by Avery Flynn
“My bed.” At least for the next forty-eight hours. After that he’d walk away like the reporter in Roman Holiday. The thought was a hard kick to his kidneys.
Her body tensed, and he waited for her objection, but none came. Instead, she relaxed by degrees against him as he walked out of the movie room and up the stairs to his room. By the time they’d reached his door, her eyes had fluttered shut, her soft, sleepy breaths tickled his neck, and she felt so right in his arms he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to let go.
Chapter Ten
Elle stretched out on the bed and rolled to her side, snuggling up with Dom’s pillow. He’d gotten up half an hour ago when the sun was low in the east and she could barely open her eyes, but she could still smell him on the pillowcase—warm and tempting and better than she’d imagined he’d be. And she had a damn good imagination.
The smell and her memories weren’t as good as the real thing. She cracked her eyelids. Rumpled sheets? Check. Super-manly room in dark colors and zero throw pillows? Check. Dom? No check. She sat up and pushed the rat’s nest off her face, amazed at how a night of great sex could do serious damage to her hair. Where was he? That’s when she saw the note propped up on the bedside table.
I’LL BE RIGHT BACK. IN THE KITCHEN, MAKING BREAKFAST. WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PLENTY OF ENERGY FOR THE DAY. DON’T MOVE. —D
Yeah, that was totally going to happen. She grabbed one of Dom’s white button-up shirts off the end of the bed and pulled it on. It came down to midthigh and smelled like him. She then hustled out of the bedroom, dying to know what Dom in the kitchen looked like. It was so unexpected for a billionaire who’d grown up wealthy and never had to make his own breakfast in his life. Was he a secret gourmand? A total newb? Did he make scrambled eggs or quiche? Dry cereal or pancakes? Was it—
She skidded to a stop outside the door to the huge gourmet kitchen. Her tongue turned to sawdust. Even wearing just his crisp dress shirt she was overdressed. He was in boxer briefs—and only boxer briefs—that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. If she’d been wearing panties they would have been toast.
“You going to stand there and ogle my ass, or are you going to help me figure out how in the hell this thing works?” He pointed at the toaster oven.
It took her a second, but she remembered how to breathe and move again. She walked into the kitchen and snuggled up behind him, wrapping her arms around his lean waist and letting her fingertips slip underneath the waistband of his blue boxer briefs. God, he smelled good first thing in the morning. A girl could get used to this—she could get used to him, and she couldn’t let herself do that. She only had him until the plane left for Elskov, and if that thought wasn’t enough to snap her back to reality and step away from Dom before she fell too deep, nothing was.
Heart pounding against her ribs in pre–anxiety attack mode, she took a calming breath and came around to his side. The only thing in front of the toast was a half-empty carton of eggs. No bread. No bagels. No breakfast pizza boxes.
“What are you making?” she asked.
He punched a few buttons on the toaster oven, his nose scrunched up in frustration. Nothing happened. “Scrambled eggs.”
As soon as his words penetrated the lust-induced fog that seemed to surround her whenever she was near him, she jumped between Dom and the toaster oven, her finger pressing against one well-developed pec. “Step away from the appliances or you’ll kill us all.”
“What?” One blond eyebrow went up as he stepped forward, backing her up until her ass was against the counter and his hard body was pressing against her from the front. “I used to make them like this all the time at university.”
Desire careened through her. It was wild, breathtaking, and totally out of control. Unable to stop herself from touching him, she circled his flat nipple before leaning in and lapping at the now hard nub with her tongue then sneaking under his impressive biceps. He pivoted, resting his hip against the counter, but didn’t chase. He didn’t need to. He caressed her just by looking in her direction.
It shouldn’t be like this, not with him. He was too dangerous. Too controlled. Too much. But if not Dom, then who could it be like this with? She was going to be queen. In a few years, if the Fjende didn’t kill her first, she’d marry an appropriate aristocrat, not a panty-drenching billionaire who wasn’t even Elskovian, let alone of the right class. After that, she’d produce an heir who’d follow in her footsteps right onto the throne. There wasn’t a space on her royal calendar for Dom. But she wasn’t queen yet.
