Her Cowboy Prince

by Madeline Ash

  So this was Frankie.

  She was blinking at him.

  He stilled, hesitating. “This okay?”

  “No one’s ever got me naked that fast.”

  Lust clawed low inside him as he looked her over. “Four years isn’t exactly a record.”

  Her smile bordered on shy. “Your turn.”

  She helped him. Their hands tangled at his shirt buttons, fumbled at his trousers because their mouths met again and split focus was beyond him. He stopped caring when his hands found her waist and slid up to cup her breasts. Christ. He dragged her nipple into his mouth, sucking and reveling in her ready moan. She was perfect. That was his only clear thought.

  Utterly perfect.

  His breath was quick, his cock rigid. Vaguely, he was aware of her hand dipping into his front pocket for the condom before she freed him and kicked his clothes aside. Sparks flared beneath his skin at the slide of her hands on his chest.

  “Goddamn,” she muttered, shifting closer and brushing her lips over his pecs. “No wonder you’re arrogant.”

  He smiled distractedly, struggling not to gather her naked body to him and show her the more pertinent reason for his arrogance. “You’ve seen me without a shirt before.”

  Her fingers drifted lower. “I’ve never touched you.”

  “I wish you—”

  His mind emptied as she grasped the length of him. All that was left was the tight stroking of her hand. The slam of his palm returning to the wall. The blaze of his pleasure growing ever-hotter. The strained sound of her name on his lips. And cursing, he was almost definitely mouthing profanities in mindless reverence at her rhythm. Frankie was touching him. Frankie was pressed naked against his side, her mouth roaming the muscles of his arm. It was too much. Urgency surged through him and he dragged her hand away.

  Then he was returning his thigh between her legs, angling it against her clit—and rubbing firmly. She moaned, shuddering, and moved with him. If her gratification lay in outer orgasms, he’d have no regrets for it to end just like this.

  “Kris.” Her indignance sparked through her pleasure. “I don’t need a bed for our first time, but I draw the line at coming on your fucking leg.”

  That answered that. He laughed, darkly delighted by her crudity, and raised his head to kiss her slow and deep. Feasting from her gutter-mouth was literal bliss.

  “Lift me?” she asked, fastening her arms around his neck.

  He passed a hand down her stomach. “I want to touch you first.”

  “Next time.”

  “Once.” His fingers found her soft curls and he went mad imagining how she must feel beneath them. “Please, just once?”

  “Okay.” Her green eyes were burning. “But we’re on a timeline.”

  Jesus. Okay. Just once.

  With his mouth behind her ear and eyes closed, he slid his fingers between her legs—and almost lost control at the silky, swollen feel of her. She weakened in his arms, pulling on his neck with a tremble, and he stroked her, a single two-fingered slide that went deep and wet and drew a sound of strangled pleasure from low inside her. Lost in the sensation, he dragged back the other way, harder this time, teasing, closer to where he most desperately wanted to delve.

  God. He had to feel the inside of her.

  “Just once,” he murmured, seeking permission through his mindless haze. He grazed against her, preparing, poised to start shallow but not making any promises to stay there.

  “Cheater.” She nipped his earlobe and he opened his eyes with a swift breath. “You can’t start again from zero.” Her voice was hoarse with wanting. “I don’t want it to happen like that—not this time.”

  Freeing his ear with a tug, he scraped his teeth down her neck and murmured, “How do you want it?” He was pushing her. She’d claimed she could do sex and attraction, but not intimacy. And while dirty talk was all sex on the surface, peel back the lust and those confessions were intensely intimate. “Tell me.”

  “I want . . .” She trailed off as he circled his hands around the backs of her thighs and lifted her to his hips. He fought the urge to enter her as he pressed her back against the wall. “You inside me,” she said, the quiet words seeming to blush. “Right here.”

  That made two of them.

  “Well then.” Skin on skin now, bodies hot and damp. The air was scented with sex and his entire being coursed with the primal urge to finish this inside her. He dragged his tongue up her neck to the hollow behind her ear. “Clock’s ticking.”

