Christmas In The City

by Shen, L. J.

  “Of course, it’s not an option, Lani, and for the record, that is not what I was thinking at all. I was thinking that it should be your security’s job to make a scene on your behalf. It should be your security’s job to keep you and your body safe. What would have happened tonight if I hadn’t been there? If Kimo had managed to get you into his car, like he wanted? Your security was nowhere in sight until we left the room, and even if they were, would they have protected you?”

  Grim’s words make complete sense, and I hate that they do, because it means I have to give him honesty in return. “No. No, they’re loyal to me, but central to their training is the idea that royals can do no wrong. That includes Kimo, the future king’s uncle. Or the queen, when she invites big, brooding men up to her room.” I say the last part in a teasing tone, needing to ease the mood, but Grim’s arms only pull tighter around me.

  “No one is looking out for you at home, are they?” he says, his deep voice rumbling through his chest and against my ear. “There’re people for Ka’eo, there’re people for running the country, but there’s no one just for you.”

  I exhale. “I have Vashti. Hehu.”

  “They’re not security, Lani. They’ve already failed to keep Kimo away from you.”

  “If I remarried . . .”

  Grim suddenly goes very, very still underneath me, as if the very idea of me remarrying has him feeling some kind of way.

  I quickly suppress the sizzle of pleasure I feel at his grouchiness, but it’s difficult to ignore; it feels so good to have someone jealous over me. Jealous in the fun, delicious way—not in the creepy, Kimo way.

  “Yes?” Grim grates out. “If you remarried, then what?”

  “If I remarried, maybe Kimo would back off. Maybe my new husband would protect me. That’s what Hehu hopes, at least, that a marriage will solve all my problems.”

  “Would it solve your problems? Having a ring on your finger again?”

  I consider it, even though I’ve already thought about it so much it’s impossible to come up with any new answers. Kimo probably would stay away—at least more than he does now—if I were married again, and it would certainly stop other men from eyeing me as a potential prize. There would be more stability, maybe, more certainty around Ka’eo’s regency, and that would be a good thing. But I just can’t help but feel like it might be a slow trap, a hidden eddy in the water that you can easily swim into but not out of. I don’t have much freedom now, but the little I do have I would lose.

  “If I chose the right man,” I say slowly, “maybe.”

  I didn’t have a choice at all when I married Rua, but the time for powerlessness in my love life is through. I’ve fulfilled my duty, I’ve borne an heir. Maybe I don’t have to choose between a man and freedom . . . after all, I was able to choose for myself tonight, wasn’t I? And it felt so good, so divine, just to see someone as thrillingly sexy as Grim, and think: I want. And think: mine.

  It’s hard to imagine ever seeing any other man who fires me up like Grim, but maybe it’s possible. And if it’s possible, then maybe I’m not ready to give it up. Definitely not just so I can wear a ring on my finger, and most likely a ring belonging to a man who covets my crown or my son’s as much as he covets me.

  “But,” I say, contradicting myself, “even the right man for me might not be the right man for my crown. I don’t know if I’m ready to choose between the two. Not after tonight.” I feel Grim tense under me, and I realize what I just said and how it sounded. “I mean, not after how good it felt tonight to be free again. Free to enjoy things just for myself.”

  He relaxes a little, but not completely, and something hurts in my chest. Like his resistance to even a grammatical slip-up implying we have a future is another rejection of me.

  Which is silly. I know it’s silly. Tonight is all there is.

  But my chest hurts anyway.

  I struggle against his arms. “Hey, where’s the rum?” I ask, trying for lightness and mostly succeeding.

  Grim doesn’t release me right away, and I hear him draw a breath like he’s going to say something. I freeze, half in hope and half in dread, the hurt in my chest like fingers searching for my scraped-up heart.

  But he doesn’t speak in the end. Instead, he lets me go and stretches out an arm for the rum. After he hands it to me, he takes one of my free hands in his and meets my gaze.

  “I want to help, Lani.” His voice is quiet now, but firm and his protective anger burns the edges of his words. “I can make you safer.”

