“Oh,” Genoveve said, sitting down again, a knowing look in her eyes.
The war room was a small chamber down the hall from the dining room. Typically, it was only ever used for dire situations, when a dinner guest needed a stern reprimand or was being told they would be removed from the castle. My father apparently had used the war room a few times to fire workers from the castle, and my mother always told me that I should use it more often.
I had only used it twice in my entire time living in the castle. Once when I needed to fire a staff member for showing up to work drunk daily, and another time when a dinner guest was harassing a woman.
Genoveve understood that taking Henry into the war room meant I was going to be sending him home, and I could see the confusion on her face as Henry followed me down the short hall.
“War room, huh?” Henry was saying as we stepped through and I closed the heavy wooden door behind us. “Sounds real dicey, Sebastian.”
I turned on the small lamp sitting on the table just inside the door. The room had nothing more than a table, two chairs, and a few bookshelves that held old encyclopedias.
Henry looked so tall in here. He’d always been bigger than me, but something about the low ceiling made him look even more imposing than usual. He’d brought his drink glass in with him, and he held it in his hand casually, as if we were at some party.
I would have hated him if I didn’t love him so much.
“Henry,” I said, trying my best to feel powerful, princely, ready to kick him out.
“Sebastian,” he said, his voice low. “Sorry. Prince.”
His gaze landed on mine and my body filled with a slow heat.
The room felt even smaller now.
“Why did you take me into this place? You’re gonna put me in time out?” he asked, the corner of his lips quirking up in a small smile.
Henry wasn’t intimidated by me. Of course he wasn’t.
“That’s no way to speak to a prince,” I said, my voice sounding quieter than I would have liked.
“You care a lot more about this prince thing than you used to, y’know,” he said, pulling in a breath and sighing.
“It is my duty,” I said.
“To what? Your own ego?”
“To Frostmonte Castle,” I said, my chest tightening. “To Berrydale, and Deercrest, and Aldwick, and every other village in the lands below us. To my family’s legacy in the world. To my father. To history.”
“Well, what about your responsibility to yourself?” he asked.
I ran a hand over my face. My cheeks were burning, and my suit was beginning to feel far too tight. I walked over to the small leather chair and sat down, trying to regain composure.
“What do you mean, to myself?”
“I mean, what do you care about? The Sebastian I knew sure didn’t care about his royal duties, or whatever the hell you’ve been saying.”
“The Sebastian you knew was fifteen years old,” I spat. “People change. People grow. It might not mean a lot to you, but the townsfolk having someone to look up to means a lot to me.”
“Enough that you’re lying to them all?”
I glared at him. “How dare you.”
He shrugged one shoulder, tipping his drink glass back and taking a long sip. I couldn’t stop looking at his hands. Even the way he gripped a fucking glass was irrestistible. It was agonizing.
“You’re lying to them,” Henry said, pressing the matter. He took a step toward me, the lamp light casting across his skin in long shadows. “You’re going to marry a woman you don’t love.”
“You don’t know anything about who I love,” I said, my throat tightening. I felt like he was staring straight through me.
Nobody looked at me the way he did. I was used to everyone being intimidated by me these days, even though I did nothing to deserve it.
“I know it isn’t her. And you’re going to break her heart if you do it, too. The princess is wonderful. She deserves a husband who would actually want her back.”
“You are out of line,” I said, standing slowly.
Henry didn’t break eye contact with me as he drained the rest of his drink. I watched his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He set the glass on the table nearby.
“You gonna teach me a lesson, prince?”
Heat surged through me again as I closed the distance between us. I shoved him up against the stone wall, my fingers digging into the fabric of his borrowed suit. I was suddenly confronted with the very real feeling of having the bulk of Henry’s body pressed up against mine, a feeling I absolutely had not been prepared for.
“You never should have come back here,” I whispered. I struggled to breathe evenly. I could smell the bittersweet alcohol on his lips.
“You never should have taken me to this fucking castle,” he responded. But there was no malice in his tone. His voice was like velvet, luring me closer.
I had lost all control of the situation.
“Henry…” I said, feeling something welling up inside me, knowing it was going to crash.
He just lifted an eyebrow at me.
I crushed my lips against his without thinking.
Finally. Finally.
He was even warmer than I was, his mouth sweet with whiskey. I was hot with anger and frustration and need, and I couldn’t tease any of them apart. I needed to touch him, to taste him. I was running on pure impulse and adrenaline.
I was going to send him home and never see him again, anyway. I had him pinned to the wall and I knew he was going to fight back soon, to push me away and roll his eyes, leaving Frostmonte Castle and certainly never coming back.
But right now, for this instant, I needed to have my mouth on his.
Energy coursed through me like I hadn’t felt in years. Perhaps I’d never felt it like this. Henry wasn’t fighting back so much as pulling me in closer, tucking his fingertips into the waist of my pants and dragging my body up toward his.
He opened his mouth to mine. The slick slide of his tongue on mine was wickedly good, in the way that forbidden things usually are.
My cock was responding. Alarmingly fast. Henry’s teeth found my lower lip and he bit me gently, pulling my lip back as he bucked his hips forward into mine.
There was no chance he couldn’t tell how hard I was.
This was bad. Bad, bad, bad. Alcohol-fueled and wrong and nothing I should have been doing—nothing a prince should have been doing.
I pulled back, gulping air, springing away from him like he’d given me a static shock. The edge of the table hit my thigh and the sound of glass crashing to the floor filled the small room.
“Fuck,” I said, looking down at the bits of crystal on the floor. “You shouldn’t have taken that drink in here with you.”
His eyes looked me up and down hungrily. “Lot of things that shouldn’t have happened in here,” he said, his voice a low growl.
“They’ll never happen again,” I said quickly, my heart panging.
“They won’t?”
I held my breath, staring at him as he leaned back against the wall, his lips still slick and kiss-swollen, looking at me like he knew me better than I knew myself.
And I couldn’t stop. My lips were on his again in another moment, my body snapping to his like a magnet.
I moved to slowly kiss the side of his neck, breathing in his scent.