Just thinking about her made his dick twitch, and he took himself in hand as he got into the shower, turning the water on. There were small red scratches on his shoulders from her nails, and that made his cock ache all the more. He poured a bit of conditioner on his hand, flattened a palm against the tile, and jerked off, imagining her kneeling before him and burying his hands in those wild blonde curls as he fucked her mouth.
When he finally got out of the shower some time later, Griffin wrapped a towel around his hips and emerged from the bathroom to see Maylee sitting on the end of the bed, blinking sleepily, her hair nearly standing on end.
“You didn’t wake me up,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes.
He moved to her side and leaned down to kiss those crazy, springy curls he was coming to love. “You seemed tired. I thought I’d let you sleep a few minutes more.”
Her cheeks flushed red at that, and she jumped up from the bed. “I should go get dressed so we’re not late for breakfast.”
As she hurried away, he admired the way her ass filled out his boxers. He was going to hide those godawful camouflage pajamas so she’d have no choice but to sleep in his clothing. He liked the look of that quite a bit. She looked like she completely belonged to him.
As she should, he decided.
Griffin dressed, throwing down a few ties to let her pick out one for him. She returned to his room a short time later, those delicious curls tamped down into a tight bun and her even more delicious body encased in a shapeless, demure skirted suit that he was pretty sure he’d seen the princess’s mother wear once. It made her look at least ten years older than she was. He frowned. He’d turned his delicious, tousled Maylee into this frumpy creature.
But she sailed over to him with a beaming smile, plucked a tie from the pile he left for her, and crooked her finger, and he forgot all about anything except that sexy little gesture.
“One of these days,” she teased as she looped the tie around his neck, “I’m going to show you how to tie your own tie. They have tutorials on YouTube, you know. Very informative. And they go real slow so you can follow along.”
“Lovely,” he murmured.
“And just think of how independent you’ll be.”
“Independence is overrated if it means I lose out on your putting your hands on me,” he said boldly, and was rewarded with her blush and a happy giggle.
“There,” she said with a final tug on his tie. “All done. Now come on. We have to eat a quick breakfast today because your schedule is full.”
He sighed. “I don’t see how it can possibly be full. The wedding is in two days and I swear I’ve visited every dignitary, museum, and charity group in all of Bellissime at this point.”
She laughed and gave him a saucy look. “I didn’t make your schedule, Griff. I just manage it.”
True. He could blame Kip for that.
They put the emeralds back in their velvet box, stopped downstairs to lock them up in a secure safe in the manager’s office, and then continued on to breakfast. They’d barely sat down before Maylee opened the computer and began to type, a look of concentration on her face. “We should ask the kitchen for a couple of sandwiches before we go,” she told him absently. “It’s going to be one of those days.”
He crossed his arms as a waiter put a cup of coffee in front of him, frowning. Damn it. The last thing he wanted was “one of those days.” He wanted a day of relaxation. A day of spending time with Maylee and seeing that beaming smile of hers again. He wanted to see her face light up like it had when she’d bought those ugly, ridiculous souvenirs. He most certainly did not want to spend it listening to a charity or three describing how his money would be best spent by them.
Griffin looked over at Maylee. There were hints of smudges under her eyes. She looked tired, and it wasn’t just from last night. He suspected his grueling schedule would exhaust anyone. He knew he was certainly tired of it. He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. “Have you had a chance to see much of Bellissime, Maylee?”
She was reading emails and her lips moved, as if she were committing the information to memory. He had to repeat the question again before she looked over at him. “What? Oh, no. We’ve been much too busy for that.”
Even as she spoke, she put her hands on the keyboard and began to type again. Then, she pulled out that ridiculous Post-it stack and began to make notes. He constantly found them stuck in the back of the sedan. He’d even found one stuck to the bottom of a shoe once. Just like him, she was running herself ragged.
And for one day, he’d had enough. He thought of her excitement at the paltry souvenir stand they’d visited. How would she react when he showed her Bellissime by the light of day instead of a quick walk at night?
