by Amy Brent
“Women.” He sighed, as if she had forcibly made him go into this strip club and watch her shake that ass. He swiveled to face me head-on, his face serious now.
“What did she say? That tabloid thing was just a crazy fuckup, right? She was buying it for a friend or some other guy she was screwing, right?”
His voice contained all the abject hope I had felt myself until yesterday—with the exception of her being with another guy.
“I’m afraid not.”
Henry processed this with an impassive expression. Then he bobbed his head in a nod so forceful, it shook several dark curls askew.
“But she’s getting rid of it if it’s yours. Right?”
His hopeful tone got my blood boiling.
“That’s the last thing I want,” I snapped.
“It may not be up to you,” Henry pointed out with a shrug.
I scowled. Already, this conversation was going exactly how I had expected—and feared.
“She’s keeping it, and I want her to,” I stated in a matter-of-fact voice. “More than that, I’m considering making it public.”
This slapped Henry out of his hot-female-ass-induced stupor.
“What?!”
His shock satisfied me slightly. My teeth thoughtlessly bit at my lip. There was some dry skin there, a whole layer I had to tear off. Just how there was a layer of incomprehension over Henry’s mind. He’d never been fond of anyone for an extended period, so there was no way he’d understand what I was going through.
“That will ruin everything,” he concluded in a shocked voice that suddenly became pleading. “Charles, if you do that, then that means I—”
“May have to become monarch,” I finished for him. I shook it away. “Maybe it doesn’t have to come to that. Maybe I can…”
Henry jumped to his feet.
He scoffed. “What? Somehow make it fly that you are not only having a baby with someone outside marriage, but that the someone is an American model? They’ll let me on the Queen’s Guard first.”
He started pacing one-footed, which consisted of rocking his body one way and then the other. All the while, his expression grew darker and darker. He rounded on me with an insistent look in his eyes.
“You know Mother—”
“Will probably disown me for good,” I concluded.
Hovering before me, Henry’s squinting eyes searched my face incredulously, as if he were the one sitting here instead of me. From the way things had been going, anyone would have guessed this was bound to happen to Henry and not me. And yet here we were, our roles reversed, the so-called responsible brother on the cusp of a career-crucifying scandal.
Finally, Henry’s whole body sagged, as if he’d talked and rocked the last dregs of energy out of himself. Staring into the dark indent of the curtain ahead of him, he asked, “What are you going to do?”
I stared into the same curtain indent.
“That’s the operative question, isn’t it?”
“And what did she say?” Henry asked, a new hopeful tone in his voice.
“She did offer just slipping away, going back home to the States, and not mentioning anything to anyone.”
With one single loud clap of his hands, Henry leaped up. “That just solves everything, now doesn’t it?”
I rose, my glare cutting into him. “That doesn’t solve a thing. It’s an option, nothing more—one which I point-blank refused and even now don’t want to consider.”
“Don’t want to consider,” Henry repeated in an exasperated tone. “Are you serious right now?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I snapped. “The real question is how anyone can expect me to, in good conscience, just abandon my own child and the girl I…” My words trailed off into nothingness.
Henry gestured at me to continue. “Go on. The girl you what?”
The question was a sneer, and my response was a frown. My phone rang.
“Charles, you’re with Henry, aren’t you?”
I nearly dropped the phone on the spot. It was my dad on the other line. I gawked at my brother’s furious face for a moment before words sputtered out of me.
“Yes, I am, Father. What is going on?”
“What is going on is that I have something to talk to you about,” his tired voice said. “Express orders of your mother, of course. Besides, your presence has been sorely missed at the palace since that unfortunate family meal we shared. Am I not permitted to see my sons from time to time?”
My gaze roved around the strip club’s cloaked back room for some kind of hasty escape hatch or something. But the only way out seemed to be the way I’d come in—through the music-roaring, girl-cooing sketch house. There was no way I could retrace my steps while my dad was on the other line.
“Where are you boys at the moment?” Dad continued. “I could come meet you.”
That lodged a pit the size of a football in my throat. Shit, shit, shit.
Seeing my face, Henry whispered, “What is it?”
Covering the phone, I whispered, “He wants to meet us right now.”
“Shit,” Henry groaned.
“We’re at a coffee place,” I said vaguely. “Can’t remember the name. Let me just take a look at the sign and text you the address. Give me a minute.”
As soon as I’d hung up, I grabbed Henry’s arm. Together, we barreled out of Pandora like the long black-walled building was about to explode. Because, in a way, it was. If Father found out we were here… Well, the repercussions wouldn’t have been as heinous as if Mother found out, but they wouldn’t be good either, especially if he thought to ask what we’d been talking about.
Out on the sidewalk, Henry and I glimpsed a coffee shop across the street. Quickly, I texted my father its name, and then Henry and I hurried inside.
--
Meeting with Father took longer than I would’ve liked. Part of me had been hoping to call up Heidi after getting advice from Henry and figuring out what I was going to do. Now, not only was I more confused than ever, but I had my kindly inquisitive father to deal with. He was dressed incognito in ugly spectacles and a low hat so no one noticed him. Or if they did, they didn’t let on.
