Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Mind made up, she squared her shoulders and turned the knob, opening the door only enough to squeeze through. It wasn’t quite pitch dark inside the room. That turned out to be good and bad.

The positive being that there was enough light for her to spot her suitcase beside the bed right away. The con? The light allowed her to visually confirm that the earl’s private investigator was not a Photoshop guru. Nick did, indeed, have eight individual abs. They rose and fell in time with each of his deep breaths as he lay in the middle of the canopy bed on top of the fitted sheet. The duvet was hanging half off the bed and wasn’t covering him a stitch. She shouldn’t notice that he was lying with one well-muscled arm flung over his eyes or that he was only wearing his pants—but she did.

The sight stopped her cold.

Or hot.

Or bothered.

Or…bloody hell.

He was a man—a very impressively endowed man if the bulge in his navy boxer briefs was anything to go by—but, more importantly, he was the earl’s heir, which made him totally, completely, and utterly off-limits. Not that her body gave a care. Everything south of her ears was enthralled and embarrassingly tingly. This would not do. Not. At. All.

Forcing her gaze away, she spotted his jeans, socks, and T-shirt on the floor in a pile right next to the bed and her suitcase. That’s when she remembered that getting oxygen in her lungs was necessary in order to not pass out at Nick’s bedside. However, that’s also when she forgot about her allergies. She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. The dust coating so much of the room tickled her nose, making it twitch as her eyes watered and pure one-hundred-proof panic shot through her.

Waking Nick up by having a sneezing fit in his bedroom while she was standing by his bed watching him sleep (not that that’s what she’d been doing, but how else was it going to appear?) was not how she’d let this evening go. Forcing her entire body to still, she willed herself to focus on something—anything—that wasn’t the dust making her nostrils twitch. Of course, her gaze fell to the man sleeping on top of the fitted sheet in just a pair of navy boxer briefs that clung to his strong thighs and…her pulse kicked it into high gear…other parts of him. Her brain fizzled out at the sight, and it took her a few breaths before she realized that just-about-to-sneeze feeling was gone.

Well, thank the bloody fates for that.

Setting her sights on her suitcase, she took in a deep breath to test her allergies. Her nose tickled and her eyes were watery, but she could take it. She would endure. Six steps to the bed. Six steps back. After that, she’d close the door behind her and forget she ever saw Nick Vane in just his pants.

Brilliant plan. So move already, Brooke.

She shook out the last of her hesitation and tiptoed across the carpet decorated with roses and ivy done up in muted shades of pink and green. By the time she got to his bedside, her cheeks were flaming and her stomach was knotting. Her pulse was pounding in her ears loud enough that she was surprised it didn’t wake him. Letting out a breath, she gripped the handle of her suitcase and picked it up, the urgency of the move lifting up a swath of nearby dust.

Her nose twitched. Her eyes watered. A tingling force built up. She froze, trying to will the damn thing into submission, but she had run out of freebies already. This one would not be denied.

Her sneeze boomed in the otherwise silent room. A startled Nick jackknifed into a sitting position and grabbed her wrist, yanking her off balance so she fell onto the bed. Well, somewhat on top of the bed. Mostly she was on top of him, which wasn’t awkward at all. It was more like it wasn’t only awkward. It was so many things at once—petrifying, lust-inducing, embarrassing, nipple-hardening to name just a few—that she was going to get internal-reaction whiplash.

“Are you watching to make sure I sleep like an earl?” he asked, his voice sleep rough but still teasing.

“Suitcase.” She managed to squeak out the single word without busting into lust flames. It was a miracle. Really.

She should get up. She would get up. She couldn’t move.

“Brooke?” he asked, concern thick in his voice. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’m fine,” she managed to get out as the reality of her imminent death from embarrassment broke the spell of immobility.

She put a hand down on the bed so she could push herself up and off him. At least she meant to put her palm on the bed. Instead, it landed on something warm and hard and lightly dusted with a happy trail that disappeared under the waistband of his pants.

Nick let out something that sounded like a cross between a needy groan and a tortured sigh as his gaze dipped down to her hand splayed across his abs.

Gulping down a squawk of mortification, she practically flew off the bed. Once she was on her own less-than-totally-stable two feet, she grabbed her suitcase and then headed out with as much dignity as possible considering she’d nearly given the earl’s heir an accidental handy and she was all but running.

Only once she was safe in her room—well, Nick’s room—could she breathe again. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, calming inhale, but all the action did was give her a full-color mental image of Nick on the bed with that look on his face that promised things. Good things. Bad things. Things she couldn’t have.

Bloody hell, it was going to be a long night.

Chapter Nine

Brooke cracked an eye open and tried to figure out where in the hell she was. She took a fuzzy, half-blind-without-her-contacts-or-glasses look around. The navy and cream canopy above her was mostly in focus. Sun streaming in through leaded-glass bay windows was a little blurrier. Still trying to work out where she was as her brain slowly came back online, a solid knocking behind her almost sent her jumping out of her pajamas, taking her consciousness from white noise to high-definition in an instant.

She whirled around in Nick’s huge canopy bed so she faced the door connecting their rooms.

“You awake?” His muffled voice came through the door.

She snatched the duvet and yanked it up to her chin. “Don’t come in.”