She glanced at the clock and did the math in her head. Thirty-five hours until their private jet took off for Elskov and the rest of her life, if the men who killed her father didn’t get to her first. Barbwire knots formed in her stomach. God, what she wouldn’t give for her father to be there now. Not so she wouldn’t have to be queen, but because he’d know what to do next. He always had. She rubbed her palm on her stomach and pretended the ache was hunger pains.
Dom cocked his head to one side and gave her a considering look. “Hey, you okay?”
“You make eggs in a toaster oven?” she asked, trying to get her brain to focus on breakfast instead of the uncertainty awaiting her in Elskov.
He opened his mouth as if he was going to ask again, closed it, and then shook his head before pointing to the toaster oven. “If I could figure out how to power this thing up, you’ll see.”
Giving the toaster oven a good look, she spied the problem. “Think this would help?” She held up the unplugged cord.
“We’re saved,” he sang out in a deep bass, kissed her on the tip of her nose, and plugged in the toaster oven.
It buzzed to life, and a deep orange glow traveled along the coils holding up the ramekins full of eggs. She did a hip-shimmy happy dance. Celebrating successes, even the small ones, was an important way she’d kept her sanity when she’d built her secret identity.
“So what other secret cooking talents do you have?” she asked.
“I’m fucking fantastic at peanut butter and jelly.” He narrowed his eyes at her, folding his arms across his chest and making his biceps bulge. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’m sure both of us are about to be glad I’m not.” She wandered over to the pantry and opened it up. “Where is the staff?”
The security staff and handful of others were usually there, even if she only rarely spotted them. She wasn’t sure if it was Dom’s orders or just the trappings of royalty that she’d have to get used to, knowing she was being watched even in a room by herself.
“Kitchen staff has the morning off.”
She grabbed a canister of flour and looked through the rest of the staples for what she needed. “And security?”
“They’re about.” He shrugged, seemingly satisfied to watch her as she dug through the pantry.
“And that’s all you have to say about that.” Had she expected more detail because they’d slept together? A small part of her had. Time to squash that expectation, and all expectations about Dom. “You know, all of this controlling-the-information flow is going to get your ass in hot water one of these days.”
There was that grin, the one that made her stomach fall to her knees. “Are you going to lecture me or help us make something to go with my fantastic scrambled eggs?”
“Oh, forgive me, Chef Dom.” She set the flour, salt, and a few other staples on the island. “Pancakes or waffles?”
He crossed to the island and looked through her gathered ingredients. “Are there chocolate chips?”
“Really?” She raised herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed him. It was supposed to be a brief, silly, you-make-me-laugh kind of kiss, but by the time he broke it off and stepped back, she’d forgotten all of that and maybe her name and age, too. “Are there cameras in here?”
He nodded, his gaze locked on her kiss-swollen lips as his palms glided from her waist to the curve of her hips. God, this man had her thinking about saying fuck it and seeing if t
hey could fit in the narrow pantry. A quick glance confirmed that wasn’t going to happen.
“I fucking hate your commitment to security.” She sighed.
“I’m beginning to agree.” He kissed his way down her throat, stopping at that sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder that turned off her brain with the efficiency of flicking a switch. A light nip, and he backed away. “Okay, pancakes first, then back up to my room, where cameras are banned, and then I will deliver on the promise I made.”
“Oh, yeah, which one was that?”
He swept her hair back, exposing her ear, and leaned in close. “To make you scream my name while your toes curl.”
A shiver worked its way from her earlobe to deep in her core, and she clenched her thighs together. “We better cook fast.”
The corner diner near Dylan’s in Harbor City that put fresh pancakes on the table in less than five minutes wasn’t going to have a thing on her. She glanced at the clock as the minute hand ticked forward.
