by Lexi Whitlow
Mother isn’t pleased, as this leaves her with the obligation of closing the ball and seeing the guests off at sunrise, but it’s my prerogative and I’ve got more important priorities just now.
“You looked lovely tonight, darling,” Mother says to Norah, taking her hand in genuine affection. “You charmed us all, like you’ve charmed the Prince. I’m not sure what your secret is, but I’m glad of it.”
Norah curtsies demurely, just as she should, then says, “Thank you, ma’am, and thank you for the beautiful dress. I’m not royalty like you, but this dress made me feel like a princess just for tonight.”
She’s either being entirely sincere, or she’s truly giving an Oscar-worthy performance.
My mother—a woman as wily as a fox who can spot a conniving upstart from a mile distant—just melts. “Oh Norah, you’re so welcome. What a sweet thing to say.”
I think I see a tear form in the corner of Mother’s eye. Good Lord, Norah Ballantyne has the “World’s Princess” wrapped around her little finger. Nobody does that!
Once we’re away from the crowd and back in the residential wing of the palace, Norah stops, pausing to take off her heels. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t take another step. These things have rubbed blisters. It’s like walking on razor blades.”
I wait, offering a hand for balance as she teeters on one foot, peeling off the offending footwear. “Did you mean what you said to my mother?”
She looks at me curiously, settling down much more comfortably on bare feet. “Of course I did,” she says. “Why would you think otherwise?”
I shake my head, biting my lip. “Norah, you’re such a bloody enigma to me. I never know what’s real, what’s fake, when you’re teasing, when you’re genuinely angry with me or complimenting me. I have no idea what to think about you.”
“Hmph,” she snorts, walking past me.
Once we’re in the apartment, Norah starts toward her rooms.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To go change,” she says. “This dress, while beautiful, is damned uncomfortable. I’m sewn up in a corset so tight it would make Scarlett O’Hara feel sorry for me.”
I have no idea who Scarlett O’Hara is, nor do I care. “Don’t change,” I say. “Stay just a few minutes—in that dress. Let’s have a drink first.”
Norah takes a breath, leveling me in her gaze. I can’t tell if she’s going to insult me, or tease me, or tell me to go screw myself. “First?” she asks. “First before what?”
My turn to take a breath. My turn to take a chance. “First, before we finish what we started down in the garden. First, before I take that dress and whatever else you’re wearing off you myself.”
She regards me with caution. “What are you drinking?”
That’s not at all what I expected to hear. “I’m drinking whiskey,” I say, allowing myself a small smile. “What would you like?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
Before I pour our drinks, I soften the lights and turn on the stereo. A little music might go a long way toward easing us into this. I can’t imagine she’s going to make it simple; she’s going to make me work for it. The thing is, I already know it’s worth the effort.
I hand her a cut crystal glass half-filled with golden Anglesey whiskey, then take her other hand, leading her toward the couch. I’m wishing now I had slightly less minimal taste in interior decoration. My couch has metal-framed edges and barely comfortable, stiff leather cushions.
“We could go to my rooms,” Norah says as if she’s reading my mind. “They’ve got more functional furniture.”
“Fair enough,” I admit, happy to accommodate whatever makes her more comfortable.
Her apartment is in keeping with the rest of the palace’s décor. The furniture is ancient, ornate, but functional. The walls are covered with elaborately patterned wallpaper and hung with paintings of long-dead royals, landscapes, and still lifes. There’s nothing here that speaks to me of Norah or her preferences; I wonder if anyone told her she’s perfectly welcome to make changes.
I peel off my tux jacket, open my collar, then settle down on a big, overstuffed couch in the middle of her parlor. I kick off my shoes, as Norah’s not the only one with feet sore from wearing stylish footwear. “Come sit with me,” I say, motioning for her to join me.
She’s taking a play from my book, fumbling with the stereo, trying to get some music on. When she finally settles down, she’s anxious, sitting far away from me at the opposite end of the couch, gripping her glass in both hands so tightly I worry she might break it.
