Royal Elite: Leander (2 page)

Things were about to get interesting.

. . .

“Let's call him.” Wynn threw down the linen napkin in disgust. She couldn't get the thing to stand up at a point to save her own life. Meanwhile, Chey had a neat stack sitting next to her elbow.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You'll just get his voicemail again. He's
busy
doing...whatever it is he's doing, Winnie.”

“I don't care. The wine isn't helping anymore, and now the napkins are annoying me.” Wynn lifted a hand to ruffle the riot of corkscrew curls that she usually wore in a sleek, dark bob. Addicted to trying new hair styles, she could be counted upon to switch it up often. Under the table, she toed off the two-inch platform Mary-Janes and wiggled her toes inside her stockings. “And don't call me Winnie.”

Chey picked up her wine glass and met Wynn's eyes over the rim, her mirth poorly concealed.

Wynn scoffed a laugh. “I know what you're thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You're thinking I should leave the poor man alone and that he'll call when he can.”

“Exactly.”

“Did you dial up Sander fifteen minutes ago when you went to the bathroom?” Wynn crossed her arms over her chest, pre-maturely triumphant. She knew Chey well. There was no way the queen hadn't tried to sneak a call to her husband. Wynn knew—because she would have done the same thing, too. Rewarded with a choke and laugh from Chey, Wynn shot her best friend a knowing smile.

“No,” Chey said after she recovered.

“Liar.”

“I didn't.”

Wynn reached over and raided Chey's pocket. Or tried to. The snug fit of the jeans and Chey's sitting position prevented her from getting more than her fingertips in. “I'm going to check your recent calls. Give me the phone.”

“Get out of my pockets!” Chey set her wine down, laughter muffled behind her teeth. She swatted at Wynn's fingers.

“No. Let me have the phone. I know you called him. If your jeans weren't so tight...”

Chey reached over and scattered the carefully folded napkins all over the table.

“...Chey!”

“Leave my phone alone, or I'll undo all the ribbons on the wedding favors, too!”

Wynn paused, staring wide-eyed.

At the same time, both women broke down in gales of laughter. Holding her stomach, Wynn sat back in the chair. The little ribbons tied around the neck of the sachets had given Wynn fits. Imagining the mess strewn around the cottage was wildly amusing. More amusing than anything, was that Leander had explicitly told her he didn't want a big 'fluffy' wedding. He was a simple yet complicated man who rarely stood on ceremony for anything. More than likely, he would have cheered the wreckage of Chey's carefully constructed napkins, and the favors, too.

A flicker of shadow out of the corner of her eye snapped Wynn's attention to the hallway situated off the living area. With a straight view to the opening from the dining room, nothing impeded her view of the shape of a man that skulked into the cottage.

“
Chey!
Get down!” Acting on instinct—which was to protect her best friend at all costs—Wynn lurched up from her chair and pushed Chey forward, trying to get her under the table. There hadn't been an assassination attempt on the king or queen in more than a year, but Wynn feared one was about to happen now.

Now, when Leander and Sander and even Mattias were all in some other country in another part of the world, unable to help them.

Yelping in surprise, Chey spilled wine over the creamy mess of napkins and ducked in her chair.

“Whoa, whoa!” Leander swerved around a tall column with his hands up, palms out. “It's just us.”

On his heels, Sander pushed past, brows beetled with concern, and set a hand on Chey's shoulder.

Wynn threw her hands in the air. “What are you two doing, scaring us half to death like that? I thought you were assassins!”

Leander strode past Sander and Chey and snagged Wynn around the hips. A slow grin built on his mouth, gaze gleaming devilishly. “Well. We were going to
surprise
you, but you were facing the living room instead of the kitchen and saw us.”

Chey sat up, twisted in her seat, and surged up into Sander's arms with a laugh. “I thought for sure we were going to have to fight. I didn't even have time to get a good grip on the wine glass to use as a weapon thanks to Wynn trying to push me onto the floor.”

Sander rumbled and brought her snug against his chest, possessive and greedy. “Leander and his bright ideas.”

“Hey. I didn't see you shouting out after we came out of the basement into the hallway,” Leander said with a mock scowl at Sander.

