I expected Gage to take me right there, but instead, he pulled me to my feet in a masterful, rough manner I loved and guided me to a barstool. He really turned me on when he took charge like that. He bent me over the barstool.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, and I obeyed, not because I was submissive but because I was okay with it right now. Another time, I might be insisting he do as I ordered.
I heard the tearing of foil and imagined he was rolling a condom over his erection. In a few seconds, he was behind me. He put his hands on my waist; and with one powerful thrust, his dick was fully inside me. I gasped in surprise at the intensely erotic intrusion.
He hesitated. “Did I hurt you?” I heard his concern, while lust peppered his voice with a deep huskiness.
“I’m fine,” I hissed. “But I won’t be if you don’t start doing your job.”
“My job?” His hands tightened on my waist. “And what job would that be?”
“Fucking me into oblivion.”
“Ah, that job.” He chuckled. How the man could chuckle while buried deep inside me with his dick throbbing, I’d never know. Gage was Superman, and I would gladly be his Princess Lois.
“Gage, puhleease.” I wasn’t beyond begging. In fact, I wasn’t beyond worshipping the ground he walked on. We weren’t ending this until we both chose to end it. That ending could happen in a month, or we might be able to carry off this romance for a year. Either way, I would cherish each day with him, well knowing it could end tomorrow but hoping it didn’t.
Gage’s hands tightened around my waist. He angled his hips to bury himself deeper and I pushed back against him. Gage slid out and back in, his tempo increasing with each thrust until he was receding, then powering back inside. He slid his hands around my body to tweak my nipples. He pinched and pulled on them. The pain-pleasure combined with his near-frantic rhythm catapulted me over the edge of oblivion to be shot into a black hole until I floated weightlessly through a star-filled sky. I was vaguely aware of Gage’s own orgasm.
He wrapped his arms tightly around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. His fingers still toyed with my nipples.
He’d taken me to nirvana one more time, and I never wanted to leave there.
~~Gage~~
I was basking in the afterglow of epic sex in the Green Room when Alisa stirred underneath me, reminding me that I was considerably heavier than she was. I straightened and pulled her with me, turning her in my arms. I held her close to my naked body and tenderly brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. I was already thinking about round two, perhaps on the fluffy white rug in front of the huge fireplace or on the massive old desk next to the windows.
“Gage, we should get dressed before someone tries to get in here with a key.”
I checked my watch. “It’s past one a.m.”
“You never know.” She worried her lower lip into her mouth, and I couldn’t deny her anything.
“Okay,” I sighed. Releasing her, I wrapped the condom in some tissue, tossed it in a garbage can, and began gathering my clothes. Alisa pulled on her dress and underwear, after which she plopped on the couch.
I dressed and shot her a questioning look.
“Unlock the door and come back here. I want to look respectable if anyone comes looking, but that doesn’t mean we have to leave yet.”
“Or you could go to my bedroom with me,” I said hopefully.”
“The staff will talk.”
“The staff knows more than any of us. We aren’t fooling them.”
“I know, but we don’t have to flaunt it,” she said.
I nodded, not interested in arguing with her, but interested in prolonging my time with her even if it meant we were done with the dirty stuff for the night. We made very pleasant small talk in between some heavy making out. I wanted her again, but she was in an odd mood, so I played along.
Alisa turned slightly on the cushion, took both my hands in hers. She met my gaze with an earnest one of her own. I sobered, realizing she was bringing up something serious and important to her.
“Gage, where are your parents?”
She caught me off guard with that question. It was completely unexpected. “At home. On the farm.”
“The farm? I know you mentioned that before. Invite them to the palace. It’s time I met some of your family. You’ve met all of mine.”
“They aren’t into pomp and circumstance.” The last thing I was going to do was drag my mom and dad into all this when it was probably ending eventually. I shielded them from this type of shit. Besides, I was a little put off that she didn’t ask for details about the farm. She was making assumptions again about me, and I didn’t like it. This wasn’t any farm run by a conglomerate. Ours was an old-fashioned family farm. I was proud of it, and I wouldn’t have anyone looking down their noses at the farm or my parents.
“You could still ask them. I want to meet them. They must be fabulous people to have raised a son as kind and sweet as you are.”
I choked and blinked several times. “Me? Sweet?”
“You are, even though you try to hide it.”
I snorted. Her statement was outrageous. I was a badass football player known for taking chances and having a lot of guts and grit. At least, I had been.
Chapter 23—Ted Tells All
~~Alisa~~
Way too early Sunday morning, Ted texted me. He was in the palace and urgently requested my presence.
I took a quick shower and threw on some clothes, getting ready in record time for me. I found waiting Ted in the Green Room, of all things, and found it hard to think of anything but what happened there last night.
“Alisa, remember when you asked me to look into Gage for you?” His refusal to look me in the eyes alarmed me.
