Prince Nicholas shakes his head in affectionate exasperation.
“She’s right on brand.”
The night goes on, and while these sorts of things are typically stuffy affairs, with Tommy beside me it’s different—a whirl of laughing and champagne drinking and heated glances and one lovely dance after the next.
Later, Tommy walks with me from the ballroom down a secluded hall in search of the lavatory. And we encounter Wessco’s other prince—the now heir to the throne, Prince Henry, and his wife, Princess Sarah.
They have two children at last count, nearly four-year-old Princess Jane and three-year-old Prince Edward. But when they step out into the hall—from the door of what appears to be a broom closet—it’s apparent they’re still mad for each other.
“Oh, hello,” Princess Sarah says to Tommy and me, immediately flustered and blushing a blazing bright pink. “We were just . . .” she gestures to a framed landscape on the wall “ . . . admiring the lovely artwork.”
Henry Pembrook has had a reputation for being a rascal his whole life—and marriage hasn’t tempered that a bit.
“We were making out,” he confesses.
“Henry!” Sarah gasps.
“Oh, look at their faces—they knew you were lying. You’re rubbish at it.”
He loops a possessive arm around her shoulders, turning her towards him.
“We’re going to have to work on your game face, sweetheart. For instance, you can practice saying you’re not hopelessly, desperately infatuated with me—until you’re able to declare it believably.”
Sarah grins, looking up at her husband with adoration in her big brown eyes.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be that good of a liar.”
Henry dips his head, whispering breathlessly, “Good.”
Tommy takes my hand and we slip discreetly past them—not that the future king and queen would notice.
They’re already making out again.
* * *
Tommy
A MONTH AFTER THE ROYAL charity gala, Abby and I get sloshed. Shit-faced. Not two sheets to the wind—but three. The kind of intoxicated where the corners of your vision take on that mellow pleasant haze and your joints are liquid and it’s impossible to keep your hands off each other.
The scene of the drunkering is Katy’s Pub, where we met up with Lo and Ellie, Henrietta and Harry, Kevin and Bea, my sister Janey and some worthless twat she’s been spending time with, for a melding of the friend groups.
Abby doesn’t see as much of Kevin and Etta around the hospital these days, as they’ve each branched off into their surgical specialties—so they spend time catching up and drinking more rounds than I can count of some fruity cocktail that I can taste on her sweet breath. Lo, Janey and I get into a shot contest that starts off friendly but escalates into a battle royale for shit-talking rights. Ellie—the poor lass—is the designated driver, though she doesn’t seem to mind, because she’s ecstatically knocked up.
Again.
When the night is done, she and Lo drop us at Abby’s building, where the two of us rush randily up the steps to her flat as quick as our flying-high feet will take us. We make it just inside the door—barely slamming it shut—before we’re wrapped together so close you can’t see where she begins and I end.
Our mouths slide together, wet and moaning. And fuck, I’m so gone for her. My luscious, lovely girl—it’s like I have amnesia—and any time before when I didn’t crave her, want her body and soul, has been wiped from my memory.
And all that’s left is her and this and us.
I press Abby back against the wall, sucking at the skin of her petal-soft neck and earlobe—grinding the granite pipe of my cock right there against that spot where she loves it and needs it. Abby’s chin lifts and her mouth opens and I slide to her lips, breathing in the same air, pumping harder against her.
She tugs at my hair and pleads against my mouth.
“If you don’t get inside me, I’m literally going to die.”
And we’re laughing together because she read my mind.
I sweep us to the sofa because the bed is just too bloody far.
And we pull at the abomination of the clothes that stand in the way. When she’s wearing nothing but bare soft skin, I want to slow down and savor and lick up every inch of her.
But she won’t let me.
She’s fire in my arms, lashing and burning for me.
I guide her to her back on the sofa, spread her legs and hook one arm under her knee. Holding her hooded eyes with mine, I suck at the pads of my fingers and stroke her pussy, slipping inside and coating her with the added slickness.
Not because she needs it—she’s already dripping—but because it’s dirty and hot and she likes watching me do it.
I withdraw my fingers and bend my knees, sliding the head of my cock between her folds—then I surge in fully with a single thrust. She’s perfect and slippery and so clenching tight my eyes roll back in my head.