No Prince Charming

by Angel Payne

  “Killian. You’re beautiful.”

  He buried his face in my neck while realigning his sex with mine. “And you’re my obsession. Dear God, Claire…”

  The curtains billowed as he stroked his erection through my soaked folds, all the while kissing a trail from my ear to my gown’s neckline, his growl holding thick, sinful promise. He teased my clit until I moaned like a wanton fool.

  “What—what if someone comes out here?” The line wouldn’t be earning me an acting award. Desire spiked my words more than fear, adding to my shivery excitement. I’d never done anything like this before in my life. Another first on my list, courtesy of Killian Stone.

  “What if they do?” His drawl was filled with molten surety. As always, he’d somehow peered in my mind and spooled straight to the source of my lust. “Maybe they’d see our shadows through the curtains…maybe they wouldn’t.”

  “So maybe we should hurry.” I ran my fingers through his hair, scraping my nails on his scalp. He hummed with pleasure like he usually did, and my heart glowed. I was starting to memorize his hot buttons, too.

  “I think you’ll say anything right now just to have my dick inside you, baby.” While we shared a chuckle, his eyes conveyed how much of the truth it really was.

  “Would you rather I beg, Mr. Stone?”

  “I would rather you never call me ‘Mr. Stone’ again. Ever.”

  On the last word, he rocked his hips and entered me, eliciting my immediate cry of ecstasy. When I was able to open my eyes again, I found him staring down at me, inches from my face. His warm breath feathered across my skin. His stunning black eyes danced with desire.

  “You take my breath away.” He withdrew a fraction and pushed in fully, circling his hips while I clung to his ass, digging my nails into his burnished flesh. “You took it away the day we met.”

  Thank God I was on my back. The man, with his eyes and his body and his heated confessions, would have knocked me there, anyway. As my soul flooded with emotion, I wrapped my arms around his neck, interlocking my fingers so I could pull myself up to kiss him. I licked his lips, moaning from the spicy taste that was uniquely him, now mixed with the salt of his sweat from the sexual pace he was setting in his wool tuxedo.

  Until voices drifted across the terrace.

  So much for pace.

  We both froze. My eyes shot to his, resulting in the instant urge to smack him. Mirth played in his stare and a smirk tapped at his lips, deliberate pokes at my abject horror. Before I could think again, he leaned down and whispered in my ear as he started pumping at my pussy again.

  “All you have to do is stay quiet, fairy. Think you can do that for me?” With deliberate timing, he changed up his pace to include those enticing hip twists again.

  “Bastard,” I hissed—then sank my teeth into his shoulder to muffle my heated moan.

  The man didn’t alter his pace. “Your cunt feels so good,” he growled into my ear. “I can feel every inch of you, clamping down on me.”

  “Ahhhh.” I let it out on a breath. The wind picked up again. The drapes smacked the support poles, threatening to give us up.

  “You’re getting wetter, Claire. Hotter. You like this, don’t you? The danger. The idea of getting caught…” I felt his mischievous grin against my neck. He’d discovered something new about me and started using it to his full advantage. “What if you came while they were out here? Could you keep quiet as you shattered for me? Could you be still while I came with you, my cock spilling hot cum inside you? Or would you scream from the rapture, so everyone in the hotel knew what we were doing in our secret spot? Would you love it if everyone knew I was out here, fucking you into ecstasy, watching every moment of it on your face?”

  “Killian,” I rasped. “Oh, hell—”

  He drowned my lips in a kiss that spiraled me higher, sucking on my tongue to the point of pain, reaching inside my bodice to pinch a pouting nipple. As I began to moan, the voices drifted away. A woman whined that it was too cold and she wanted to go back to the party. A man answered, complaining she had no sense of adventure anymore.

  Killian finally released my lips but played along my jaw with hot kisses. “Oh fairy, that was close. Maybe next time we won’t get so lucky. But maybe next time you’ll be coming for me.”

  “Okay,” I blurted. When he only chuckled, I really did start begging. “Killian, please.”