“Uh, yeah. I do. What is it?”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”
“It’s understandable. You’ve had a lot on your plate. How is married life?” I was stalling in the worst way, changing the subject, and hoping we could forget I’d ever asked him to research Gage.
Ted’s eyes got this faraway look, as if he were no longer in this room with me but elsewhere, and I knew where that was. “I am in heaven.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“And I’m happy for you.” He sobered and refocused his gaze on mine. “There’s a problem with Gage.”
My heart dropped to my toes, and my stomach lurched. This could not be happening.
“What kind of problem?”
“He’s a commoner.”
“I know. What are you getting at?” I wanted to put my hands over my ears and not hear whatever he was going to say, yet like a car wreck, I couldn’t look away.
“He’s not from a wealthy, old-money family, or even an old-money family. I see no proof there is a single member of the royal family in his ancestry. His parents are poor farmers from Virginia. He did go to prep school for one year in California. He has two brothers and two sisters. None of them graduated from college. In fact, he’s the only member of his family who’s gone to college, and he didn’t graduate.”
I put my hands to my mouth and gasped for breath. The truth sat on my chest and squeezed every last bit of oxygen from my lungs. I tried to reconcile this Gage with the one I thought I knew. I’d made so many assumptions about him, his family money, and how he’d grown up in a world similar to mine. His world couldn’t be any further apart from mine. It shouldn’t matter. None of it should matter. It wasn’t like he lied. He’d just withheld information. Wasn’t that just as bad?
I was going to lose my breakfast. I dabbed my napkin in my water and ran it over my brow. My head pounded as I attempted to come to terms with this information.
“Lis.” Ted put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head but wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I fear he’s using you. His goal is to play in the NFL and make a fortune and get his family out of poverty. His future as a football player i
s pretty dim. What if he’s using you to achieve the same thing?”
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
No. No. No.
Not my Gage. Not the guy who’d made love to me last night so tenderly and with such raw emotion. Only Gage had always been a good actor and charmer. Did I really know him at all?
And my family? They’d warmed to him. Now what would happen? In a perfect world, none of this would matter, but this wasn’t a perfect world. His background would come out. Someone else would do the research Ted had done. They would accuse him of what Ted had. He was a proud man, and I didn’t know how he’d take such allegations.
“Ted, please go now. I need to be alone.”
Ted hesitated, his eyes full of pity for me. Pity? I didn’t want to be pitied.
“I’m fine. Really.” I put some steel in my voice, and I must have been convincing enough, as he nodded and left the room. As soon as he was gone, I locked the door and cried until I had no tears left.
Gage couldn’t be a guy looking for a payday, even though, as a princess, I was one. He couldn’t be. I was a good judge of character, wasn’t I?
Why hadn’t I insisted he open up to me? Had I been worried I might be shallow enough to feel differently about him? Did I? Was Gage’s humble background a game changer?
I rang for Giles. He came quickly, as if he’d been hovering outside the door. The concern etched on his face indicated he had. Ted may have alerted him, or Giles had merely eavesdropped. The guy was everywhere.
“Giles, please have Gage join me here as soon as possible.”
He bowed slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
~~Gage~~
When I was told Alisa had summoned me to the Green Room, I scrambled to get there. I was ready for an encore of last night, and so was she.
The second I opened the door and saw her sitting primly on the edge of a chair with her hands folded in her lap, I knew something was wrong—very wrong—and that something had to do with me. She lifted her stricken face and stared at me as if she’d never seen me before. My heart slammed against my chest, warning me of impending disaster.
I racked my brain for one thing I’d done last night or this morning. Perhaps I’d violated some royal etiquette or said something that had set her off. Whatever it was, I’d fix it.
Alisa was my world, and I wouldn’t lose her over some misunderstanding. Yet the grimness of her expression belied more than a simple misunderstanding.
Something had happened in the few hours since I’d last seen her and now.
“What is it, Lis? What’s wrong?” I crossed the room and sat across from her, reaching for her hand. She jerked her hand away and shook her head. Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
My knees shook and threatened to give out on me. Before they did, I sat down hard in the chair across from her. I gripped the arms tightly and waited for her next words to wreck my world, because I knew deep down they would do just that.
“I know who you are, Gage.”
“Who I am?” I was playing stupid, not showing my hand until I had a hint what cards she was holding.
“Your family. Your real family. Remember them? The farmers in Virginia? You aren’t related to anyone of any significance.” The second she’d said those words, I could tell she wanted to take them back. I’d never considered her a snob, yet she’d just proven she was, and I pounced on her words.
“Significance? What the fuck?” I glared at her. “How the fuck dare you talk about my family like that. They’re the ones who work their asses off from dawn to dusk to put food on your fucking table while barely making enough to keep the farm going.”
“I didn’t mean it quite that way.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. She was squeezing them so tight I waited for them to turn blue. Finally, she lifted her head, and the defiance and fire had returned. “Why didn’t you open up to me?”
“Why didn’t you ask me? You’re just like the rest of them. You made assumptions I was like you and your friends. But I’m not. I’m poor, Alisa. Fucking dirt-poor. If football doesn’t pan out, I have nothing to fall back on.”
“Is that why you wanted to continue our engagement? For insurance if you didn’t earn a spot on the team?” She spoke so quietly I had to lean forward to hear her.
“Is that really what you think?” My voice was rising, and I made a conscious effort to tamp it down before the ever-present servants came running. “I’ll be the first to admit, I was getting a kick out of royal life, out of being somebody beyond a football player, but my wanting you had nothing to do with your crown.”
“I thought we could tell each other everything.”
“Seriously? I thought if you cared enough, you’d ask me.” My laugh was bitter. “Not to mention you kept a pretty big secret from me.”
“What?” She hadn’t seen that one coming from the look on her face, but she should’ve.
“You didn’t tell me you were a princess until the last minute, not even after I bared my soul and told you I loved you.”
“That’s not the same,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Yeah, what would you know? You’ve been a spoiled rich girl all your life, never had to worry about anything. Never had to see your mom and dad with lines of fatigue on their faces and worry they’re working themselves into an early grave.”
She hugged herself, and her face was rigidly stubborn. “I don’t understand why you didn’t trust me enough to open up.”
“And you didn’t care enough to ask.” We were doing this tit-for-tat thing, and neither of us was going to be the winner of this pissing match. “I don’t expect you to understand, but my parents are the best people you could ever hope to have, and I was incredibly lucky. When I went to California, I had a cheerleader girlfriend a lot like you, pretty, popular, and fucking hot. I told her about my mom and dad, expecting her to admire them as much as I did. She didn’t. Instead she dumped me. Then she proceeded to band the rich kids together, and they humiliated and attacked my parents at the one game they came to watch. They didn’t deserve such treatment, and I swore I’d never again allow anyone to treat them in such a manner. I closed down, and I kept my family separate from my so-called friends. I was in college to play football and only football mattered. What others thought of me was irrelevant.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“Really? The girl who can’t wear the same formal gown twice? Who has to shop at all the finest stores? Who has more handbags than our farm had cows?”
“You really think I would care?” She was getting pissed too. This was not going to end well. Neither of us was backing down.
“Maybe I do. My parents sacrificed everything they could for me and my career. My dream has been to make it in the NFL and give back a little of what they gave me. If I could make their lives a little easier to live and ease their burdens, I would do anything to make that happen.”
“Including marrying a princess?”
I went cold inside. “Is that what you think this is about?”
“Let’s face it. Your career in the NFL is hanging on by a thread. You’d secure your family’s future and stand to share a large fortune with me if we married.”
Anger rolled through me, ugly and unrelenting, while pride erected prison walls around my heart and locked it up tight.
“If that’s how you feel, I’m gone. We have nothing more to say to each other.”
I was done.
~~Alisa~~
That wasn’t how I felt, but frustration over how closemouthed Gage had been drove me to say things I wasn’t sure I meant. I lashed out at him in a pathetic attempt to hurt him as much as he hurt me.
He walked stiffly to the door. I wanted to run after him and throw my arms around him. Tell him we’d work this out somehow, someway, but I didn’t.
He placed his hand on the ancient brass doorknob and turned to regard me. His face was so hard I barely recognized him as the man who made love so passi
onately to me.
“Goodbye, Alisa.” He met my gaze and held it. As much as I wanted to look away, I could not. Instead, I hardened my own heart and stared blandly back at him, as if he wasn’t my world and his leaving wouldn’t be a blip on my radar.
I was a better actor than I’d imagined, because he nodded curtly and strode out the door. I waited several heartbeats for him to change his mind and come back.
He didn’t.
My heart imploded, destroyed from the inside out, and the tears fell like a Seattle rainstorm.
I was alone and bereft in the world, and I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing.
Was I a snob? Would I have given Gage a chance in my world if I’d realized he wasn’t from my world? Looking back, I couldn’t recall dating anyone who didn’t throw around his parents’ big bankroll or, at the least, allude to it.
The revelation shocked me to my core, but I was right to let him walk out of here. I would never trust the man. Never.
We’d been playing a game too long, and now we both had to grow up and live our lives—separately.
The sex might’ve been epic, but what else did we have?
My mind conjured up all kinds of memories of the laughs we’d had, the games we’d watched and evaluated together, the times we’d watched the stars with my head on his shoulder.
It hadn’t been just about the sex.
If it had, this would be easier. I wouldn’t feel like I’d swallowed a torch and my insides were burning with a pain as intense as when my stepfather had suddenly died.
I was strong. I was a survivor. I would get through this and be better for it.
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