by Parker Swift
He kissed her on the forehead and then returned his attentions to me, their only company. “Thank you again, Lydia, for doing this for us, for…” His explanation faded out. “Well, you know.” He had the good manners to look apologetic, like he knew they were asking too much.
“It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?” I asked, remembering my own wedding, not the real wedding Dylan and I had just for us at city hall in New York, but the one with the sixteen-page photo spread in HELLO! magazine. And I was just marrying a duke who had once been engaged to Princess Caroline; I was not the one actually marrying the second in line for the throne.
“Lydia, they’ve given me a valet,” he said with a what-the-fuck? air to his voice. “Do you know how awkward it is to have someone dress you?”
“Trust me, babe, with four suits, you’ll be thankful for the valet,” Caroline chimed in from over her cocktail, and I took another sip of my lemonade.
Zach smiled at her. “Aww, you know I love it when you try to sound American.” He was teasing her, and it was so good to see.
“What?” Caroline exclaimed, her cheeks glowing a bit red.
“‘Babe’?” Zach was clearly ribbing her. And he had a point; the pre-Zach Caroline would never have called a boyfriend babe.
I laughed out loud, which made Caroline turn and look to me, clearly offended that I was so easily siding with Zach on this. “Oh please,” she scoffed, “you and Dylan are far worse.”
“I’m not denying it,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. I looked at Zach and Caroline and saw so much glowy, fresh love between them. They may have been looking at me with their eyes when they spoke, but the attention of their bodies was entirely on each other—the way he held her hand on his lap, stroking her palm with his thumb, the way she dipped her head towards his shoulder. It wasn’t just that I saw it. I recognized it. Remembered it. Dylan and I had so few opportunities to flirt that way these days. Flirt wasn’t even the word—to be immersed in each other like that. Our relationship now had so many more angles and curves—being parents together, building a life together, all of that added dimension. Sometimes in the course of day-to-day life, I could forget about the early pre-wedding falling-in-love days. But if I stopped the daily humdrum in my mind, the constant flow of scheduling and life management, I could easily remember the first time Dylan and I spoke in Canada, when he said I love you for the first time, when he asked me to move in with him. All of it.
Suddenly I missed Dylan like crazy.
“Zach, I have to ask.” I looked over at Zach as I spoke, and I could sense his curiosity.
“Shoot,” he replied, running a hand through his hair.
“How did you get the nerve to ask Caroline out? I mean, you seem like a ballsy guy, but you know, the future-queen-of-England thing is a thing.”
Caroline smiled, like she knew what was coming, and Zach smiled right alongside her, content, as though he was remembering. “I didn’t,” he said, and I looked at him curiously. “She asked me out. But the funny part was that I didn’t know it was her. Or I didn’t know who she was.”
“But I thought you were there covering her tour, photographing her,” I said, confused. “That photo you took of her on that trip is practically legend at this point.” After their relationship had gone public, a photo Zach had taken of Caroline looking incredibly happy and natural with no makeup had gone viral overnight. In the photo, her glowy face is framed by a furry hood and she is watching a sunrise. It had become the unofficial emblem of their courtship. It was in every article about them, immediately recognizable.
Zach shook his head, denying my assertion. He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and then wrapped his arm back around his bride. “I was there to cover a climate scientist. I’d heard people talking about how a princess was visiting, but honestly I hadn’t paid much attention. I’m a science and photography geek,” he added, shrugging. “Then this one afternoon, this gorgeous girl and a handful of guys arrive—I had no idea who they were, nor did I ask. But there was just the one camp for miles, and only one central building. One morning she and I are sitting around a table in this lounge drinking the worst coffee—”
“That coffee was awful!” Caroline interrupted, giggling a little under her breath and gripping Zach’s hand in her own.
“And I start talking to her about how my camera needed a repair and how the damn bears had been breaking into the food stores, and then she stops me, mid-sentence, and says—” He paused and looked to Caroline, a prompt.