  I have the fleeting image of Grim as my personal security guard, trailing me at events and ushering me into cars. Pulling me into his arms every chance he gets. Tumbling into my bed every night.

  “You can?” I whisper, not daring to name, even to myself, what I hope right now.

  Grim nods, and it’s the nod of a man who’s never walked away from a challenge. The nod of a man who’s vowed never to forget what right and wrong feel like. “I can draft a proposal to overhaul the palace security training, and I can send over our own protocols so your team sees how my company Grimstone approaches personal security for high-profile clients. I can even recommend some security trainers who work with royalty in other nations and make introductions for you. I think we can make it very seamless and quick, Lani, and in just a few months, you’ll have a team that meets my standards. Which means you’ll be safe. As safe as if I were there guarding you myself.”

  Those imaginary fingers in my chest find my heart. “You could do it, you know,” I say, a little too quickly for it to sound like a joke. Because of course it’s not a joke at all. “You could be my guard.”

  The minute I say it, I know I’ve pushed too far. I let out a weak laugh and then take a big gulp of rum to hide my embarrassment.

  Grim’s face doesn’t change, but it doesn’t need to. I see something tormented in his eyes, and I feel his hand tighten around my own.

  He gently pushes the bottle away from my mouth so he can have my full attention. “Lani . . .” he starts, then stops, as if considering how to say what needs to be said without hurting my feelings.

  “Grim, you don’t have to—”

  “My entire life is here. My firm, our clients, our missions base.”

  “You don’t have to explain—”

  “I do, dammit,” he says roughly. “I do because, right now you’re thinking that I wouldn’t be willing to follow you, and maybe you’re even thinking that no man would be willing to follow you, but nothing is further from the fucking truth. You are worth following to the end of the oceans themselves, Queen Noelani, and if things were different, I’d spend every hour of every day reminding you of that.”

  My heart is being squeezed. Squeezed so hard that all I can do is stare at the beautiful man in front of me and wait for his next words.

  Grim gives a harsh exhale. His eyes close as he says, “It’s just that things aren’t different. People depend on me here. They need me. Their lives depend on me. I don’t take that lightly.”

  “Nor should you,” I say, and I mean it.

  His life is here and it’s important. I only wish that I were important to him, too. I don’t want Grim to know how suddenly and deeply and foolishly I’ve started feeling things for him. I have to clear my throat before I speak because my words would wobble with emotion I don’t want to reveal.

  “Well, I look forward to receiving your security proposal,” I say in a rush. “I think I’m hungry. Are you hungry? I’ll go find the room service menu and see if Vashti can coax them to send something up.”

  I climb off Grim—bottle still in hand—without looking at his face, because if I look at him, I’ll say something stupid. I’ll say something pointless.

  I’ll say something that we both know can’t ever be true.

  He lets me escape, although the careful brush of his hands along my thighs as I clamber off the bed reminds me that he’s allowing it—that if he wanted, he could grab me and toss me back on the bed. He could crawl o
ver me and kiss me until food was the very last thing on my mind. He could keep me against his hard, warm body for as long as he wanted, and I would stay.

  I would stay.

  The sitting room is cool enough to raise goosebumps along my arms and legs as I walk right past the table with the room service menu and over to one of the windows. Through the flurrying snow, I can see the White House glowing against the dark, surrounded by snow-ruffled trees and with the Washington Monument sword-like and proud behind it.

  “It’s a gorgeous view,” his voice rumbles from behind me.

  I turn to see Grim, wearing nothing but his piercing and his necklace, a luxuriously sculpted stretch of pure alpha male. Each step tautens the heavy muscles of his thighs, and the room’s faint lamplight burnishes the dark bronze of his skin, throwing every carved groove of his abdomen into sharp relief. His eyes are like the ocean at night—glittering and dangerous—and his cock is ready for me. It’s so rigid and so thick, with a swollen vein on the side and a glisten of pre-cum at his tip, matching the shiny piercing as they both glint in the light.

