A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  As with the dancing, she went where he wanted her. She went further: she huffed a moan that seemed part arousal, part frustration and ground herself against his thigh. They were both wearing jeans, but he could feel the heat emanating from her through both layers of denim. Fuck. Yes. He had not imagined things going this far, but now he could not imagine stopping. He used his leg to grind back against her. Abruptly, she broke their kiss and let out another moan. This one was lower, longer, dirtier. This one was all frustration. She rocked her hips against his leg, and he thrust it harder against her core. Did it again, setting up a rhythm meant to encourage her to writhe against him. Let his face fall to her neck and whispered, “Yeah. Take what you need.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, like she was shocked, but he was pretty sure it was a good sort of shocked.

  If no one ever danced with the princess of Eldovia like no one was watching, it was safe to say no one ever talked dirty to the princess of Eldovia like no one was watching. “Yes. Keep going.”

  Another gasp. She liked this. He did, too, so he amped it up—both the pressure and the dirty talk. “Use me to make yourself come.”

  And she did.

  It was astonishing.

  Oh dear Lord. What had she done?

  When Marie came back to earth, she wasn’t sure which was the worse transgression, that she’d shown Leo her mother’s secret hideaway or that she’d humped his leg like a dog in heat and had an orgasm in her mother’s secret hideaway.

  He was still holding her. They were both breathing hard.

  He was a wizard. Those fairy tales Gabby so loved? Marie was in one now, and she’d been bewitched by an evil wizard with sexy forearms and a secret plan to ruin her. She knew how these stories went. Soon, she’d be locked in a tower. Or asleep for twenty years. She needed to get away from him.

  Her face was on fire. She didn’t want him to see her. So she buried her face in his neck. Which wasn’t helping on the whole getting-away-from-him front.

  He only let her rest there, mercifully out of his sight, for a moment before he gently pushed her back. Held her at arm’s length. “Hey, hey.” He studied her face for a long moment with those all-seeing, unnaturally pretty eyes, and though it should have been impossible, her face flamed higher. Hotter. Throbbed along with the juncture of her thighs, which was still tremoring with the occasional aftershock.

  “Regrets?” he asked softly. “Real regrets, I mean. Not bullshit ones you think you should have. Because if so, I owe you an apology.”

  Real regrets. That was an interesting way of putting it. It reminded her of the dancing like no one was watching metaphor. Did she really, in her heart, regret what had happened? The prospect of him apologizing for it helped answer that question. She smiled sheepishly and shook her head. “No regrets. If there’s any apologizing, it should be me to you for . . .”

  Leo raised his eyebrows. “For what?” For a moment, he looked like he was trying not to laugh, but she wondered if she had imagined it, because a graveness washed over his face, a kind of serious intensity she hadn’t seen on him before. “For grinding all over me and getting yourself off?”

  Oh my. His words went straight to her oversensitive sex. She wanted to put it down to the fact that she hadn’t had sex in the two years since university. She’d used her time at Oxford, away from the spotlight of royal life in Eldovia, to gain some experience. To have some fun—at least, until her mother died. Not that she had a bedpost full of notches, but she’d had some good times with a few boys. Still, even in those carefree years, no one had ever made her feel like this, and certainly no one had ever spoken to her the way Leo had.

  She liked it. It was embarrassing but thrilling. How to answer? Her first instinct was to be all abashed and missish, because that seemed like the “proper” response.

  But was it? In the sense that proper meant “right”? That sort of response felt weak.

  No, she would own what had happened. She would own her own response to it. “Yes. For grinding myself all over you and getting off on it.”

  “Fuck, Princess,” he bit out. Leo’s face screwed up, and he sounded pained.

  “I’m sorry if doing that was out of line, or if I was . . . using you.”

  “You were using me. I told you to use me.”

  “Right.” Well, she was supposed to be owning this, wasn’t she? So she lifted her chin and straightened her spine.

