Max and the Prince (10 page)

Max grabbed his flailing hand and pulled it towards himself,
closing both of his around it. “What we have is good, Lucien. I have feelings
for you that I don’t think I’ve ever felt for another man, and believe me, I’ve
had a few men.”

Lucien was jealous. Not because
he
wanted plenty of
men, but because
Max
had enjoyed other men. Still, the comment that Max
had feelings for him slipped through the jealousy and left a warm feeling
inside.

“I’m sensing another
but
.”

“I’m still here to keep you safe, so let me have my moments
of action mode. Okay?”

“I can do that.”

“We’ll both go and see Kev tomorrow, as friends, and I will
ask my questions, but meanwhile, tell me how you’re feeling.”

“Angry. Really angry at whatever happened to Kev.”

Max smiled. “I didn’t mean that. I said I had feelings for
you. Don’t you have something to say to that?”

Lucien smiled back. “And you’re not worried that they’ll
cause… issues? Remember, I’ve seen
The Bodyguard
now.”

“That isn’t real life, Lucien. Nope, real life is us”—he released
one of Lucien’s hands and indicated them both—“complicated and new, the
bodyguard and the prince.”

“Sounds like the title of a porn film.”

Max pressed a hand to his chest and let out an exaggerated gasp
of shock. “You watch porn?”

Lucien couldn’t help the snort of laughter. “I’m in my
twenties and I’ve never had a real sex life. How do you think I made it this far?
I have an intimate relationship with XTube.”

As they talked at the kitchen table, about porn and BI and
Kev and everything that was going on, it all felt so natural and normal.

Like nothing outside this house could hurt Lucien.

Nothing at all.

They’d just been to see Kev in the hospital. He remembered
nothing of the attack but was working on trying to recall. Max was convinced
Kev didn’t even see anything given the injury to the back of the head. The
attacker had come up behind Kev and taken him by surprise. And now they were in
the library. