by Kit Kyndall
She resisted the urge to loudly assure him she wouldn’t do such a thing. Instead, she managed a smile and asked sweetly, “Would you please consent, Prince Bennet? I need to know where you are so I can figure out the best way to help you reach your maximum potential.”
He stiffened again, his expression completely closed off. “There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“Won’t you at least give me a chance to try?” She squared her shoulders. “I’m very good at what I do.”
He made a scoffing sound. “How old are you? You look like you’ve barely finished college.”
“I’m twenty-seven,” she said in an even tone. “I’m a fully qualified physical therapist, and I’ve helped a lot of clients. Even those who don’t want to be helped, and who were very stubborn about the whole situation.” She bit her tongue as she uttered the indiscreet words, but couldn’t call them back.
He glared up at her. “I don’t like your tone, or your attitude. Send her home, Tucker.”
“No,” said Tucker and Harper simultaneously.
She took a step closer to the prince before kneeling down to be closer to his level. She kept her tone brisk. “You need help, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re fired, and I’ll fire him too if you don’t get out.”
Tucker seemed unconcerned with the threat as he crouched down on the other side of the prince’s chair. “I’ve already spoken with the king, and he assures me that my job is secure, as is Harper’s, unless she does something grossly incompetent. We all want to help you, and you know that, Bennet.”
Bennet glared at him before turning his heated gaze on Harper. “It appears I’m stuck with you.”
She nodded just once. “Yes, it does. Now, should we do the assessment?”
He didn’t resist, but his lack of participation was obvious over the next twenty minutes as she evaluated his form and remaining function. It was an emotionally exhausting experience, and one of the worst sessions she had ever done, and they hadn’t even started the difficult things yet. It was a relief when he pulled his chair back a few feet, rolling backward, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’m done being your damn guinea pig for today Ms. Gaines. Get out of my room now.”
She could have argued and insisted on continuing, but there was no need. She had enough basic information to put together a treatment plan, and she wanted to escape the prince’s constant presence for a while as she recomposed herself. Without another word to him or Tucker, she turned and left.
She drew up short a few feet down the corridor when she ran into Fiona Claremont, who was clearly waiting for her. She bit back a groan and attempted a small smile. “I’d almost forgotten you had something you wanted to discuss with me.”
“We’ll talk while we walk back to your quarters.” She left no choice but to follow as she turned and started walking briskly down the hallway.
Harper fell into step behind her, vaguely aware of Tucker catching up with them as they moved down the corridor.
“Take this.” As she spoke, Fiona pivoted slightly to drop a thick booklet into Harper’s hand. Her brisk steps never faltered. “Take time to memorize it.”
“What is it?” As she asked the question, she glanced down at the title and frowned. “Employee handbook.” Was she an employee, or was she an independent consultant?
“As I said, read it and memorize it. There are certain rules and standards to which you must adhere. You have to learn protocol and decorum, and what is acceptable behavior.” Fiona stopped and spun around, glaring at Tucker for a moment before her gaze cooled as it moved to Harper’s. “You’re here as an employee, not a friend. It would be wise to remember that and behave accordingly.”
“Fiona certainly hates it when us commoners dare become friends with the royalty,” said Tucker with a chuckle, clearly unconcerned by Fiona’s opinion on the matter.
The brunette glared daggers at him again. “It would behoove some to learn their place.”
Tucker didn’t bother with a response as he turned to face Harper with a grin. “Don’t be too afraid of her. She’s King Barret’s right-hand man, but she doesn’t wield half the power that she thinks she does.”
Fiona sniffed at him. She also seemed to choose to ignore his reply as she focused on Harper. “The prince needs a physical therapist, not another friend. Remember that, and you’ll do well here.”
Harper somehow stifled the urge to roll her eyes. “I’m here to help the prince, and I can’t imagine ever becoming friends with him. He’s too unpleasant.”
Fiona looked scandalized. “Please refer immediately to your manual, chapter four subsection seventeen-A. You’ll see you’re not allowed to say such things.”
Harper couldn’t hold back the eye roll that time despite her best efforts. “I’ll certainly look through the manual and try to devote some attention to decorum in between focusing on helping the prince reach his full potential again. Thank you for your time, Ms. Claremont.” It was a dismissal, and she was able to pull it off because they had returned to the room she’d been assigned earlier. She swept past the king’s assistant, nodded to Tucker on the way, and closed the door behind her.
As soon as the door was settled in the jamb, she leaned back against it and took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding, and she was gripped by myriad emotions. She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh, cry, or scream.
Briefly, she wondered if she had made the wrong choice by coming to Montrovia. Tucker had warned her it would be difficult, and she’d thought she had prepared herself, but it seemed obvious that it was going to be the hardest assignment she’d ever undertaken. The sense of excitement she’d experienced in the face of a new challenge before failed to rise this time, and she let out a deep breath as she stood up and moved away from the door, dropping the manual provided by Fiona on a writing table nearby as she did so.