“‘I don’t suppose you’d like to give me a tour of this place, would you?’”
I had a sense there was an inside joke there.
“That’s right, and it was in that moment that I realized oh fuck, this is the princess. I mean, you don’t hear many accents like hers at base camps loaded with nerdy scientists. But by then it was too late. I had already been blabbing my mouth off for thirty minutes, and I’m pretty sure I was halfway in love with you already,” he finished, looking at Caroline. “The photo happened later. It was early morning—you can see the sun rising. It was after we’d, uh…” He held her hand, stroking it gently.
I just smiled. “Say no more.”
They were lost in each other, and I was quickly becoming a third wheel, although I was saved by the chiming of my phone.
Dylan:
Having fun?
Me:
Yes. I wish you were here though.
Dylan:
We need to get out together more often, don’t we?
Me:
Yes, we do. And yes, I know it’s already eleven, and no I’m NOT in labor…
Dylan:
Getting cheeky, are we? You should come home though. You have an appointment at 6am on your calendar in the morning, baby.
Me:
I do? With who?
Dylan:
With my cock. I know how you are when you’re pregnant, damsel.
I’m sure you need sorting out.
Me:
Walked right into that one, didn’t I?
Dylan:
Fish in a barrel.
Come home.
Me:
Soon.
“I should probably head out in a minute,” I said, taking another sip of my lemonade. “Let you two get some rare private time.”
Zach did that thing where he nodded and shook his head simultaneously, as though he knew exactly what I meant and disapproved of it at the same time. He pulled Caroline even closer to him somehow, and I caught her looking around the room for cameras. They didn’t have anything to worry about—the management at the Connaught would never let that happen. But it was instinct to be aware, and Zach saw her doing it as well.
“The scrutiny is weird, right? The media suddenly interested in what you eat for breakfast and whether or not you got a haircut.” I looked at him with sympathy. “I mean, I thought I had it bad, but you must be feeling pretty overwhelmed.”
Zach looked at Caroline and then to me and acknowledged what I’d said without confirming—he was already becoming the diplomat he’d have to be. I leaned in towards our table, and he met me halfway. Caroline scooted in a bit as well, but she knew that this was actually something that oddly belonged to me and Zach, something that she couldn’t understand. “It’s different for them,” I said. “They never knew anything different.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “But it is. So different.”
I nodded. It was. “You do get used to it. Almost. But I don’t think it ever feels normal.” I paused for a moment, thinking about all the times when the public had it wrong about who I was, or, even weirder, where they had it right. Once a photo had been published, and there was a circle drawn around a hole in the elbow of my sweater. The magazine made some comment about my being frugal, but the reality was I just had no idea there was a hole in my sweater.
I said, “The odd thing, I think, is how with each story that is totally false, because they have a photo with no caption, because papers n
eed to be sold, because a barista claims to know you, hell, because some junior editor lies about a source to climb the ladder—with each one of those, there is more and more distance between who the world thinks you are and who you really are. I mean, we don’t know each other that well, but I’m guessing you think I had a nose job.”
A few years earlier it had been a painfully slow news cycle, and some middling publication claimed I’d had a nose job while pregnant with Aiden. There followed dozens of articles on the safety of surgery during pregnancy, on the unfair burden society places on young mothers to remain attractive, on the history of nose jobs. It had spun up a truly impressive body of articles everywhere from In Touch magazine to The Atlantic. In fact, I’d had a tiny benign mole removed from my nose at the dermatologist’s office, and worn a bandage on it for one day.
Zach had the good grace to look a little surprised and sheepish.
“You did, didn’t you?” I asked, smiling, and he nodded.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. But it’s a million little things like that that add up. And sure, we quietly sue the paper, and sure, they settle, but no one reports on that, and no one cares if it’s not true, so it just becomes part of who you are—out there.”
“Sounds awful.” Zach looked like none of this was really a surprise, but also fairly discouraged.
“It is. But they’re worth it,” I said, looking at the woman at his side, my friend, his fiancée. “And it’s their world. And we love them, so it’s our world too. And so much of our lives are public that now I actually embrace that discrepancy between what’s real, what’s ours, and what the world believes. Because that’s privacy. I don’t want them”—I gestured to the darkened windows of the bar—“to know us. Because then what life, what privacy, would we have?”
“Dylan’s lucky to have you, Lydia,” Caroline said, her voice surprising me. “I’m so happy he found you.”
“Ha,” I replied. “I feel like I found him.” I sighed, which turned into a yawn. “I should probably—” I interrupted myself with a shake of my head. I’d been about to say I should go, but Frank was now approaching me, his cell phone in his hand. He reached the table and locked his hands in front of him. “Let me guess,” I said, looking up to Frank’s enormous frame. He held out his hand to help me up.
“Mr. Hale thinks it would be wise for you to come home.” At least Frank had the decency to look a little sheepish to be delivering Dylan’s bossy message.
“I’m sure he does,” I said, smiling.
* * *
When I got home that night, I was saved from Dylan’s mission to put me into labor with hot sex by looking as tired as I felt. But the days that followed were predictable. Predictable in a busy, lust-filled, sexually frustrating kind of way.
Dylan would try to convince me to have sex in the morning—in bed, in the shower, in the closet as I was dressing—anywhere he could trap me when the kids were distracted. During the day, wherever I was, he’d text me dirty things until I needed to put my phone down and go read up on who was who at Westminster Abbey to get my mind off of it. Or he’d surprise me with a visit. And the evenings, when we were together, were the worst. At dinner one night when Charlotte was over, he slipped his hands between my legs, knowing I was helpless. Another night we were on the couch watching television—the children were sitting on the floor in front of us, and we were watching Frozen. It still didn’t stop him from pulling me against his chest and surreptitiously drawing lazy featherlight touches up my inner thigh. And I was most defenseless at the same point every night, when we climbed into bed—he’d coil his body around mine, lay gentles kisses across my body, hide clothes so I had to sleep naked, so he had access. It was blissful, insane, cruel torture.
And me? I resisted. It took every effort, every ounce of willpower, but I resisted.
Or I tried. I mean, I really tried.
I knew there was nothing anyone could do if I went into labor. There was no way anyone could truly be mad at me, at us, if I had a baby and therefore couldn’t fulfill my obligation. But it didn’t feel right to bring it on. It didn’t feel right to try to get out of the wedding. At the end of the day, the queen was the queen, Caroline was the princess, and they’d invited me, asked me, to do this, and I didn’t want to let them down. In spite of the timing, I wanted to do it, if I could.
But I was also only human. And I was so goddamn horny. Those pregnancy hormones were killer.
I’d never forget the look of victory on Dylan’s face when he woke me up on Thursday morning with his head between my legs.
It was still dark out, and for a moment I thought I was dreaming, but when I felt Dylan’s scruff against my inner thigh, I woke up fast. I looked down and met Dylan’s gaze over my belly. His eyes bore a look of lustful advantage—he had me, and he knew it.
“Dylan,” I whispered. I was still undecided as to whether I should fight him off, try harder not to succumb, and I made a halfhearted attempt to roll away from him. But his hands gripped the backs of my thighs, and spread them, holding me in place. He laid impossibly light kisses up my inner leg, drawing out the fire at my core, the tingling, the want. I felt the tip of his nose graze my center followed by the lightest touch of his tongue, and I bucked, my pelvis reaching for more. In a flash he’d taken me from asleep to completely ready. There wasn’t a prayer of resisting him. I needed him, needed this.
I couldn’t quite reach his hair, but all I wanted to do was pull it, tease it, take out the pent-up angst and energy on it. In frustration I reached behind me and found my grip on the headboard, pulling myself away from him and pushing towards him in the same moment.
