Christmas In The City

by Shen, L. J.

  Rick looks to me for back up because we always see eye to eye on strategy, but I’ve barely processed what he said. I stare at him blankly and manage a nod, drawing a questioning frown from him.

  Dammit.

  I never lose focus. It’s not in my nature and goes against all my training, but the memory of Lani is so vivid that I practically feel her luscious ass pressing into my lap. My thoughts keep drifting back to the presidential suite and away from this meeting.

  Drifting back to last night.

  You don’t have to explain, she’d said, even as her shoulders curved in on themselves, as if to protect her heart from yet another man using her up and shoving her aside.

  But I did have to explain, I still do, because I did a shit job of it last night. She deserves everything, every single thing her proud little heart could ever want—and she also deserves a man who can give it to her unreservedly. She deserves a man who can challenge her and worship her and lavish her sweet, curvy body with orgasms every chance he gets.

  She deserves something like what Maxim and Lennix have: a love so powerful and raw that nothing and no one can take it away from her.

  Except . . .

  Except even the idea of Lani—my Lani—being courted and adored by another man is enough to clench my fists under the table. Only I made her brave enough to move her flower for me, and only I helped her feel safe enough to explain the danger she feels daily in her own palace. Only I wrung orgasm after orgasm out of her perfect body, and only I fit inside her so big and so tight that every second we were joined felt like ecstasy. She’s meant to be mine, she’s made to be mine, and god fucking dammit, I want her to be mine. I want her thighs over my shoulders as I eat her; I want her kneeling between my feet with those pretty lips parted. I want to be inside her snug little cunt, and I want those berry-brown nipples in my mouth.

  But it’s more than that.

  I want her curled up in my lap when she’s tired. I want to stroke her hair and kiss away her tears when she’s sad. Her blazing pride, hard-won honesty, that incredible, indelible courage—the courage to ask for what she wants, to say what she needs—I want them all.

  The same courage, I realize with a small measure of shame, I couldn’t muster last night. I didn’t want to leave her and yet it was all too much too fast: her bravery and her joy and her guarded heart unfurling like a rare flower, just for me.

  It’s not love, at least, I don’t think it’s love yet. Having never been in love, how would I know?

  But it’s something. It’s something clamoring for me to find her, to throw her over my shoulder and carry her off to some place safe. It’s something saying: yours to adore, yours to protect.

  And she does need protection above all else. My fists squeeze again as I think of that asshole-weasel, Kimo, and his repeated assaults on Noelani’s safety. I know men like him, men who get off on intimidating the people around them, and they don’t respond to anything other than intimidation in turn. A bigger bully. They only respond to strength, to power. To another predator snarling back.

  Would it solve your problems, little queen? Having a ring on your finger again?

  If I chose the right man . . . maybe.

  I felt it last night, like the flushing burn of sodium thiopental tingling in my veins, like simply being in Lani’s presence dosed my blood with truth serum. When she said those words to me, all I could think was one undeniable fact.

  I am the right man.

  Not I want to be the right man, and not I could be the right man.

  I am the right man. After only a night with her, I know this. I would keep her safe from Kimo and make sure she and her son were fully protected. I would honor her freedom. I have no political ambitions, no desire for her crown or her son’s. Everything I did would be solely for Noelani and Ka’eo, solely to keep them safe and happy. And if the natural benefit of being Noelani’s husband was having her in my bed to tease and fuck for hours on end, then all the better.

  I think of us last night against the window, her hair comb sparkling in the dark, her pussy so sweet and greedy for my cock. When our gazes clung in the glass reflection, there was nothing between us. Not just the nakedness of our bodies. There were no lies, no games between us, only the stark, honest need we both felt. A connection that is so rare it might very well be once in a lifetime, and a connection I sealed when I came with my arms around her and my mouth against her flower hair comb. I can still feel the indentations her diamond tiare flower left against my lips last night.