…
Dom demolished most of the eggs and the stack of pancakes with their buttery-crispy edges without tasting a single one. It was hard to when he’d spent the past hour in the same room as Elle, who was dressed in one of his shirts and nothing else. He’d discovered that tidbit when she’d bent over to get the skillet for the pancakes and the shirt had risen high enough to show the bottom curve of her bare ass. It seemed sporting a boner for this long killed his sense of taste.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had breakfast with someone he’d slept with. Shit, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to have breakfast with someone after a night spent twisting the sheets.
She stabbed a piece of pancake and used it to sop up the last of the swirl of maple syrup on her plate. She pointed the fork at him, syrup dripping from the pancake square impaled on its tines. “I’ve never seen someone eat pancakes that fast.”
“You make pancakes for a lot of people?” he asked, only the fact that he already knew the answer keeping him from bending his fork in half in insane and misplaced jealousy at the possibility.
“No.” The light in her big, brown eyes dimmed. “You’re the first.”
Her obvious sadness was a punch in the gut. She’d been abandoned, that’s what she’d said over and over since they’d gotten to the chalet. He knew her file better than his company’s balance sheet—and he could recite that from memory. She’d made the best of a shitty situation, but she’d isolated herself. Ten years of lies, of always looking over her shoulder… It had to have marked her even if she hadn’t really been alone, not one single moment.
Guilt morphed the pancakes in his stomach, turning them from fluffy lightness into cement bricks. Clever, determined, snarky, and sexy as hell, she was going to make one hell of a queen, he had to admit, even if she was the woman who made him wish the monarchy didn’t exist. For almost ten years, he’d been her invisible shadow, celebrating her successes and mourning her losses from the sidelines as he’d watched in awe while she made a place for herself in a strange new world.
In a parallel world where the coup had never happened and his being a commoner didn’t matter, things might have turned out differently. Falling in love with her wasn’t a possibility, but Dom wasn’t sure he had the choice. What he did have a choice about was telling her the truth—or at least as much of it as he could.
“Elle, I need to tell you something.”
She flashed a sassy grin, put her fork on her now-empty plate, and leaned forward, giving him enough of a view of her perfect tits to make his brain short-circuit. “Is it that you’re madly in love with me and you want to run away to a private island where we’ll live out our days naked and happy?”
“I like the sound of that.” In fact, he already had the island.
“Don’t even joke.” She stuck out her tongue and giggled, but the smile in her voice didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re the Gregory Peck reporter character in this situation. You have to walk away alone at the end, and I have to do my duty.”
That hurt more than it should. “No island?”
“Nope, we’re each on our own. Lucky for me I’ve got a decade’s worth of experience on that front.” She casually sipped her coffee, but there was no missing the slight shake to the mug in her hands. “So, what did you really need to say?”
“You weren’t alone.” Shit. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that.
She set her mug down with a clank, and her eyes narrowed. “The guys I went home with. You knew about them. You said you were at the bar.”
Fuck. So much for being Mr. Smooth. “Yes.”
She went still and stared at him. He gulped and shifted on the tall bar stool. Here he was, a billionaire poised to overthrow a government, and she had him squirming in his seat.
“What else?”
Feeling the sharp corner of each guilt-formed concrete brick jabbing against his stomach lining, he sighed and straightened his shoulders. He’d opened the door, now it was time to walk through it. “It took us almost a year to track you down after you’d gotten to America. Lucky for us we knew you were landing in Harbor City, so we had a starting point.”
“Nine years?” she asked, her voice sharp enough to be considered a weapon. “You, the Resistance, have known where I was for nine years?” She smacked her hand against the granite island, her eyes damp and her lip trembling. “All that time I thought I was alone and you knew where I was and never came forward?”
Yep, his stomach was shredded. He could take tears. He couldn’t take hers, not after he’d seen for himself how much spirit she had. Taking a shot at him. Fighting with all she had in the workout room. The stubborn determination not to be pushed into a decision but to choose her destiny herself, for her own reasons. That Elle wouldn’t be broken; he’d kill the person who tried. But when it came to everything that had happened before he walked out of the elevator and onto the showroom floor at Dylan’s, he hadn’t had a choice.
