by Susan Stoker
Green eyes darken. “It wasn’t . . . she isn’t . . .”
“Don’t insult either of us by pretending that you haven’t gone to see her every night for the last month.”
“John, you’ve no idea—”
“I’m going to return to the box,” I tell him stiffly, still clutching his shirtfront, “and I expect you to wait outside until I’m done. If you enter, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”
“Over my dead fucking body. The box is exposed to the entire theater. Anyone could—”
“You’ll wait until I say otherwise.” Thrusting him away, I smooth a hand down my chest, then draw in a heavy breath that fails to settle my rattled nerves. One glance down the hall confirms that we’re still alone. I don’t believe in miracles or luck, but fucking hell, I do not need this argument being thrown at the press before the sun even rises tomorrow morning.
I step back.
Blunt fingers circle my wrist, stalling me, and then Henry’s gravel-pitched voice hits me like a powerful undercut to the gut: “I took an oath to protect you when you were barely ten. In the seventeen years since, I’ve laid down my life for you more times than I count. And I’ll do so until the day I die.”
Over my shoulder, I meet his bleak gaze—and I know. Fucking hell, I know what he’s planning to say before the words even leave him.
“But I regret you, John,” he rasps, squeezing my wrist so tight that I feel the pain searing his soul in just his grip alone. “I regret every moment that you were mine and every moment that you’ll belong to someone else for the rest of our bloody lives.”
My pulse thunders so hard, so furiously, that I hear ringing in my ears. “Henry, we both know that it’s over. We discussed—”
“I’ll wait outside the box, Your Highness.” He releases me, cool air rushing in to touch skin still branded from his touch, and he offers a bow that’s so wrong in every single way that I want to pummel his face and demand that he stop. “No one will interrupt. As always, you have my word.”
5
Blanche
Velvet cushions my arse as I lean forward in my chair to peer down at the dancers on the stage.
The beauty there resonates deep within my soul—the elegant lines of long, lean limbs and the longing etched in every leap and pirouette. Their synergy tastes of passion and hope, of love and need. It feels like freedom, something so entirely elusive, and I’m not the only attendee enraptured by Frederick Ashton’s enchanting choreography for The Sleeping Beauty.
If I’d lived any other life but my own maybe I would have developed a skill for ballet. Maybe I would have been the one to sew the costumes themselves, each piece of tulle layered upon another with careful precision. Or maybe . . .
I crush the program in a tight fist.
It’s a miracle that I’m even here tonight. It’s been years since the earl let me attend the Royal Opera House, and certainly never alone. But he’d booked the Royal Box as though we had the money to spare, and he’d ushered me into a town car with the sort of giddiness that I haven’t seen from him in, well, ever. I won’t pretend to understand Father’s mind—nothing but madness awaits me there.
Never taking my gaze off the stage, I reach for my flute of champagne from the table nestled beside the armchair. Only—
“It seems that you’re out, my lady.”
My shoulders stiffen at the smooth, taunting voice and I know without turning around who I’ll find standing behind me.
Nostrils flaring, I set the empty flute down with a satisfying clink of glass on polished wood. “I shouldn’t be surprised, you know.”
“That you’ve missed me?”
I hiss through clenched teeth. “I barely know you.”
Movement rustles, the sound of a chair being lowered on my left. A second later, Prince John settles down with a feline grace. His right knee presses into my thigh, he sits so close, and there’s no denying the way he leans forward to suspend a champagne-full flute before me. “I’ve brought a peace offering.”
“I didn’t realize we were at war.”
“What do you call it when a man proposes marriage only to be soundly rejected?”
There’s . . . something in his tone that I can’t put my finger on. Not vulnerability, not even regret. Curiosity needles my spine and I turn, just a little, so that I can stare past the flute to the man himself.
Dim lighting spills across his handsome features, casting his square jawline in complete shadow. But his eyes . . . Damn it all to hell, those blue eyes of his seem to glimmer with an undecipherable emotion. Anticipation, I think. Wait. Did he . . .
Did he come here to spar with me?
“A stroke of bad luck,” I finally manage, my palms turning sweaty around the program. “Better luck next time, Your Highness.”
Instead of taking the hint, he leans back in the velvet armchair. With absolutely no care for my personal space, he stretches out his long legs, one ankle crossing over the other, while bringing his peace offering to his lips for a healthy swallow. In this moment, he looks nothing like the future king and every bit the indolent charmer out to wreak havoc on the hearts of women everywhere.
Mine included.
“Do you know why I chose you as my bride, Lady Blanche?” he asks.
“Are we back to this again?” Throat suddenly dry, I swallow uselessly. “You’ve already mentioned my claws, of which I can promise you—they haven’t been filed down this evening. Beware.”
As if I haven’t even spoken, he spins the flute’s stem between his forefinger and thumb. The sparse light fractures on the liquid, turning the champagne nearly translucent. “I was given a list of acceptable matches, you know.”
“How lovely to be picked out like a broodmare,” I mutter, giving up all pretense of niceties by snatching the flute from his unsuspecting grasp. The champagne is fruity, offering a sweetness that quenches my parched throat. With a sharp grin, I return the glass to him. “A woman knows when to pick her battles.”