  “Grim?” Rick asks. My head snaps up. He glances from my mouth to my eyes with a puzzled expression.

  I’m caressing my lips. Usually a man of economical movement, spare even, I’m caressing my damn lips. A tell. A clue to inner turmoil and a lapse in discipline.

  Shit.

  I drop my fingers from my mouth where her flower marked me. Where Noelani marked me.

  The truth burns everywhere inside me now—not just in my veins but all over my entire body.

  I am the right man for her, and there’s only one thing to do about it.

  “How long do you think it will take me to get to CadeCo?” I ask, standing up and glancing at the steady fall of thick snowflakes. The team members around the table look up at me, stunned. I’ve never left a planning meeting early, not once, and here I am leaving in the middle of one hammering out crucial campaign security for my best friend.

  “Uh . . . maybe half an hour,” Rick says, surveying the wintry conditions.

  I check my watch. Noelani had a meeting with Maxim at CadeCo an hour ago. She might still be there. I might still have a chance to catch her before she boards the plane back to Manaroa. I don’t even know what I’ll ask or offer, but she needs to know she can stop looking before she even starts because I’m the right man. We’ll figure out what that means.

  “Let’s pick this up later,” I tell the team, already grabbing my coat and striding from the strategy room to the sound of their surprised murmurs.

  I’m fitting together a plan as I go to Grimstone’s parking garage and hop in one of our black SUVs. It’s cold as shit, but I don’t waste time warming up the car. I have to get to Noelani—and anyway, after you’ve wintered over in Antarctica, it’s hard to complain about the mostly mild Beltway winters. Even with the snow fluffed over everything like so much cake frosting, the temperature is mild enough that I don’t even bother to pull on my gloves. I let the cold keep my thoughts sharp as I pull out into the streets and head for CadeCo.

  I need to approach this exactly right—I need Noelani to see why this is the best possible way forward for her. I need her to see that I’m the right man for her, even though I left her cold and unhappy last night. I’ll convince her that it won’t ever happen again.

  I’m a man of plans, an expert in strategy, famed for my cool head and quick thinking, but when I finally carve my way through the snowbound streets to the glassy offices of CadeCo, I’m a tangle of messy, jangled nerves.

  I’ve gone to the ends of the earth. I’ve faced down bullets and fire. I’ve held literal lives in my hands, and yet nothing compares to the raw terror of facing Noelani and risking her saying no.

  After how I left last night, no is the answer I deserve . . . but won’t accept.

  I don’t even bother trying to park the SUV; I pull up to the snowbank marking the curb and I slam the car into park. The possibility that I might be too late crawls up my throat, and my heart thuds against my ribcage as I get out of the SUV and mount the salted stairs up to the CadeCo doors.

  Which is when Noelani steps out.

  In a long wool coat and a scarf wound elegantly around her throat, she’s the picture of grace and radiance. She doesn’t wear a hat, and the light breeze toys with those long silky strands, sending them dancing around her shoulders and arms as she turns to say something to Vashti.

  “Hurry up,” snaps an unpleasant voice in Manaroan.

  Kimo emerges from behind the two women, his face flushed, featu
res tight with irritation. He grabs Noelani’s wrist and jerks her down the first two steps. She stumbles and almost falls.

  All my carefully laid plans dissipate like a snowflake tossed into a broiler. My respectful logic, my careful diplomacy—all of it vanishes when that weasel Kimo manhandles Noelani like she’s his possession, and a worthless possession at that. In an instant, I’m up the steps, pulling his hand from her arm. Years of practice make it easy to find the right pressure points in his arm, even through his coat, and he yelps when I press on the nerve bundles with just enough pressure to make him stagger back.

  “You. Don’t. Touch. The. Queen.”

  My words have the report of bullets. Swift and lethal and aimed at his vital organs. His black, beady eyes narrow, outrage sketched on his face.

  “Guards,” he commands, eyes locked with mine. “Take this man into custody.”