  The gesture seemed to amuse him. He pressed his lips together like he was trying not to smile. “Let’s just say no apologies are required.”

  “Good. So. Regrets: none on my part. You?”

  He reached out and smoothed her hair. Plucked a leaf out of it. “Maybe just that we wasted so many days not doing this.”

  She felt the grin all over her body. She felt like her face might crack open. Like her chest might crack open—like it would have to, to let all the exhilaration inside her escape so she didn’t burst. That he had enjoyed himself that much with her made her almost giddy. Not with the princess. With her. Even in her relatively carefree university days, away from the scrutiny of the palace, she’d never been able to fully trust that people—friends and lovers alike—were attracted to her and not to her position.

  Leo had his head tilted up to the sky. “It’s starting to get dark.”

  She had to revise her earlier claim of no regrets. She did feel a little bad that she had gotten off as a result of their hot, snowy interlude, but he had not. That was also unprecedented. In fact, she couldn’t think of one time that had happened. In her experience, male orgasm was inevitable and female orgasm was an occasional, irregular bonus.

  But Leo didn’t seem fussed that his needs hadn’t been attended to, and it was getting dark. And to be honest, she was enjoying the lopsidedness of the situation. This moment of selfishness. She busied herself smoothing her coat, still debating whether she should say something. Or attempt to . . . do something. But he was staring at the cabin with a contemplative look. “So what’s the story with the unfinished cabin?”

  “I told you this clearing was my mother’s special place. Our family retreat. The summer before she died, she got the idea to build a little log cabin here. She was always getting these crazy ideas—everything from an ice cream buffet for breakfast to impromptu trips to the Riviera.”

  He smiled and held out his hand. She was used to people doing that with their elbows. She was used to resting her hand on a man’s arm and letting him escort her into dinner or one of those infernal balls. But she wasn’t used to holding hands for the sake of it. It seemed almost painfully intimate suddenly, which was silly given what had just happened.

  She took his hand, hoping the mitten on hers would obscure the fact that it was shaking. “And it’s not precisely true that no one else has ever been up here. There’s a carpenter in the village. Kai—he made the snow globes at the Owl and Spruce.”

  “I met him today. I took Gabby for lunch, and he was there. He was . . . exceedingly silent.”

  She smiled. “Yes. So you can imagine that my secret is safe with him. And I went to school with him. I trust him.” Leo led the way back onto the path. He walked a little ahead of her on the narrow path, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “My mother presented the plan for the cabin to my father. She said it would make our clearing a more comfortable all-season retreat. He agreed easily.”

  “That’s hard to imagine.”

  “It’s hard to . . . overstate how different he was back then.” Marie was having trouble getting the words out.

  Leo stopped walking and turned to look at her without letting go of her hand. It was starting to get dark. He did that thing she’d come to recognize as a signature Leo move where he slouched so he could get right in her face and perform an assessment.

  “He agreed,” she said, pushing through the lump in her throat and rushing to get on with the story. “And she hired Kai, but what you saw was as far as he got. She got sick as the weather turned. She really wanted to see it f
inished, and Kai, God bless him, worked like a fiend. But in the end, she declined faster than the doctors predicted.” She nodded toward the path to signal that she wanted him to start moving again.

  He obeyed, asking, “And you didn’t want to finish it after she was gone?”

  “Oh, I did. More than anything. I still do. But my father won’t hear of it. I took him out here and tried to convince him to let me keep going. I shoveled off the pond and brought our skates . . .”

  “The bad memory you referenced when we were shoveling my place,” Leo said gently.

  “Yes.” Marie still remembered the pain of that day. There was the fresh hurt of her mother’s death but also the sharp sting of her father’s reaction to the clearing. She had thought it would bring them together. But instead she’d lost her mother and her mother’s place. “I was still naïve enough then to think that he might heal. That we might heal together. But he ordered construction halted. I tried to strike a deal with Kai to go behind his back, but my father found out and lost his mind. He issued a royal proclamation saying that it was forbidden for anyone to construct a monument to my mother.”