  At the nape of his neck, he heard the rustle of her opening the condom.

  They were really doing this.

  Disbelief momentarily dizzied him as she slipped a hand between them to roll it on. Years of pretending she wasn’t his greatest desire—years of aching and hoping and holding himself in check—finally over. In all that time, he’d never imagined it happening like this.

  Sheathed, he positioned himself at the apex of her thighs—and slowly pushed inside her.

  “Kris.” Frankie’s fingers dug hard into his shoulders as he eased further in. “I—I need you—”

  And then she was kissing him, sweet shadows and searing light, and it was all he could do to keep the pace slow to let her pleasure build. She moved with him, skin slick and sweaty, working toward release even as her body adjusted to his size. Barely keeping his head at her hot clasp, he filled her more with each push until finally he was fully seated inside her.

  Then he took their timeline very seriously.

  The sounds she made at his thrusts went straight to the dark, dirty stores of his mind, and he almost burst from that alone. Blood raging with sensation, he filled her again and again, until the promise of release shimmered down his spine. He was trembling, hands shaking over her body. His chest felt tight and huge at the same time, like something was growing beneath his solar plexus and his ribs had fastened tight to contain it.

  He knew what it was.

  Knew that even now, fully surrendered to him, she wasn’t ready to hear it.

  “Kris,” she said, spine stretching to take him deeper. Her breath was shallow, heightened. Close. So very close. “Kris. Please.”

  Tightening his hold, he caught the edge in her glazed stare. It stunned him; thrilled him. The look in her eyes wasn’t simple desire. It was core-deep, an endless reserve.

  God above, she was all in.

  “Hold onto me,” he said, and felt her tighten—felt his nerve endings fraying as he neared ecstasy. Then she clenched around him with a cry that fell beneath the roaring in his ears as his own orgasm beat its way out of him, brutal and blinding and boundless.

  More.

  Before he’d even found his breath, he wanted more. Frankie was sinking in his arms, shaking, her grip growing slack around his neck. He kept his hold tight, unwilling to let her go so soon, and lifted his face from her shoulder to find her watching him, her eyes heavy-lidded yet somehow more open than they’d ever been.

  “You okay?” He pressed her a little harder against the wall as his muscles relaxed.

  Her smile was like a love-nip of her teeth straight to his heart. “Yes.”

  The base of his sternum ballooned with feeling, but before he could put it into words, she was pushing at his shoulders, saying, “Let’s move.”

  Grudgingly, he eased out of her and set her on her feet. As he dealt with the condom, he asked, “Are we late?”

  She picked up her phone from the desk and cursed. “We have seven minutes.”

  They dressed fast. He tugged his trousers on and fixed her hair, trying to give it a generic end-of-a-long-night look and less thoroughly-wall-banged. Then she tucked his shirt in and he almost ruined her hair all over again.

  “Best not to touch me below the waist,” he cautioned, letting her palm restrain him.

  “Noted.” Her cheeks were flushed. “Ready?”

  He grinned. “For anything.”

  She rolled her eyes, swiped up all the folders on her desk and strode to
the door.

  “Frankie,” he said, reaching around her to cover the door handle. The sideways look she cast him was both irritated and amused. He kissed her between the eyebrows and said softly, “You’re everything.”

  She waited a beat before arching a brow. “You stopped me for that?”

  “Yes,” he said, trying to alleviate the pressure in his chest. He didn’t want to return to a reality where he had to be discreet about touching her, kissing her, betraying the way he felt about her. “I might be the king of a country, but you’ll always be my world. And I’ll do anything—”

  “What’s happening here?” A shadow passed over her face. “We’re running late and you think we have time for a sonnet?”

  “I was just trying to—”

  Ah. This was too intimate.

  “Enough.” She slapped his hand aside and hauled the door open. Then she stopped, hesitated, and pushed it closed again so the latch rested against the frame. “Oh. Except. It turns out that condom was a good idea.”

