Christmas In The City

by Shen, L. J.

  Hehu sighs and rubs his forehead. “I hear he’s been taking meetings all week. Investors. Shipping conglomerations. Oil companies. He’s eager to approve the proposed drilling site off the western shore, and a refinery on Manaroa to go with it.”

  It’s only a lifetime of being groomed to marry a king that keeps me from releasing a creative string of profanity at a White House Christmas party. Instead, I manage to seethe, “Over my dead body will he bring that poison to Manaroa.”

  We didn’t resist colonization and industrialization for centuries to pollute our home now. Now when it’s already shrinking and more vulnerable than ever.

  “Be careful, Noelani.” Hehu looks around the room at the hobnobbing people in tuxedos and gowns and sparkling jewels. Kimo’s in the decadent crush somewhere, probably trying to glad-hand more energy executives. “After the last marriage proposal of his you refused, I sometimes worry that he might be thinking the same thing.” Then Hehu pauses in that way of his that tells me he knows that I’m not going to like what he says next. “You know, if you did remarry, it would ease a lot of people’s minds.”

  “I’m not marrying Kimo.”

  “I didn’t mean Kimo,” Hehu says gently. “Anyone. Fall in love again, Noelani. Be happy. The kingdom will thrive for it, and so will Ka’eo.”

  His words hurt, and I’m not exactly sure why. “I’m doing everything in my power to help Manaroa thrive already, Hehu. You know that.”

  I take a deep breath and force myself to think of something different—not Kimo or my son or the rising sea bent on washing my homeland away. I’ll think of pleasant things, like tomorrow’s meeting with CadeCo, a huge green energy conglomerate, before my flight home. I’ll think of the snow so impossibly beautiful outside, a pure thing covering the corruption of the city underneath. I’ll think about getting another cocktail made with cool, Christmas-y gin.

  I’m turning to go hunt down this cocktail, when a gorgeous woman in a white silk dress approaches me, trailed closely by a tall tuxedoed man I recognize as Maxim Cade, the CEO of CadeCo.

  Both of them offer me small bows. “Your Majesty,” the woman says, the festive lights glimmering in her dark hair when she straightens. “I’m Lennix Moon Hunter, and I wanted to tell you how powerful I found your testimonies this week. Your people are lucky to have a leader like you.”

  “That’s so kind of you,” I respond easily. Both my English and my manners are flawless—a testament to the rigorous education I received as the promised bride of Manaroa’s future king. “I’m not sure the council members found the testimony as powerful.”

  “In my experience,” Lennix says, “most leaders are stubbornly oblivious when it comes to how these issues affect indigenous people and our land.”

  “Our?” I question with lifted brows.

  “Lennix is Yavapai-Apache nation,” Maxim answers smoothly.

  “Ah, I see.” I consider Lennix with new eyes knowing she’s American Indian. No wonder she’s sympathetic to how our issues go overlooked and our voices unheard.

  “Between my work on climate change reform,” Maxim says, “and Nix’s advocacy for indigenous autonomy, you won’t find two people more committed to your cause than we are, Your Majesty. I’d love to hear how I can help, so I look forward to tomorrow’s meeting.”

  “I appreciate that,” I say. “Aside from the sorely needed updates to our energy infrastructure, we need opportunities for graduates. Too many of our brightest people leave for Auckland or Sydney or Singapore, because there aren’t enough STEM jobs in Manaroa. I hope to change that during my regency.”

  “If this one has taught me anything,” Maxim says, squeezing Lennix’s shoulder. “It’s that determined women can change the world.”

  “Even determined women need allies,” I say wryly.

  “So true,” Lennix agrees. She glows when she smiles at Maxim. Their love is an open secret, telegraphed in discreet brushes of their fingers and the caress of every glance they share. Envy pricks me, not for the unlimited resources or the influence Maxim Cade yields that could be useful to my cause. I envy that; the “foundness” so evident between them. Even in my marriage, I always felt a little lost.

  “I love your dress, by the way,” Lennix says, casting an admiring gaze over my evening gown.

  A Manaroan dressmaker literally sewed the gold silk onto my body, and it, like everything else in my life, is fitted to me. Fitted to me, but not for me. Nothing is for me. I’m draped in crown jewels, but each diamond is set in responsibility. I can barely stand under the weight of them.

  “Thank you,” I murmur. “I was admiring yours, too.”

  “D.C. has some great shops,” Lennix says. “I don’t make the best use of them, but if you get the chance . . .”

  “I doubt I will.” I smile ruefully. “I need to get back in time for Christmas. My son is at home.”

  A shadow passes over Lennix’s lovely face. “Oh, yes. Of course, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Yes, my condolences, too. King Rua was a great man,” Maxim says, his tone sober. “He and I spoke more than once about how urgent things were becoming there, how quickly the waters are rising. I’m sorry we didn’t get to work together before he passed away.”

  “Thank you.” I swallow the heat rising in my throat. “Well, the waters are still getting higher and Manaroa still needs your help.”

  “Well you’ve got it.” Maxim aims a wry grin over my shoulder. “Oh, I’d like you to meet someone, Your Majesty. I would warn you that his bark is worse than his bite—”

  “But we’re not entirely sure that’s true,” Lennix cuts in with a smile, looking in the same direction. “Just try not to get bitten.”

  When I glance over my shoulder to see whom they’re referring to, I realize, with some surprise, that I’d quite enjoy a bite from the man striding toward us.

  He’s built like the ageless mountains dotting my island kingdom. Simultaneously hulking and elegant. Like one of our dormant volcanoes—still but with roiling, hot liquid beneath.

  My dress fits me perfectly because it was sewn onto my body, but his tuxedo seems tailored to his because it has no other choice. Like it and everything in his path will suit his needs, or else. A little taller than Maxim and a lot wider, he must be six foot six. I surreptitiously observe the precisely tailored pants molding long, muscled thighs and the slight bulge behind his zipper. This man’s body is a sin, and I should cross myself just for looking at him. Maybe pray a rosary or two.

  Ave Maria.

  If his body is a sin, his face . . . a transgression. His is not the conventional handsomeness of someone like Maxim, whose green eyes and even features were made for the stage, for the spotlight. This man was crafted from shadows. God sculpted those cheekbones in secret and chiseled that jaw at night. The piercing eyes of a devil and the beautiful mouth of an angel. Dichotomously, dark and divine convene in him.

  I glance at Maxim and Lennix, wondering if the uncharacteristic bolt of lust coursing through my body is broadcast on my face. It’s been so long since I felt this kind of attraction. Actually, I’ve never felt anything like this; so deep and instant I ache in long-neglected places. If I’m honest, in places never touched.

  He approaches with utter purpose and complete awareness. There’s a potent competency suffusing his movements, like he’s never been in a situation he hasn’t mastered. And while his ink-dark eyes and lushly formed mouth should be expressive beyond belief, his face is impassive. He scans the room as he approaches us, surveying it with the stoic efficiency of a soldier. He has a night-ray vision stare, penetrating the surface of things, peering beneath the layers.

  I wonder what he sees when those dark eyes fall on me?

  Does he detect the loneliness woven into this expensive dress? Sense that each gilded thread pulls just a little too tight, making me feel caged instead of covered? Where everyone else sees wealth and royal privilege, I wonder if a man with those eyes could see what’s really here? C
ould see that having everything is not always enough?

  “It’s time,” he says abruptly, looking at Maxim and no one else. “The car’s waiting.”

  “Hell, I forgot.” Maxim grimaces and offers me an apologetic glance. “I have a meeting. I know it’s late, but this gentleman leaves the city tonight and won’t return until the New Year.”

  “I understand,” I say, disappointed I won’t get to see the man with the bite much longer.

  “Forgive my rudeness,” Maxim says. “Your Majesty, my friend Brock Grimsby, who also oversees security. Brock, Her Royal Highness Noelani, Queen of Manaroa.”