Relief replaced Wynn's fright as the moments wore on, and she threw her arms around Leander's neck, halting his banter with a kiss. “You're in so much trouble. Where have you been, and why haven't you been answering your phone?”

“I was busy,” Leander said.

“See? I told you so.” Chey, wearing a smug expression, cheek pressed against Sander's jaw, stared Wynn's way. “I tried to explain that when you're gone, you're always busy, but she wouldn't listen.”

Sander and Leander both gave Chey a knowing, wry look. As if to say,
you're one to talk.

Wynn belly laughed when the men both called Chey out. “I'm
so
not the only one. She tried to call Sander when she went to the bathroom earlier.”

“Be quiet, Winnie.”

“Don't call me Winnie.”

“What's all this?” Leander broke into the banter, staring at the array of wedding supplies on the table.

“All the stuff you said you didn't want at your wedding,” Chey said.

“Thanks, Chey.” Wynn shot Chey a dry look.

“You're welcome.” Chey smiled girlishly.

“You look nothing like a Queen right now. I'm just mentioning,” Wynn said with a laugh.

“That's because she's just my wife right now, and my wife has things to do. It was good seeing you, Wynn.” Sander hauled Chey up into his arms.

“What happened to your throat?” Wynn frowned when she caught sight of red marks on Sander's neck.

Chey glanced back to Sander, then frowned and ran her fingertips over the wound. “What's this?”

“Don't look at me, look at Leander. Or did you miss the growing bruise on his jaw?” Sander pointedly glanced Leander's direction.

“Thanks a lot for pointing that out,” Leander said to Sander.

Wynn used her fingers to gently turn Leander's chin the other direction, and gasped at the darkening blue-black mark spreading from his jaw to his cheek. “What happened?”

“
Someone
was somewhere they weren't supposed to be, that's all. It's no big deal.” Leander brushed the minor injury off.

“You mean to say that
someone
attacked someone else without even checking to first see if he belonged there,” Sander countered. A grin flirted with the corners of his mouth while Chey kissed a line from his jaw to his neck.

Leander laughed. “Aren't you late for a session with your throne?”

“With the bed, you mean.” Sander turned from the kitchen, Chey secured firmly in his arms, and strode for the back door rather than the hallway.

“Good to see you, too, Sander!” Wynn called out. “I'll talk to you tomorrow, Chey.”

“Goodnight!” Chey didn't glance back.

“Twenty bucks says they won't even make it back to the castle before he accosts her, then there'll be another baby on the way,” Leander retorted, watching the king and queen go.

Wynn put her attention back on Leander, refusing to release him yet. “And you'll be first in line to hold him or her. We can hardly pry their kids out of your hands as it is.”

“That's a wild exaggeration.” Leander scoffed, then swooped in to kiss her mouth.

Wynn let him part her lips and seek the sweet hollows past her teeth, trading the taste of wine across their tongues. She wound the ends of her fingers in his neck length, brown hair—which had a small leaf sticking out of it.

“What did you both do, wrestle on the ground?” Wynn whispered against his lips.

“Yes.” Leander tipped his head back, making eye contact. “I didn't mean to scare you. Next time, what you should do is go for a weapon. That sword is here in the kitchen, remember. In the pantry.”

Wynn smiled when Leander veered off into self-protection suggestions. It was just like him to think of security and safety above all else. It was part of his 'job' with the royal family. Wynn wasn't convinced Leander hadn't popped out of his mother's womb ready to do battle with how focused the man was on his craft.

“I don't like the sword,” she said, just to see him go into what she called 'lecture mode'. When that happened, his brows drew, his eyes got even more serious than they were right now, and he took on a different tone when he spoke.

“I know you don't, but it's a silent weapon so you can fight back without alerting anyone else who--” Leander paused and narrowed his eyes.

Wynn arched her brows, inviting him to continue. Baiting him.

He leaned in with a sudden arch and bit her neck. Soft bites, making a trail toward her ear.

“If you keep that up, good sir, I'll be obliged to drag you into the bedroom and have my wicked way with you,” Wynn said.

“Why go all the way to the bedroom?” He rasped the words just beneath her earlobe.

