Prince of my Panties (Royal Package 2)

That hope could hurt us both. Badly.

13

Jeffrey

I’m going to have a wreck.

Drive off the side of the mountain.

I’m going to kill myself and Elizabeth, months before her twenty-sixth birthday. On the coroner’s report, they’ll list “Redhead Sewing Lingerie” as the cause of death.

God help me, I need to keep my eyes on the road, but I can’t stop sneaking peeks at the passenger’s seat, where Lizzy—newly redheaded and wearing enough eyeliner to make me have vivid, 1960s-themed sex fantasies I’ve never had before—cradles a corset with a deep V in the front of it in her lap. She’s working magic on the silk fabric with her needle, adding pearls in a pattern that makes it look like someone scattered flower petals across it, but it’s the V that’s driving me crazy.

I can’t stop imagining Lizzy in that plunging V neckline.

Lizzy with her breasts spilling over the of cups of the corset, soft and plump and begging to be kissed. I want to wrap her in that lingerie and then unwrap her slowly, piece by delicate piece, until she begs me to put us both out of our misery.

It’s miserable to be this close to her in those tight jeans and tending that seductive scrap of fabric and still be wearing so many clothes.

Add in that tight shirt of hers, the one that shows the curves she usually hides under layers of billowing fabric, and the chances of my eyes staying on the road until we get to Rue are slim to fucking none.

I have to do something to get my thoughts back on task.

“How long did you say the woman walked? Between taking you from the playground and arriving at the place in the woods?”

“I don’t know,” she says, not looking up from her work. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe longer. It felt like a lot longer, but children are bad with time.”

I grunt. “I wasn’t.”

“Sure, you were,” she says. “You just didn’t realize it. Children’s time-passing-meter is easily thrown off by boredom or fear or how long it’s been since they’ve had a snack.”

My stomach growls at the mention of food, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Lizzy’s lips curve. “I told you we should have stopped for second breakfast in the last village,” she murmurs.

“I’m not a hobbit.”

She sighs. “No, you’re not. Sadly.”

“Why sadly?”

“Life seems so much easier for hobbits, doesn’t it? They seem so content in their shire, tending their animals and families, never worrying about what adventure they might be missing by staying home. If you were a hobbit, we’d be back in the cottage with snacks instead of wasting our time looking for people that might not even exist. And I wouldn’t have had to take car sickness medication that makes me sleepy.”

“You don’t look sleepy,” I say grumpily.

“And you don’t look cranky, but…here we are.”

“If I were a hobbit, I’d run mad,” I say, not bothering to contradict her. I am cranky. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this turned on by a woman, or had a woman seem so “take it or leave it” about me. Sure, she propositioned me while she had a fever, but since her fever broke, Lizzy seems more than capable of resisting my charms. “And how can you say that?” I continue, grumpier still.

“Say what?” she asks, her attention on her work.

“What you just said. How can you doubt that this woman exists and still believe in her prophecies at the same time?”

“Easily. People are excellent at contradicting themselves. As a species, it’s one of the things we’re best at—believing one thing while holding a completely contradictory opinion at the same time. So which part of being a hobbit would drive you crazy? Your feet being so large in proportion to the rest of your body?”

“No,” I say, my grip tightening on the wheel.

“The public drunkenness? You don’t seem like you’re into public drunkenness. Or private drunkenness. Do you drink?”

“Not often, no.”

“You don’t like feeling out of control,” she says, humming knowingly. Irritatingly. “And that’s what you would hate about being a hobbit. Being small and humble and not in charge.”

“They’re at a physical and cultural disadvantage to the other species in the stories,” I say, troubled by how accurately she’s read me without looking up from her work. “They can’t help being vulnerable, but they are, and given my druthers, I’d rather not be.”

She giggles. “Your druthers… You’re adorable.”

My chest warms, and the grumpy knot in my gut softens.

“Seriously? Who says things like that?” She chuckles softly. “Were all your tutors two-hundred-year-old British men?”

“Some of them were two-hundred-year-old British women,” I say, sneaking peeks at her smile as we hit a relatively straight patch of road. “We also had a twenty-something computer nerd from the Netherlands and a prize-winning fiction writer from Germany who taught the fundamentals of storytelling. But he didn’t last long.”