  “Please what? Tell me, baby. Let me hear it.”

  “It—it feels so good. You feel so good, fucking me. Faster…please. Harder…please. Do it until you come, Killian. Get lost with me…” I gripped his ass again and pulled him into me. His deep groan spurred me to hold tighter, wrapping my legs around his waist. My gown pooled down around me on the sofa, making me appear to be drowning in an ice blue lake. The comparison was so damn accurate. I was submerged in heat, desire, and need, clinging to the only life raft that made sense. Killian.

  “Hell, yeah.” His face swayed above mine with the force of his thrusts, his features drenched in an expression of reverence, intensity, and joy. “Let it go, baby. All of it. I’ve waited too damn long to watch you come again. Do it for me, Claire.”

  I gasped and grabbed at his hair. “You—you, too.”

  “I’m right here. I’m going under, too. I’m ready. So fucking ready.”

  I was speechless again. The purity of his confession, the honesty of his passion…they turned me inside out. I adored him. I needed him.

  I came for him.

  The explosion slammed like a lightning strike, jolting me with a million sensations from head to toe, covering me in delicious tingles and prickles. Lights of a million colors sparkled behind my closed lids as I heaved in air, desperate to catch what I could. Killian’s groan added more resplendence to the moment, his body seizing as his cock pulsed against my walls, an orgasm that surely tested the limits of the latex around him.

  After a couple of long minutes, he fell on top of me. We traded smiles that resembled kids in a candy store.

  “Holy fuck, woman.”

  “Don’t you blame me!” I couldn’t stifle my giggle.

  “No blame,” he stated. “Only gratitude.” His face turned solemn. “You amaze me.”

  After he tossed the condom in a covered ash tray, we lay in silence for a few minutes, enjoying our afterglow and the play of the wind through the drapes. I started to get chilly since we weren’t humping like bunnies anymore, so I snuggled closer to the furnace of his chest. He circled his arms around me, tucking my whole body close to his. I pulled in a breath. When I let it out, all the lead weights in my body seemed to float out with it.

  “This is nice.” My voice sounded almost like I’d sucked in helium. I almost giggled again until Killian tightened his hold. While he still radiated warmth, it was joined by a sober stillness.

  “What the hell are you doing to me, Claire?”

  “What am I doing to—” I attempted a sarcastic huff while smoothing a hand over his shirt. “Sorry, sir. I’m afraid you have that one backwards, too.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” My tone wasn’t so flippant now.

  “I think we have to talk. To figure this out. And yes, there is a this.”

  He swung a finger back and forth between us in emphasis. I rose a little in order to see his face. As I expected, his focus didn’t waver. As I hadn’t expected, a clear truth nailed me between the proverbial eyes.

  The man had feelings for me, too. This shit had knocked him just as sideways as me—and quite possibly scared him as much, too.

  I’ll never get my fill of you.

  You’re a fever in my blood.

  You’re my obsession.

  Holy shit. I’d written all of it off as pretty, empty words. After all, men said the stupidest lines when their little head ran the show.

  Had his big head been in on his show, too? Had he meant all of that?

  “This is so complicated.”

  He tucked some of my stray hair beh
ind my ear. God only knew what my elegant style looked like now. “Then let’s simplify it.”

  I was almost thankful for the strong gust that whooshed across the terrace at that moment. It was a perfect excuse not to speak—not that I had any words to give him, anyway.

  Then Michael Jackson saved my ass.

  Billie Jean suddenly blasted from my handbag, still sitting where I’d tossed it when we climbed onto the sofa. “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s Chad. I’d better—”

  “Go ahead,” Killian kissed my forehead in encouragement.

  I picked up right before the King of Pop hit his chorus. “Hey,” I said breathlessly. “What’s—”

  “Where are you?” It wasn’t Chad. It was Michael. And he sounded like the horrified guy from those old radio recordings of the Hindenburg disaster.

  “I’m—errr—at the Terrace.”

