by Susan Stoker
I am a prince.
I am a man with faults, great and small.
But in this moment, for as long as she’ll have me, I am only hers.
7
Blanche
I’ve never been so bold.
Never been so brazen.
I regret nothing.
A sinful smile touches the prince’s mouth as he reaches up to tug on the bowtie at his collar. With a deft pull, the material comes loose to hang open like two black wings of surrender. Nimble fingers undo the top buttons of his shirt, leaving the taut skin of his throat exposed to the shadows and to me.
My fingers threaten to strangle the gilded armrests.
In all my life, I’ve never even kissed a man. I spent ten years at a boarding school, just as the earl wanted of me, and I was bound. To his will, to his rules, to the guard he paid to follow me everywhere. If I spoke to a girl who wasn’t of the “right background,” I was reprimanded. If I so much as looked at a boy, Father threatened to pull me from school altogether.
It didn’t take me long to realize that being at home, away from the world, was so much worse than watching life pass me by as though I didn’t even exist.
I want to live.
I want to thrive.
And while I may not want marriage or rings or heirs, there’s no one here to tell me that I can’t have John, the man with hot blue eyes and a voice like smoke. He frustrates me more than words can even say but beneath the sharp barbs and rapid-fire banter, I sense a twin soul.
If he is the flame, then I’m the kindling.
We have no other choice but to burn.
“Won’t you kneel for me?”
My voice wavers, the boldness in my veins emerging uncertain and nervous, and John only pauses to strip off his jacket and toss it to his abandoned chair. Darkness hugs his frame, limns of light revealing glimpses of a broad chest and narrow waist, where his shirttails are still tucked into his trousers. His gaze stays on mine, potent and thrilling, as he folds his cuffs up to corded forearms.
I swallow, hard. “John?”
“Lift your skirt, my lady.”
My knees snap together reflexively. “Don’t we . . .” I throw a wild glance around, my heart damn-near shattering its cage of muscle and bone. “I mean, shouldn’t we go elsewhere?” The theater is dark, the only spotlights fixed on the stage, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone. Anyone could see us, hear us. Inexperienced though I am, even I know that we’re on the precipice of disaster.
“Here will do.”
“I don’t think—”
“Where are your claws?” he husks, keeping to the shadows when he lowers down to one knee. The other meets the carpeted floor a second later. And then the chair beneath me shifts, hard, so that the stage is right there, just beyond the top of his head.
Oh, God.
He’s positioned me with expert finesse. Anyone who glances at the Royal Box will see me engrossed with the performance, unable to look away, but it’s not The Sleeping Beauty that has me enthralled but the man watching me from beneath a thick fringe of black lashes.
“You don’t snap your fingers at a man and expect him not to fall,” he says, his blue eyes glittering. “You have three seconds to make the next move, sweetheart, or I’ll do it for you.”
It’s not the first time that he’s called me sweetheart, and yet the endearment sinks into my bones like liquid heat. It’s not tender on his tongue. It’s not sweet or romantic but sharp and daring, as if he’s begging me to prove to him, once and for all, that I’ll rise to any challenge he throws my way.
He craves the fight, the battle for power, and I . . . I—
My trembling fingers snatch fistfuls of my silk skirt, and I tug. Cool air wafts over my bare ankles, then the slope of my calves. John never looks away from my face, as though he enjoys the play of emotions flittering across my features more than the naked skin I’m exposing, bit by bit.
When I pause at my knees, he gives me only a single command: “Higher.”
I draw in a labored breath.
Silk glides over my thighs, the sensation so illicit under the predatory watchfulness of his gaze that a whimper reverberates in my chest. I can’t control it—not anymore, I think, than the groan he releases a second before calloused hands grip my knees and spreads them wide.
Finally, his gaze falls from my face.
“I shouldn’t take you like this,” he growls, his thumbs skimming my inner thighs until they’re centimeters away from my core. “You deserve kisses that’ll leave your lips swollen and a gentleness that’ll prove you’re treasured, loved.” He presses the pad of his thumb over my clitoris, directly over my knickers, and every nerve-ending in my body goes up in flames as I slap a hand over my mouth to silence my moan. “But that’s not what you want, is it, Blanche?”
Helplessly, my hips churn, begging for relief.
“No, I didn’t think so.” His chuckle is low, seductive. “You’re dark alleyways and starry nights, not tea parties and sunshine. And you like this”—he lowers his head, lips brushing my thigh, and nips my sensitive flesh—“don’t you? Being in a room full of people while you’re so aroused that you’re fucking soaked.”
As if to prove his point, he flattens his palm against my core.
My lids flutter shut.
Heat chases a fiery path from the apex of my thighs to my toes like I’m a faulty electrical wire that’s on the verge of detonating an explosive device. I’m coming out of my skin, sensation tearing through my limbs, and the man has barely touched me.
I won’t survive this.
God help me, but I don’t think that I’ll survive him.
“Please,” I hear myself whisper hoarsely against the cage of my hand, “John, please.”
