by Susan Stoker
“News of the notorious prince is pretty easy to come by,” she said.
“Well, then I’ll leave you to the library,” I said and started unbuttoning my jacket, revealing my sweaty neck and collarbones. A little something Brenna seemed to notice, with suddenly wide eyes, like I’d stripped naked in front of her.
“Unless,” I said, leaning against the door, “you want some company. There are some hidden couches in the back—”
“You’re not funny,” she said.
“I’m not trying to be.”
“You’re not my type,” she said.
“Tell me what your type is and I can try.”
“My type is a royal prince who goes to Nikenburg and sees that the economy is dying. The schools are in shambles, the hospital is practically a hundred years old—”
“I saw all of that,” I said.
“Yeah, my type of guy would do something about it.”
And then she shut the door to the royal library in my face.
Chapter Two
5 years later
My secret council meetings in the library were no longer quite so secret. Brenna was in the back. I could smell her. I could feel her in the air. Like an electrical current just for me.
It had been like this since she came home from school for the summer a week ago. I was painfully and completely attuned to her. I knew where she was in the palace with a weird accuracy. Every time she came home from school, I was like this. Itching and twitchy with my awareness of her.
But part of me, right now, liked that she was there, that she might be eavesdropping on this meeting.
That she might approve of what I was doing.
“So,” I said to the five new council members who had been elected when the oldest of the council members had died during the winter. “I can count on your votes?” I asked.
“I’m not approving any foreign involvement in our oil drilling,” said John, the giant bearded redhead who represented the corner of the North Island most affected by the discovery of new oil. The four other council members nodded.
“But,” said Agatha from the South Island—the first woman on council in many years, “we need money, Gunnar. Our fisheries are dying. The council has brought five very acceptable and very rich women to your attention. All of whom would gladly sit on the throne.”
“The last one,” said Alec. “The heiress from the States, she was beautiful, too.”
She’d been as thin and as cold as an icicle.
And I totally understood that was my fate, I accepted it… I just wanted a little more time.
“It’s not the middle ages,” John said, and I could have kissed his big grizzly face. “The boy should marry who he wants.”
“The boy is a man, and in parts of our kingdom it feels like the middle ages,” Agatha said and I was ashamed she was right.
“I’ll consider wives in a few months,” I said. “And I understand patience is difficult. But selling our souls to foreign investors might bring us more money, but will diminish our options down the road.”
Everyone agreed and filed out of the library. With five votes against the proposal to let the Russians and Exxon bid on the drilling operations, I could stop my uncle’s proposal. I could buy myself some time.
I shut the door behind Agatha and then turned, fighting my smile.
Brenna.
I found her in the far corner where the big wide oak table, carved by the Vikings who settled on this island, was surrounded in big leather chairs.
She was folded up in the biggest chair at the head of the table, looking almost exactly the same as she did that day we met.
Same long blonde hair, piercing brown eyes, her gaze stabbing at me through her glasses. A book in her hands.
“Hello, Brenna,” I said, leaning against the table. “Spy much?”
“You’re challenging the vote?” she said, cutting right to the chase. Which really, was the thing she did. And she was the only one who did it in this palace. Maybe the kingdom. She saw right to the heart of the matter and then ran directly at it.
I sighed and ran my hands over my face. I was exhausted. Ruling from the shadows behind my father was not as easy as I’d thought it would be.
“Gunnar?” she said and stood up, stepping closer to me. And that was strange, and perhaps in my exhaustion or in my surprise, I flinched.
Which, of course, made her stop. She pressed her hand to her stomach, fiddling with the bottom edge of her shirt. Her other hand pulled on the cap sleeve of her shirt, a pretty ruffled pink thing, trying to hide her strong arms.
Her mother made her feel like shit because of her body, and all I wanted to do was take that shirt off of her so I could fucking worship her body. She had grown into her Viking princess looks while she’d been at school, and I could barely keep my eyes off her.
Which was clearly making her more uncomfortable. Her cheeks were pink.
“I am challenging the vote,” I said, looking away. “Dad had another heart attack.”
“Mom told me.”
“And my uncle, the greedy fucker, is trying to get into power through this oil thing.”
“And you’re going to stop him?”
“I’m heir to the throne of Vasgar, Brenna. If I don’t stop him, who will? If I don’t lead this country out of the dark days my dad put us in, who will? My uncle would have us annexed to Russia in three years.”
She was silent for so long I looked up and caught her staring at me. Her bottom lip between her teeth.
Fuck, I wanted to suck on that lip.
“You’re getting married,” she said.
“Not yet I’m not. But…probably…eventually. Anyway,” I said and stood up. “Don’t tell anyone, would you? About the vote.”
“I can help,” she said. “With the council. With the vote. With…everything you’re doing.”
“What?”
“I can,” she said with some belligerence, like I doubted her ability—which was far from the truth.
“I know you can. But why would you want to?”
“It’s my country too,” she said. And I swear it was like she sang me a love song with those words. “At least for the next few months, until I go to New York.”
