Either way, I was no longer invisible. They knew my name, my full name, and all the secrets that came attached to it. And soon, I would know them too.
I backed away from his grip, completely forgetting that my finger was still on his chest. “Can you just wait here for two minutes?”
He gestured his hand toward the door, waving me inside with an arrogant smirk. If assaulting royalty weren’t a crime, I would have taken my shoe off and thrown it at him.
Mrs. Fletcher walked around one corner of the kitchen at the same time the alarm went off on my watch. Madeline was nowhere to be found, but a young girl I had never seen before stood at the island peeling potatoes while another one rinsed lettuce at the sink.
“Just in time,” I said as I pulled the brownies out of the oven and set them on a cast iron trivet.
Mrs. Fletcher wiped her hands on the front of her apron and smiled. “Ah, Katie dear. I was coming in here to check on them. I should’ve known you wouldn’t forget.”
The scent of warm, melted chocolate filled the air and made my stomach growl. The girl at the sink sang softly to herself while she rinsed the lettuce. It reminded me of the way Madeline always hummed, and that made me smile. Madeline refused to let me be invisible, like the kid who kept following you to your lunch table and acting like you’d known each other your whole lives until you wake up one day and realize that kid was actually your best friend. I adored the snot out of her for that.
“Pretty sure burning brownies is a carnal sin fully recognized by the church,” I replied with a wink.
She chuckled as two guys walked in from the back entrance to the kitchen, laughing and carrying on about some poor dude getting stuck with stable duty. Which was just a fancy term the royals had for cleaning up horse poop all day. The first girl looked up from her potato peeler and grinned at the guy with short brown hair and dimples. He smiled back and a pink blush crept up her neck all the way to her cheeks.
I loved watching people flirt. I guessed it was the same hopeless romantic in me that loved reading classic romance novels or watching chick flicks while pigging out on Doritos and cheese dip. While I fully believed other people deserved a happily ever after, I was fine with plain old happy.
In the blink of an eye, the background chatter stopped, and I watched as all of the staff looked behind me with a dutiful bow of their heads. Even without all the pleasantries, I would have known Sutton was here by the way the room suddenly filled with masculinity and sexual tension. I swallowed a scream then took a deep breath to compose myself as I turned around.
“Your Highness,” I said with the most modest curtsey I could muster.
Maybe he would get the hint and pretend like he wasn’t here for me.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as his eyes narrowed in on me. “Are you done here?”
Apparently, he wasn’t big on pretending… or taking hints.
I nodded my head toward the pan of brownies on the countertop by the oven. “Obviously.” We stared at each other like two people going for a prize, relentless and daring. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared, and I could almost hear his harsh breath in my ear. Something raw and primal ripped through the air. I hoped that Sutton had enough sense not to follow it across the room and make me forget there were other people here. Then I cursed the tiny part of me that wished he would.
I broke our connection before he had the chance, looking over my shoulder at Mrs. Fletcher. “I’ll be back to cut them once they’ve cooled.”
She gave a polite nod then walked over to the island and grabbed a potato. Everyone else’s eyes bounced from me to the prince and back to me again as I headed for the door. The second I was close enough, Sutton placed his hand possessively at the small of my back and led me out of the kitchen.
“Was that completely necessary? I asked you for one thing. One.” I moved away from him and pointed to the wall outside the kitchen doorway. “Wait there. That’s all I wanted.”
“I heard voices and got curious. Why? Did I interrupt something?”
He heard the guys. Of course. In Sutton’s vocabulary, “curious” and “jealous” were obviously the same thing.
“I was getting my brownies. Geez Louise, you’re ridiculous,” I said as I hurried in the direction of the East Wing. The hallway seemed so much shorter when I was running from Sutton.
His footsteps fell close behind me. Then I heard his rich voice in my ear. “Mrs. Fletcher could have gotten them.”
I stopped in front of the library then turned to face him. My stomach rolled with nervous energy. He was one wrong word away from me going inside and forgetting about our visit with the king. At least that was the excuse I fed myself. “I didn’t want Mrs. Fletcher to get them. I don’t have servants. People don’t go around waiting on me hand and foot.” I sucked in a deep breath and met his eyes. “I’m not you.”
Thank God.
My eyes fell to the floor as sadness rippled through me. “But I’m not them either. I’m lost somewhere in between. The last thing I need is everyone looking at me as just another girl you screwed.” Even Chelsea had those thoughts. She told me so when we had lunch, and that was without ever seeing us together.
“You fucked him. Oh my God. You fucked the prince.”
Sutton backed me against the wall of the Great Hall, stopping centimeters in front of me. “When did letting the king fuck you become such a disgrace?”
My gaze snapped to his, catching his hard, blue-green eyes. “What did you just say?”
He pinched his eyes closed and shook his head. “Future king.” He tugged his tie loose and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his dress shirt, drawing my eyes to his tanned skin like a magnet. My entire body reacted—pulse quickening, nipples hardening, breath rushed and ragged. “Semantics. And I think you and I both know you aren’t just another girl.”
I forced myself to look away from him, at anything but the sexy way his throat bobbed when he swallowed. “Our families are enemies, and I’m pretty sure the whole world knows how that story ends. Throw in the fact that I’m leaving in a few months and that your name is most likely stamped on some spoiled princess’s vagina… and just another girl is all I can be.”
He leaned in, resting his hand on the wall above my head and ran the tip of his nose along the side of mine. Electricity thrummed, charging the air between us. Whatever this was. Whatever we tried so hard to pretend it wasn’t. There was no timer, no red wire or green one to cut, no turning it off. There were only moments just like this one, each one of them building up to that one final explosion that would seal our fate.
“I’m no Romeo.” His free hand trailed down my side. “You aren’t going anywhere, little sheep.” He lowered his hand, cupping me between my thighs. “And it’s my name. I’ll stamp it wherever the fuck I want.” My lips parted on a gasp, and he quirked his head to the side. A wicked grin played on his lips. “You like me touching you like this, don’t you?”
Too much. I liked it way too much. I didn’t answer because he wasn’t asking. He was observing. His hand pressed harder against my sensitive flesh, the heat burning through the delicate linen fabric of my pants. Sutton brought his other hand down to the hem of my loose black tank top then pulled it over my head. The cool air hitting my bare skin made me shudder.