  Even with my heart all scraped up inside my chest, my body clenches with wet desire at the sight of him.

  He’s the gorgeous view.

  I can’t take my eyes off him.

  “Grim,” I whisper, but he doesn’t stop, coming all the way up to me and then turning me by the shoulders to face the window and the blizzard-dusted world outside.

  “You see that world out there?” he murmurs low into my ear. “You see all those buildings where people make the choices that shape the world?”

  I shiver at the touch of his lips on my skin. “Yes.”

  “It’s nothing compared to you.” He deftly unknots the sash of my robe. “You are worth a hundred capitals, a thousand nations. You are worth worlds upon worlds, my Lani.”

  My Lani.

  Oh sweet Mother Mary, how I’m powerless against that. And then he says it again as he peels the silk from my skin, again and again as he kisses my ear and my jaw, and makes slow love to my neck with his mouth.

  My Lani. My Lani. My Lani.

  I’m panting and trembling against him when he finally cups me where I need him most. “What are you worth, my little queen?”

  His fingers press expertly on my clit, so I gasp his answer. “Worlds.”

  “Worlds upon worlds,” he corrects, and he sounds almost angry, but I can tell it’s not with me. And when I look up to see his reflection in the window as he rolls a condom over his erection, I see the answer.

  He’s angry with himself.

  Grim curls one hand around my hip and another around himself, and he slowly, inexorably pushes himself inside, impatiently nudging my feet apart when it becomes apparent that it’s just too tight a fit.

  “This body,” he groans into my hair as he finally edges inside me. He’s big enough to steal my breath, and I lean my forehead against the cool glass to stop my violent shivering as he feeds me another inch.

  “This body,” he says again, and this time it’s through gritted teeth as the softest part of me clasps greedily at the hardest part of him. The trail of his piercing against my sheath is agonizing and delicious; it leaves thrashing urgency in its wake, and I push back against him, rising up on the balls of my feet, desperate for more. For all of it.

  Finally, he’s seated fully inside of me, with one arm around my waist to keep me up on my toes and his other hand palming my breast possessively. I brace my own hands against the glass for leverage, trying to fuck back against him, needing more of that sizzling stretch and sweet, sweet deepness. Needing more of Grim as close to me as two people can ever get.

  But Grim stops my writhing easily, nipping at my ear. “Greedy little queen,” he says. And then, gentler, “Please, Lani. Let me give this to you. All you have to do is feel it.”

  Which is how we end up fucking slow and dirty in front of the window overlooking the world’s seat of power.

  Grim doesn’t let me miss a single inch of his aggressive, shuddering thrusts, and he doesn’t let me lose myself completely either in the sensations he’s giving me. Instead, he nips at my ear whenever my eyes slide closed, and he wraps a hand in my hair to keep my gaze on our reflection whenever I’m tempted to look away. I have to look at him—look at us—him with his rugged features and stern expression, me still with the sparkling flower comb in my hair.

  He wants me present.

  He wants me to remember this.

  This is goodbye.

  We can’t tear our eyes away from each other’s in the reflection, and I can almost imagine he’s trying to tell me something with his gaze as he fucks me. I try to tell him something back, pouring every agony and futile longing of tonight into my face so he’ll know. He’ll know that no matter how much stands in the way of a killer and a queen loving each other, I’d try.

  If he wanted me, I’d try.

  What’s the use of being worth worlds upon worlds if you have no one to tell you so? Both with rough, husky words and with a big, pierced cock?

  I come loud and hard and keening, so loud I fear my scream will shatter the glass. He follows soon after, pinning me against the window as he pumps the condom full of his spend with a wrenching, utterly sexy groan that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. That groan, his sounds, his scent will haunt my dreams.

  And it’s only as we both gradually come down from our highs that I realize he had his lips pressed against my flower comb the entire time he came. Like the most erotic part of tonight was not the filthy sex and sticky orgasms, but the fact that I gave myself to him with complete free will.