“New York?” I said.
“I have an internship at the UN.”
“That’s…impressive,” I said.
“I know,” she said with a cocky little smile that went right to my blood. She was entirely a creature of contradiction. “Come on, sit down, tell me your plans.”
She’s not for you, I told myself. She’s not for Vasgar. She is meant for big things. Do not get used to her being around.
The smart thing to do would be to leave. But I didn’t. I sat down.
And by the end of the afternoon, I had her stretched out on one of those big couches in the back, moaning my name.
***
Four months later
Brenna
“Gunnar,” I sighed and kissed his shoulder, the warm smooth skin stretched over hard muscle. I kissed it again, because how could I not? “You can’t fall asleep.” One more kiss for good keeping. And that little dip of tendon, the thrilling change of terrain where shoulder met arm—that needed a kiss too.
“I’m not sleeping,” he said, his deep voice rumbling up from the pillows beside me. His hand fished out from beneath me to grab his phone from the bedside table. He tapped at the phone’s face and the light of the clock illuminated us in green light.
“What time is it?” he asked, his head still buried.
“After three.”
“Wow. That’s… that’s gotta be a record?” He’d snuck in here a little after midnight.
I laughed, blushing and embarrassed but thrilled too. I kissed the inside of his elbow because it was so pale and tender and his.
“Keep doing that and I definitely won’t be sleeping.”
He shifted in the bed, and the sheets we were tangled in released the warmth and smell of our bodies. Of
sex.
My bed smells like sex.
I found that pretty freaking delightful.
And that it smelled like sex with Gunnar Falk? Well, that was still a dream I hadn’t totally processed yet. I slipped toward him on the sheets, curling my body around his. If three hours of sex wasn’t a record, maybe four would be?
“Hold it there, princess,” he said, turning to face me. His sliver-gray eyes half-lidded and sleepy. I was not a princess. The rules of our country didn’t allow the stepdaughter of the king to hold an official title. I had a crown, though. A very, very small one, made of amber.
It was really more of a headband.
Gunnar, on the other hand, was the Prince. His crown was gigantic and made of antlers and amber and diamonds. It was—just like him—pretty badass. Gunnar was next in line for the throne of Vasgar.
He propped himself up on his elbow, and the royal seal—the howling wolf and sword tattooed in beautiful detail across his chest—shifted as he moved. Like it too was restless and wanted to howl.
It really was a work of art, the tattoo and the chest.
“You really need to leave,” I said. “We have a council meeting in like five hours.”
“I have lunch with the foreign ministers today, too.”
“Do you need help?”
“No. I got that handled.”
Good, because I hated the foreign ministers’ meetings. And he knew that, which might have been why he let me off the hook.
I couldn’t resist one more kiss, to his lips this time. Full and soft right now, but capable of twisting into cruel smirks and cutting smiles. I had been the recipient of the cruel smiles for years after my mother married his father and we moved into the palace.
It was no secret we spent many years hissing and spitting at each other.
This summer, all of that changed when we started working with the council. Together. It was a shock to both of us that we were such a good team. In council chambers and in bed.
I mean really, the in bed thing was a total shock. But I could not get enough of this man.
And to my delight he could not seem to get enough of me.
“But I’m not leaving until we talk,” he said.
“Now, you want to talk?” I laughed. We were whispering, and the bed felt like a cocoon. The palace was outside. My mother and his father and all the gossip and scrutinizing and judgement. It had no place in this room.
“I came in here to talk,” he lied. “You distracted me.” His hand slid down over my hip and my stomach, and I just managed to restrain myself from flinching. Sex was one thing—when we were in the moment, I didn’t care about all my extra flesh. Because Gunnar seemed to LOVE my extra flesh. My hips and stomach and thighs and breasts. His enthusiasm healed a lot of old wounds about my weight. Not all of them. It would take more than a summer of sex to fix some of the damage my mother had done, but it was a start.
I couldn’t be sure if I believed I was all the things Gunnar whispered to me when we were having sex—that I was sexy and beautiful and strong.
But I believed that he believed that, and it was a start.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk. You keep your hands to yourself.” I pushed his hands back toward his body.
“And you keep your lips to yourself.”
“Agreed. Go.” I grinned at him and he grinned back. My miles of blonde hair were spread out against the pillows, the ends of it tangling with his jet black hair.
“You’re leaving in two weeks,” he said and I went cold. If I’d known this was what he wanted to talk about I wouldn’t have sworn to keep my lips to myself. New York. The plan before the summer started had been New York.
I took a deep breath but didn’t say yes.
“Right?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “New York? That’s still the plan, right?”
“Not…really.”
“Brenna.” He frowned, reading me with ease. “What have you done?”
“I refused the internship.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I couldn’t put it into words. Not yet. I could only lift my hand and sort of circle it around the bed. His eyebrows lifted and his soft lips got sharp edges.
“No,” he said. “No, Brenna. You’re not giving that up for me.”
