by Lucy Lennox
“Down, boy. I have no interest in fiddling with your boy toy. He’s definitely not my type.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with him?” I asked, affronted on Felix’s behalf. “He’s sexy as hell.”
“Oh my god, you’re besotted. Yes, he’s fine. But I prefer the big beefy type, if you want to know the truth. Someone like that new guard who’s been looking after your sister recently.”
Arthur’s eyes glazed over, and it was my turn to laugh. “That guy? The one with the man bun? He’s like an empty pocket. There’s nothing upstairs. Surely you want your partner to be able to read a restaurant menu?”
“Sir, I never said I was looking for scintillating conversation. Have you seen him in his workout clothes?”
I shuddered. “Go for it.”
“I believe that’s what I was advising you to do,” he corrected.
“Mm,” I scoffed as I got up and left the room. “Maybe.”
I spent the entire morning hiding in the treasury room with my laptop. Father’s advisors had sent me heaps of email in order to get me up to speed on several diplomacy issues as well as a budgeting memo, a notice of a new judicial assignment, and an article on sustainable development.
By the time I stopped for a lunch break, my head was spinning. I’d always worked closely with my father, but I’d never been the decision-maker involved in any of the issues he managed. I was grateful his minister of state was a good man—intelligent, capable, and trustworthy. I’d be able to rely on him while I got my feet under me.
A couple of hours after lunch, I decided to take a walk to clear my head. I hadn’t had the chance to say hello to Calum yet, which was unusual. Normally, I’d run into him at mealtimes in the kitchen, but I wanted to make a point to thank him for all of his hard work this season.
I somehow convinced Jon to watch me from the utility vehicle parked next to the building rather than following me into the studio itself.
“I’m just going in to have a quick word with Calum. Nothing too dangerous,” I said before stepping out of the vehicle and walking along the crushed-shell path toward the building.
As I approached the large open door of the glassworks, I heard Calum’s deep laugh. I’d known the man since I was a teenager and had always enjoyed his gruff personality. He was a cross between a moody artist and a hardworking laborer. It may have taken time to get to know him properly, but once I had, he’d been one of my favorite people to share a cup of tea with at Gadleigh.
As I rounded the corner and saw into the studio, the first thing I noticed was the thin, sweat-soaked T-shirt plastered to Felix’s back. Damp hair stuck out in wayward spikes all around his head where he’d obviously been running his hands through it. His arm muscles bunched and moved under slick skin as he moved and rotated a long pipe with a gob of molten glass on the end. He was joking around with Calum and his men, responding to some innuendo about his skill with the blowpipe.
“Show us what you got, greenhorn,” one man teased. “Put that pretty mouth to work.”
“Watch and learn, my friend. I’ll show you how we blow things in Texas,” Felix joked before bringing the long pipe to his lips.
My entire body seized up, and I froze where I stood.
Felix’s wide red lips wrapped gently around the pipe, but it might as well have been around my cock. I felt the memory of his lips on me and shuddered.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed, watching him.
As he blew and worked the pipe with his mouth, his arm muscles continued moving. The pipe spun in his nimble fingers, and the glowing gob began to expand. He placed a colored cane onto the glass and continued spinning the pipe. The color swirled around the glass gob, making a unique design. He quickly added another colored cane and began intertwining two more while adding them to the object. While he was twisting the colored canes onto the gob, he kept glancing up at Calum and his men and joking with them.
Watching his face bright and full of happiness was breathtaking. He looked so easy, so free. I could see how much fun he was having and remembered with sudden clarity the reason for his visit to Gadleigh.
It wasn’t to sleep with a prince. It wasn’t to fuck around with someone he’d just met. And I could tell now for certain that it wasn’t to lie his way into a celebrity exposé for the tabloid press.
He’d come for the glass. He’d come to appreciate something that had been a part of my family’s history for hundreds of years. Something I knew very little about but that clearly he embraced with every part of his being.
I suddenly felt like I was missing something important—something I never knew I’d been lacking.
Felix put his design back into the fire and spun it for a while before bringing it out. It was clear there was more molten glass on the design now. He brought the pipe back to his lips again and blew.
The clear glass around the original design began to open and expand, encasing the design in a clear glass ball.
It was mesmerizing. The man wasn’t just the chemist geek he’d portrayed. He was an artist.
He moved to a steel table and pressed the item to the table, flattening its sides until it resembled a pyramid with a colorful twisted design inside.
As Felix walked the pipe back to the fire, Calum followed him with another pipe.
“Punty here, Felix. Whenever you’re ready,” Calum offered.
I saw them transfer the item Felix was making from one pipe to another before Felix put the item back into the fire. As he leaned over, his damp shirt rode up his back, revealing a strip of skin above the electric blue waistband of his underwear. Andrew Christian underwear.
Fuck.
I wanted to see him in nothing but that underwear. With the sweat of the glassworks still running down his back and the heat of his skin under my palms.
My heart thundered in my chest as I continued watching him work from my semihidden spot by the doorway.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the muscles of his back and arms, the way he shifted his weight as he moved around the space. The easiness to his interactions with Calum and his men. He was a completely different man than the nervous guy who’d stumbled into my hidden study the day before.
This Felix was confident and strong, creative and engaging. Relaxed and happy. I wanted to throw the man over the large steel table and fuck him six ways to Sunday. My dick pounded in my jeans, and blood roared in my ears. The man was a damned masterpiece, and I wanted him all to myself.
“Sir!” The bark was so sudden, I jumped, nearly tripping over my own feet. Calum stood just inside the door gazing at me. “Didn’t you hear me? I called your name twice.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, brushing nonexistent dust off my knees in an effort to hide my erection in my lap. “Woolgathering.”
Once the fear had deflated my cock, I straightened up and followed him into the studio. He held out his hand toward Felix with obvious pride.
“Look who’s surprised the hell out of us with some moves,” he declared. “Young Felix here is a glassmaker himself.”
I watched as Felix turned from his position near the melting furnace and recognized me. The pipe he held swung in an arc toward the ground, and I shouted at him to take care. He jerked his arms back up, narrowly missing smashing the delicate design against the hard wall of the furnace.
“Shit,” he blurted. “Fuck.”
One of Calum’s assistants tutted over him, offering to take the apparatus and hold it until he was ready to continue working on it. Felix handed it to him and shook out his arms, as if cramping muscles had caused the inattention rather than surprise at my arrival.
He flicked his eyes over to me again.
Sorry, I mouthed, trying with my eyes to communicate how sorry I was to have bothered him while he was clearly having a nice time. He shot me a small smile and shrugged before turning back to the assistant. I could tell from his body language he’d gotten my blow-off message from the night before loud and clear.
The realization tightened my c
hest and made my fingers clench into a tight fist, but before I had a chance to say anything to him, Calum clapped me on the shoulder.
“Want to see what we’re working on these days?”
I followed him through the studio, trying my best to pay attention as he showed me the latest designs his team had created. They were beautiful and unique, as always. I’d been a big fan of his from the early days of his arrival at Gadleigh but had shunned his efforts to teach me anything about the process of glassmaking. My father had demanded too much of my time for me to spend it on “art.”
But now I realized I’d missed out on something by not allowing him to teach me. I could see how much joy it brought all of the men in the studio and how they took great pride in their work. I wasn’t sure I could say the same about the hours I’d spent toiling over memos and diplomatic documents earlier that morning.
The entire time I tried listening to Calum’s voice, I couldn’t help but sneak glances at Felix across the big open space. After a few awkward minutes, he was finally able to forget I was there and go back to his work. He returned to the easy camaraderie with the other glassmakers, and I even overheard him talking to them about their favorite bands. When the subject moved on to favorite movies, Felix seemed to go quiet. The two men with him chattered on endlessly about new releases coming out that week and didn’t seem to notice Felix’s body stiffening and his complete departure from the conversation.
I continued to watch him, concerned about what had caused him to shut down, when Calum’s hand landed on my arm. I glanced at him and found him looking at me with knowing concern.
“We’re begging off early today, so I’ll leave you to it,” he said quietly. I arched an eyebrow at him in question. “Christmas Eve, yeah? Gonna let these boys go home to their families.”
I’d completely forgotten about the holiday.
“Oh shit. Yes, of course. Please,” I stammered. “Merry Christmas. Go on.”
Calum studied me again for a beat. “Would you mind terribly staying to help Felix finish up?”
“I… I don’t know how to help him do anything here,” I admitted. Not that he didn’t already know this. Plus, since when did he ask the prince of Liorland to do a cleanup job in his workshop? It wasn’t that I minded at all. In fact, it was nice to be spoken to normally for once—as if I was just a regular man lending a hand. “Of course,” I added.
The truth was, I wanted them to leave. I wanted to be alone with Felix. To nudge him out of his sudden funk and find a way to bring him back to the easy joking from before.
“Cheers, sir,” he said with a twinkle in his eye and a pat on my arm. “And a Merry Christmas to you too, Your High—”
I rushed to cut off the honorific. “Go! Get on out of here and have fun. You too, guys,” I called to the men helping Felix put his design into some type of special cabinet.
The men turned to gawp at me but quickly tidied up and gathered their belongings to leave with Calum. Felix watched them in shock as the three men rushed out of the large front doors, and quiet descended on the studio again.
“What—” he began. “What the hell just happened?”
“They’re headed home. It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Well, yes. I know. I guess… I guess I just thought they’d help close down the shop or something?” He glanced around the space at the items left out.
“I told Calum I’d do it,” I said, walking toward him. “But, to be honest, I don’t really know what I’m doing. Maybe you can help?”
He nodded.
I picked up one of the tools scattered on a workbench. “What’s this?”
Felix hesitated before stepping forward to stand next to me. “It’s an optic mold. You can put the warm glass down inside it to help shape it.”
I switched out the mold for another tool. “And these?”