  One of them reaches for me, and I stare him down, daring him to touch me.

  “If you ever want to use that hand again,” I warn the guard, “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  Another steps forward, ratcheting up the tension encircling the group, and I instinctively reach for the piece at my back.

  “Stop,” Noelani says. She steps close, her scent surrounding me, and lays a staying hand on mine where it rests on the weapon. “Grim, don’t.”

  She looks up at me, pleading and caution in her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I ask softly, reaching for the arm Kimo wrenched. I push back the buttery leather of her glove to uncover marks his fingers left on her wrist. I glare at him, lips bared and teeth gritted. “You son of a bitch,” I snarl in Manaroan. “You leave marks on her, but I’m the threat?”

  His eyes widen at my harsh accusation in his native tongue. “She’s my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife. I have her best interests at heart.”

  I step close enough to growl in his ear for him alone to hear me. “She’s not your anything. Touch her again, they’ll be finding parts of you all along the Manaroan coast.”

  He stiffens and, through what I recognize as fear, glares at me. “We need to leave, Your Majesty. I have guards with Ka’eo at home, but you wouldn’t want to delay getting back for your son’s first Christmas without his father.”

  His manipulative words, carrying a transparent threat, have an immediate effect on Noelani. Her mouth goes tight and her shoulders straighten, but her hands tremble. Seeing that subtle vulnerability when she’s trying to project strength undoes me. I grab her small hands between mine and position myself so my height and the width of my shoulders blocks Kimo from her line of sight, and her from his.

  “Lani.” I lower my voice so only she can hear.

  Her gaze snaps up to mine at the familiarity. Not in royal outrage, but in recognition, reminiscence. The name she asked me to use, the one no one else does, takes us back to that suite; to our bed and a bottle of rum, to the confessions we shared that bound us together quickly, tightly, and in ways I haven’t with any other woman before.

  “Last night,” I continue. “You said the right man and a ring might make things better.”

  She nods hesitantly but still doesn’t speak.

  “You said maybe your new husband would protect you.” I gently turn her arm over, glaring at the fingerprints. “That the right man could keep things like this from happening.”

  Her eyes drift past my shoulder.

  “Don’t look at him,” I order quietly. “Fuck him. Look at me.”

  She snaps her dark eyes back to me and draws a deep breath. “What are you saying, Grim?”

  “I’ll be that man.” I cup her face, heedless of the guards’ watchful presence, of Kimo bristling behind us, of Vashti standing to the side.

  Confusion and hope mingle on her pretty face, and her brows pull together. “But you said your life is here. You said—”

  “It is, but we can work out the details. I’ll travel when needed, and technology makes just about anything possible.”

  “After one night?” she whispers faintly. “Why?”

  “We rolled years into one night, Lani. Don’t ask me to label this because you’ll be disappointed. I don’t do labels, and I have no category for what I felt last night.” I press her hand to my chest. “For what I still feel, but I think we’d be good together and I know I can keep you safe. Keep your son safe.”

  At the mention of her son, she bites her lip and looks down at the snow beneath our feet. “But what exactly are you asking me, Grim?”

  I reach into the collar of my sweater and pull out the chain I’ve worn around my neck since I buried my mother, the last funeral I ever attended. My parents’ wedding rings glint in the winter sunlight, twined in memoriam as they were in life. My father’s plain gold band and the tiny circle of gold with its chip diamond look so modest next to this small woman’s opulent beauty. She is the crown jewel, and even I see how inadequate this ring is, though it means the world to me.

  “Oh, God,” Lani gasps, her hand pressed to her throat. “Grim, I couldn’t. It’s too precious. No.”

  It’s too precious.

  The flower in her hair last night could pay mortgages, but she looks at my mother’s department store engagement ring like she might not be worthy of it.

  And I know.

  I won’t call this love after a night, but I’m the right man for her, and she is the right woman for me.