  Like my real gift to him tonight was not the sex, but me.

  Surely . . . surely that must mean he cares for me like I think I’m beginning to for him? Surely this can’t be it, this can’t be our goodbye sex, not when he’d kiss a piece of my jewelry simply for being the thing that brought me to him?

  My heart rises into my throat like a balloon, and I turn when Grim carefully slides free of my body and bundles up the condom with some nearby tissues. When I finally face him, I can see the indentation of royal diamonds on his lips.

  “Grim,” I breathe, reaching up to touch his mouth with my fingers, needing so much to touch the proof of his feelings for me.

  But he ducks out of my reach, not meeting my eyes as he goes to throw the condom away.

  My heart sinks back down into my chest.

  Maybe lower.

  Maybe it sinks right into the floor.

  “Grim,” I try again, but my voice breaks.

  “I should go.” He still won’t meet my eyes. This entire night he’s demanded my gaze, commanded my attention, letting me hide nothing from him—but now he’s a cipher, betraying nothing with his voice or his expression or his posture.

  He still won’t look at me as he pulls on his rumpled tuxedo, and I know with a woman’s intuition that it’s because he’s afraid of what his eyes might show me.

  I step closer to him, still naked and flushed from his sex, and I almost demand that he looks at me. As a queen and as his lover, I deserve to see what he’s trying to hide. I deserve to see what he won’t say.

  And I almost do it, I really almost do it. My mouth is already forming the words and my shoulders are back and my chin is lifted—my favorite queenly pose. No matter that I’m unclothed, I was born to command men, and I’ll order Grim to tell me the truth. I’ll decree it. If I’m worth worlds upon worlds, then I deserve to hear it.

  Grim fits his arms into his tuxedo shirt, not bothering to button it, and shrugs on the jacket.

  “After I leave,” he says, his voice emotionless, “I want you to call Vashti up here so she can spend the rest of the night with you. I don’t want you sleeping alone until you have properly trained guards outside your door.”

  I don’t answer. My pride and my hurt won’t let me—and neither will they let me march up to Grim and adjure the truth out of him. I fold my arms over my chest—not to cover myself, but out o
f defiance—as he goes on.

  “And I’ll send over that proposal soon. I know I can’t ask you not to travel and not be anywhere near that weasel until you have better security, but Lani—” He clears his throat and looks over at the door. “Your Majesty, please. Please consider it. If anything happened to you, I—” He clears his throat again, but this time he can’t seem to make himself continue. In uncomfortable silence, he shoves his feet into his shoes and makes his way over to the door.

  I don’t follow.

  He pauses, then, with his hand on the doorknob, and he meets my eyes for the first time since he pulled free of my body. His eyes are stormy and angry and defeated all at once. But his voice is pure regret when he says, “Worlds, Lani. Upon worlds.”

  And then he turns the knob and leaves my life forever.

  Chapter 8

  Grim

  I feel like shit.

  And what’s worse, I think I might deserve it.

  “So the Des Moines hotel block is bought out. There’s not a structure with sniper sightlines on the other side of the street, but even so, I’m still not sure we have sufficient local police presence,” Rick, Maxim’s personal security guard, says.

  I try to force my attention back onto the Iowa strategy meeting and away from the look on Noelani’s face as she came apart in my arms. The way she looked when I barked and practically stammered nonsense as I fled her room like a teenage boy terrified of his own feelings.

  Silent. Regal. Disappointed. That’s how she looked.

  “They’re always stretched thin at the run-up to primary season,” Bill, recently assigned to Lennix’s personal detail, says impatiently. “I think we focus on having our own people in place, and let the local uniforms focus on what they like. Riding their pretty motorcycles for police escorts and shit like that.”

  Rick shakes his head, a frown puckering the old scar that bisects his forehead. “We need presence outside of the hotel. You’ve seen the size of the crowds Maxim’s drawing now. He’s ahead in every poll, and the whole country is watching to see if an Independent can win Iowa. We’ll need the blues for traffic and crowd control.”