Griffin picked up his coffee cup. “I think I shall be sick today.”
It took a moment for Maylee to stop typing, and when she did, she looked over at him. “Huh?”
“I’m sick,” he enunciated, and took a sip of coffee. “Cancel my appointments.”
“Oh, but . . .” She looked at the computer, then back at him, frowning. “What about—”
“It’s either appointments with my mother, other titled people who want a visit from a royal, or people who want money. Tell the charities that they can send me a bill and I’ll give them what they want. Tell everyone else to sod off.”
She chuckled. “Shall I write it just like that? Lord Montagne Verdi wishes for you to sod off.”
“You can word it much nicer, of course. And then we’re going to go sight-seeing.”
Her eyes lit up, which was all that he needed to know he’d made the right decision.
***
After breakfast, they retreated back to their rooms to change. Griffin figured that if they didn’t want to be followed, they’d need disguises. Maylee had picked up a few touristy shirts and baseball caps for family back at home, and so they’d separated to change into jeans and the ugly silkscreened T-shirts. Griffin shoved a baseball cap over his head and frowned at his reflection. “Appalling.”
Of course, when Maylee returned a few minutes later, baseball cap over her curls and a tight T-shirt and jeans outlining her curves, he had to change his mind on their choice of clothing. Her delectable ass filled out her jeans remarkably well.
This, he decided, was a good plan.
“I brought you some sunglasses, too,” she told him, and produced a pair of plastic monstrosities with the lenses printed with the Bellissime flag.
“I have prescription glasses.”
“Yes, and everyone recognizes you in them. Can you see good without them?”
“Can you see well,” he corrected.
“I can see just fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
He sighed. “Never mind. I can see without them, yes.”
“Then put them on. It’s all part of your disguise.”
He did, and turned to give her an unhappy glare.
She choked on a laugh at the sight of him. “Very nice,” Maylee told him, unable to keep a straight face.
“The first place we are going is a sunglasses store,” he admonished her, trying to scowl and unable to in the presence of her happiness.
“Come on,” she told him, and extended her hand for him to take. “I know the back way out of the hotel. No one will see us.”
Griffin put his hand in hers and was surprised at how pleasant it was. Hers was warm and soft and reminded him of her touches last night. This was definitely getting more enjoyable by the minute.
They went through the maze of the hotel and then through the back loading dock, and escaped down a narrow alleyway, walking two blocks before coming out into the midst of the Bellissime streets. They were full of tourists, the streets garlanded with the royal family’s colors.
“Where to first?” Maylee asked him with a squeeze of his hand.
He tapped his sunglasses. “We’re getting rid of these.”
She laughed again, and they went off into the shopping distric
t.
***
Griffin decided he rather liked spending time with Maylee. She was fascinated by everything, from the street vendors with wooden puppets in the shape of both the crown princess and Luke Houston, to the chocolate cakes sold on the corners. They passed plenty of stores, but Maylee was more interested in buying things to send to family than for trinkets of her own.
He got a far less embarrassing pair of sunglasses, and he let her lead the way after that. To his surprise, she was just as interested in the older buildings of Bellissime as she was with the touristy stops. Every plaque they passed by, she stopped to read and then would ask him questions. It was a pleasure walking the streets with her and telling her about his homeland, and she soaked up every word. He especially liked her intake of breath when they passed the Saine-Anne de la Vallée Cathedral, the tiny, ancient church that Alex and Luke would be married at a few days hence.
“It’s so beautiful,” she told him.
“It’s very old,” he agreed, and went into an accounting of the church’s history, dating all the way back to Charlemagne. She listened to every word with wide-eyed pleasure. Normally when he went on about his antiquities interests, people got bored or tuned out. Maylee just looked impressed and fascinated. He made a mental note that he’d have to arrange for her to travel with him on a future trip. Perhaps to Peru. Wouldn’t she be impressed with Macchu Picchu? He knew he’d found it a bracing sight, and he wouldn’t mind seeing it again, through her eyes.