“Make me, my lady.” He rubs his palm in a slow circle, taunting me with the promise of more. “Give me all of you—every secret, buried part that you show to no one—and I promise that I’ll make you come so hard, you’ll feel my tongue between your legs for the rest of your damned life.”
I almost laugh.
For twenty years, the earl has done everything in his power to see me isolated. I’m a well-kept puppet that he locks away from all, just waiting for the right time and place to unleash me and make all of his wildest dreams come true.
Power. Wealth. Prestige.
And here is the man of my father’s dreams demanding that I lower my walls, crack my foundation wide open, and unleash my own desires upon him. If I weren’t so set against tying myself to a husband for the rest of my life, I would beg John to marry me.
Right here, right now.
Instead, I pull my hand away from my mouth and curve my palm over the prince’s head. His dark hair is thick, oiled back from his face in a way that’s refined and aristocratic. But the dilated pupils reveal a deep-seated wildness within him that beckons me closer.
I need this.
Need him.
The orchestra below hits a crescendo, the violin’s notes frenetic and urgent. It matches the staccato of my heartbeat as I apply gentle pressure to the crown of John’s skull. With his gaze firmly on mine, he lowers and lowers some more, full lips parting, his roughened fingers inching my knickers to the side to expose me fully.
I can’t breathe for the desire lodged in my throat.
Can’t think for the way his nostrils flare, his throat working with a swallow, and then—
“Oh.”
Blue eyes watch me closely, his tongue flicking over my clitoris. Sensation erupts along my spine, back bowing, nails scraping the armrest. A hiss escapes me, and my heels dig into the ground, hips rising and falling, fast, until John plants a firm hand on my stomach to keep me rooted in place.
Give me all of you—every secret, buried part.
His words tease at my consciousness, and I take hold with both hands, allowing the permission in them to wash over me.
Freedom. Happiness. Lust.
Letting pleasure drive me, I grip John’s ha
ir, tight, and angle my hips so that he has no choice but to give me more. A masculine growl reaches my ears, throaty and raw, and then he sinks his hands beneath my arse and lifts me from the velvet cushion to feast.
He sucks on the bud of desire, his tongue pressing flat over and over again. The violin fades, the cello taking its place, deep and dark, its rhythmic strumming echoing in my ears like an erotic melody. But nothing comes close to the sensuality of the future king kneeling between my legs.
There’s no imbalance of power here.
He laps at me with expert precision, never letting up on the pressure. And I guide his every movement, my fingers threading through his hair. I control him because he lets me, for the moment, at least, and he keeps me leashed with every stroke of his tongue that drives me closer and closer to a climax.
He breathes hard, big shoulders trembling.
“Hold yourself open,” he orders, lowering me back onto the chair. “Now.”
Chest heaving, I do as he tells me. My hands sink down over my belly, quickly hiking up my skirt so that it spills over my waist like a silken waterfall. I touch my palms to my inner thighs, all insecurity eradicated, and then I snake them inward until my thumbs graze my core.
John groans, deep and low in his throat, and then his hands disappear from sight. I hear the jangle of his belt buckle, the zipper of his trousers coming undone, as well as the hasty rustle of fabric. His head falls forward to my knee on a barely stifled grunt, and from the way a vein throbs in his neck, I know that this moment has escalated to what is definitely the most thrilling night of my entire life.
He’s touching himself.
And then he’s touching me.
I feel every flick of his tongue against my thumbs, as I hold myself open, his attention focused solely on my clitoris. I’m dying, falling deeper into the abyss. Heat scorches my muscles and no matter how much I try, I can’t tear my gaze away from the man before me.
Eyes closed, cheeks flushed, he brings me higher and higher, all while guttural noises stay locked within his throat as he works his cock with hard, fast strokes. Every glance downward, past the slope of his shoulder and the curve of my right thigh, rewards me with another glimpse.
He pumps himself furiously, fingers curling over the crown, before sinking back down to the root. His hips punch forward with each thrust into his grip, as though he’s imagining that it’s not his hand that he’s fucking but me.
“John,” I breathe, shaking. “John.”
Blue eyes snap open. “Come for me, sweetheart. Fucking come for me.”
That word again.
Only this time, it slips from him like a benediction—and it lights me up in a way that nothing else ever has. My toes curl in my shoes and I throw my head back, my entire body shuddering with an orgasm more potent than any I’ve ever given myself in the darkness of my bedroom.
Stars burst behind my closed eyelids.
Beneath my palms, my thighs tremble.
“Fuck.”
The harsh grunt pulls my attention back to the man on his knees. With his forehead resting on my thigh, the muscles beneath the thin fabric of his shirt jump and clench as he works himself over, tugging, pulling at his length, until he comes with a low groan that I feel in my very soul.
Pulse racing, I slip my palm over his damp nape. “Thank—”
The rest of my sentence dies as commotion starts behind me. As in, behind me. Doors slamming open, deep voices barreling into the private room. And then the one voice I would do anything to never hear again: my father’s.
“You will marry her!” he bellows, his shoes marching across hardwood floor. “Do you hear me? You will marry her for this!”