“Listen to me. Hear me out.”
He sighed, my lover vanishing as my old nemesis returned. Stubborn and cutting. This wasn’t how I wanted to do this.
“Your father is in terrible health,” I said.
“Not that bad.”
“Gunnar,” I sighed.
“Fine. Yes. He’s practically on his death bed, are we supposed to pretend to mourn?”
“No,” I said. Few people would mourn Frederick, least of all his son. “But we should plan.”
“His funeral? Excellent. I will order the champagne. But none of this explains why you gave up such an opportunity. New York—”
“You are next in line for the throne, and there is so much work that needs to be done. Work that you’re doing. That we…we are doing. You have put the plans in place to grow our economy, to strengthen our schools—”
“So you’re skipping the internship with the UN to work for me?”
Ah, I could not say I had no pride. Because that stung. That he would assume with his royal privilege that I would only work for him. Subordinate. Never equal.
And this…what I was proposing…it was all pride. He wasn’t wrong, some of the ideas we were working on were mine, and I loved my country enough, and I…I loved Gunnar enough to want to lead alongside him.
“With you. We could…” Oh, it was hard to say, even if I was proposing it as a business venture. A “do what’s best for the kingdom” kind of deal. But I knew he would see right through it, to my soft beating heart behind the idea.
I didn’t have to say the word though; his mouth fell open for just a moment in the most horrible shock. I could not look at him and see his horror at the idea.
I had thought… Foolish. Stupid Brenna. He’d never said a word about love while he was between your thighs.
“Marry?” he asked. “Are you proposing to me, Brenna?”
“We would be good for Vasgar,” I said in a small voice.
“What part of Vasgar is good for you?” he asked. “Not your mother. Not my father. The council that only humors you because I’m standing beside you? Why would you want that when you could have the world, Brenna? The whole goddamn world and any part of it you want?”
“I only want this part.” That did not come out as strong as I’d hoped. I sounded weak and scared and unsure. “And you.”
He rolled off the bed, sitting on the edge with his back to me, and I fumbled at my bedside table for my glasses. Once they were on, I sat up and pulled the sheets from the bottom of the bed where we’d kicked them in our haste. I pulled them up over my body, which suddenly was flawed again.
Thick Brenna, wanting more than I should have.
I felt a shuddery kind of pain start in my chest. Like everything was breaking apart.
And I did what I always did—I ran right at it, because if it was going to break, I was going to break it into a million pieces.
“I love you,” I said to his long, lean back in our ancient language. “And I want to marry you. For the country. And for… for me.”
He was silent for a long time, his head bent, his dark hair flopped over his forehead, damp with sweat.
“Gunnar,” I breathed, hope and love making a fool of me. “Are you going to say something?”
He stood and turned to face me, proud in his nudity. His muscles and tattoos, the flaccid length of his penis against his leg. I blushed looking at it, even now.
“What should I say, Brenna?” he asked and the smile he gave me was not… the smile I’d grown used to. The one he gave me across the throne room or in council chambers, the sly, secret, sweet one that I’d believed had been just for me. No. He gave me his cruel smile. The ruthless twist of his lips that he’d
greeted me with when my mother and I had moved into the palace and he’d hated me.
And then he laughed. He laughed and he looked down at my soft white body. The shape of me obvious under the sheet. My too-broad shoulders, my too-big hips.
A peasant’s body, my mother always said when we went to try on clothes that never fit. My father’s blood.
“Gunnar,” I breathed, trying to find a blanket to pull up over my body. The sweat gone and replaced by a chill so deep I could feel it spreading to my bones.
“You are not meant for the throne of Vasgar,” he said.
And then he, the man who’d taken off all my clothes, kissing every body part revealed, pulled the duvet up over me like he was tired of looking at me.
“I will marry someone the council picks out for me,” he said and pulled on the thin silk pajama pants he’d worn into my room. “A noble woman. With more money than God. With a pristine bloodline and a body so thin and sharp I could use it to cut my meat. And you—”
He looked down at me on the bed, and I scrambled up and out of it, the sheet clutched to my chest. My heart breaking into a thousand pieces. “You’ll finish law school. And you’ll get that internship back and you’ll get the fuck out of this country if I have to fly you there myself.”
“I don’t want the internship, Gunnar.”
“Listen to me, Brenna.” He leaned over the bed. “Listen very carefully, because I will not say this again.” His eyes looked all over my face, as if pulling apart each piece of me for dissection and disposal. My pink cheeks. My glasses. My plain brown eyes. My heavy eyebrows. My long blonde hair.
“I don’t want you here,” he finally said and I inhaled hard, a deep rattling thing like the time I’d been punched in the stomach at school and it had felt like there was no air left in the world.
“Get on with your life,” he said. “Marry some nice man and have a nice life.” The way he said nice was condemning. “And the fact that your peasant mother married my father will be a footnote in your history. A story you tell at boring dinner parties.”
“You don’t mean this,” I said, blinking away the tears so I could see his cold, calculating face clearly.