“These are jacks. They’re kind of like scissors to cut your item off the base.” He ran his hands along some of the other items one at a time. “These are tweezers for grabbing and manipulating the soft glass to shape it. This is a block. If you place the glass in here and spin it, it helps shape it evenly. Let’s see… these are tongs and forceps, pliers and clamps… And this,” he said, gesturing to another long pipe. “This is a pontil. It’s a rod that holds your design while you add decorative flourishes.”
“I thought it was called a punty,” I murmured, distracted by his nearness.
Felix’s eyes widened. “Yes, it is. They’re the same thing.”
I leaned closer to him and reached across his body to another tool. The scent of his sweat nearly brought me to my knees. It was a complete contradiction to the bookworm I’d met in my study. This guy was all man, and he smelled like he’d been hard at work using every muscle in his body. My dick was hammering in my pants.
“And this one?” I breathed into his ear.
His body shuddered, and he began to stammer.
“It’s, ah… it’s… ah… this one is—” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. “Jacks. Like the other one.”
His chest was heaving breaths in and out, and his pulse flitted frantically in his throat. While I stared at it, he swallowed. Hard.
“You’re still sweating,” I murmured against the thundering pulse point.
“It’s… it’s hot in here. I’m… hot.”
“True enough.”
My tongue came out to draw a line down the cord of his throat, to taste the salty residue of his hard work. The sharp intake of his breath echoed in the cavernous studio, and the only other sound was the faint hiss of the gas furnace nearby.
“God,” he groaned. “Good god, Lio.”
“Mmm. I want to lick every damned inch of your body right now. Do you have any idea how sexy you are?”
He continued to gasp as my hands roamed across the curve of his denim-clad jeans and up onto his moist lower back under his shirt.
“I’m filthy with glass dust,” he muttered. “Need to shower.”
“Later,” I said, pulling him into my arms and aligning our hips together. I noticed he had a leather apron on, and I quickly untied it and set it on the worktable next to us. When I pulled him close again, I felt his cock press into my inner thigh. “Fuck.”
My hands wandered down into the back of his jeans, causing his cock to get even harder against my legs. Despite my mouth all over his face and neck, he seemed to be in a kind of passive trance. His hands rested on my chest, but he wasn’t grabbing me and kissing me back with the same fervor he’d done the night before.
I pulled back and cupped his face to look at him. “Felix, are you okay?”
He stared at me for a minute before shaking his head. “No. I’m not.”
My heart dropped. “What’s wrong?”
“You left. Without a word. I assumed that meant… you know,” he trailed off, and his eyes flicked away.
I blew out a breath. “I’m sorry. I know I did, and you didn’t deserve that. That was shit.”
Felix stepped back from me and began putting away the tools in a nearby crate with sections labeled for each one.
“It’s fine. You didn’t owe me anything, Lio. It’s just that I don’t… I mean, I didn’t want… I’m not really good at the casual-sex thing. I’m sorry. I know that makes me lame, or whatever, and I’m sure you’re used to guys who are more put together and know the score, or something, and—”
I cut him off with a hand on his shoulder. I stood behind him and noticed a damp curl against the slim tendons on the nape of his neck. I ghosted my thumb over it, trying to touch it without actually touching him.
“Don’t apologize. You don’t have anything to apologize for, Felix.” My voice sounded rough in my ears. “I’m the one who’s sorry. For making you feel that way.”
“What way?” he asked, turning to me.
“Like that’s all it was,” I muttered softly.
“Wasn’t it?” he challenged.
I felt my nostrils flare
as the truth of it left a bitter taste in my throat. What else could it be but a onetime thing? Even if I could admit to wanting more, I couldn’t allow myself anything more than physical with Felix. So that was it—one last fling with a gorgeous man before accepting my life with a nice woman. But I couldn’t tell him any of that. And, besides, something inside of me knew I was fooling myself.
“Maybe at first,” I began. He turned back around and moved quickly to switch off the gas to the furnace. “Felix, wait. It was at first, maybe. But then I got to know you more, and it… it freaked me out a little. I wasn’t expecting to… like you like that. And the fact of the matter is… I’m not in a position for something more than physical right now.” Or ever, I thought.
I could see his face from the side and noticed his jaw ticking in frustration like he was holding back from saying something.
“Talk to me, Felix.”
He threw up his hands and laughed. “This is ridiculous. I’m acting like some stupid kid when the truth of the matter is, what else could it be but just physical? We live in different countries, and I don’t even know your fucking last name!”
I felt a familiar panic well up in my gut. Was this the moment I confessed who I truly was? He deserved to know.
But the minute he knew my identity, things would change between us. It was inevitable.
“Grimaldi,” I said quietly, wondering if it was enough for him to put two and two together. “My last name is Grimaldi.”
Chapter 14
Felix
Something about the name was familiar, but I was too distracted by the man in front of me to figure it out. Worry lines etched between his eyes, and the eyes themselves were deep blue pools of… something.
Longing.
But he’d been right. It could only be physical. Once I left Gadleigh, I’d be heading thousands of miles away, back to my regular old life. And he’d be winging back to fancy Monte Carlo—to whatever life he had there.
“My last name is Wilde,” I offered in return. “Felix Wilde.” I stood still, wondering if by any chance he’d mention the famous actress with the same last name.