A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  “I bet he loved that.”

  “Mr. Benz has an overdeveloped sense of duty that can be exploited, and I had an ulterior motive in sending him skiing with Gabby this morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This morning we had a breakfast for the members of parliament. It’s a social event, primarily, but we also use the occasion to push for our priorities in the upcoming session. Usually Mr. Benz attends.” Marie’s eyes twinkled.

  He chuckled. “And let me guess. Your priorities are different from Mr. Benz’s?”

  “Well, some of them are the same, but I might have taken the opportunity to lay the groundwork for some of my plans with regard to refugee policy.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  “And what have you been up to all morning?” she asked. When he raised his eyebrows—she no doubt knew what he had been up to—she said, “May I see?”

  Leo had been imagining waiting to show her the cabin—the big Christmas reveal. But screw it. She was here, she was practically vibrating with anticipation, and he could not deny her.

  He tugged her basket out of her grasp and gestured for her to go ahead of him.

  They walked in silence, the snow crunching beneath their feet the only sound as they made the turn onto the small, ungroomed path that would take them to the clearing. Apparently they were going to pretend that last night hadn’t happened.

  Which was fine. Denial worked for him.

  She was walking in front of him, so she broke through the tree line into the clearing before he did. He heard her gasp, though, and, shit, that did something to his chest.

  He emerged to see her running, literally running, toward the cabin. When he caught up with her, she turned to him, her hands clasped under her chin and her hood fallen.

  “Oh, Leo, it’s wonderful!”

  She was overreacting. Despite today’s work, the structure itself wasn’t that different looking than it had been. It was just a bit taller, the newer logs a slightly darker color than the old ones.

  But he’d be lying if he said her delight didn’t please him. A strange, warm sensation began unspooling in his gut—it turned the corners of his mouth up, too, almost against his will.

  She ducked under the doorway, and he followed her inside. The walls were now taller than he was, so the sense of being enclosed was magnified. It was going to be pretty damn cozy in here when it was done.

  She continued a slow twirl, cooing over the space.

  “We’re doing the roof over the next two days,” Leo said.

  “We?”

  “Kai,” he said. “He’s been a huge help.”

  Marie turned a mock-annoyed face to him. “So I can’t get him to go against my father, but you can?”

  He shrugged.

  And continued to do that involuntary smiling thing.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  That was probably what the warm feeling in his belly was. “I am.”

  She set her basket down and produced a blanket from it. He took it from her and spread it on the ground in one of the far corners. It was where he would put the kitchen if this was his place.

  He sat back while she unpacked the basket, narrating as she went. “Cheese.” She pulled out several hunks, each wrapped in wax paper. A long, skinny loaf of bread followed. “This was still warm when I raided the kitchens.” She was like Mary Poppins, unpacking a seemingly endless feast from her modestly sized basket. Everything on its own was simple, but also kind of posh in its simplicity. There was some kind of deli meat, very thinly sliced. “This is a local variation on the Swiss Bünderfleisch—it’s cured, dried beef,” she explained. Next she produced mushroom sausage, plums, and walnuts. “And this,” she said, unwrapping a large pastry of some sort. “I am not sure how to translate this. It’s like a cake but also like bread. Like a sweeter croissant, perhaps. But our cook makes it with lemon curd inside, which isn’t traditional, but my mother loved it, and I do, too!”

  Marie’s enthusiasm was infectious. Leo grabbed a knife from the pile of cutlery she was unpacking and sliced into the mystery dessert.

  “You can’t eat that first!” she scolded, her tone split between scandal and amusement.

  “Can’t I?” He extracted the slice and held it in front of him so they could examine it. He hadn’t done a very good job—the lemon had been clustered in the middle and was now spilling out of the tip of his slice onto his fingers. There was probably some kind of royal protocol for cutting whatever this was.

  He licked the lemon off his fingers, realizing as he did so that she was staring really intently at him.

  So, even though nothing could come of it—except perhaps to demonstrate what she and her paperwork were missing out on—he made a show of it. Let his tongue drag over each finger individually. Really went to town on the last one—which didn’t even have any lemon on it—biting down on it and letting his teeth scrape against it.

  Marie was still staring at Leo’s mouth when he was done, so he lifted the cake thing to it and took a bite. It was pretty fucking fantastic. Light and airy like the croissant she’d referenced, but sweeter. But with just enough of the tart lemon that the sweetness didn’t become cloying.

  It was so good he sort of lost his momentum on the whole “torment the princess” front.

  Which is why he only half heard her when she said, “At least hold off on the sweets until I’ve unpacked everything.” She rummaged around in her basket. “I’ve brought you the NDA.”

  The residual sweet tanginess in his mouth turned to ashes. “I told you, I’m not signing your NDA.” He could maybe forgive her for asking the first time. It was habit for her, no doubt. But that she was going to try again was insulting. It made him feel like she didn’t know him at all.

  She produced a small, earthenware jar. It had a piece of light-blue checked fabric in place of a lid, affixed to the jar by a thin, blue ribbon. It looked like one of Dani’s fancy hot fudge jars. “Here you are.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it and see.”