  He grinned. “You think?”

  “Yes.” Her green gaze was heavy as she looked back at him. “I know we’ll be spending nights together, but just thinking out loud here, there are a lot of secret rooms and secluded nooks in this oversized display of wealth you call home.” She patted the front pocket of his trousers, swiping her hand rather firmly across his crotch as she pulled away. “You might want to replace it.”

  He almost growled as she strode into the corridor.

  Utterly perfect.

  10

  They ran from one end of the palace to the other, bolting up too many flights of stairs, and still reached the base of the tower five minutes late. Breathing hard with a hand on his side, Kris flatly refused to run up this final staircase. So Frankie strode into the tower study ahead of him, her core temperature high, her heartbeat a post-orgasm mess, and forced herself to concentrate on Philip and the twelve guards in attendance as their attention shifted to her.

  These were the personal guards of the Jaroka brothers—four assigned per family member—two for the day shift, two for the night. She had selected each of them personally and entrusted them with the safety of the royal family. Some were sitting on the study couches and chairs, others were leaning against the curved walls or standing by the windows. All in uniform, clear-eyed despite the late hour and connected by grim tension.

  “Ma’am,” several greeted her.

  She gave a nod, hoping to God they couldn’t see the past half-hour on her face. “Thanks for coming.”

  Mark’s night guards looked understandably harried, having raced across town from Kuria Estate. And Philip, bless his straitlaced cotton socks, sat in one of the chairs opposite the monarch’s desk with spectacularly wild bed hair and the telltale piping of a pajama top askew beneath his shirt.

  Her cadre all snapped to attention when Kris entered the room behind her. They were the only royal employees who knew he would soon be their king, and every one of them bowed low.

  Taking advantage of the moment of privacy, Kris grazed a hand over her back and slanted a soft-eyed glance at her mouth as he passed her.

  “Tell me.”

  His demand had been hard as granite; his fingers had been equally unyielding at her core.

  “Tell me how you want it.”

  She flushed, having not even known to want it like that.

  As the guards straightened, Kris said, “Don’t mind me,” and crossed the room to drop into a languid sprawl behind his desk.

  “We’ll make this snappy.” Frankie closed the door with her heel, adjusting her grip on the folders. “But before we start, who made the best joke on Philip’s hair?”

  A pause as everyone looked pointedly at Hanna.

  “It’s just,” the guard said, “it looks like it was subjected to an incredibly isolated extreme weather event.”

  Frankie snorted, Kris said, “Ha,” and Philip grumbled as he patted his head.

  Then Frankie caught Hanna eyeing off her hair and swiftly moved things along.

  “Right,” she said. “The authorities have confidentially reopened the case regarding the late royal family’s deaths. This is following Prince Kristof’s testimony about the violent attack on Prince Tomas and his friend Jonah Wood in Montana three years ago, which we covered at yesterday morning’s briefing.” She tapped the folders against her palm. “The detectives’ search—and ours—has shown that four of Prince Tomas’s attackers have contacts in Kiraly who worked on the renovations of the west wing. This could be coincidence. Or it could be an indication that whoever orchestrated Tomas’s attack is also behind the balcony collapse. These people might all be from the same network.”

  Unease blew through the room, shifting feet and stiffening shoulders.

  In a casual movement, Frankie stepped back to lean against the door. She opened the top folder and flipped through its contents. She saw none of it. Dread was too busy squeezing her throat closed, robbing her of focus.

  Holy hell. This was real.

  Somehow, she’d managed to disconnect from it. To treat the threat like an abstract problem to be solved, but if the incidents were truly connected—

  Someone wanted Kris and his brothers dead.

  And weren’t afraid to act on it.

  A feverish rush made her skin too hot and too cold at once.

  Kris was watching her. She flicked over another page, refusing to look up. He’d see the panic in her eyes—would ask about it later. And she didn’t want to voice this fear. It was poised like a tipping point inside her, a confession that would unbalance her control and drag a landslide of vulnerability down with it.