Then he frowned at himself. Maylee wasn’t his assistant, but Hunter’s. She was simply on loan.
He wondered how much he could pay her to defect to him. Maylee was loyal as could be, and he wasn’t sure if Hunter would be willing to give her up, since Gretchen seemed fond of her. Of course, hiring Maylee would cause all kinds of new problems. Kip was rather possessive of his job, and the last thing that Griffin needed was two assistants. He’d have to figure out the details somehow.
“Boy, they sure like dessert here, don’t they?” Maylee asked, her drawl catching his attention. She’d paused in the street, staring at a sweets shop.
“Bellissime is very proud of its chocolate,” he agreed. “Do you want to try some?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she said, grinning.
A few minutes later, they emerged from the shop, two gelato cones in hand. Griffin had gotten a traditional chocolate spumoni and Maylee had gotten a chocolate crème de menthe, which she joked was a fancy pants way of saying chocolate and peppermint.
As they left the shop, Maylee gave her cone a lick. “Mine is amazing. I think I love Bellissime.”
He laughed. “We take chocolate very seriously here.”
She eyed his cone. “Is yours better than mine?”
“You want to give it a taste?” They moved to a nearby park bench and sat down. A fountain burbled nearby, and people strolled past, taking pictures. It was all very touristy and pretty. “I’ll share if you want.”
“If I say yes, are you going to laugh at me for eating yours and mine?”
“Not at all. I’d love to watch you lick my cone.” And he wagged his eyebrows at her.
She snorted. “Perv.” But she reached for his hand and dragged his cone toward her mouth, and then gave it a tentative lick. Then, she moaned. “Oh, my God. That’s incredible. Why is everything so good here?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth, the small pink tongue darting out to lick at his cone again, and then retreating back between those pretty, perfect lips.
And now he had a rather uncomfortable erection forming. He closed his eyes and started counting back from a hundred, even as she made little pleased noises in her throat as she ate her gelato.
“You want to taste mine, Griff?”
God, she was really going to drive him to distraction today, wasn’t she? Forget the counting. He opened his eyes and looked over at her, just as she was giving the top of her cone an open-mouthed kiss, her tongue flicking out against it. Chocolate coated her pink lips.
He leaned forward and took her lower lip in his mouth, sucking on it. “Delicious,” he murmured, and then nibbled on her upper lip while she made soft mewing sounds that drove him wild. “I think I like yours better.”
She stared at him, dazed, as he pulled away. Her lips were slightly parted, her mouth wet from his kisses. “You . . . you want to taste it again?” Her voice was breathless.
“More than anything,” he admitted. “But if I do, they’ll cite me for public indecency.”
Her gaze flicked to his lap, where his arm was carefully maneuvered over his cock. And she laughed. “I’m sorry. I’ll behave.”
“Let’s discuss something that will rid me of my problem, shall we? And save the tastings for later.”
“All right,” she said cheerfully, and took a big crunching bite of her cone. After a moment, she said, “Tell me about your childhood.”
That’d do it. Talk of his family always made any sexual thoughts disappear. “Must I?”
“Well, no, I guess you don’t have to.”
Griffin regarded the fountain nearby. “I’m afraid it’s one of those revolting ‘poor little rich boy’ stories. Except when I was growing up, my branch of the family wasn’t all that wealthy. We had several estates but other than the crown’s money, we were essentially bankrupt. My mother, Her Royal Highness Sybilla-Louise, married my father because his branch of the family had an acceptable title and enough wealth to keep the family estates afloat. It was not a love match. Not even close. You’ll notice that with the exception of my cousin Alexandra, not many in the royal family marry for love.”
“It sounds kind of backward,” Maylee observed, giving her cone a furtive lick.