  “Good evening, Your Majesty,” the mountain of a man murmurs in a voice that rolls over my nerve endings like hot oil.

  My eyes snap to his face. I’m shocked, not because of what he said, but that he said it in near-flawless Manaroan.

  “You speak our language?” I reply in kind, hoping I sound imperious and not breathless.

  “I picked it up when I met a solider from your country a few years ago,” he replies, his words friendly enough, but his demeanor severe. “My family is Polynesian and I grew up in Hawaii. Hawaiian, along with English, is the state language. It’s very similar to Manaroan.”

  He says all of this in Manaroan, and something about hearing my native tongue in a roomful of strangers on a foreign snowy night makes me homesick for my tropical kingdom.

  “Grim, it’s rude to speak in a language we don’t understand,” Lennix chides.

  “Grim?” I flick a glance up at the man towering over us all.

  “The best he could come up with for a nickname,” Grim says in clipped English, nodding to Maxim. “The car’s waiting for you two. Rick will take you.”

  Another man approaches. This one nondescript in that way so many security people strive to be, wearing a suit made for you to forget you ever saw it or the person wearing it.

  “Rick,” Grim says. “Take Mr. Cade and Ms. Hunter to the car.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rick stands by patiently while we say our goodbyes.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow then,” Maxim says. “I believe your secretary has the details.”

  “She always does.” I smile, even though disappointment lands like a stone in my belly. The most fascinating sight since I landed in this country, and I had two minutes with him.

  “It was such a pleasure meeting you,” Lennix says. “And thank you again for all you shared in the council meetings.”

  She dips her head in a bow, and on impulse, I take her hands and kiss her cheek. Manaroans are warm people, and we like to touch. I’ve missed that in this city where so many of the people I’ve met are as cold as the snow on the trees and the ice on the streets.

  “It was lovely meeting you, Lennix.”

  She smiles, and Maxim leads her away, a large, possessive hand at the small of her back, and Rick trailing them like a bulldog.

  “Where is your security detail?”

  It takes a moment for it to sink in that Grim’s still here and we’re standing alone. In a roomful of people, but in this tiny corner of the grand ballroom, alone.

  “Oh.” I scan the room until I spot Hehu in conversation with a neighboring country’s prime minister, and Rangi, the guard who came in with us, beside him. “Over there.”

  He glances across the room, following the direction of my nod. “Are they always so loose with your protection?”

  “Loose?” A humorless laugh slips past my lips. “Unfortunately, no. The rest of the team is probably just beyond the ballroom. Most people here have security. It would get quite crowded if we all brought in our full entourages.”

  “Unfortunately?” he asks, one thick, dark brow quirked. “You don’t like feeling safe?”

  “There’s safe, and then there’s cloistered. The thing about sheltering someone so much that danger can’t get it, is that nothing gets in.”

  “You know they’re just doing their jobs,” he says, his tone firm, but his eyes seem to gentle some as they scan my face.

  “Have you ever been someone’s job, Mr. Grimsby?”

  His gaze sharpens, and it feels for a moment that he really does see me. No one ever really does. Even the attendants who help me out of my gowns and jewels, who prepare my bath, who see me naked—don’t see me at all. They see the regal queen. The grieving widow. The loving mother. The dedicated regent.

  Who sees the woman? The one who aches for a touch, longs for a kiss at night? A hand to hold on a walk through the garden?

  “The paths we choose often have pitfalls we never anticipated,” he says. “If being too safe is one of yours, count yourself lucky.”

  “You think I chose this path?” I ask with a bitter little smile. “People like me don’t get to choose. I was born to be the king’s wife.”

  He watches me for a moment, and his eyes narrow in curiosity, realization. Understanding.

  “And what would you have chosen to be if not a queen?”

  Chapter 2

  Grim

  She blinks up at me as if the thought has never occurred to her; as if indeed, like she said, no path was ever open to her that didn’t lead to the throne. Her pretty mouth, rounded into a surprised “O,” slowly stretches into a wide smile.

  “What if I said a teacher?” she asks teasingly, her English flawless, but lilted with the slightest bit of an accent. “Or a pastry chef?”

  A smile so rarely used it almost creaks curves my lips. “Somehow I can’t see you wearing an apron.”

  But then I do.

  An apron and nothing else.

  In my imagination, she wears an apron as red as her lips, tied tight at her slim waist, straining over the flare of her hips. Her pretty ass is bare, the dark gold skin reddened from a slap to each rounded cheek. The loop of the apron around her neck sags so her full tits push at the neckline, the brown nipples peeking over the edge.

  Shiiiiiiit.

  This is a queen, not one of the escorts I fuck when I need to nut. Nothing fogs a clear mind like horniness, so even I have to take the edge off every once in a while, but there’s no emotional attachment. No feelings. Queen Noelani—with her hair, a fall of midnight down her back and over her shoulders, velvet skin, and dark, luminous eyes—is a feelings woman. How could a man not feel something for a woman like this? I’ve never met anyone like her.

  You’ve never met anyone like her because she’s a queen, you stupid son of a bitch.

  I’ve met queens, but none quite like Noelani of Manaroa. I kill my rare smile and frown, searching the room until I spot Rangi, her security guard, standing by Hehu, her advisor.

  “I better get you back to your people.” I take her elbow gently. “I’ll walk you over to your team.”

  “Do I really seem that fragile?” she asks, resisting my pull and standing her ground. “That I can’t walk across a room alone without getting myself killed?”

  The gold evening dress loves every curve of her petite body. A tiare flower made of diamonds and yellow sapphires pins back the thick, dark waves of her hair on one side, and even in heels she only reaches the middle of my chest. Yes, she seems fragile and breakable. And so very fuckable.

  And somehow precious.

  If she were mine, I wouldn’t leave her alone for ten seconds, much less the ten minutes her guard Rangi has been across the room.

  He’d be fired if she were mine. And punched in the face.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, lashes lowered into thick fans shielding her eyes from me. “I’m sure you have better things to do than entertain a spoiled royal.”

  “I don’t think you’re spoiled.”

  The opposite. Unspoiled. Even wrapped in layers of wealth and sophistication, there is an obstinate innocence to her.

  “Yes, well, I’ve taken up enough of your time.” The lush lips settle into a resigned line, and she squares her elegant shoulders as if for battle. “You can take me to them now.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  I can’t bel
ieve I asked because who cares where she’d like to go. Women like her are supposed to be somewhere at all times. Accounted for. And yet I can’t wait to hear what she says.

  Her smile is bright and sudden and sincere. “You really want to know?”

  “I never waste my breath asking questions I don’t want to know the answers to.”

  She nods, and as much as she might want to shake off her royal trappings, even that small movement of her dark head is imperious.

  “Netflix.”

  I don’t catch my shout of laughter in time, which seems to surprise us both and only widens her smile.

  “Did you say Netflix?”

  “Yes.” A naughty chuckle pours out of her. “I’d like to be in my hotel room with vanilla rum and popcorn and binging Netflix.”

  “That doesn’t seem too tall of an order.”

  “Ah, but you haven’t heard the hard part yet,” she says, and the high curve of her cheekbones carries the slightest flush of rose gold. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. Alone is the hardest place to be, but it’s where I spend most of my time.”

  I get the sense that she’s forcing herself not to look away from me; like it’s an act of courage for her to hold my stare while her meaning sinks in. Is she . . .

  I look down at the small woman with a presence so huge it fills this room without any real effort on her part.

  Is she propositioning me?

  You wish, Grimsby.

  I’m still holding her elbow, and she takes a step closer. Her scent stirs memories of lazy afternoons on the Big Island growing up, trees laden with Hawaiian hibiscus.

  “Noelani,” a stern, accented voice says behind me. A dark-haired man with joins us, his irritation straining to get out through the tight corners of his eyes and mouth.