She was worried about her mother? Like an admission would set off some kind of treason alert and they would be immediately evicted from the castle, carried out by the guards and their heads thrown on a block. This wasn’t the 1800’s and I wasn’t that cruel.
If she knew the truth—that I only needed her honesty so I could fuck her without feeling guilty—she might reconsider answering me. I didn’t know which was worse, her logic or mine.
“If I promised you that your mother would be fine, would you tell me the truth?”
She made a fist, holding only her pinky in the air. I smirked to keep from smiling at how insanely adorable she looked trying to be serious about a promise made for fifth graders.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“It’s a pinky. You want to promise?” She nodded toward her uplifted pinky. “Then promise.”
I hooked my pinky around hers. My signature was days away from being sealed on the bottom of Acts of Parliament and Royal Decrees, and here I was making fucking pinky promises in the goddamn library.
She held up a thumb. “Now stamp it.”
I tipped my head back and laughed.
She glared up at me.
“Wait. You’re serious?”
She cleared her throat, shifting her weight on her feet and lifting her chin. Holy shit she was serious. And intoxicating. “Stamp. It.”
I stamped the fucking thumb.
“Now what?” she asked.
My arm wrapped around her waist and I pulled her against me, because no matter how close we were, it wasn’t close enough. “Now you tell me everything.”
Her pulse throbbed in her throat. “What do you want to know?”
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t.”
I didn’t even try to recognize how her confession made me feel, so I locked it away and decided to deal with it later. “But you hate my father?”
More thunder pealed right outside the window. The sheer force of it rattled the glass, a warning from God that we were treading on sacred ground where secrets were meant to stay buried. She flinched but didn’t answer, which I had quickly learned with Katie, was an answer.
One day this battle would end.
One day I would make sure the only storm she was afraid of was me.
A crack of lightning and thunder shattered the silence.
“I stamped the fucking thumb, now answer the question.”
She fisted her hands in the front of my shirt and squeezed her eyes shut, like she battled between pulling me closer and pushing me away.
I clenched my jaw. “The question, Katie.”
Say it. Show me who you really are.
Her eyes snapped open. “Yes! Are you happy now? Yes, I hated him. Because if he’d gone a different way home or if he hadn’t used our property as his own personal shortcut… If he’d stayed home like any sane person would have, my father never would’ve gone out into the freezing rain to save him. And he’d still be here. He’d be alive. And neither one of us would be lonely.”
If being caught in the storm made my dad crazy, then what did running out into the middle of it make hers? I almost explained that the king was only out there to help his people, that he wasn’t insane, that he wouldn’t have left his family if he had known what was coming. But the words would have fallen on deaf ears. Katie wasn’t looking for an explanation. She was looking for justification.
Her words slammed into me. I knew she hated us. I always figured that her hatred had stemmed from Matteo’s and that his sacrifice was the icing on the cake. There was so much pain in her voice, so much resentment, and none of it had to do with her father’s threats. Because she didn’t know anything about them. She didn’t accuse my father of being anything other than careless.
Two undeniable truths stood out in her moment of confession.
She said “hated.” Past tense.
She admitted she was lonely. And that she knew I was too.
I kissed her because… fuck it. Fuck forbidden. Fuck a last name. Fuck a war. Fuck it all. My mouth crashed against hers as I slammed her against the bookshelf behind us, trapping her with my body, locking her feet between mine. She tasted like peppermint and heaven. Her lips parted, and I dove deeper inside, seeking, demanding, and consuming. I braced one hand on a wooden shelf, sending books tumbling to the floor, and the other hand on the curve of her ass. My fingers dug into her flesh knowing I’d leave a trail of bruises, and I fucking loved it. Her fists tightened in my shirt, making a wrinkled mess of expensive fabric. She moaned in my mouth, and I fell over the edge. We broke on a breath, and I leaned my forehead against hers.
“I could get drunk on you.”
We are royally fucked. Literally.
She captured my face in her hands, looking up at me with those hypnotizing fucking eyes that screamed, more. I pressed my body to hers, my cock iron-hard against her stomach, and she gasped. Fuck, I could listen to that sound all day. I brought my mouth back down on hers, kissing, needing, wanting. It was vicious and violent, and… damn it all to fucking hell, I should stop and walk away right now, but I couldn’t get enough of it. If tasting her was sin, then I was damned, body and fucking soul. I was a prince, not a saint.
I raked my fingers over her ass, pinching up the fabric of her thin sundress, then across the top of her thigh. I pulled back, biting her bottom lip and ending the kiss. My hand trailed between her legs, remembering the bare, slick skin of her cunt and impatient as fuck to get my hands all over it. “If I slipped my fingers inside, would I find you wet for me?”
She brought her hands to my hair, her fingers tangling and tugging and pleading for more. “Yes.”
God, she was beautiful like this. Magnificently, painfully beautiful—and mine.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
No. Not Your Highness.
Not now.
Right now, I was just Sutton and she was just Katie. No royal titles. No last names.
I let go of the bookshelf and wrapped my fingers in her hair, forcing her head back and making her look at me. “Say my fucking name. I want to hear it.”
I rocked into her in a rush of violent, desperate need. Jesus, my legs were shaking. My whole body trembled with the need to fuck. I was suddenly very aware that there were way too many clothes between us and not nearly enough time. I could spend a week alone with Katie and still not be done with all the things I wanted to do to her. I was rock hard, my dick straining against my pants with the need to be closer to her, to feel her bare.
She threw her head back and closed her eyes. Her lips parted, the tiniest whimper slipping out and her breath came fast, so fast. “Sutton…”
Fuck yes.
A gust of air shot through the room when the library door flew open.
“Katie? Are you in here? I just wanted to see—”
Fucking Keaton.
Katie dropped her hands from my hair as her wide eyes stared across the room. She pushed me away as if that made what he’d walked in on any less obvious.
I massaged my temples against an impending headache and turned to face him. “Jesus Christ, what is it with you and timing?”
His grin was filled with malice. “Oh, you know, just keeping an eye on the sheep. Watching out for wolves.”
How fucking clever of him. Wrong story, motherfucker. I wasn’t the wolf. I was the lion. And this was my kingdom.