8. Christian
Kale's mouth fell open,and I saw the moment when realization dawned. He snapped his mouth closed and inhaled a sharp breath, and I could hear all the things he wanted to say to me caught behind the seal of his lips. He blinked slowly and exhaled, stare flickering toward the balled-up and spit-soaked royal order on the hotel couch, then back to me. His cheeks went dark and then he looked down at our bare feet.
"A prince?" he asked softly, sounding as betrayed as I imagined he felt.
"I'll be with your shortly, Niko," I said, slamming the door closed in my guard's face before he could protest. Only after the bolt latched, did Kale look back up at my face.
"You should have told me."
"What difference would it have made?" I asked with a helpless shrug. I didn't want to be callous toward whatever emotions he was feeling in that moment, but I was having plenty of my own and Niko's arrival made it impossible to feel any of them in the ways that I wanted.
Whatever had happened between Kale and me over the past few hours was beyond anything I'd ever experienced in my life. There weren't words for the way he made me feel. And whatever he'd spanked out of me on the couch? I'd spend years trying to dissect all of that. From the first crack of his hand against my ass, something had shifted. It wasn't like something coming loose, but more like something falling into place. With every strike he delivered, I started to understand myself with a new startling level of clarity. I didn't just like what we did together. I needed it.
Somehow, he'd known that about me. And when he shoved that stupid royal order into my mouth and pressed me down into the couch so I could scream my way into becoming…? It was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me, and he didn't even know. He couldn't know. And now Niko was here, ruining it like he ruined the rest of my life, always on Phillip's orders or at my father's command. Always someone making demands of me without caring how it made me feel. Was that why when Kale issued his instructions, it had been different? He cared how I felt, how I reacted. I could tell because he kept asking me if I was good. Kept telling me we could stop. He had given me a choice to let him lead, and that was everything.
"What difference would it have made, Kale?" I asked him again, snatching the ribbon from the couch and shoving it back into the inside pocket of my coat.
My mind was at war with my heart and both of them battled my libido. With every step I took, I was reminded of Kale. From the ache between my ass cheeks to the tenderness in my cock every time it dragged limply across the luxuriously plush robe and the burn against my ass and the backs of my thighs—every move made me think of him.
He sat down on the edge of the couch and I gathered my clothes, less one sock, and when I'd gotten everything together, he still hadn't answered me. Dropping the pile of garments onto the coffee table, I went to him, trailing my finger over his exposed knee. He tilted his head to the side and looked up at me, expression now unreadable.
"Would it have made a difference?" I asked, voice softer than before.
He stretched his fingers toward mine, twining our hands together. It was hilarious, I thought, that he had been inside of me with his mouth and his cock and his hands, but he hadn't held my hand until this very moment. We'd come close at the door, but I'd put that on the list as another thing that Niko had ruined for me.
Ever so slowly, Kale shook his head. He pulled me onto his lap and I came without complaint, straddling him and resting my hands on top of his shoulders.
"Would it have mattered?" He'd been so insistent up until that point that I use my words, and what I needed more than anything we'd just done together was for him to do the same.
"No," he whispered, shaking his head like he was more certain of the answer.
Relief washed over me and I fell forward, pressing my forehead against his. There was that damn burn against my eyelids again, and after our last time on the couch, I wouldn't have thought there were any tears left inside of me to let out. Leave it to this insufferable man to find them and draw them out at his whim.
Kale settled his hands on my waist, taking a deep breath but otherwise remaining quiet and still.
"What are you thinking?" I asked.
He chuckled. "You don't want to know."
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't," I assured him.
"I was thinking about how I fucked a prince tonight," he said, wry smile flickering across his face. "How I spanked him until he cried and then fucked him again."
I swallowed, shivering. "You did."
He flexed his fingers against my waist, then trailed them inward, loosening the sloppy knot he'd only just tied on the belt of the robe. It came apart quickly for him, as I imagine most things and people would, and then his hands were on my skin. Dancing up my ribs and over my chest and around my back, Kale's fingertips mapped my skin with his hands, every exhale out of his mouth trembling between us. Even though he was touching me softly, reverently, he wasn't tentative. He still stroked his fingers across my flesh like he had any right to it and, fuck, how I wanted him to have a right to it.
"Tell me something about my prince," he whispered, stare trained on the places he touched me instead of my face.
"I'm the spare for a spare for a spare," I said with a disgusted scoff in the back of my throat. "There's no place in line for the throne for me, just all the limitations and restraints as if there were."
"Third place, then?"
"More like eleventh, because of the kids."
He hummed, moving his hands away from my stomach and down to the tops of my thighs. It was impossible to not moan at his touch, to spread my legs wider and sink down deeper onto his lap. He wasn't hard, but he was burning and that somehow meant more.
"What were you running from tonight?"