“The Fjende knew about us and were looking for you. If we had made overt contact, they would have found you. We were there as much as we could be.”
“What do you mean?”
Okay, fuck this. For each degree she cooled, he only heated up. Maybe it was the guilt. Maybe it was because he had done everything he could. Probably it was both.
“Your apartment? I own it. That’s why the rent hasn’t gone up in eight years.” His frustration at himself leaked into his voice, turning it hard and heated. “Your full-ride scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Harbor City? My company sponsored it.” He needed to reel the emotion back in, but he couldn’t when it came to her. He never could. So he plowed forward, his voice getting louder with each word. “Mrs. Beeman who lives in the apartment below yours and always brings you soup in the winter and asks you to watch her Pomeranian? She’s one of ours. We’ve always been there.”
He had done his best. Facing her as she blinked those big, brown eyes fast and furious to stop the tears from flowing, it felt like it hadn’t been enough.
Looking anywhere but at him, she toyed with her coffee mug, spinning it around and around with shaking fingers. The hollow sound of ceramic turning on granite echoed in the suddenly quiet kitchen. The urge to keep talking, to keep proving himself, burned him up, but giving in wasn’t an option. Pushing her never gained the results he wanted—he’d learned that the hard way the day they’d arrived at the chalet and she’d tried to blow his head off.
Finally, she righted the mug and folded her hands into her lap before looking him straight in the eyes. “Is there anything else?”
His gut churned. More? Oh, fuck, yes, there was. “What do you mean?”
“If you’ve been keeping other secrets, now’s the time to share.”
Just little things, like the fact that her father was alive and the Resistance’s leader. He could tell her. Shit, he wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t break his vow to the king who had his own secrets he didn’t think anyone knew. Within the next
few months, King Magnuz would be dead. The transplants to replace the organs torn apart by the assassin’s bullets hadn’t worked. The clock ticked down for them all. If losing her father once had been devastating for Elle, what would it be like to lose him twice, and after she found out he’d never reached out to her in the ten years she’d been on her own? Telling her the truth wouldn’t give her father any more time, and the end result would be the same.
“Nothing.” The lie left a foul taste in his mouth, one he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop tasting.
She narrowed her eyes and gave him a look that seemed to dig into the darkest parts of his soul and find him lacking. “Really, it doesn’t seem like nothing.”
“Every man has secrets.” He put a lightness into his tone he didn’t feel. He had to maneuver away from this topic. He got off his stool and rounded the island to her side. “Anyway…” Nudging a strand of hair away from her ear, he inhaled the sultry scent that drove him to distraction. “It’s Roman Holiday rules, remember?”
Cupping her chin, he turned her so she faced him and went in for a kiss. Whisper soft and harshly demanding, it was meant to distract them both from the dark turn their conversation had taken and the even darker things left unsaid. She opened for him, and he slid his tongue inside, teasing her and tormenting himself until she pushed him away.
“That won’t work forever, you know,” she said, more than a little bit breathless, color brightening her cheeks.
“What’s that?” he asked, letting his hands travel over her hips and up under the hem of his shirt she was wearing.
“Kissing me to shut me up.” She stepped out of his grasp.
Fingers still tingling from touching her, he took a deep breath to regain some sanity before he threw her over his shoulder caveman style and carried her back up to his bed. “Sounds like it’s already wearing off.”
She dragged her fingers through her long hair and swallowed hard. “Look, I understand the why of what you did, I do, but it still hurts. I was so scared and alone in the beginning. That passed and I got my footing, what I thought was a deserved scholarship, a rent-controlled apartment, and a snarky old lady neighbor who made me laugh even when I had a fever and a nose that wouldn’t stop running. I stopped being scared, but I was never not alone.”