As it turned out, he had been dispatched by Mother to wrestle out of us who we were taking to the ball. Before any rational thought could occur to me, I blurted out, “Heidi.”
And as Henry ogled me, he blurted out, “And I’m taking her friend…Liz…”
“Liza,” I supplied for him. This appeased father but only worsened things for me. Taking Heidi to a high-profile charity ball like this after all that had happened…it was an idiotic idea at best and a fatal one at worst. Whatever happened there, it wouldn’t be good.
And yet, as I settled into the wooden-back café seat, my mind was already sinking into the comfy warmth of the idea. Me and Heidi, arm in arm…
My father’s current presence was acutely unbearable, though. He was a man who, over time, I had come to look up to, and I couldn’t tell him what I’d done, not when things were still undecided like this.
And yet, the lie of omission took root in me so deep that I was practically stuttering with it. Finally, I excused myself to the bathroom.
Standing in the corner away from the urinals, I did something, an act that was now becoming something of a habit for me: call Heidi during my first free moment. Our conversation was brief and hesitant on her part, but she’d agreed to meet me at the house and have my car pick her up as usual.
And now, thirty minutes later, after an unlikely excuse and a hasty departure from the café, here I was, sitting on the hidden house’s inside steps, waiting.
She was late and looked paler than I would’ve liked.
“You all right?” I asked immediately, covering her with my arms.
Her arms and torso went stiff, as if she didn’t trust herself to lean into the hug.
“I guess as well as can be expected,” she said in a small voice.
My arms still around her, I conveyed her to sit
beside me on the steps. My hand slipped to hers, and once again her responding gesture was hesitant.
“I think people should know.”
My words were louder than necessary, but Heidi didn’t give any indication that she’d heard me.
Rage arced through me.
“Heidi.”
She closed her eyes and nodded, tears escaping from her lowered lids.
“It’s just that it will ruin everything: my career, not to mention your…”
Her teary eyes sought out mine.
I squeezed her hand. “Future as a monarch. I just keep thinking there has to be another way. Another way that isn’t so black and white. That isn’t either you and the baby leave or we both lose our careers.”
A bitter smile traced the edges of her lips. “I don’t think real life is like that.”
Nothing was all I could think to say. Instead, my fingers traced hers, up and down, over knuckles and around nails.
Then Heidi spoke again. “But I’m willing to try, if you are.”
Hearing the furtive hope in her voice, I blurted out, “Would you go to the ball with me?”
Her smile was surprised, puzzled.
“It’s this big affair for a charity I’m passionate about,” I explained. “It’s the World Wildlife Fund. I think last year, they were responsible for taking the rhino off the endangered species list.”
As her smile became thoughtful, I couldn’t resist those tempting lips any longer.
When my lips first met hers, passion sizzled all the way to my groin. Oh yes. It was time.
Chapter 20
Heidi
We kissed our way up the stairs. On the top step, he pressed me into the wall with the flat of his palm while his other hand enjoyed me. It squeezed my breasts over my polyester shirt, slid around to my ass, squeezing over my jeans even harder.
Lightning bolts of pleasure crackled through me. Damn had I missed this.
His hand locked around my wrist and tugged me down the hallway. But instead of leading me to the special bedroom with all his toys, he led me into the normal one.
In the doorway, a flash of tenderness broke the hungry expression on his face.
“I don’t want to hurt…the baby.”
His hand settled on my belly as my body eased into his. He backed into the doorframe, and my hand slipped over the top of his.
“I think it’s a girl.”
He glanced at me, surprised, but I only shrugged.
“I don’t know why. I just do.”
“A girl,” Charles said, his grin growing.
Now I was the one tugging him to the bed. The fire coiling in me couldn’t wait any longer.
On the bed, both of us on our sides, we kissed and sucked each other’s clothes off piece by piece. First went my stiff button-up shirt, then my already too-tight jeans. Then off came his shirt and his pants. The rest were flung off like afterthoughts as we enjoyed each other.
This Charles was new, tender and yet no less skillful. His fingertips’ slow and rapid strokes sent every part of me tingling with suppressed desire. His mouth followed the path too, kissing and sucking and enjoying every square inch of me.
From one breast to another, he laid out his oral adulation. He took extra time on my nipples, sucking and sucking and sucking them until their puffy service became hard. Then he swooped back to the first once it had become puffy again. His skillful tongue-flicking had my fingers raking down his back with joy.
When he moved his kisses up to my neck and feasted on the tender flesh there, I couldn’t hold in my groans any longer. They spilled out as his fingers trailed over me.
They’d been cupping my face and breast, but now they were all over me in ever-moving, ever-gentle, ever-swift, and ever-pleasurable flecks of movement, of pulsing joy. He went over and about my curves as if he were designing them at the same time he was enjoying them, as if he were finger painting over my body a canvas of his desire.
Gradually, his erection dug into my thigh. Our kissing, breathless forms eased together closer, and closer, until his raging boner was at my entrance, almost touching.