  “Oh, no,” Kimo says, drawing up next to us. “You can put that little bauble away. Noelani isn’t just a woman, she is a tradition. Her family is promised into royal matrimony. She is groomed for it. Do you not realize according to Manaroan law, you aren’t free to marry just anyone, Noelani?”

  “He’s right.” The assertion comes from an older gentleman standing on the steps just above us. I remember him from last night’s event.

  “What?” Noelani asks, tears filling her eyes. “But Hehu, I thought—”

  “You thought what?” Kimo sneers. “That you could marry some blockhead security guard commoner?”

  His eyes crawl along her body, lust and anticipation tainting his stare. “The state paid for your education, your grooming, your life, Noelani. The people of Manaroa own you. You were purchased with their hard-earned tax dollars.”

  “Once,” Hehu says with quiet certainty.

  “Excuse me?” Kimo snaps. “What do you mean?”

  “Our laws do indicate that with all we’ve invested into making you a queen, Lani,” Hehu says softly, “you must marry a king.”

  Noelani’s eyes widen, and sparks set the dark eyes on fire. “But—”

  “The laws say you must marry the king,” Hehu says again, shrugging carelessly. “And you did.”

  He turns to Kimo and smiles. “She fulfilled the law to the letter. Nowhere does it say if that king dies she must marry another one. She’s free to do what she likes.”

  “That’s—that’s ridiculous,” Kimo snarls. “She doesn’t get to choose.”

  “Oh, yes she does,” I say, slipping the necklace over my head. I loosen the clasp and ease my mother’s ring down the chain and into the palm of my hand.

  “Noelani,” I say, reaching for her small hand and poising the ring at her finger. “Marry me.”

  Kimo chokes, steps forward, and reaches for Lani’s wrist again. Before I can snap him in two, she does.

  “Guards,” she says, not raising, but firming her voice. It’s an order she doesn’t even have to complete. Two of the men standing by seize Kimo by the arms and pull him away.

  “What do you say?” I ask, ignoring Kimo’s protests and misplaced indignation.

  A slow smile takes over her face by inches. A tender heat enters her eyes, and I imagine she’s remembering our night together. Not just the fucking, but the intimacy. The sincerity of our connection. It’s more than many couples start with. I think it’s more than enough.

  She slides her finger forward so the modest gold band slides into place, and she smiles.

  It’s a smile promising me
worlds upon worlds.

  She takes a deep breath, and says, very simply, “I say yes, Grim. Yes.”

  * * *

  Want to know what happens next?

  Sierra and Kennedy will release an expanded novella following the Killer & his Queen to Manaroa in 2020!

  Subscribe here to be notified of details for the release:

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  See where it all began …

  See where Grim’s dangerous story begins and how Maxim and Lennix fell in tumultuous, fateful love in The Kingmaker the first book in the lush and spellbinding All the King’s Men duet!

  RITA® Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan delivers the epic first installment of the All the King's Men Duet

  Power. Passion. Betrayal.

  Raised to rule, bred to lead and weaned on a diet of ruthless ambition. In a world of haves and have nots, my family has it all, and I want nothing to do with it. My path takes me far from home and paints me as the black sheep. At odds with my father, I'm determined to build my own empire. I have rules, but Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of them. From the moment we meet, something sparks between us. But my family stole from hers and my father is the man she hates most. I lied to have her, and will do anything to keep her. Though she tries to hate me, too, the inexorable pull between us will not be denied.

  And neither will I.

  Find The Kingmaker here!

  * * *

  Want more sexy Washington D.C. stories? Love powerful heroes and the fiercely intelligent women who claim their hearts? Check out American Queen, the first book in the provocative New Camelot series!

  He wants me to be his queen...

  Warned as a girl to keep her kisses to herself, Greer Galloway wants nothing to do with kisses—or love. Twice she's ignored the childhood warning and kissed a man, and both times ended in gutting, miserable heartbreak. Now she's sworn off all romance forever, determined to teach her classes and do her research and live out the rest of her days alone.