I put the tip of my nose against his, nudging him until he looked up at me. When he did, I pressed our mouths together. He didn't close his eyes and neither did I, but I parted my lips and committed the feel of his tongue against mine to memory. He broke the kiss far sooner than I would have, but between the two of us, I was not the one in charge.
"Use your words," he again demanded of me.
"All of it."
"Do you hate it?"
His thumbs were so close to my cock and his touch felt electric, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake.
"Most of the time," I admitted.
"If we'd met under different circumstances, would this still have been for just one night?"
"It's all I have," I said. "It's the only time that was mine."
Kale tilted his head to the other side, still close enough to my mouth that I could taste him. "And you shared it with me?"
"I gave it to you."
He slanted our mouths together, hands snaking around to my back. He splayed his fingers wide like he was trying to cover as much surface as possible with the limited resources he had. After all, no matter how much he'd rocked my world, he was just one mortal man. But I arched into him, leaning into the kiss with a whimper so soft he swallowed it down before I even heard it.
"Do you have to go right now?" he asked.
"I can leave Niko outside for a while."
"Can you leave him outside until the morning?"
Another knock at the door felt like the answer was no. Kale's entire body went tense, and he gave me a little push as though he had to shove me away to keep from touching me.
"Room service, Mr. Sheffield," someone called out from the other side of the door.
I barked out a sharp laugh, and Kale slumped against the back of the couch, scrubbing his hands down his face with a frustrated grumble.
"I forgot about the food." He lifted me off of him and stood.
"Let me." I held up my hand for him to stop, and he sighed, nodding.
I imagined the entire night must have been quite the whirlwind for him, the last ten minutes probably even more so. I waited until I was sure Kale would stay on the couch, then I re-tied my robe and went to the door. Out in the hallway, I found Niko, who looked as stern and annoyed as he ever did, and a bumbling old man with a room service cart between him and the door. There were four silver domed trays on top with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. Two glasses. Niko eyed the spread, but didn't say a word.
"You can take that inside," I said to the employee, stepping out of the way so he could come in with the cart. I think he could sense the tension, because he moved as quick as he could, running out of the room with the cart and not so much as a look back. I glanced at Kale on the couch, stare fixated on the carpet beneath his feet.
"Are you good?" I asked, a repeat of his refrain to me.
"Just thinking."
"I'm not leaving right now, but I need to speak with Niko alone."
He nodded, and I stepped into the hallway.
"Are you quite finished, sir?" Niko asked, tone laced with frustration.
"Nowhere near it, but I appreciate your detective skills if you were able to find me so quickly."
"The city has lots of cameras," he said.
It was the only explanation he offered, but enough to remind me that there was nowhere I could go that was out of the reach of my father…or the crown.
"Do I get points for being right under your nose?"
"It was ballsy," he said, "I'll give you that."
"Is Phillip mad?"
"Fuming."
"Has he called our father over it?" I scratched my chin, just below my lip. The skin there was tender, abraded from the scruff on Kale's chin.
"Not yet."
Another unanticipated wash of relief that I knew I didn't deserve, but would take just the same.
"Let me have the rest of the night then," I said, not quite begging, even though I didn't find myself above it in that moment. "You know where I am and you know how to find me if I slip off again."
"Don't slip off again."
"Is that an okay?" I arched a brow.
He checked his watch and frowned. "Don't leave this room."
I grinned, knowing I was going to get my way. "I wasn't planning on it."
"I'll be back for you at eight," he said, pressing some buttons on his watch. An alarm, I gathered.
"Bring me clean clothes. My tux is a bit soiled."
"You're incorrigible," he muttered, shaking his head and stalking off down the hallway toward the elevators.
Slipping back into the room, Kale stood as soon as the door closed. When I flipped the deadbolt latch closed, his brow knit together in confusion. "Are you leaving?"
I went to the desk where the food and champagne had been laid out. Taking both of the glasses and the bottle in hand, I turned to Kale and raised them both in the air. Triumphant.
"I have until the morning," I said, a little breathless with the promise of what we could do with those ten hours. "If you still want me."
The confusion on his face morphed into elation, and a wide, cocksure smile spread across his face. There he was. There was the man who'd pushed me so far out of myself I didn't even think it was possible to return to life before him. The man who'd called me "princess" because he wanted to spoil me with his dick, not because it was in the same realm as my actual title.
"Use your words, Mr. Sheffield," I teased, using my thumb to untie the bow I'd made on the robe when I went to barter for my freedom with Niko. The soft terrycloth fell open, and Kale licked his lips, humming thoughtfully at the sight of me.
"I think I'll want you for the rest of my life, princess," he said, sitting back down on the couch and popping loose the knot on his robe too. He spread the material open, putting himself on display for my perusal. "Now get your ass back on my lap where it belongs. We don't have much time."