  “What?” Leo snorted.

  “Mind you, it has no legal teeth. Though the mechanism still technically exists for the crown to issue royal proclamations, they’re not actually enforceable. They’re only used for things like proclaiming a day in honor of an athlete who medals at the Olympics, that sort of thing. And of course no one knew about the cabin. So the proclamation was targeted solely at Kai. Which Kai knew. So he backed down. Not that I blame him.”

  “Why no monument? What if someone wanted to put up a statue in the village or something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like he doesn’t want to remember. He never even talks about her.”

  “It hurts too much,” Leo said, and he said it kindly, like he understood, even though her father had been nothing but rude to him. Marie was glad Leo was ahead of her, glad she didn’t have to look at him.

  “I’ve always wanted to finish the cabin, but there’s no way I’ll find anyone to help me. Even if there was someone I could trust, no one is going to directly disobey a proclamation from their king. Not for something trivial like this, something that doesn’t matter.”

  They’d reached the main road. Leo held up a large branch that was blocking their way so she could pass. He had to drop her hand to do so. She felt the loss.

  “Hmmmm.” He let the single syllable draw out, like he was teasing her about something. She didn’t know what.

  He laughed. Not at her, she was fairly certain, even though she was still confused about what was happening. It felt like a conspiratorial laugh. “It’s too bad you don’t know any architects. Or, technically, architecture school dropouts. You get what you pay for, I guess.”

  “Pardon me? You can’t mean . . .” Could he? That was ridiculous. There wasn’t enough time, for one, and—

  “I do mean.”

  Marie was dumbfounded. Literally unable to speak. She had just been thinking how Leo made everything easy. This, she had to find a way to explain, was not something he could make easy. Not something he could apply his grumpy but relentless American can-do attitude to and just do.

  “Look, Your Majestic Supreme Highness.” He wagged a gloved finger at her. “This is my turf. I am the perfect person to finish this cabin for you.”

  Oh dear god, he was going to do it. He was going to make it easy. Both the job itself and her ability to trust him. Something fluttered in her stomach, something she hadn’t felt for a long time. It was the same feeling she’d get when her mother would interrupt a meal, or, even better, dancing lessons, and proclaim it time for a trip to L.A.—or even just family movie night.

  It was an unfamiliar feeling of late, but she recognized it all the same. It was excitement.

  Marie wagged a mittened hand back at Leo. She was going to concede. Of course she was. But she was going to have fun doing it. “You’re the perfect person for the job? I’m not sure how you figure that? I’m a little concerned about this half-architecture-degree business.”

  “Well, yes, but one, you don’t need an architecture degree for this. That’s just a little bonus. This is basically Lincoln Logs. I worked construction for years. Finishing this off will be a piece of cake.”

  She tried not to smile. “Very well. What’s two?”

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘One,’ just now, implying that there was more than one reason you were the perfect person for this job.”

  “Right.” A slow, almost evil smile blossomed. “Two is: I don’t give a flying fuck about your father and his royal proclamations.”

  Back at the palace, Leo hunted down Gabby and heard about her afternoon. She toured him around the kitchen and gave him tastes of all the hot chocolate she’d been helping make. He felt a little bad that he was only giving her half his attention, but two things were happening that were distracting the hell out of him. One, he was horny. That was what happened when you let a princess hump you in the woods. Two, doubts were creeping in. Again, a fairly standard outcome when you let a princess hump you in the woods.

  After what felt like forever, Gabby was dispatched for a predinner bath—she had chocolate firmly lodged under her fingernails—and Leo went to his room and FaceTimed Dani.

  He didn’t even bother asking her about the book. He didn’t even bother with hello. He dived right in—because he needed to have his goddamn head examined. “Marie and I got it on in the woods. Sort of.”

  Dani started laughing.

  “What?”