Wynn shuddered, scraping her nails across the back of his neck. She gasped quietly when he lifted her feet off the ground an inch and backed her into the nearest wall. Connecting with a gentle thud, spine flush against the surface, Wynn tugged on his hair. He snarled a sound and used his chest to brace her while his fingers deftly unclasped the button of her black slacks. The material slithered to the ground, the scrap of her matching underwear flying off a toe when she kicked her foot.

Their kiss became more demanding. Wynn returned the favor of divesting Leander of his pants, ignoring the knife sheath that hit the ground with a muffled thunk. In three motions each, the rest of their clothes fell away.

Needy, Wynn got her nails on his back, reveling in the feral sound he made as he got his hands on her waist, her breasts, mercilessly tweaking her nipples until she cried out. He'd discovered she liked it
a lot
when he did it just right. One of the many secrets Leander had cracked in their time together.

Between kisses, he whispered sexual and sweet things, alternating between rough and tender. He drove into her, drove her against the wall in a devastating rhythm that tore apart her resistance and brought her to the brink of ecstasy in a scandalously short amount of time. She cried out his name, then gasped on the final thrust, long and deep, that pinned her hips against the wall.

Breathing her praise against his throat, she hung on with both arms, a sheen of sweat on her skin. The hot gust of his groans ruffled her hair near her ear. She shivered.

“Did I forget to mention that I missed you?” Leander said, sounding drugged.

“Yes.”

“I missed you.”

“Tell me again.”

He kissed his way along her cheek to her jaw, and then to her mouth, where he pressed a whisper. “I missed you.”

Wynn shuddered and held on tighter. When he tilted away from the wall with her still in his arms, legs around his hips, Wynn didn't protest. Through the cottage, up the stairs, and into their bedroom, Leander carried her as if she weighed nothing at all. On the thin side anyway, she wasn't hard to tote from one place to another.

Tumbling into bed, Wynn wound up curled on her side against him, fingers trickling over the lean muscles of his chest and abdomen. Sleek and honed, his body was a testament to the hours and hours of brutal activity he put himself through.

“You're staying home now, right?” she asked.

He arched one arm behind his head, the other draped under her neck and around her shoulders. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, I'm here until the wedding.”

Wynn studied his profile, the glint of gray in his eyes. “Promise?”

He ticked a look her way. The stubble of his whiskers added a rakish air to his already rakish expression. “As long as there isn't an emergency, then yes.”

“Leander. I can't have you rushing off on the eve of our wedding. Promise me you're here until the wedding.” Wynn couldn't fathom being stood up at the alter, even if her friends and family would understand.

“I promise I'll try very hard to be here.”

“That's cheating.”

“It's the best I can do, baby.” He sifted long fingers through her hair, dragging the tips against her scalp.

“I don't understand why you have to do what you do. I mean, can't you find another kind of job around here? Or stay closer to home with your security tasks?” If Wynn was honest with herself—she didn't know exactly what Leander did for a living. Once or twice, it had been a bone of contention between them, causing a few disagreements and a bit of tension. She knew he 'helped' Prince Mattias with security matters of a sort, but beyond that, she was clueless. Whenever she mentioned his 'work', Leander didn't correct the term, or offer to better explain any details.

“I like my job.”

“Yes, and it keeps you away from here for days and weeks—sometimes months at a time. It's not like you're military or anything.” Wynn had thought so when she first met him and he'd been in a guard uniform.

“No. I'm not military.”

Wynn clamped her lips over a tart reply. She didn't want to make him tense the second he walked in the door from a month's absence. “Well, anyway. I think most everything is ready for the wedding. Chey and a few other girls and I are going to the mainland to decorate the chapel--”

He frowned and interrupted. “Wait, what? We decided to get married outside under that stone gazebo near the beach.”

“Oh. I had to change all that.”
Because you weren't here to consult.
But she didn't say what she was thinking.

“Is that why you and Chey were out there making all those frilly wedding things? How many people are coming? I requested no more than ten or twenty.”

Wynn squirmed on the bed. “...probably like, eighty.”

The twitch of his body gave away his surprise. “
Eighty?
Have you met eighty people since you've lived on the island—wait. Don't answer that.”