write her a personal thank you note soon, complete with a heartfelt post-script to get a fucking life.

  “Brex said she met someone he didn’t know there, like a date. God, help us if she’s discovered Tinder.”

  She didn’t waste any time. Then again, she’d had so much time taken from her. The trouble was that she still had the experience of a child, but her brother and his friends weren’t around to keep her in check. She was roaming the streets of London with a half-cocked idea of what she’d missed and far too much self-confidence.

  Georgia finally managed to get Sarah’s dress over her head, and she fell back onto the mattress in her underwear. We stood on either side of the bed, debating what needed to happen next.

  “I think that’s good enough.”

  “I could stay with her,” I offered. It wasn’t really Georgia’s job, and I’d be in the bathroom half the night anyway, thanks to his little majesty using my bladder as a punching bag.

  “If you stay, I’ll stay and then we’ll both sleep like shit.” That settled the matter. She walked across the room and plucked a pile of clothes off a chair. “Did you get my delivery?”

  “Yes.” I was suddenly grateful the lights were out. “Thank you.”

  “All the more reason for you to go back to bed.”

  I tugged the coverlet past her heavy legs until I had enough slack to pull it over her. Sarah’s eyes opened as I tucked it around her. The moonlight caught their glassy surface, illuminating her confusion. “Poor little princess locked up in a room.” Her hand strayed from under the blanket and skimmed over my stomach. “Would you lock your princess up?”

  I took a step away and stared at her, my hands closing protectively over my stomach. Georgia was at my side, angling herself between my body and the bed.

  “She didn’t mean anything by it,” I said, willing myself to believe it. Is that what she thought? That they locked her way and forgot her? I knew the truth. They’d never given up on her. That was the key to helping her now—proving to her that they’d never given up on her.

  “I’ve got her from here.” Georgia never looked away from Sarah, who’d yet to fall back asleep. Instead, she’d fallen silent, her eyes lifeless like a doll’s.

  “She just needs to know the truth. That her father loved her. That Alexander was trying to protect her.” She’d come back to London on the defensive, and we’d responded in a similar fashion.

  Georgia nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “That might be true, but you should talk to your husband. I think his sister should find somewhere else to stay.”

  “We’ll make it work. Maybe a different wing of the house so that she doesn’t wake up the baby—”

  “Clara,” she stopped me, “I don’t think you want her in your house at all.”

  * * *

  I tiptoed into the bedroom a few minutes later and found Alexander awake, staring at the ceiling. He was still wearing the clothes he’d thrown on when we’d gotten the call.

  “I’m going to fail her,” he said when I climbed into bed next to him.

  I placed a hand on his chest, not wanting to interrupt him but letting him know I was listening.

  “She should be able to handle this. She should be a normal twenty-six-year-old. She should have gone to university. Maybe gotten married. None of those things happened, and I don’t know how to help her choose to be an adult.”

  “What happened to her isn’t your fault,” I reminded him. Alexander may have kept the secret but he wasn’t at fault for the events that led to her coma.

  “It was my friend who gave her the drugs.”

  “And you were trying to get her home.”

  “While I was drunk.” He turned on his side to face me. Reaching out, he brushed a finger down my cheek. “I’ve been laying here wondering what it would be like if I’d been the one in that coma. I never would have met you. I wouldn’t be King. I’d be a boy still.”

  “Maybe I would have fallen in love with Sarah,” I teased, but the joke was as flat as the air between us. “What-if’s are only a gateway to madness.”

  “Yes, but even though I know all of this—even though I understand—I’m still angry with her. I’ve had enough…” he trailed away. “Get some sleep. You must be exhausted, and we have the games this weekend.”

  I kissed the back of his palm and snuggled into the pillow, but sleep evaded me. I knew what he was going to say: he had enough to worry about. I wouldn’t add to that stress by sharing Georgia’s opinion.

  But now I knew I wasn’t alone in how I felt about Sarah’s return. It was the one thing none of us were saying.

  I wished she’d never come back.

  Chapter 17

  Clara

  It was strange to be at the Sovereign Games as an audience member. How had it only been months since I’d hosted the first event? Weeks since I’d handed the reins to Edward after learning the truth about Anderson Stone? It felt like lifetimes had passed. So much had happened, and, yet, I found myself crammed in a tent making small talk with familiar faces that I’d once met but obviously forgotten.

  Relief washed over me when I spotted Henry in the small crowd, particularly since his mother was nowhere in sight.

  “You look lovely.”

  I checked my fascinator, grimacing so only he could see. “I’m afraid I’ve never gotten used to the hats. Don’t tell anyone or they’ll kick me out.”

  “You’re secret is safe with me,” he assured me.

  I still relied on advice from Belle when it came to events like this. She’d insisted I wear the new green dress from Tamara’s and then sent over a peacock-plumed fascinator that would have looked stunning on her, but that I suspected made me look ridiculous. I couldn’t help feeling as though a bird had landed on my head. I kept this thought to myself, knowing even a friend would find it scandalous coming from the lips of the Queen.

  Henry’s wool officer’s jacket, on the other hand, fit in with the old money ensemble here. He nodded to people as they passed. I imagined he never forgot their names.

  “More relaxing to be on the sidelines, I imagine,” he said, after greeting a few distant relatives. He eyed me up and down. “Or maybe not?”

  “I don’t miss having one more thing to do.” I patted my stomach. “This is taking up most of my time.”

  But that wasn’t true. Drama was taking up my time. Alexander’s troubles with Parliament and our new family member made a high-risk pregnancy feel less important than it probably should have been. Instead, I used it as an excuse.


  “And there’s the other complication,” he added.

  “Complication?” I asked. “There are a lot of complications in our lives. You are going to have to be more specific.”

  “Anderson.”

  “Oh, that.” I turned toward the jumping competition, wishing he wouldn’t bring it up.

  “I suspect it wasn’t just the pregnancy that took you away from us,” he said meaningfully.

  “It was the pregnancy, mostly.” And it was. The baby’s health and focusing on keeping my stress low meant that I’d needed to step away. But a big part of managing my stress was staying away from Anders and the tension he caused between me and Alexander.

  Maybe it would have been different after I found out the truth. I suspected that Alexander was more anxious about his brother and wife unwittingly becoming friends than he was about Anderson’s confusion regarding his feelings towards me. My husband knew my heart belonged to him. Then again, Alexander had shown a jealous streak before.

  “I was concerned Alexander might demand it,” Henry murmured, clapping at some feat on the field.

  “He didn’t.” It was time for a change of subject. “Are you enjoying your time in London?”

  “Usually, I enjoy London, but my mother is not…”

  “So, you’re not?” I guessed.

  “It is the lot of the caretaker, I suppose. The weather doesn’t seem to suit her.” He waved at the lingering fog that had descended mid-afternoon.

  “She never had issues here before. She seemed quite capable.” At least, she’d been capable of giving a tongue lashing. She’d had no problem making sneering, derisive remarks to me ever since I’d known her.

  “I’m afraid her health is failing, and she’s grown quite forgetful, although that isn’t stopping her from being as demanding as ever,” he added conspiratorially with a slight smile. “But it is hard. She left one of her medications—for her heart—at home and insists that we go to the doctor there. She won’t allow me to call the doctors here and pick up a new one. I don’t think she likes being seen as dependent on anyone. Who can blame her for feeling that way?”