  “That’s here, right? In this hotel? You’re still at The Peninsula?”

  “What are you doing on Chad’s phone?” I glanced at Killian, who’d straightened in connection to the tension in my voice. “Michael, what the hell is—”

  “Are you still at The Peninsula or not?”

  “I’m here, all right? What’s happening?” I wouldn’t have been shocked to see flames licking up the side of the building any minute.

  What Michael revealed was worse.

  “Trey’s flawless manners?” he shot back. “Turns out they’ve been helped along—by God knows how much tequila.”

  “What?” I realigned my dress. “But how the hell—”

  “Remember the cute little blonde reporter? The freelancer?”

  “How could I forget? She’s been eyeing Trey’s crotch more than his face.”

  “And apparently trading drinks with him while she does. We also found a flask at the edge of the reflecting pool. Chad’s pretty sure he heard Trey sneaking gulps from it in the john earlier.”

  “Wait. The reflecting pool? You mean the big tank thing with the fountains that the decorators brought in?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “Why did Chad find the flask there?” My imagination answered that for me. “No. Ohhhh no.”

  “Oh, yes. The guy’s giving ‘liquid courage’ a whole new meaning.”

  I traded another stressed stare with Killian. No sense in hiding the truth from him. “Dear God.”

  “I’m not sure He’s listening.”

  I tried to jam my hairstyle back into place. “How bad is it?”

  “You’d better just get down here.”

  When I hung up, rolling my eyes in misery, Killian’s expectant stare awaited. “Let me guess. It involves Trey, some booze, and at least one woman.”

  I grimaced. “Michael didn’t mention any women.”

  At that moment, a giddy female squeal resounded from the bottom floor. In its wake were three words, issued in loud enough shouts to echo up the street. “Go, Trey, go!”

  “Mother. Fucker.” With his pants already righted, Killian braced an elbow on his knee in order to pinch the bridge of his nose. “How did this happen? I thought he was being watched like a toddler.”

  “He was. I guess next time a strip search won’t be off the table.”

  “There can’t be a next time,” he growled. “Dammit, I thought we were done with his crap. I thought the Wooten incident was his rock bottom.”

  “I’m not sure he has a rock bottom.” I shoved back into my shoes despite trembling knees. “I’m sorry. This is unbelievable. We worked so hard at putting all of this together.”

  I felt like crying as we rushed toward the elevators, but that was so not happening right now. The car arrived and I stepped toward it, but Killian halted me, taking both my hands.

  I averted my eyes, unwilling to meet his scrutiny. The second the call from Michael concluded, I should have expected this. The promises of “we have to talk” and “simplifying this”? Yeah, they weren’t happening, either. At least I’d had the bliss of the dream for a minute.

  But once again, he shocked the hell out of me. After tenderly kissing my knuckles, he lifted my chin for his reassuring gaze. “We’ll figure this out, baby. All of it. Okay?”

  If I’d found it hard to choke back my tears before, the feat was pure torture now. “Okay,” I murmured, before re-girding my psyche as we rode to the ground floor.

  With one of my hands still locked in his, Killian pushed through the crowd toward the reflecting pool. Our journey wasn’t easy. The mob was thick and rowdy, everyone whispering and laughing. Most had cell phone cameras in their hands, eagerly setting the devices to capture the antics of—

  “Oh God,” I sputtered.

  The actual was worse than the imagined.

  Trey looked like a bigger imbecile than I’d assumed, skipping across the faux pond with a highball glass in one hand and a leash in the other. At the end of that leash was Adara, the Lincoln Zoo’s precious white tiger, one of several creatures on loan for special appearances during the party. I didn’t know a thing about tigers, but the wildcat looked like it debated whether to enjoy the bath or have Trey for a midnight snack.

  I forced myself to look at the bright side. Though we’d heard a girl shrieking from the terrace, at least she wasn’t in there with him.

  My conclusion was Penny Treacle’s ideal cue. At that moment, the girl burst from under the water, lacy thong in hand, shouting “Spring break rooocks! Woo hoo!” She continued following Trey, shrieking in delight as he splashed her, still dragging the damn tiger.

