Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She’d never had to actually tell the story before. Thanks to the reporters, everyone already knew—or thought they did. Trying to find the words to sum up the whole distasteful mess was harder than she’d expected.

Nick started to pick up their dishes and put them back on the tray, his movements stiff. “It’s okay, you can just tell me to mind my own business.”

Shit. That was not what this was about. “I’ve never told anyone before. I never had to.”

He gave her that disarming, charming smile of his. “You don’t have to.”

She turned away and exhaled a deep breath. By the time she’d counted to ten, she’d settled her features enough to give him the lowdown. “I met Reggie at a pub in Manchester. He came in with a bunch of his mates and I tripped and spilled my entire pint on him. Instead of getting mad, he made a joke and bought me a pint to make up for, as he’d said, being in my way.”

God. He’d been so fun and relaxed. The stories he’d told had made her laugh and the kind of life he led as a footballer made her experiences up until then seem so dull.

“Long story short, we started dating. Oh, I’d heard the rumors about him and the fact that he couldn’t keep his cock in his trousers, but he’d convinced me that he was a changed man—that he’d changed because of me.”

What an utter fool she’d been.

“Everything was fine—at least as far as I knew—right up until the prime minister came to a match. That’s when Reggie met the prime minister’s daughter. After that, she started going to matches on her own and, unbeknownst to me, meet

ing up with him in the locker room for a quickie. When I showed up after a practice, the team trainer sent me back into the locker room. That’s when I found them.”

Her memory from that moment was only in flashes. Reggie down on his knees in front of the other woman’s spread legs. The look of ecstasy on her face. How wet Reggie’s mouth had been when he’d turned and seen her. The blinding flashes from the cameras.

“I must have screamed or yelled or something because the next thing I knew, the reporters who’d been at the practice were there in the locker room. It was just the kind of embarrassing moment involving minor celebrities that the tabloids love to cover. The fact that it involved a regular girl from a small village—a total naive country girl—just made for more fodder. They camped out on the street in front of my flat. It was horrible. I couldn’t take it and I came back to Bowhaven.”

She’d made the drive home on autopilot, as if she’d been called back to the one place that still felt safe from mockery and humiliation.

“And when the reporters came here on Reggie’s tail when he’d shown up supposedly to win me back—more likely it was to fix some of the bad PR—the villagers formed a kind of blockade. No one talked to Reggie or the reporters. No one gave interviews, shared old photos, or gave away my location. They were there for me in my worst moment. Now that they’re having a bad moment, I want to do what I can to repay them.”

Brooke had always expected that telling that story for the first time would be like reliving every humiliating second of the whole thing all over again. It wasn’t. Sure, it wasn’t painless, but sharing it with Nick was…nice. Kind of like letting go of a weight she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying around. She was lost in the strangeness of the moment when he reached out to her and intertwined his fingers with hers.

“I’ve never wanted to punch out a total stranger so much in my life,” Nick said, his eyes dead serious.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a wry chuckle. “Riley landed several good shots.”

He raised his beer can in salute. “I owe that man a beer or twelve.”

Something about his concern as they sat nearly hip to hip on the rug gave her a warm, secure feeling, the kind that reassured one after they heard a noise in the dark. It felt good. Too good. The wrong kind of good. It ticked her off, made her prickly. This man of all people, this bloody American heir to an earldom shouldn’t be the one to make her have that reaction.

“Why should you care?” she asked, her posture stiff enough to make her lower back ache as she sat on the rug and stared into the cold, dark hearth. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“What can I say,” he replied, his words carefully neutral. “I’ve always been a sucker for the underdog.”

“How very Captain America of you,” she said, stuffing another untasted chocolate into her mouth. “So you know my big secret; it’s only fair for you to tell me one of yours—and since I already know all about your parentage, you can’t make growing up an American earl-in-waiting as it.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the reality of what she’d just said, the casual cruelty of it, slapped her across the cheek. He’d been abandoned by his father and his mother had died when he was still a child. Shame burned her gut. “Nick, I’m so sorr—”

“Don’t worry about it.” He crushed his empty beer can and laid the mangled aluminum on the tray with the rest of their dinner dishes.

“No, really.” She reached out and curled her fingers around his arm, the familiar shiver of awareness cutting right through everything else. “I shouldn’t have—”

Something dark and thrilling flashed in his eyes that stole the words out of her mouth and made her pulse thunder in her ears. The next thing she knew, one of his strong hands was cupping the back of her head and he was pulling her in for a kiss.

“No more sorrys,” he said, his lips so close to hers. “You don’t want my sad story.”

She had half a second of “oh shit” before his lips touched hers and she forgot everything else in the world. God. This man was an artist with his mouth. She felt the kiss all the way from her lips down to her toes and every place in between. Her thighs clenched when his tongue curled around hers, teasing and tempting her into doing every bad thing she could think of—and she had a great imagination. Then, just as the desperation for more had begun to build, he pulled away.

“Sorry,” he said, rolling up from sitting to standing in one fluid motion. “I shouldn’t have done that. I lost myself for a minute. It won’t happen again.”

Her mushy brain couldn’t process the words over the take-me-now demand her body was putting out. So she sat in silence and watched as he grabbed the tray covered in empty dishes and strode to the door, no doubt to deliver it to the kitchen in the big house. She’d been the one to say they shouldn’t have a repeat performance; that’s why he’d backed off. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d lost her ever-loving mind with that decision.