For the first time in her life, the threat that stained her future lifted. The abrupt opening of possibility was disorienting, and she closed her eyes and pressed harder into him.
It just made her dizzier. Kris. He was holding her.
I’ve got you.
She’d hidden so much of herself since they’d met. Her identity as royal security. As a Kiralian citizen. Her nightmare of an upbringing. Now, not only did he know everything, but her father could never ruin her life again.
It was like opening every window in the house to let in a weather change—and having it gust inside all at once.
“I saw him,” Kris said into her hair. “Waiting across the street back there. I didn’t know how to tell you without him overhearing, and I figured he had a plan. I’m sorry I pretended, even for a second, to believe what he’d said. I figured we needed to play into his hand in order to bring him down.”
Overwhelmed, Frankie just hugged him tighter.
“Is your mother likely to be a problem?” His question slipped softly across her head. “Would she tell the press about you?”
Her mother wouldn’t dare put herself in a position that could catch her father’s attention. “No.”
“So—this can be our secret,” he said, and she wanted to fall into the deep vibration of his voice. Then she realized what he meant.
With a strange sense of awe, her grip on him slackened.
“I’m almost scared to ask.” He paused, and she slowly pulled back. “Do you have any other reasons we can’t be together?”
Silenced by disbelief, she stared at him.
Kris. The charismatic young man she’d first found at his college bar—their chemistry immediate and intense as she’d slid onto the stool beside him and asked when the trivia was supposed to start. The blue-eyed rogue who’d offered to be her teammate when her ‘friends’ never showed—who had sat far too close, known far more of the answers than she’d expected, and made her laugh more than she’d ever laughed in her life. The cowboy who’d mentioned that his brother Tommy was unbeatable at trivia—stunning her with the realization that he wasn’t the only child of Prince Erik Jaroka. That to prove herself to Philip, she’d need to find all the heirs, and had to swiftly disengage from this brother’s charm. He was the new friend who had responded to her lie that she didn’t know what to do with herself after college by inviting her to come home with him to Sage Haven, since their local bar had wildly competitive trivia nights and she simply had to help him win.
Kris. The prince who had wanted her since they’d met, but who had never, ever pushed her—was now asking if anything else lay between them.
Stunned, she shook her head.
“Please,” he murmured. “Be sure.”
“I am,” she whispered.
His answering smile held wonder as he leaned in to press his forehead against hers. “Frankie.”
She trembled. Her name had always seemed made for his voice.
“Kris.” Her skin felt worn against his brow; her heart felt unusually close to the surface beneath her breast. The night’s events had left her brittle, but she’d exposed too much of herself to retreat now. On a near-silent breath, she asked, “Be good to me?”
His hold tightened. “Every second of every day.”
“I don’t know how to do this.” But her nervousness shimmered, luminescent. It existed only because this brink was new—not because she feared what waited on the other side.
“Neither do I,” he said. “All I know is that I want to be with you.”
“I—” Overcome, she faltered and brushed her nose against his. His bottom lip disappeared between his teeth, even as he continued to smile. “Me too.”
His smile became a grin—then a groan as he picked her up completely and buried his face against her neck. Reaction flared in her, a tingle from her scalp to the arches of her feet, and she angled her head back as he planted openmouthed kisses down to her collarbones. No protest formed on her tongue. No need to stop him. Just the electric thrill of this man’s desire and the beauty of it reacting inside her.
Then her half-lidded gaze drifted down the road—to the men at the palace gates.
“The guards,” she murmured, stiffening.
After cursing against her skin, Kris stepped back with his hands on her shoulders, putting himself at a distance, but not letting her go. “How do you want to do this? I mean us, going forward. I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your team. Or impact your reputation.”
She ran a hand down her neck. “I don’t know.”
Where was the line dividing her position within his security team from her place by his side? She wanted to be both equally.
“Can we figure it out as we go?” she asked.
“I’ll follow your lead,” he said, and his palms slid outward, cupping her shoulders as his thumbs stroked her skin. Her entire upper body tingled. “How do you want to figure it for tonight? We could go back to our own rooms. Find other ways to be alone, because my guards will always be outside my door. Or yours, if I come to you. If we spend the night together, word will get around among your team.”
She clamped her hands around his wrists, holding onto him. This all felt impossible. Standing on the brink of a relationship with Kris and discussing how to navigate it through their roles of royal life. Knowing, in a held breath of hope, what this meant for their future. And even if this had happened in Montana, with no royal ramifications, surrendering herself to this darkly addictive cowboy would still have felt impossible.
“Frankie?” he said, a quiet nudge.
“Word can get around the royal guard. Most of them already know I’m mad for you.” Heat flooded her cheeks; warmth crept into spaces that had only ever known cold. “I don’t want to spend another night apart. I can’t handle us being within the same walls and not being together. It—hurts.”
His features melted. Softly, he gave another, “Oof.”
Unbalanced by her admission, she ducked her face.
“It hurts me, too,” he said softly. “So much about us has always hurt. But not anymore.” His energy shifted along with his stance, deepening, rippling, and it didn’t take a genius to know desire had settled at the front of his mind. “Would you like to come to my room tonight?”
The question unlocked something inside her that she’d always believed had no key. The possibility of something real and honest and true—and the knowledge that just maybe, she deserved to have it.
Happiness lit her up as she smiled. “Yes.”
9
They didn’t make it to his chambers.
Kris’s blood coursed in an intensified rush as he led her up the stone steps and into the palace’s grand entrance hall. They hadn’t spoken since they’d passed through the gates. Too fixated on the reality of what they were doing, on the new thrill of touching each other without immediately letting go. With one hand gripping hers, he used the fingertips of his other to trace up and down the exposed skin of her forearm. When he grazed the inside of her elbow, his touch as soft as a whisper in her ear, she sucked in a sharp breath.