  “Oh, God.” It bore repeating. “Killian, that tiger could turn on them any second!”

  “Good,” he snarled.

  “You have to stop him.” I forced myself to meet the dark fire in his glower, urgently grabbing his shoulder. “Please. I’ll try to disperse the crowd, okay?” I turned, spreading my arms, attempting to redirect the throng. “Show’s over, folks. Time to go home. Thank you for supporting the Zoo; thank you. Please drive safely.”

  I might as well have been herding kittens. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Penny, Trey, and the giant white cat in the fountain.

  Shit.

  Where was the animal’s handler?

  I hurried through the room, finally finding the middle-aged man as he exited the restroom. Without preamble, I grabbed him and pulled him back toward the fountain—

  Where there were now three people in the water.

  Killian had waded in after his brother.

  Everyone watched as the zookeeper grabbed the leash from Trey and guided the tiger away. At the same time, Harry Treacle showed up to collect his inebriated daughter, yanking her out and covering her with his jacket. Mary Treacle was right behind them, screeching at her daughter about the season being ruined, ignoring Penny’s crocodile-sized sobs. Most of the onlookers stowed their phones and started toward the valet stand. The party was pretty much over, and other than some really bad film footage, at least no one was hurt.

  Scratch that.

  As soon as Trey and Killian stumbled out of the pool, Killian seized his brother by the back of his shirt, whirled him around—and drove his fist into the middle of Trey’s face.

  “Killian!” I shrieked.

  Trey stumbled for a second, glaring at Killian and coiling a fist.

  Smack.

  After Killian clocked him this time, Trey crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Killian walked forward to stand over his brother, shaking out his fist.

  “Dammit!” I couldn’t help rushing forward, standing on Trey’s other side. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  Killian grimaced like I was the village idiot. “Are you serious?”

  “Are you?”

  He lowered to the ledge of the fountain, sweeping a hand at Trey. “The fucker just undid everything you worked so hard for!”

  I leaned over him like a mother to an errant child. “And you’re doing everything in your power to make it worse!”

  “Would you look at him for a second? Just one?”<
br />
  “No. I’m too damn busy gawking at you. Your idea of ‘helping’ was to wade in there after him, then go for the roshambo the second you got out? Next time, don’t help, okay?”

  The man sat there in silence, still looking utterly glorious despite his mussed hair and half-drenched tux. He worked his knuckles over both knees, letting my words sink in—or at least that was the impression he led me to. As I watched a couple of banquet servers try to revive Trey, I barely noticed the slow smile spreading across Killian’s face again, even as he stood and walked to me. It was only when he let out chuckle that I turned to him, exercising my turn to unfurl a you’re-the-village-idiot glare.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, his grin turning even more cryptic.

  “Killian.” My frown deepened as he curled both arms around my waist and tugged me close. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Maybe I should be thanking the bastard.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Because now that we’re back at square one, that means you’ll have to stay longer, right?”

  He buried his face in my hair and tickled my neck with his warm lips. I couldn’t resist a wry laugh myself, and was tempted to nuzzle him in return, when we were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. A female someone.

  We turned to endure the impact of Margaux’s accusing stare.

  She slid both hands to her hips, emphasizing the daring cleavage of her blood-red production of a gown. I still couldn’t figure out if her matching, miniature top hat was supposed to look lopsided or had tilted that way by accident. There was no time to ponder the answer. The woman was determined that we wouldn’t ignore her silent demand for an explanation.

  “Shit.” I shoved from Killian, swallowing hard though instantly grateful for the low growl he used for his answering command.

  “Claire? What the hell?”

  “Not now, Stone,” I spat.

  “What. The. Hell?”

  Thank God for Trey.

  I never would’ve admitted to the words crossing my mind, but the guy regained consciousness with flawless timing. As he sputtered and moaned, Margaux was forced to give in to confusion instead of accusation.