I need to address this head-on.
I reach down to the floor, clasping her bare ankles in my hands and lifting them onto my lap, pulling her down into a half-reclining position. She yelps with surprise, almost spilling her drink.
“Oh, relax,” I insist as I begin to firmly but gently massage her feet.
It doesn’t take long for Norah to melt back into the couch, head rolled on a cushion, shoulders slack. A moment or two later she’s purring like a cat. “That feels so good,” she says dreamily as I work the bones in her feet, pulling toes, massaging her pads and heels with strong hands.
I’ve bedded a lot of women; I can’t remember most of their names. I’ve never given more than a passing glance to any woman’s feet, much less spent serious foreplay time with them. Norah’s feet are lovely. Her toes are long and graceful, arches high. The skin is soft, and her nails are buffed to a pretty gloss.
“I’d pay you to do this every day,” she moans, closing her eyes, settling her whiskey glass on her belly while she loosely grips it with both hands.
“You wouldn’t have to pay me,” I say softly. “All you need to do is tell me you want me to do this—and more—and I will.”
She opens her eyes, watching me. She doesn’t say anything for the longest time, then finally asks, “It doesn’t have to signify anything, right? It’s just fun. Like in Paris?”
I shrug. “Sure,” I say confidently, brushing off any other notion. “Just for fun. Extracurricular fun. Outside the terms of our contract.”
I wish I was as confident as I sound. The girl makes my heart flutter in my chest. She makes me crazy. She confounds me, and amuses me, and makes me overthink everything. More than that, I genuinely like her. She’s decent, and kind. The way she spoke to my mother tonight was above and beyond expectations. The way she treats staff like they’re friends and family. The way she takes the time to learn every detail she needs to know to do this job, and then executes beautifully. I know she took up this thing to bail her parents out of dire straits and set herself up for a career at some point down the road, but she’s taking it all seriously, holding up her end of the bargain better than anyone else Mother and I might have enticed into the job.
I have a healthy, realistic view of royal marriage. I don’t expect Cinderella. That said, it would be awfully nice to have a partner in this business who I like and respect—someone I can sit down and talk with at the end of the day, whose opinion I value.
If that happened, this arrangement we have might become the happiest marriage this royal family has seen in centuries.
“I’m game,” Norah says, rousing me from my reverie and my gentle, two-handed kneading of her left foot. “But you need to get me out of this dress soon, because I’m about to suffocate.”
“I can do that,” I respond, feeling my cock stir with heady anticipation long before it should. “Come here.”
I pull her forward, settling her on me, thighs straddling my lap with layers of silken fabric, crinoline, and lace piled up between us. She’s a vision before me. Reaching hands behind her back to feel for the clasp and zipper, it occurs to me that I’ve never done this in the palace. I’ve always kept my trysts—because that’s all they ever were—away from here, away from my family, away from any possibility of my royal life and that life intersecting.
I slip the bodice of her gown off her shoulders, letting it relax and gat
her at her hips. Her pale breasts are bound tight in a corset of satin and fine, handmade lace, reinforced with canvas and bone stays. It’s threaded up from behind with silk ribbons stronger than steel wire.
“Stand up and turn around,” I instruct her.
Norah slides back on my thighs, putting her bare feet to the carpeted floor. Without getting up, I pull the gown down to her ankles, revealing long, strong legs and her perfectly sexy, heart-shaped ass barely covered by lace panties. Grasping her hips in my hands, I press my warm lips to her right cheek, nicking it teasingly with bared teeth, causing her to stiffen, then giggle in my grasp.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper into her warm skin. “And I mean that.”
Getting back to the task at hand, I loosen the bow of silk ribbon just above the crack of her ass and begin unwinding the binds that constrain her.
“Oh, that’s so much better,” Norah breathes, filling her lungs with air. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you.”
