His Royal Hotness

by Virna DePaul

  “We could be really fast,” she called sweetly. “I’m already wet.”

  She was sitting up, and when his eyes fell on her, she slowly spread her legs open for him.

  “I know you can fuck me fast with that huge cock of yours, Your Grace.”

  Boxer briefs in hand, he crossed the small distance between them, wrapping his fingers around her ankles and dragging her to the edge of the bed. She crossed her feet around his ass and grinned. Leaning forward, he brushed her hair away so he could nip at her earlobe.

  “I’m going to fuck you,” he whispered.

  A soft moan slipped from her lips, making his dick twitch. He had to get control of himself.

  “But I am going to take my sweet precious time fucking you,” he continued. “Why have minutes when I can have hours?”

  He tugged at the earlobe caught between his teeth until she gasped.

  “I’ll fuck you slowly and deeply until your eyes glaze over and words you don’t even realize you’re saying tumble from your lips and every inch of your body is warm and tingling.”

  She pressed her chest against him, and he grit his teeth from the neediness of her hard nipples. The image of pressing his cock into her wet, eager pussy almost drove away what little resolve he still had. But making her wait…She’d be trembling with desperation, begging him…

  He lifted her from the bed and whispered, “I am going to take my time with you. Later.” He placed her on her feet next to the clothes bunched on the floor and grinned at the pout on her face. “Get dressed.”

  * * *

  Their first stop was an appearance at a local high school track-and-field meet with the rival school. As Callum met the athletes and cheered in the stands with the students, he felt more at ease than he’d ever felt in his official capacity as Duke. His tie no longer seemed tight around his throat, his wool slacks didn’t seem scratchy, his shoes weren’t pinching his toes. He laughed and shouted and felt alive. Molly was by his side the whole time.

  Next stop was the city council building in the center of Kelso. Before Molly, those things felt like being onstage. He was just a stringless puppet there to perform. Everyone expected him to hold himself like Jamie, nod his head like Jamie, shake hands like Jamie. Stiffly and properly, he greeted the council as they walked into the conference room.

  Immediately, Molly tugged at his side.

  “I’m not fucking whoever this guy is,” she whispered, poking her finger into his chest. Then she winked. “Be Callum. I kind of like that guy.”

  Her reminder lifted a huge weight from his shoulders. He loosened up, and the meeting passed with more success than he’d had since taking on the title of Duke of Roxburghe.

  Back in the black sedan, he held Molly’s hand as Mack drove through the old streets of Kelso.

  “Just one more stop,” he said with a smile.

  They pulled into the entrance to St. Mary’s Hospital, and Callum offered his hand to Molly to help her out of the car. He frowned when he saw her flinch at the sight of the hospital lobby.

  “Molly?”

  She flashed what was clearly a forced smile and took his hand in hers, which he found to be surprisingly clammy and cold. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

  He guided her off to the side, his arm around her shoulders. She shook free with another forced smile and added a forced laugh.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” She stepped past him towards the sliding doors of the hospital entrance.

  “You sure?” He caught up after a couple strides and tried to look in her eyes. “You look pale.”

  She rolled her eyes and pointed towards the cloudy sky. “Yeah, I haven’t seen the sun in weeks.”

  She said nothing more as she followed Mack inside and continued to avoid eye contact with Callum. Still, he noticed her tug nervously at the sleeve of her sweatshirt and kick scuffs on the yellow linoleum floor. Callum tried to keep an eye on her, but was soon distracted by the hospital president walking towards them.

  “Your Grace,” she said with a warm smile. “We are so happy to see you here again. If you’d like to come this way, a lot of kids are eager to meet you.”

  “Of course.”

  He bowed his head and the hospital president turned toward the bank of elevators. He glanced back at Molly, who followed without lifting her eyes from the floor. Hospitals were no one’s favorite place to visit, but this seemed more than just a natural aversion. From his experience with Molly at the school, he thought she might enjoy the children. But as he greeted them, talked with them, and showed them the gifts he’d brought, Molly was absent.

  She just lingered in the doorway or leaned against the wall just outside the room. She never talked with any of the kids. Her eyes twitched and her fingers fidgeted.

  When Callum finished racing toy RV cars with an adorable little boy, he realized just how over his hour-long visit he’d gone. Mack approached with his coat, but Molly was nowhere in sight. Callum frowned.

  “Where is—”

  “Third door on the left,” Mack answered, with a nod down the hallway.

  Hurrying his step, Callum slipped into a room lit with gray light from the open windows. It was some sort of art room for children. Small tables and chairs were laid out with crayons and scissors and sparkly glue. Molly sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a miniature red plastic easel. She dipped her paintbrush into a cup of water and swirled it into a pot of yellow paint before adding another ray to the sun she was painting.

  He walked toward her and grabbed a tiny chair. She finally noticed him and wore again a forced smile as she set down her paintbrush. “Ready to go?” she asked.

  She wiped her hands on her knees and was about to stand up when he placed a hand on her shoulder to hold her still, comically lowering his huge frame into the child’s chair he’d grabbed. He could feel her watching him as he stared down at his hands.

  “I broke my wrist when I was nine, but I was out of the hospital in just a few hours. Royal privileges or something. You can still see the scar,” he added, pointing to the spot for her to see.

  She glanced at it, then returned immediately to his face.

  “My high school buddy got pneumonia one winter and spent a week in the hospital.” His eyes traveled to the sun Molly had painted. “I visited him a couple times after school. But I never stayed more than an hour or so.”

  “It’s getting late,” Molly said.

  She closed the lid of the watercolor set and dunked the paintbrush in the cup of water. But Callum placed his hand over hers.

  “My father’s heart attack was so severe he died before he even made it to the hospital. And…” He felt his fingers tighten around her small wrist.

  “When Jamie…” The words were still not there. He cleared his throat. “It was all so fast.”

  Molly’s voice was thick when she spoke again. “I think we should go.”

  “Molly,” he said, crawling down from his chair to join her on the floor. “I know some people have had to be in hospitals much longer that I’ve had to be. And I…I just…all I want to say is that I’m sorry.”

  Tears were forming in her eyes as he caressed his thumb over her hands. His voice was barely above a whisper.

  “And if you want to tell me about what happened to you, maybe your parents, I want to listen.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “Just like you listened to me.”

  She pulled her hands away. Callum feared he’d pushed too far, but she merely wiped at her eyes and placed her hands quickly back into his own cocooned hands.

  “My father won’t talk about her at all,” she began, “and it’s destroying him. But I know why he doesn’t want to. I know all too well.”

  She sniffed. His heart broke at the red rimming her eyes and the tears clinging to her eyelashes.

  “Because it hurts,” she said, fresh tears falling down her cheeks. “It fucking hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.”

  As Callum held her hands and longed to hold more of her, she shar
ed with him the story of her mother’s cancer. In many ways, it was the opposite of his brother’s death. It was long, it was painful, it was anticipated months in advance. And yet, the way it wrenched apart Molly’s heart was exactly the same.

  “My father shut down after her death.” The light outside started to fade, but Callum had no intentions of leaving. “He was already tired. I know that. I doubt he slept at all that last month. He wanted every last second with her. He’d wait by her bed, awake while she slept, just in case she woke up for a few minutes here and there throughout the night.”

  She wiped her nose against her shoulder, unable or unwilling to let go of Callum’s hands.

  “But he just shut down. She was the light of his world and that light was one day just gone. I sometimes can’t remember that my father was once happy. I forget that he used to laugh. I couldn’t tell you what that sounded like. It seems impossible now.”

  She described the happiness of her childhood. Without a brush in her hand, she verbally painted the most vivid and bright pictures of a warm, joyful home. He smiled with her when she said every inch of their tiny apartment had been covered with her mother’s art and every minute filled with her father’s music. Callum laughed with her when she laughed at the angry neighbors that had smacked their floor with brooms and her parents covering their mouths to hide their uncontrollable giggles.

  He grinned along with her infectious grin when she whispered about how they would sneak into museums and art galleries, her parents posing as world-famous art critics with such pompous accents that no one dared question them. It was a time of color, happiness, and bright and beaming love.

  It was pure Molly.

  “My father played every instrument you could think of and even some nobody’s ever heard of. He’d write my mother serenades and love songs. But after she passed, he told me to get rid of it all. All the instruments. All the sheet music. All the stands and cases and albums and CDs.”

  Molly clutched Callum’s hands, her fingers trembling and voice quivering.

  “But that wasn’t all. He wanted my mother’s art gone, too. All of it. Sold, donated, thrown out on the street. He didn’t care.”

  Callum could just make out the outline of her curly hair, the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders as she breathed deeply to steady herself. She was just a silhouette against the evening’s impending darkness. He understood firsthand how the death of a loved one could make someone feel like an empty outline against the dark.

  The question then was how to fill back up — and with what. He’d tried to be a replacement for his brother. It had been a way to fill the outline with as little pain as possible.

  “I’m trying so hard not to be like that,” Molly finally said. “I don’t want to close myself off. My mother certainly wouldn’t have wanted that. I want to continue to love and to see with wide, innocent eyes and to feel everything in the world. The good and the bad.”

  A dying ray from the setting sun, just a single ray, broke through the heavy cloud cover on the horizon and set a glow to Molly’s golden hair, as if by magic.

  “All my father knows is that the art and instruments are out of the apartment where he’s holed himself up in his grief. He doesn’t know I’m keeping it all in a Brooklyn storage unit for when he’s ready. I have to believe one day he’ll be ready. I just have to.”

  Reaching out blindly, Callum trailed his hand along Molly’s face until his thumb caught a hot tear.

  “Until then I just keep painting, I guess,” she said. “Flowers or sunshine or sketches of famous paintings in my notebook.”

  “And me,” he added.

  He caught the glimpse of her smile as the ray of light flashed through the windows.

  “Yes, you,” she said. “And you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Molly

  Molly couldn’t lie to herself any longer.

  She also couldn’t convince herself any longer, no matter how hard she tried, that her relationship with Callum was a fun fantasy to be simply forgotten with the rise of the morning sun. That it was her chance for a good story, one to take home about fucking a hot royal with no strings attached.

  No, the time for Molly to lie to herself and believe those lies went straight out the window the moment she had shared her mother’s death.

  It was an unavoidable fact: she was falling for Callum.

  Sighing with a happy smile, she rolled over and instead of her arm falling onto a warm, broad chest, it fell instead on cold sheets. Craning her neck, she searched the empty bedroom. The bathroom door was open but the light inside was off. Her stomach grumbled, and she hoped that Callum had left to bring hot breakfast up from the kitchen.

  She slipped from under the sheets, and her bare feet hurried across the cold stone to her backpack. Time to grab her notebook and sketch. Callum’s face was fresh in her memory, illuminated in the moonlight. He’d fallen asleep and she’d lain there admiring his handsome, softened features until her own eyelids could no longer remain open. She was about to put every detail to paper, but a sudden buzz distracted her.

  Buzz. What buzzed?

  For a second, she had no idea. Then she literally smacked her forehead. Her phone. Her phone buzzed!

  In this Scottish bliss with Callum, she’d ignored her one link to the world of reality back home—her phone, clinging to 4% battery. Molly squinted at the dimmed screen. Missed calls. Unopened emails from those at her new job. Ugh. Every word felt like a fierce pinch reminding her that this was real life. Of course life, real life, would catch up. The image of Callum’s face in the moonlight broke, and she didn’t have time to put the pieces back together.

  We look forward to seeing you Wednesday morning, Miss Lane. Please report to HR at 8 a.m. for your badge picture and some necessary paperwork.

  Please remember for Wednesday to bring two forms of identification with you. Driver’s license and passport should work fine.

  Once you provide a voided check for the account of your choice on Wednesday we can set up Direct Deposit for you. It should only take one or two pay periods.

  We so look forward to you joining the team and can’t wait to see you Wednesday.

  Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday.

  “Shit,” Molly muttered, tossing her phone like a hot coal into her backpack and burying her face in her hands.

  She’d made herself believe Wednesday didn’t exist. She must have. Today was Friday, and she supposed she’d told herself tomorrow was Saturday and then Sunday and after that? What, another Sunday? Was Sunday to be followed by Sunday and after that Sunday yet another Sunday? She stomped her feet against the stones.

  “How could I have been so stupid?” she moaned into her palms, rocking back and forth. “What the fuck was I thinking?”

  She looked around the room in surprise, as if she hadn’t been sleeping and fucking and eating in it for the past few days. This was the bed of a duke. The sheets, the pillows, the scent of sweat, they were all his. The pants crumpled on the floor by her foot were the pants she had tugged off a duke.

  Her boots were flung into the corner. Not even all the boots’ stickers could keep the left one’s sole from flopping when she walked. Those were hers. The notebook stuffed with memories of her mother, her father, her travels, her hopes and dreams, were hers. And that god-damn phone with its missed phone calls and ignored emails from her new Manhattan job, that was hers. That was her life.

  Panic coursed through her fingers and all the way to her toes. She stood up and suddenly needed to move. Pacing the room, she dragged her fingers through her hair and tried to figure out what to do. She had to speak to Callum and tell him. But tell him what? She must leave, but couldn’t possibly leave? Tell him she wanted to stay?

  “Does he even want that?” she wailed, realizing that was her greatest fear, that no, he didn’t.

  While she’d invested more in Callum than just her body, he might not feel the same. What if for him she was just a fuck? Or, what if his famil
y position chained down his heart and he’d never conceived of truly opening it up for her?

  Flopping down on the bed in a huff, she covered her eyes with her arms and groaned aloud.

  “I’m fucked. I’m just absolutely fucked.”

  Just then the bedroom door opened, and Callum came in with a large box under one arm and a bag of takeout in the other. His eyes lit up when he saw Molly laid out across the bed in his oversized button-down shirt, one tit out and her cheeks flushed.

  “Well, I do believe you are!”

  He laughed, closing the door with his ass and dropping everything to climb onto the bed.

  She was about to tell him that she needed to speak to him, but he leaned down to kiss her and the softness of his lips was so unbelievable, she got lost in his kiss.

  “Good morning,” he whispered with a smile before sliding off the bed.

  Sitting up and touching her own lips as if she could still feel his, she wondered what she was supposed to say to him. It all seemed so inconsequential in comparison to the wonderful tingle on her lips.

  She shook her head and focused. Wednesday. She needed to tell him about Wednesday. She set her resolve as Callum returned to the bed with the bag of takeout.

  But the moment he pulled out the plump donuts and to-go cups of black coffee, it all just slipped away. They faced each other, legs wrapped around each others’ hips, and fed each other bits of donut. A cherry-filled donut mussed Molly’s fingers and she sucked them clean, smiling as Callum leaned back to watch, biting his own lower lip.

  Why would she ever want to think about Wednesday? His hands were on her knees now and that was all that mattered. His shirt slipped from one shoulder and his eyes were on her breast. He was laying her down beneath him and stroking her hair and looking into her eyes.

  What did Wednesday matter when now was so delicious?

  He reached for something above her head and then slid his silk tie across her exposed chest. Goosebumps erupted on her arms, and she felt herself grow wet from all the filthy things he could do to her blindfolded. She closed her eyes obediently as he held the tie in place and secured it behind her head. Hot kisses down her neck seared her skin, and she tilted her head to give him all the access he could want.