Chapter Two
Bennet was disappointed all the way around. He barely knew any Americans, but he’d heard the women were independent, free with their sexuality, and easily impressed by his royal status. So far, the physical therapist failed to meet any of the three traits. She’d yielded far too easily when he insisted on ending the session for the day, her loose khaki trousers and pink blouse had done nothing to reveal the figure beneath, especially with those buttons all the way up to the neck, and she hadn’t seemed particularly impressed by him.
It was hard to get a read on her, and he was afraid she wouldn’t be the distraction he had hoped for. The dragon lady from Belgium had been tough, but even she had eventually yielded and broken down in tears as she fled the castle. It had taken him two weeks to undermine her completely and break her resolve.
The simpering miss from his own country had been a nice novelty for a short while, since she obeyed everything he said and clearly revered him, but Tucker had interceded, going to the king and asking for the girl’s dismissal. He’d had the audacity to claim she was too malleable, and Bennet was taking advantage of that to get out of his physical therapy. That might have been true, but he was still irked at his friend’s interference.
There was little to ease the monotony of his days, so he’d been looking forward to a feisty American with whom he could argue until he eventually broke her too. She seemed to be cut from the same timid cloth as the Stratta girl, whose name he’d already forgotten.
And she was dowdy. Without a touch of makeup, her hair in disarray around her face, and that loose uniform-looking attire, she was certainly nowhere near his standards. The only thing remarkable about her at all were her ice-blue eyes, and the way her pale skin contrasted with the short pixie cut to give her kind of an ethereal appearance. Her short stature just reinforced that impression, and he was certain she was delicate.
It would take all the fun out of pushing her, because there was no sport in torturing someone who was already broken. He had little enough to keep him entertained, so he’d hoped to find amusement with her. There was abs
olutely nothing special about the American, and she would likely be gone as quickly as she had arrived.
Yet he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her as the evening progressed. Perhaps there was an element he had overlooked, something that would make her interesting, and explain why his thoughts dwelled on her. He resolved to find out for himself again in the morning as he prepared for bed. He could handle most of those tasks himself, though he sometimes required Tucker to help him get in and out of bed.
Once he had seen to his evening ablutions, he went to his room to press the button that connected his intercom to the doctor’s, whose room was right next door. Tucker answered quickly, and Bennet spoke brusquely, “Come put me to bed.”
He wheeled away from the intercom system, loathing that he required the assistance of another person for something so menial as getting into bed. There were many days when he could transition himself, but there were still too many days where he needed help. Today was one of those days, thanks to a vague, but persistent, feeling of lethargy he couldn’t explain.
He was bitter about it and glared at Tucker when he entered the room a moment later. The doctor took it in stride, seeming unbothered by Bennet’s silence and brooding stare. He was matter-of-fact as he helped him transition to the bed. Then he said something horrible. “Soon, you’ll always be able to do this yourself. Harper’s going to help you, if you let her.”
Angered by the reminder of his condition and his weakness, he glared up at the man he usually considered a friend. “I don’t want her here, and I don’t need her assistance.”
“You’re all mixed up now, Bennet. You’ve been stubborn since the day I met you, but I suggest, for your own sake, you give her a genuine effort. She can and will help you, but you have to be willing to help yourself too.”
“You may leave now.” He said it with as much icy disdain as possible, staring pointedly over Tucker’s shoulders instead of meeting his gaze as he did so.
With a small sigh and a shrug, the doctor stepped back. “Good night, Bennet.”
“Prince Bennet,” he said in a haughty tone.
Tucker chuckled, seeming to find the reminder humorous rather than humbling. “Prince Bennet,” he said with a hint of mockery in his tone as he dipped forward into a curtsy.
Despite his best efforts, Bennet’s lips twitched at his friend’s display, and he let out a sigh. “Goodnight, Tucker.”
“I’ll see you early in the morning, because Harper likes to get up early.”
“I couldn’t care less about what the American likes, and I doubt I’ll give her a second thought.”
Tucker didn’t argue or urge him to reconsider. He simply nodded his head before slipping away. It was difficult to tell whether the doctor thought his disdain was sincere. It didn’t matter what Tucker thought. He refused to spare the American physical therapist a single thought as he lay down, scrunching slightly in the bed to get more comfortable, before closing his eyes.
He managed to clear his mind and fall asleep within a few minutes, but a dream about Harper woke him less than an hour later. They had been having a screaming match, which was easy enough to envision in real life. However, his physical reaction to the dream was perplexing. His cock was full and heavy as it lay against his belly, and he was startled to realize the dream had left him turned on. The ability to achieve an erection had only returned to him in the last few weeks, as the swelling on his spinal cord had lessened, and he reassured himself it was simply a physical reaction due to his restored ability and had nothing to do with Harper personally.
It was still a long time until sleep returned, as he waited for his thoughts to clear so he could fall asleep again. Exhaustion finally weighed down his eyelids to the point where they didn’t open again, and his breathing evened a few minutes later.
To his chagrin, almost immediately, he fell back into a restless dream that revolved around the dowdy American. Apparently, he didn’t find her so matronly in his dreams, because his body was reacting predictably. He hovered on the edge of deep sleep, wanting to wake up, yet unable to as images of her playing through his brain swept him deeper into unconsciousness, and farther away from the reality of knowing just how uninspiring the physical therapist really was.
***
Harper renewed her resolve before lifting her hand to knock on the prince’s door the next morning. She waited with a smile that slowly melted when she received no response. Once more, she knocked and got the same silence. After one last firm rap on the door, she squared her shoulders and turned the knob. She had expected it to be unlocked, since the prince might have need for assistance throughout the night, and the knob turned easily in her hand.
She stepped into his suite and made her way through the extravagance to his bedroom. Once more, she tried knocking politely, but opened the last door barring her from her patient when he failed to answer.
Pausing for a moment, she glanced around the room. The prince’s huge bed took up much of the space of one wall, but the bedroom was still large enough to house the entire floor of her dorm from college. Shaking her head at the excess, she strode across the room to the floor-to-ceiling drapes and pulled them open one at a time.
A groan sounded behind her, and she grinned in satisfaction as bright morning sunlight flooded the previously dim room. Sliding her hands into the pockets of her worn denim shorts, she strode across the room to his bedside. “Good morning, Highness. It’s time to get to work.”
He responded by burrowing deeper under the covers, until only a hint of his deep brown hair was visible. There was another sound that could have been a groan or a curse.
She forced herself to sound cheerful as she raised her voice. “You can’t escape, Prince. We have a lot of work to do.”
“Go away. I require more rest.”
She rolled her eyes and reached for the covers before tossing them backward off his prone figure. “The day is wasting, and you…” Harper trailed off, eyes wide and mouth open.
He wasn’t sleeping in the nude, but he might as well be. His white briefs were very brief indeed, and they were so fine, they might as well have been see-through in the bright morning light flooding the windows. That was completely her fault.
He lifted himself on his forearms, which absolutely highlighted the taut perfection of his ass in those briefs, as he turned from his stomach to his back. He smirked up at her from his position as he lounged, seeming unbothered by her presence. “Do you like what you see, physical therapist?”
She swallowed, unable to formulate a quick retort. As it was, she could barely drag her gaze up his chiseled abs to attempt to look in his eyes. Harper was roughly successful in looking at his chin instead. It was perplexing that he could make her feel so awkward. She had seen countless naked and nearly naked people during her tenure as a physical therapist, and as a student before that. Some of them had been very attractive, so why was he so special?
That was a stupid question. It was clearly all lust-fueled, but she couldn’t blame her body for responding as it did. Bennet was a magnificent specimen of manhood.
At least until he opened his mouth.
“I know I do. You’re quite dowdy compared to my usual women, but I’ll admit it’s nice to wake up to a passably pretty face and nicely toned body.” He looked pointedly down at the crotch of his underwear, which did nothing to hide his erection.
It was likely his usual morning wood, and she strove not to let it rattle her. “I see the paralysis must be below the thighs then.”
He lost the languid look of seduction he’d worn, and his face went cold. “Get out.”
She squared her shoulders. “Just as soon as you finish your morning therapy session.”
He picked up a pillow and tossed it roughly in her direction before reaching for the blanket again. “I’m not doing anything with a swot like you. Go back to America, because you aren’t needed here.” With those words, he tucked the blanket securely over his head again.
She gritted he
r teeth as she moved closer to the bed. Once more, she grappled for the blanket, trying to overcome his resistance to its removal. “Stop being such a baby and get up.”
“Stop being so obstinate and get out,” he countered through the blanket.
It was starting to feel ridiculously like wrestling with her little brother, and she glared down at him as she tugged sharply on the blanket. When he let go at the last moment, the bedding flew off the bed, and she face-planted on the mattress.
He laughed hard enough to shake the bed. “I didn’t realize you were so eager to get in beside me, Harper.”
She quickly twisted and sat up, scooting to the edge of the bed. “Enough with your silly games. I expect you to be dressed and ready for a session in twenty minutes.”
He arched a brow. “You can expect all you’d like, but my plans for the day include nothing more than breakfast in bed and lounging by the pool.”
Once more, she opened her mouth to argue before thinking better of it. “Fine.”
He looked smug. “Fine, huh? No more arguments?”
She shrugged. “I get paid either way, so if you don’t want to work today…whatever.” It took all she had to bite back a grin when he looked put-out.
“Fine,” he repeated again, sounding disgruntled. “Then clear out so I can start my day.”
Without a backward glance, she turned and sashayed out of the room. He thought he’d won. Silly prince.
Chapter Three
She watched and waited for him to appear at the pool, having taken up a hiding place in the women’s dressing area. It was practically a five-star hotel in its own right, so it was no hardship to stretch out on a lounger and enjoy an iced guava juice until he came into sight.
He wheeled out on his own, though Tucker was a few steps behind him. She frowned when she noted how tired her friend looked before her attention moved to Bennet. He was almost wearing a swimsuit. It was slightly more modest than the briefs he’d slept in and had the added advantage of being opaque when he transitioned from the chair to a chaise lounge with some assistance from Tucker.