“It is. We like to pretend that the royal family is as enlightened as the current times, but they’re still stuck in old protocol more than any other group I have ever imagined. My family was not a warm one. I rarely saw my parents except for state functions, and my brother and I were shuffled off to live with various nannies at my parents’ country estates. When we were old enough, we went to boarding schools.” He shrugged. “I went to Eton in Great Britain.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Eton? It wasn’t so bad.”
“No, your family. Didn’t you love and care for one another?”
He gave her a wintry smile. “I care more for my cousin Alexandra than I do for anyone else in my family.”
“That’s so sad.” Her round face looked unhappy. “Weren’t you lonely?”
“I suppose. I had my books and my studies. I didn’t need much more than that.”
Her hand reached out and touched his.
Griffin grew uncomfortable with her sympathy. “At any rate, my father died when I was fifteen, and my brother, George, became the duke, which made him even more insufferable than he already was. When I was finished with my studies at Eton, I was called home for a time, but it was rather . . . miserable.” He paused, thinking of George’s angry rages about money, his new wife who cried because he never came home, his mother’s icy demeanor that cared more for the hem of his coat than if Griffin was happy. The constant royal functions and scrutiny. “I asked to go to college in the States. My mother was appalled at the thought, but I would not be budged. At the time, I wanted to get as far away from my family and Bellissime as possible, and I thought the States would be the perfect place to do it.”
“They must have finally let you go,” Maylee commented.
“Mmm. Eventually. I did, however, have to forfeit all claim to the throne in order to leave, though. My mother was convinced that Bellissime wouldn’t approve of a States-bred king, never mind that I was ninth in line and would never see the throne unless a plague descended upon the royal house.” His mouth twitched and he looked over at Maylee. “I’d say the joke is on her, considering that Luke Houston will be the next king of Bellissime.”
Maylee wasn’t laughing, though. Her face wore an expression of sympathy.
“So
I forfeited any claim on the throne, abdicated all my titles. My mother had the queen dissolve my original title and my inheritance returned to George’s hands, which made him far more amenable to sending me off to the States once that happened. I was given the title of Viscount Montagne Verdi since it wouldn’t do for Mother to have a mere ‘mister’ for a son.” He smiled thinly. “And so I moved to the States and never went back.”
“And you made truckloads of money,” Maylee said. “And rubbed their noses in it.”
He laughed. “I made truckloads of money,” he agreed. “And then I paid off all of Mother and George’s debts.”
Her brows drew together. “Why?”
“Family loyalty, I suppose.” Though sometimes, he wondered why he did so. It certainly hadn’t improved things with Mother or George. If anything, they resented him more for carving his own path and ending up incredibly wealthy.
“Your family sounds like a bunch of jerks, Griff.”
“They’re titled. They can’t be jerks. Snobs and assholes, yes. Jerks, no.”
She laughed and tossed a piece of her cone to the ground. Immediately, birds flocked to it and she began to tear off another piece. “It sounds very sad and lonely, if you ask me. Do you have family in the States, then?”
He thought of the Brotherhood, his friends who had been at his side and helped him more than any family member possibly could have. “I have friends. It’s enough for me.”
His phone buzzed.
Griffin pulled it out of his pocket and grimaced at the photo that popped up. Jonathan and the foreman of his dig, squatting next to a dug trench and grinning like a pair of idiots. “Speaking of friends,” he said dryly. “Jonathan is determined to make me hate him, it seems.”
She peered over his shoulder at the picture. “Because he’s there and you’re not?”
“I couldn’t abandon Alex,” he said. “Though I do wish heartily that she had eloped.”
Maylee laughed.
Chapter Eleven
They spent the day walking the streets of Bellissime, hand in hand. Maylee purchased a few souvenirs, but they spent most of the time simply strolling, visiting tourist spots, and tasting confections at every dessert shop they passed. By the time they headed back to the hotel, Griffin’s feet hurt and his stomach ached from too much chocolate, but he’d enjoyed every moment of the day.
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