I stand, pulling the slouching corset up over her raised arms and head, discarding it on the floor. She’s wearing a strapless, damn-near-transparent lace bra that matches her panties. It will have to go soon, but for now I want to keep it where it is. “Turn back around,” I say, returning to my seat on the couch.
She turns in place, standing before me, an angel. Her pale skin is flawless and glowing, her curves and soft places exposed. She’s still wearing the sapphires at her throat and on her wrist. The only thing she’s lacking to make her perfect is letting her hair down from the tied-up “do” the stylist contrived for her, complaining that her golden locks were far too wild to set loose.
“Come back to my lap,” I say.
When she does, I slide my palms up her thighs, then around her ass, scooching her closer, pulling her sex to mine. I’m stiff behind silk suit pants and tight boxer briefs. It’s excruciating, and excruciatingly pleasurable knowing her slick heat is so close to my hard desire.
The first time we did this, it was anonymous. Fun. Quick and insane. We barely spoke ten words between us. It was raw sex, just two unfamiliar bodies hurling themselves at one another until we were sated and exhausted.
This is different. This feels altogether different. This is personal.
“The night we met,” I say to her quietly, drinking her into my mind so I’ll never forget this moment and how she looks sitting here on my lap, “do you remember what you said to me, and what I asked you?”
She smiles at me. “I told you I came to Paris to find new stories, and you asked me if I’d found any yet.”
I nod, letting my hands trace the contours of her body, from her collarbone to her sternum, pausing at the round of her breast, circling her nipple, then tweaking it between my thumb and middle finger, causing her knees to press against my hips and her eyes to close briefly.
“Have you found any new stories yet?” I ask her, my hand flattening as I palm over her soft, flat belly with fingertips dancing just beneath her navel.
“A lot of them,” Norah says, lifting her own hands, reaching forward to undo my shirt buttons. “More than I ever counted on.”
When she’s got my shirt open, I sit forward, lifting my hands up under her shoulder blades, drawing her to me as I press my face into her soft, fragrant flesh. I kiss her collarbones and her neck, then go lower, nosing the seam of cleavage at her breasts, then lower again to grip a lace-covered nipple in my teeth and lips, making it stiff with my attentions.
Norah moans.
“I hope I give you a lot of stories,” I breathe into her flesh, tasting her skin, lapping up her scent. “Good ones.”
I reach high into her hair, pulling pins and nets, threading my fingers through a curling mane of golden tresses that falls away, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back. “That’s better,” I say, running my fingers through the tangle of spun gold. “Wild and unruly, like you.”
She huffs an amused smile at me while her hands tug at my shirt-tails, pulling roughly. “You need to be naked, too,” she says, mild frustration piquing her tone. “I need your skin on mine.”
“By all means,” I agree, opening the button on my pants, loosening them enough to set my shirt-tails free. She shoves the thing off my shoulders and down my arms, insisting it comes off. I’m left in an untucked t-shirt. She lifts it, pressing her fingertips into my belly, tracing the contours of my abs, then flattens her palms at my sides as she leans in to kiss me.
Our mouths meet, parting, tongues circling, probing, sucking between hot breaths, noses pressed together. Norah is heat and hunger, her hips pressed tight against me, her mouth locked on mine, arms intertwined, fingers exploring, pressing.
This is personal. This is a first like our first time, only better by orders of magnitude. We fit. Our timing is in perfect synchrony. Even our scents are complementary.
She’s bright to my dark. She’s smart to my dull, and rough to my sharp. She’s hot to my cold, blue blood. She’s what I need to feel whole. My life has been a performance, acting the part I believed others wanted me to play while playing at being a normal person. Norah has brought those two incomplete characters together.
Norah’s brought me to myself. She’s something wholly unexpected—a friend. And a naked one, at that.
She heaves against me, breathing hard, her body tense as her hips grind on top of mine. “We need to go lie down,” she purrs between starved kisses. “I want you now.”
I lift her with little effort as she wraps her legs around my hips, her arms tightly winding around my neck to hang on. I walk her to her bedroom, then lay her on the bed as I crawl in over her.