When the tip met my opening, it was just a kiss more than anything. My pussy trembled as if electrocuted. Every part of me ached for him. I strained my pelvis toward him, and he gave it to me, what I’d been needing so very long.
His entrance was pure, pussy-tingling ecstasy. As he finally entered me, our bodies swept over each other, chest to chest, hand in hand. There was the odd squeeze, so gentle and yet so pleasurable, so in tandem. It was part of a dance our limbs already knew by heart. All it took was closing our eyes and letting them do what they wanted.
Our forms flowed together, in and out, over and around. He filled me so fully, kissed me so entirely that after only a minute or so, I was ready to come. My body was rumbling with the upcoming orgasm.
But Charles hadn’t had his fill of me. His hands slowed; his strokes lessened. He drew them out until they shook the very core of me. Oh. Oh. Oh.
My body was wailing with this almost unbearably extended smear of pleasure.
He couldn’t suppress his joy either. He was sweeping it into me, onto me, over me, through me, as me. It was as one that we fused, that our bodies crumpled into each other. His cock was just another part of me.
Both of us were groaning with it, spilling with it. Finally, we were enveloped by it.
We came as one shaking body. Five full-body shakes. Shake. Shake. Shake. Shake. Shake.
And then we slumped into each other, no longer fully connected, but still one.
It didn’t take long for the memory of regular life to encroach.
One of Charles’s thoughtful hands rested on my stomach. I glanced over to see him looking both spellbound and uncomfortable. I sat up, hopped off the bed, and salvaged my things. There was no point hanging around here until Charles started wondering when I’d go. I’d rather bite the bullet myself.
“Don’t worry about a dress,” he said as I was getting ready. To my questioning glance, he explained, “For the ball.”
“Did I say I was going to the ball?” I asked with a cheeky smile.
Charles cocked his head at me.
“I think your body might’ve answered for you. Hate to say it, but it’s true.”
I kept my smirk close-lipped and my head turned away to disguise the butterflies exploding into flight inside my chest.
“I guess that’s that then,” I said simply.
“As I was saying,” Charles continued, “I’ll have a dress sent to you for the ball. Just text me your measurements if you don’t trust me to tell the tailor.”
“I think I’ll do that,” I said.
We stood there for a minute, looking and smiling at each other, before Charles’s smile started to falter.
“I should be going,” I said quickly, heading for the door. “But let me guess…”
“I’ll walk you to the door, you’ll take the car, and I’ll definitely be seeing you later,” he said.
It struck me, as he walked me downstairs, how utterly different things where and yet how utterly the same. Despite Charles’s grand promises, his actions today had betrayed something different, something uncertain. Things still weren’t solved. They were as far from solved as you could get.
Chapter 21
Charles
“You’re not going to make that shot.”
Henry’s complacent voice was definite as I leaned over the red felt of the pool table to make my shot. As my cue connected with the cue ball, I turned to him.
“I could say the same thing about you. Your date for the state ball is just asking for trouble.”
Henry paused for a minute. Both of us watched the cue ball hurtle toward the cluster of striped and solid balls. Smacking into them, it succeeded in sending two into the holes. One was striped, which was mine, and one was solid, which was Henry’s.
Henry swiveled to me, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his tweed pants.
“Let’s face it. My little American model will go virtually unnoticed compared to the major infraction and havoc you’ll be causing by bringing yours, especially considering that tabloids scandal.”
As he took the cue from me and went over to make his own shot, I reminded him about an important fact. “Neither Mother nor Father know about the tabloids scandal, and I intend to keep it that way. Besides, I’m inviting Heidi because I actually enjoy her company.”
“What, and I don’t enjoy Liza’s?” Henry asked before he slid his cue into the cue ball in a neat hit, sending a striped ball into a hole.
My glare dug into the center of the red upholstery of the wall in front of me.
“I’m just saying,” I continued as he aimed the wooden stick for his next shot, “that disappearing for weeks—heck, months—at a time and then reappearing is…ungallant.”
Henry said nothing as he took his next shot. It was a good hit squarely onto the striped 17 ball, which ricocheted toward the far hole on the left-hand side. But instead of going straight in like it should’ve, it bounced off the inner corner and went to the nearby hole, clearing it completely.
“Bollocks,” Henry swore, hoisting the cue out at me. “What’s it to you anyway?”
I sidestepped him and his question.
I took my time positioning myself for my own shot. With my black shoes planted squarely on the ground, my coated form dipped down. I even took care positioning the cue and my two hands. Then, I hit. When the cue ball sent my solid ones into two separate holes, I turned to Henry, victory on my lips. His scowl was marked with expectancy for the answer I had yet to give him.
“Mainly, I figure with my date, as you so kindly pointed out, Mother will be peeved enough as it is. So why worsen the blow by you bringing your own unsuitable date?”
“My deepest apologies,” Henry said in a voice that was full of shit.
Nevertheless, he left it at that. No way was I about to admit part of my concern stemmed from Heidi telling me how upset the whole Henry affair had made Liza.
“How’s the other palace by the way?” I asked.