  I’m scared for you.

  I don’t want to lose you.

  I can’t live without you.

  Reality whipped down her spine. Her fears shied away. What the hell was she doing?

  She’d wanted to be with him since they’d met, and now she couldn’t muster the courage to be honest with him? His life was in danger—and she was too chicken to be emotionally intimate. You’re everything, he’d told her, like the sweetest secret, and she’d batted it away without a thought.

  Stupid. So unbelievably stupid.

  She plucked the top photograph from the folder.

  “This morning,” she said, her voice miraculously level, “guards were assigned to discreetly monitor these contacts. And tonight, we got lucky. All subjects converged at a pub called the Bull’s Quest at ten-thirty this evening. Photographs show that upon arrival, each of them wore an identical pin, indicating it’s some kind of club.”

  Hand not quite steady, she held up the top photograph. A close-up of a circular silver pin on a shirt collar, hollowed out with a capital ‘A’ in the center.

  “Anyone recognize the symbol?” she asked.

  “Anarchism.” This from Zoltan, one of Tommy’s guards.

  “Spot on.” She kept her back against the door, maintaining a pose of late-night weariness to cover her previous overwhelm. After the night she’d had, it wasn’t hard to feign. “It’s possible we’ve got ourselves some violent anti-authoritarian rebels.”

  Kris frowned behind the desk. “These people want chaos?”

  “Anarchy is more complex than chaos, Your Highness,” Zoltan said, turning to face Kris with an air of respectful neutrality. “That’s reductionist and a common misinterpretation of the movement. Many anarchists believe in a highly organized society, but don’t feel they can entrust the management of their lives to kings or other rulers, and seek to build a democratic society from the bottom up, instead of the top down.”

  Kris blinked. “Right.”

  “That said, we do seem to have a group of extremists on our hands,” the guard finished.

  Did they ever.

  Frankie cleared her throat. “I’ll find out if they accept new people into the group. If they do, I’ll join them the next time they meet.”

  In the corner of her eye, she noted Kris sit forward slowly. “What if they recognize
you?” he asked, and even though his voice was admirably calm, none of the guards turned to look at him. In fact, he was the only person looking at her in a room of fifteen people. The privacy was discreetly granted, the guards looking at their shoes or out the windows, but it betrayed they all knew Kris’s concern sprung from affection and that this particular exchange wasn’t any of their business. “It could be dangerous.”

  She held his stare. “They won’t recognize me.”

  His forearms were on the desk, hands clasped together. “You’ve been seen in public as my bodyguard.”

  Shame slid down her sternum. “I won’t be going as myself.”

  With a nod, he ran his tongue along his back teeth and looked away.

  “Right.” Her tone hauled everyone’s attention back to her. “Do not share this information or investigation with anyone outside this tower. Do not share the possible connection between the attacks with your primaries.” She glanced at Hanna, Peter, and Kris’s night team. “Clearly you’re the exception.”

  Lazlo, a mid-forties guard with a shaved head and oversized shoulders, raised a polite hand. “Markus is still officially king.” He pointed out. “Should the king not be made aware of such critical news? If not of the possible connection between the attacks, then at least the possibility that the late royal family’s deaths weren’t an accident?”

  Frankie glanced at Kris. “Your Highness?”

  He frowned back. “I don’t like the idea of telling Mark and not Tommy.”

  “So we inform them both?”

  Stricken, he shook his head. “I don’t want to cause Tommy additional anxiety. The threads are still too loose. Can we wait until we have something concrete to tell them?”

  Frankie and Lazlo both gave a nod.

  “Any other questions?” she asked.

  They all shook their heads.

  Blowing out a hard breath, she extended the bottom folder to one of Tommy’s night guards standing closest to her. “This is everyone who attended the anarchist meeting this evening. I’ll email you the image files shortly. You spot any of them near your primary, you send out an alert and take immediate evasive action. We don’t know whether they have a new plan, so expect the worst.”