Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Her gaze rose to his face. “I like you, Nick Vane, and this might get complicated.”

“I like you, too, and complications don’t bother me,” he said, heartbeat slowing as he stroked the long silk of her hair. “I like working out puzzles.”

She smiled up at him, kissed the spot just below his collarbone, and closed her eyes.

Five minutes, an hour, a lifetime later, Nick lay in his bed with Brooke and stared out at the room. It wasn’t much. A bed. A nightstand. A dresser. It didn’t have the lake lapping lazily outside his window like his place in Salvation or the sound of croaking frogs coming in on a warm breeze drifting in through the window—but it had Brooke. And as she snuggled against his side, her naked body fitting perfectly against his, he decided that at that moment, it was better. It was the only place he wanted to be.

The realization should have scared the shit out of him. He held his breath, waiting for the itch of fear to prick at the back of his brain. When it didn’t come, he let out a long breath, wrapped his arm tighter around Brooke, and fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-One

The undead were everywhere, and Nick couldn’t find Brooke.

Mace must have hired 90 percent of the village as extras for the big zombie wedding ball scene. Nick made his way through the zombies walking from the makeup trailers in the stable house driveway to the big house, where they stood on the edge of the set, which Mace had called a “no-go zone,” where only director, actors, camerapeople, and other must-haves were allowed. He was not and neither, it seemed, were the zombie hordes. Brooke, however, had managed to get past the invisible velvet rope.

One of the crew, a skinny guy in a black T-shirt and artfully torn jeans with—no lie—a newsboy cap was next to her, chatting her up. He was the kind of guy who only ordered craft beer made in small batches that had been flavored with the stolen acorns of woodland fairies and talked in condescending tones about the true righteousness of records played on his authentic gramophone. Nick wanted to crunch his nose to dust.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Daisy said, stopping to stand next to him.

Or at least he thought it was her. Gray skin, one eye hanging halfway down her cheek, and only a few blond wisps of hair covering her oozing head.

“Daisy?”

“In the undead flesh.”

“You look horrible.”

“Thank you.” She grinned up at him, showing off a mouth with only a handful of yellow teeth in it. “Check out Riley’s heart.”

He glanced over at the big man next to Daisy before his brain could warn him off. Riley’s face was pretty much the same, if grayer and slimier, but the real stomach turner was the hunk of skin and muscle missing from his chest that gave the perfect view of a putrid heart behind his exposed rib cage.

“The makeup folks really know what they’re doing.”

“It took forever, but how could we miss this?” Daisy slipped her hand into Riley’s. “Bowhaven’s never seen anything like it.”

Well, things sure had changed since he’d been village-napped.

“So who made the first move?” Nick asked, not bothering to hide the shit-eating grin he aimed at the big forest ranger.

Riley’s blush managed to give his makeup a pinkish hue. Daisy, on the other hand, just grinned.

“Me, of course,” she said. “Now the village has something else to talk about other than just wondering if you and Brooke are more than just heir and secretary.”

“They’re talking about that, huh?” As if magnetized, his gaze went back to Brooke inside the forbidden zone with the skinny guy who was standing way too close to the woman who’d been screaming Nick’s name as she came hard only a few hours ago.

Caveman tendencies? Possessive? Jealous? Him? Fucking A, yes he was.

“Take a breath there, John Wick,” Daisy said. “She’s just talking to him.”

Only half aware that there were other people in the world, he turned back to the diminutive zombie next to him so she could read his lips. “What?”

“Nothing,” Daisy said with a chuckle that ended when a hard look entered her eyes that gave him pause. “You know what happened with Reggie?”

That fucker? Oh yeah, he knew and wanted to squash him like a bug because of it. However, since she’d already called him out for being a me-Tarzan-you-Jane dipshit, he just said, “Yeah.”

“So know this.” She leaned forward, enough grit in her tone to make his blood chill in his veins. “No one will ever hurt her like that again.”

Subtle? Not in the least, but that wasn’t Daisy’s style. “I understand.”