  “Oh my god,” she choked out, barely able to get the words out.

  “Will you shut it? I need advice, not mockery!”

  “Okay, okay, sorry.” She composed her face into an overly serious expression. “Shoot.”

  “What do I do now? Apologize?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Uh, because I defiled the goddamn princess of Eldovia in the woods. In her woods. In the woods surrounding her palace.”

  “Did she enjoy being defiled?”

  “Well, yeah. I think so.”

  “Did she defile you back?”

  “Actually, no.” He shifted in his seat.

  She snorted. “I fail to see the problem. Except maybe for your blue balls. Poor Leo.”

  “How can you not see the problem? I got Marie off in the woods!”

  “So you’re having a little holiday fling. Enjoy it. Try to get off yourself next time.”

  “Do you think she wants to have a fling with me?” Was that what was happening here? No. That didn’t make any sense. “What would be in it for her?”

  Dani cracked up. Threw her head back and cackled.

  “What?”

  “Are you really that dumb?”

  Leo didn’t know how to answer that. So apparently he really was that dumb.

  “Have you ever thought about why Giada keeps fucking you even though you guys broke up years ago?” she asked.

  “Because it’s efficient?” he ventured, falling back on the word he usually used to describe his thing with Giada.

  “Yeah, but she moved to Jersey City! She hauls her ass all the way to your place.”

  “Are you trying to say she has a thing for me?” Because she absolutely didn’t. Their relationship had been brief, and it was ancient history. The sparks—those kind of sparks, anyway—were long gone. And he hadn’t even seen Giada for the better part of a year.

  “No! I’m trying to say that all signs point to you being good in bed, Leo.”

  “Oh.” He was embarrassed. This was like talking to his sister about sex. “You know what? I gotta go,” he said.

  “Yeah, you do that.” She smiled at him. “Bye, Leo. I would say, ‘Be good,’ but I think since you asked for my advice, I’ll actually say, ‘Be bad.’”

  He needed to shower before dinner, but he had a bee in his bonnet about this, so he typed a text to Giada. Hey. He probably should have said more. She
was going to interpret that incorrectly.

  I can’t.

  Leo chuckled. Yep. Actually, he shouldn’t do this over text. That was a dick move, right? Even if they weren’t really breaking up. They’d already done that, years ago. Still. He called her.

  “Leo. I told you, I’m busy.”

  “Yeah, that’s not why I’m calling. I just need to talk to you for a sec.”

  “Okaaay.” Giada sounded skeptical, which was fair enough.

  “I want to . . . break off this thing we have going. If we even have a thing going anymore.”

  “We don’t have a thing going anymore. I met a guy like six months ago.”

  “Well, good for you.” He meant it.

  “He lives downtown.”

  “So no need to haul your cookies up to the Bronx anymore.”

  He’d been kidding, but she must have thought he was offended. “Leo, I’m sorry. Should I have told you? I didn’t think we were—”

  “Hey, it’s okay. I met someone, too. It’s just a temporary thing while I’m on vacation. But I didn’t want to . . .”

  She laughed. “Leo, you are honorable to a fault. I haven’t seen you since last spring. You don’t have to ‘break up’ with me.” He could hear the air quotes. “I was planning to keep you in my back pocket in case things go south with Mr. Lower Manhattan, but you were always better than I was.”

  He wasn’t sure he agreed with her assessment, but he just said, “Thanks.”

  “Send me a text every now and then, let me know how you and Gabby are doing, okay?”

  “You got it. And if you’re in the neighborhood visiting your parents, stop by and say hi if you have time.”

  “I will. And I’m not just saying that.”

  Leo felt like a weight had lifted when they hung up. Giada was a good person. But, Marie aside, he and Giada, who had been hooking up as exes for way longer than they’d been together, had been on autopilot for too long. Hell, most of his life was on autopilot. That was how it had to be. He had to make money and put food on the table. But still, it was nice to feel like he was moving on from something.