“You were at the bottom of the list.”
My lips part. “I was . . . I’m sorry, did you just say that I was—”
“In fact,” he goes on, his gaze hot on mine, “when I flipped the page over, there you were.”
I blink.
And then, for good measure, I blink again.
“You are, for lack of better phrasing, the last woman the king would have me marry.”
“Then why in the world do you want me?”
Setting the champagne aside, he drops his hands onto the armrests of my chair. That single move cages me in, and I jerk my attention north just in time to see the way his stare falls to my lips. The lingering glance lasts longer than it should. Long enough, really, that thoughts spark to life that I’d sooner destroy than ever admit out loud.
Would he taste of champagne? Sharp with just a dash of sweetness to tease the palate? Or would he taste of privilege and wealth and the sort of power that has always made me want to strike back tenfold?
Do not even think of kissing him.
“Your Highness?”
At my roughened voice, he slams his eyes shut. A heavy breath visibly shudders through his broad frame, and I don’t miss the way his teeth snag on his bottom lip for the briefest moment. “I won’t have a wife who’ll break for me, no matter what you seem to think. I watched that imbalance of power play out with my parents, and it did no one any bit of good—least of all my mother.”
“But everyone . . .” I press a palm flat over my thigh to still my jittery leg. Stupid nerves. “Everyone knows that it was a love match between them.”
“You can love a person,” he says, softly, “and it still won’t make them any less wrong for you.”
Slowly, I meet his gaze. “Do you speak from personal experience?”
“And if I say yes?”
“Then I would ask you why you aren’t marrying her.”
A hoarse chuckle tumbles from his lips, and the sound is so honest, so incredibly raw, that a
fissure of heat catches at the base of my spine. “There is love, Lady Blanche, and then there is lust—rarely do the two intermingle.”
I’ve been bold my entire life—secretly, away from the public eye—but never so much as I am right now when I touch my fingers to Prince John’s chin. He’s clean-shaven tonight, smooth to the touch, but no less masculine for the way his gaze bores down on mine. “You told me that I will never love you, so is it lust that you want from me?” I stroke his skin with my thumb. “Or do you plan to only fuck me when you’re wanting an heir before you run back to the one who holds your heart?”
The blue of his eyes sharpens. “Tell me something.”
“Another command,” I breathe, allowing my lips to curve with mock reverence. “Do you ever ask for anything, Your Highness? Or do you just snap your fingers and expect the world to fall at your feet?”
“Shall we try it now and see how you do?”
A growl reverberates in my chest at the challenge in his tone, but I barely have the chance to snap back a retort before he catches my wrist in his grip and yanks me forward, planting his mouth at the curve of my ear. “Tell me,” he rasps, “how does a woman sleep at night knowing that she holds a small fortune in her palm while her father is on the verge of losing it all?”
6
John
The sound of Blanche’s breath hitching is more mesmerizing than every Royal Ballet performance rolled into one.
Fucking hell, I want this woman.
I want her claws scoring my back as I thrust into her and I want those throaty moans of hers echoing in my ears as I drive her to come on my cock. Simply put, I crave—and I’ve never been the man who sits idle on the sidelines while waiting for fate to lead me on a merry chase. I take what I want, and God help us both, but I want Blanche more than I should. I have since we met at Buckingham Palace last week.
Against my throat, she whispers, “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
“I said that I don’t.” She pulls on her captured wrist to no avail. “Now if you would please let me go, it would be much—”
“One-hundred-thousand pounds sitting in a secret bank account.” I turn my head and let my lips brush over her cheek. “You should have seen my face when I realized how you’d swindled the earl.”
She makes a choking sound in the back of her throat. “I didn’t swindle anyone.”
“No?”
“I make investments.”
“With money that you’ve taken from where?”
“What’s it to you?” she demands, lowering her voice to keep from being overheard from any of the patrons in the nearby boxes. “I didn’t steal the money, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Something tells me that you would, actually.”
“Because you know me so well?”
“Because,” she retorts swiftly, “I see right through you. Clearly, you had me investigated like I was . . . like I’m some criminal.”
“No, my lady”—I lower my face so that she has no choice but to meet my gaze—“I investigated you much more thoroughly than I would any criminal.”
Her free palm lands on my thigh and a hiss scratches at my throat, begging for release, when her nails bite down without mercy. She’ll leave marks, this one.
I doubt she’ll warm your bed once she knows the real you.
Something tells me that Henry will always be wrong when it comes to Blanche, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I loved my mother. No, I adored her—the way she made silly faces at me from behind Father’s back, just to see me laugh. The way she pushed my hair back from my face, even after I’d reached my majority, because she couldn’t help treating me like the little boy she once held in her arms. She was a figure idolized around the world, but she always remained a mother to me first and foremost.
Except that she should never have become a queen.
She trembled under the weight of public expectations and she fumbled her way through one social engagement after another, her nerves never abating long enough to realize that if she just breathed, all would be right in the end.
This life became her personal hell.
I won’t have that same misery fall upon my wife.