8
John
It’s 1977, not 1877, but you wouldn’t know it from the way the earl of Essex carried on at the Royal Opera House three weeks ago. I was caught with my trousers undone—quite literally—with come on my palm and the taste of Blanche’s sweet cunt on my tongue, and marriage it would be.
No, marriage it will be.
Today.
Right now, in fact.
Passing a palm over my hair, I allow my gaze to fall to the ground between my polished shoes. The carpet is red, much like Blanche’s red-rimmed eyes when I went to her a fortnight ago.
Don’t do this, she begged me.
You love someone else, she said.
I love Henry in a way that bears no rhyme or reason. But I don’t . . . Fucking hell, I don’t crave him. I want his company and his conversation, and God knows that I had no problem fucking him when we toed the line into something more. Except that when I learned of Phillipa, the woman he met at the British Museum on his rare day off, I felt nothing.
No anger.
No hurt feelings.
Henry could sleep with the rest of the human population, but his soul will always be tied to mine, the same as mine is tied to his. I don’t need to be in his bed to know that we’re forever linked.
The same can’t be said for Blanche.
She brought me down to my bloody knees in a packed theater, for fuck’s sake. She made me spill into my own hand like a lad of seventeen, not twenty-seven. And when she asked me to step away, to tell her father to piss off for trying to wrangle us down the aisle, I told her no.
No to letting her walk away.
No to a life that won’t have me in it.
No to any other man but me in her bed, in her world, in her goddamn heart.
It turns out that I’m a selfish bastard.
I’ll be a pretty bird locked in a gilded cage that you visit whenever the mood suits you.
“It’s time, John.”
The sound of my father’s voice snaps my gaze back up to find him standing beside me. How long has he been there, watching me battle with myself for stealing a woman who doesn’t want to marry?
I run my hand over my chest, ignoring the bells and whistles of the Royal Commander’s full dress that I pulled on this morning. Carefully, I look at the king and force the words past my dry mouth: “Would you have let Mum go, knowing how it would all end for her?”
The cancer.
The loss of life.
The utter and complete heartbreak.
His blue eyes, so similar to my own, shutter with barely concealed pain. “Every day with your mother was a gift,” he says softly, “and every day without her is an unbearable hell.” His hand grips my arm, squeezing tight. “But there are people in this world who we’re bound to, son. No stretch of time will ever ease the loss. We burn for them, we breathe for them, and one day, if we’re unlucky, we bury them too.”
I swallow, hard. “I told Lady Blanche that she’ll never love me.”
For a second, Father only studies me. Then, “Because of you and Henry?”
The floor threatens to open up beneath me, and I physically rock back on my heels. “I don’t . . . You didn’t—”
“A father knows all, John.” He squeezes my arm once more and then releases me. “I disapprove of Henry because he should never have allowed things to progress to anything beyond friendship. The Godwins work for us, but I don’t . . . That is to say, I don’t dislike him for, well, you understand.”
Being a man, is left unsaid.
“And the deadline on me marrying?” I ask hoarsely with a hand on my thundering heart.
Father’s gaze is somber when he says, “That man loves you in ways that you will never return. He has for years. And if there is any hope of salvaging your friendship before it’s ruined for good, then marriage is—”
“Don’t tell me you did this out of the kindness of your heart for Henry.”
“Part of me did it for your mother because she knew, even years ago, how the road would end for the two of you.” His mouth tugs to one side, shamelessly. “And the other part of me—the larger part, I’ll admit—did it because you are my heir, John, and you have a responsibility to the Crown.”
A wife.
A marriage.
A future king
dom to rule over.
The pounding of my heart doesn’t ease as I leave the king’s side and head for the front of Westminster Abbey, where the world waits with bated breath for me to marry their future queen. I don’t hear the tread of my footsteps nor do I make eye contact with any of the guests who wait for the ceremony to begin.
I don’t stop until I’m in place, my pulse a quick thud-thud-thud that reverberates like jackhammering in my ears. My gaze flits over the crowd, and there, off to the side, is Henry Godwin. His face is unsmiling, his bulk solid as he watches me silently. I hear Father telling me that Henry has loved me for years—loved me—and guilt creeps through my veins.
Did I take advantage of him?
Did I lead him along?
Did I break him?
I can’t draw in enough air as I stare at my oldest friend. He’s saved me, time and again. He’s put himself in the path of danger to keep me alive. Beyond that, he’s been the one I’ve turned to at all stages of my life—as a lad looking up to an older, intimidating teenager. As a young man, begging for scraps of information about women and sex and desire. As an adult, when life ground me down and I buckled under the pressure of being heir to the throne.
Never once did he turn me away.
Never once did he make me feel inconsequential.
Never once did he let on, for even a second, that he loved me in a way that best mates shouldn’t.
But I regret you, John.
Even from this distance, I see his green eyes widen, as though he’s sensing my inner turmoil. And then he brings his left hand to his mouth, where he taps once on his lips before tugging on his left earlobe.
The secret sign that he crafted for us when I was only ten and he sixteen.
I have your back, it tells me.
And I almost fall to my knees in apology for never having his in return, for allowing this divide to claw itself between us where one feels marrow-deep love and the other . . . does not.