“I need to go back to my apartment,” I whisper, kissing her neck, her body arching up to meet me. “I forgot the condoms.”
“Forget the condoms, Owen,” she breathes in my ear. “
Damn. Alright. My cock burns inside my pants, aching for release. Not just yet. There’s something I need to do first. I hook my fingers in the silk waistband of her panties, pulling them down over her hips, thighs, knees, and ankles, casting them aside.
It wasn’t about Norah the last time we were this close—or at least, I didn’t think so. This time it is all about her: I want to make her come a thousand times, moaning my name; I want her flooding my face with her juices all over again; I want her to keep my fingers inside her and never release them; I want her to know how I can make her feel so she never wants anyone else so close; I want to stamp her with my royal seal and have her wear it as a badge of pride.
I slip a single finger through the seam between her legs, feeling liquid heat pour instantly onto my hand.
“Oh God,” she cries at this small intrusion. Her clit is hard, erect in its pocket between pink, hot folds.
I drop down, putting my mouth and tongue to work against that little button while my fingers probe her depths, stroking her, forcing her tight walls to surrender.
“Oh, fuck, Owen!” she calls, fists gripping my hair, hips riding my chin like a bucking, un-trained thoroughbred. She comes on my face, into my mouth, gushing like the high tide at Saxony, salty and warmed with the Gulf Stream tropics.
“Oh… oh… oh… God.” She comes again a few minutes later with more of my fingers put to work while my lips torture her nipples, sucking them hard, making her writhe under me.
I watch her face change as she comes. Her eyelids flutter. Her jaw slackens, then clenches. Her back arches, rising high above the sweat-dampened sheets. Then she just goes soft and limp like a doll in my hand, whining like a kitten. “Come to me,” she heaves, her breaths evening against my kisses. “Inside.”
It feels as if I’ve waited my entire life for this invitation. Unsteady hands shove my pants and boxers down, freeing my aching erection from the binds of cloth and elastic. I guide myself to the tightly-enclosed circle of muscles between her thighs, shoving her knees wide apart with my own. Pressing in, the head of my cock jolts alive, electrified by contact with Norah’s precious, ringed walls of gripping tension and vel
vet. Her delicate folds envelop my length in searing, wet heat.
“Oh…” Norah moans in my ear.In a second, everything I know falls away. I’m lost in a world without pretension or order. Everything superficial evaporates inside the heat of two creatures entwined into one thing. There’s no need for title, or prestige, or power. There’s only this moment and the pleasure of being lost in it forever, with her pressed deep into the sheets, flat beneath me, then on top of me, smiling down on me, sucking my soul into those artless blue eyes that consume me. This time is fleeting, and forever, consisting only of eyes and breasts, lips and hips, thighs and belly—the parts of her that are now parts of me, all of them having done away with every pretension I ever held dear, rendering me vulnerable and raw to the only person in the world who makes me laugh and laugh at myself, and come aching, crying against her, moaning her name, lost in her golden tresses, lost in her safe embraces.
9
Norah
We’re sitting up in bed, legs crossed, facing one another, both of us naked, both of us sated and blissfully dazed. I reach forward with outstretched fingers to gently touch the sweat-misted skin above Owen’s left nipple. There’s a small patch of port-stained skin there, a birthmark vaguely shaped like a cat. I trace its edges, wondering at it.
“My father had one just like it,” he says quietly, looking down at my hand. “My brother Lloyd has one, too, except his lion is upside down and backwards.”
“An omen,” I suggest, only half-kidding.
Own takes my fingers in his, lifting my hand to his lips. He kisses each digit individually, then turns my palm up and kisses that.
We sit a long time together, touching one another, tracing curves and angles, Owen twirling his fingers through my hair, then leaning down to breathe chaste kisses on my knees. Finally, he lies back, pulling me down with him into his embrace. “Should I stay or go?” he asks, his voice low. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”