“Dylan. Please,” I whined pathetically, and I felt him chuckle against my skin.
“That’s it, sweet girl,” he cooed, as though he were calming an edgy foal, relishing in his control over my body, and I felt his breath right up against my entrance. So close.
I groaned again, and this time he delivered. I felt his tongue sweep against me in earnest. He nipped, he taunted, he drew the delicious needy shivers of want from me with each movement, all the while holding my legs at bay, keeping me open to his liking, rendering me helpless against him.
“Oh fuck,” I cried as I felt the orgasm coming, not a prayer of keeping it away. I knew my knuckles were white with the grip I had on the headboard—I was reaching for a modicum of control anywhere I could find it. Dylan blew soft air against me, and I came crashing into pleasure. There was no easing in—it was a full-on fireworks display radiating through my limbs.
I had no idea how long I lay there, absorbing what had just happened. My eyes were tightly shut, and I was trying to regain some sense of sanity when I felt Dylan’s lips moving up my body.
“I’m not done with you, damsel,” he whispered. I felt his firm hands tackling the buttons of my shirt, exposing me. He was kneeling above me, his knees gripping my hips. “Now, be a good girl, and get on top.”
If I’d been more awake, I might have rolled my eyes at him, or made some remark about him being a good boy, but my defenses were down. I was receptive to him, pliant, devilishly turned on by his words. With impossible ease, he switched our positions. I went with his pull and found myself straddling him, him leaning against the headboard. With my hands on his shoulders, I gazed at him and saw pure need.
He had successfully softened me, drained me of any desire to fend him off. I wanted so badly to feel him inside me.
“Now,” Dylan said with a loving firmness as he drew his fingertips across my breasts. “I want you to put that pretty pussy of yours on my cock. Understand?”
I did. I definitely understood. I rose slightly, and Dylan thrust up to me. Oh god. I felt so full. In a moment we’d found our rhythm. He rose slightly to meet me, I took him in each time, and with each beat Dylan reignited the orgasm that had just quelled, brought it back to life.
“That’s my girl,” he whispered with want. I took. I gave. I relished the smell of him, the closeness, the feeling of his hands o
n my breasts, my fingers in his hair, his lips against my shoulder, his nails against my back, of this man inside me. And we found our release together in a perfect moment.
It was pure unadulterated bliss. Heaven. Without a doubt what we both needed. But much to his chagrin, it did not put me into labor.
Chapter Eight
Eight days until the big day
By Friday afternoon, I’d managed to stay pregnant while enduring eleven different appointments and meetings related to the wedding. Some were more enjoyable than others. The worst had been a series of grueling, boring meetings with the wedding planner around the order of events, the key players involved, where any given person would be at any given moment on the wedding day. For example, I’d apparently be arriving by carriage at Westminster Abbey at precisely 12:57 p.m., tiny bridesmaids (or what I, as an American, would call flower girls) in tow. This was exactly two minutes prior to when Caroline would arrive with her father by antique limousine.
In fact, this point, concerning transportation, turned out to be one of the topics of a rather tense conversation that took place at Hannah’s studio during the second-to-last dress fitting.
Hannah, thankfully, was well past pinning and had moved on to tweaking and embellishing. The stylist, sent by Caroline’s team, had me walk around the room in about six different pairs of shoes, all the exact same shade of cream as the dress. Some pointy, some round. Some flat, some stilettos. The miracle was that it had taken two previous meetings to whittle the selection from twenty to six. Surprisingly, it was Frank who provided the voice of reason.
“Might I suggest, miss, shoes without the heel?” he said with protective authority. “I think Her Grace would be more comfortable.” I looked at him and melted a little. I wasn’t sure how old Frank was behind his beard. He could be thirty-five or fifty-five, but that had been one of the sweetest, most paternal signs of affection I’d seen. I smiled at him warmly, hoping I could convey how much it meant that he was looking out for me.