“Shall I tell you a secret of my own?” At Blanche’s stubborn silence, I cover her hand with mine . . . and I squeeze, urging her to tighten her grip on my thigh. Her soft gasp brings a dark smile to my lips. “Scratch me, and I’ll bleed. Hit me, and I’ll bruise. Bite me, sweetheart, and I promise that I’ll bite back—perhaps, if you’re lucky, I’ll do so while on my knees for you.”
A shaky breath escapes her. “You shouldn’t . . . Oh, God, we shouldn’t—”
“Then let me go.”
Her chin snaps back and her wide, amber-colored eyes fall to her lap where she’s turned our hands over so that it’s her keeping me locked in place. As if she’s uncertain that her hand actually belongs to her, she flexes her fingers—and I don’t disappear.
Neither does she.
Beyond the railing, the entire theater watches the performance down on the stage. If I try hard enough, I can hear the Duke of Bedford in the box to my right—the man never misses a night to be out on the town. If I try even harder, I’m sure that I’ll hear Henry moving around in the hall where I left him waiting.
But I regret you, John.
How he can say that after almost two decades, I don’t know. He may be a spy for the Crown, and he may be my bodyguard, but we’ve been friends for what feels like a hundred lifetimes. Seventeen years of friendship versus six months of shagging. And not even that, as I haven’t touched him since I learned about him and Phillipa a month ago.
“Your Highness?”
“John,” I tell Blanche, bringing my gaze to her face. “Call me John.”
In the dim lighting, I watch color wash over her cheeks. “Then, John, it’s past time that I be getting home.”
“And miss the rest of The Sleeping Beauty?”
“We both know that I’m only here because you convinced my father to let me come alone—not that he probably needed much convincing when he’s practically frothing at the mouth for me to marry you. This was an ambush, plain and simple.”
I dip my head in acknowledgment. “Then run, little wolf.”
She doesn’t move.
“Have something else to say?” I ask.
“My mum left me the money before she fled to Chicago with her lover.” The admission comes low and controlled, as though she hates making the confession in the first place. Her thumb grazes the backs of my knuckles, just once, and all the blood in my body rushes south to my cock as if she’s raked her nails down my spine instead. “There is no one worse with money than the earl. He’ll bankrupt himself ten times over before he ever realizes that if he just practiced a little moderation, he wouldn’t be drowning in debt.”
Instead of jumping in to direct the conversation, I wait her out. She doesn’t disappoint, her amber eyes flickering to mine a moment later. “For every financial advisor that he sent away, I hunted them all down to invest the money Mum gave me. I won’t go hungry because I took fate into my own hands, however I could. Above all else, I want independence, freedom.”
“And marrying me won’t give you that?”
“I’ll be a pretty bird locked in a gilded cage that you visit whenever the mood suits you.” Her expression is somber, earnest. Completely and hopelessly vulnerable as she lays herself bare before me. “In marrying you, John, I’ll trade one prison for another, and I can’t . . . I cannot do that to myself when I’m so close to striking out on my own.”
From birth, the course of my life has been paved with jewels and gold and a royal lineage that stretches back centuries. If I ever dreamt of being anything but a king, I can’t remember.
Because I was never allowed to dream at all.
I think of Henry, whose family has bent the knee and taken an oath to the Crow
n for four generations now. I’ve never met another person who speaks of the stars the way that he does—he knows all the constellations and the planets, and on any day of the week, I can find him snatching another book from the library at Buckingham Palace.
If he weren’t a spy, he’d be an astronomer.
And if I weren’t a prince, I would be . . .
I don’t know.
My chest aches with a pressure that won’t relent, and it’s only when I see Blanche wince that I realize I’ve squeezed her fingers too hard. Immediately, I release her. “Apologies,” I manage curtly, pushing to my feet. “For all of it—the day at the palace, this evening. You deserve your independence, my lady. And I won’t be the man who strips you of your dreams.”
Her eyes follow me, trailing up my legs to my torso and then, finally, to my face. She visibly swallows, her hands gripping the gilded armrests of her chair like she’s desperate for stability. “May I ask you something?”
I tilt my head in a silent yes.
“You say that you want a wife who won’t break for you,” she says, her chin lifting so that she never severs eye contact with me, “and you said, the other day, that I was born to kneel but what if . . .”
All the air dissipates from my lungs.
Down at my sides, my hands curl into tight fists.
What if what? I want to demand of her, but Blanche seems stuck on the words itching to break free from her self-imposed restraints. It’s a testament to my own self-restraint that I don’t press a hand to my erection to ease the mounting ache.
Fucking hell.
“Spit it out, Blanche.”
Only, she doesn’t say anything.
Not. A. Single. Word.
Instead, she presses her lips firmly together, like she’s trying to keep them from trembling, and then she lifts her right hand. Two gold bracelets glimmer against her slim wrist in the shadowed box. The sleeve of her dress slips down to expose the angle of her elbow, the elegant curve of her bicep. Then, with her amber eyes zeroed in on my face, and her shoulders heaving with quick, desperate breaths, she touches her middle finger and thumb together, and snaps.