  He pulled the ribbon off and peeled back the fabric. The jar was full of small scraps of paper that looked like they’d been ripped by hand.

  Well.

  He looked up at her to make sure he was interpreting this correctly.

  “I’ve given some more thought to the matter and have come to the conclusion that I owe you an apology.”

  He was shocked but also not shocked. He was starting to understand that there were two . . . well, not two versions of Marie, but two sides to her, maybe. There was the proper-bordering-on-prim princess who shouldered a shit-ton of duty. The wallflower who let balls and parties shake her confidence.

  But there was also the woman who got into a stranger’s cab with no money and only a vague idea of where she was going and ran after a ship belonging to a villainess. Who manipulated her butler-dude in such a way that she got what she wanted politically.

  “I’ve been thinking about your question from last night,” she went on. “When I asked you to sign this document and said, ‘We do them all the time,’ you asked me who ‘we’ was. It made me think that I didn’t really know. Well, I do know. It’s a generic ‘we.’ The royal establishment. But then I started thinking, there are only two members of the royal house of Accola, and I’m one of them. Why do I just mindlessly do what I’m told?”

  “I’m not sure you do,” Leo said, thinking back to the “version two” of Marie he’d just conjured in his mind. “I think you just think you do.”

  She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for example, you had quite the argument with your father about the UN appointment. That didn’t look to me like doing what you were told. You got rid of Mr. Benz back in New York pretty handily, too. And you just told me you made him go horseback riding with Gabby today so you could get your way with parliament.”

  A slow, semi-self-satisfied smile blossomed. She liked his interpretation of things. “Well, I’ve come
to the conclusion that insisting I make everyone I have any sort of meaningful interaction with sign a nondisclosure agreement suggests that I have bad judgment. That I don’t know my own mind.”

  “That doesn’t seem like you at all,” Leo said, wanting the semismile to turn into a real one.

  It did. “And if that’s the case . . .” Marie picked up the jar and tipped it upside down. Little bits of paper scattered on the wind.

  Okay then. Leo cleared his throat and tried to tamp down a spike of that same panicky excitement that had hit him outside her door last night. He wasn’t sure what the destroyed NDA signified. Was he just witnessing a moment of emancipation? Or were they going to get back to what they’d been planning before she’d whipped out the document to begin with?

  “So what now as it relates to . . . us?” she asked, verbalizing his thoughts exactly.

  “You tell me.” And please tell me yes. He had to adjust his position on the blanket. She was making him go half hard with her signature mixture of boldness and innocence.

  “I’m unsure. Has the momentum been lost?”

  He barked a laugh. She was so . . . primly herself. “No momentum lost here, Your Rebellious Highness.” None at all. In fact—he shifted around some more on the blanket—momentum gained.

  She looked skeptical. “I am fretting, though, that here I told you not to treat me like a princess and then . . .”

  “You acted like the most princessey of princesses?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “I’m afraid so.”

  “We’re overthinking this. Here’s how this is going to work. We are going to drop the princess/not princess distinction. I think it’s less useful than it seemed. If you want to have sex, we’re going to have sex the way you”—he pointed to her—“and I”—he pointed to himself—“have sex.”

  She liked that idea, judging by the way her eyes lit up. “And what way is that?”

  He shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”

  “Now?”

  “No time like the present.” He wagged his eyebrows. “If you want to.” Please want to.

  “I want to, but I didn’t bring any contraception.”

  I didn’t bring any contraception. That was such a Marie way to say it. He smiled. “Well, we’ll just have to do things that don’t require contraception, then, won’t we?”

  She looked as shocked as if he’d suggested they run away and join a sex cult.

  “Wow, you really have had some duds, haven’t you? I’m glad the bar is so low.” He was joking about that last part. The bar wasn’t low. The bar—the very, very high bar—had nothing to do with her past lovers. It had everything to do with her. With showing this woman that she was desirable and that she deserved the best—and not because she was a princess.

  Also, who was he kidding? He wanted to impress her.

  Which he needed to not think too much about, or he’d freak himself out. When he’d said We’re overthinking this, he’d meant it. The “we” part included. So he leaned forward—they’d both been sitting cross-legged on the blanket—intending to kiss her. But he leaned slowly. Despite what she’d just said, despite the shredded NDA, he wanted to make sure she was into this. In general, but also right here, right now.

  In the queen’s cabin in the goddamn Eldovian Alps—and what even was his life?

  The little sigh of relief she exhaled into his mouth as their lips touched told him that she was. Her lips were cold. So was her face, he discovered, when he peeled off his gloves and settled his hands on her cheeks. So he set to work heating her up, letting his mouth slide lazily from spot to spot, taking his time at the corner of her jaw, the juxtaposition of impossibly soft skin over sharp bone doing something to him, before migrating back to her mouth and licking into it. Their tongues stroked together, lazily at first but then with increasing urgency. She grabbed his parka like she wanted to pick him up, or—

  Like she wanted to use him as a handle to lever herself onto his lap.

  “Oh god,” he bit out as she straddled him. The sudden, exquisite pressure of her, even through all their layers of clothing was both welcome and insufficient.

  “Leo,” she whispered, trying to kiss him and unwind her scarf at the same time. “Leo.”

  “Yes,” he answered automatically as he helped her get the scarf off. “Yes.” He wasn’t even sure what he meant. Was he answering to his name? It felt more like he was acknowledging something she wasn’t saying, something his name stood in for.

  She was grinding on him, like she had last time. He loved that she was doing it of her own accord, without the need for encouragement. Hell, he loved it, period. He thrust his hips up to meet her, and soon they were chest to chest—or parka to ridiculous red coat—rocking back and forth.

  She started huffing short little pants that sounded familiar. She’d made those same noises last time, just before she’d come.

  “Not yet,” he said gruffly, his body protesting as he lifted her off him.

  She protested, too, a little whimper of displeasure that went to his ego and his dick in equal measure.

  Normally, he would have exactly zero objections to a woman dry humping him until she got off. But this wasn’t what she wanted—or at least not the optimal version of what she wanted. He had listened carefully to her last night. She wanted him to talk dirty. She wanted to have sex.

  And while they weren’t going to get naked and fuck right here in the subzero woods, he did sort of feel like he needed to up the ante a bit from yesterday.

  “Shh,” he soothed as he guided Marie to lie on her back on the blanket, moving some of the food aside. He drew a focusing breath as he took in the sight of her, her cheeks pink, her pupils dilated despite the afternoon sun shining into the roofless cabin, her hair more out of today’s braid than in, loose tendrils fanned out against the gray blanket.

  Leo was at a loss for how to proceed. Not because he didn’t have any ideas, but because he had too many ideas.

  But that was actually an opportunity, in this particular instance, wasn’t it, given what she’d told him?

  He could just ask her.

  He started undoing the buttons of her coat. “I can’t decide what I want to do next. Should I make you come with my fingers or my mouth?”

  She gasped.

  He ignored her, peeling back the sides of her coat like he was opening a book. “I want to do both, but which do you think I should do?”

  That got him another gasp but not an answer. He didn’t know if he was hoping for an answer or a not-answer. Not having a clear direction was turning out to be an awful lot of fun.

  He considered getting rid of her sweater, but it was awfully cold. So he settled for shoving his hands up it. He slid them under the band of her bra, too, and cupped her breasts. They were soft, but tipped with hard little nubs that he rolled gently between his thumbs and forefingers. “Oh, no!” she cried.

  Shit. He pulled his hands off her immediately. How had he made that much of a miscalculation? He’d been sure she was enjoying herself.

  “No.” She reached for his hands and settled them on her bare stomach. “I don’t want you to stop. I just didn’t want to come too soon.”

  “Ah. And that would have been a problem because . . . ?” he teased.

  “Because when you asked me if you should use your hands or your mouth, that is not where I imagined your hands.”

  God, she was too much. But she was right. It would be a shame if this ended before he got to feel her. So he went to work on her jeans. The scratching sound the zipper made as he lowered it echoed across the otherwise silent clearing.

  She was wearing black lace panties. She didn’t seem like the black lace panties type. She seemed like the white cotton nightie type. “Did you put these on for me?” This was a case where he wanted an actual answer. And he thought she would enjoy it if he pressed her on the matter. Their interests were aligned here.

  “Did you put these on hoping I’d see them?” he
goaded. He worked her jeans down over her hips, fully exposing the little scrap of fabric covering her mound. It had a tiny black bow on the front. He sucked in a breath. There was something . . . dangerous about that bow. It was small and shiny and it was a bow, for fuck’s sake. It shouldn’t have had that much power over him. But it caused an infusion of something that felt curiously close to too much, like a jet of water into an already full bathtub.

  He covered the whole thing—the bow and the panties and her—with the palm of his hand so he didn’t have to look anymore. “Or maybe you were hoping I’d shove them out of the way and do this?” he rasped, sliding his thumb past the waistband and into her.

  She bucked her hips, chasing his touch, and he gasped at the slick heat of her. Which was not the way he wanted to present himself to her. She was the one who was supposed to be gasping.

  So he turned his attention to extracting the answer he wanted.

  “Back to the original question. Which do you think?” He pulled the panties down farther, so they joined her jeans halfway down her thighs and maneuvered his body so he was looking right at the mass of short, springy curls. “Tongue?” he used a hand to part her folds, part of him wondering if actual steam would be emitted given the temperature differential between the air and . . . her.

  A shudder racked her body—her whole body. It was sudden and startling and violent.

  Had he pushed too far?

  “Leo,” she whispered again, all needy and trusting, and it almost undid him. She started shivering.

  It was too cold to be doing this out here. So he pulled panties and jeans alike back up and arranged himself so he was lying on his side next to her, but he kept the one hand on her.

  “Hands,” he said decisively, using the hand not down her pants to reach over and grab one side of her coat and re-cover her. “Hands now, tongue later.” From this angle he had his fingers pointing down, so he let three of them move exploratorily, making small circles near but not directly on her clit. He watched her closely, trying to assess what worked. He needn’t have, though, because when he grazed the nub straight on, her eyes flew open, and she said, “Oh!” It rang out across the clean, cold air.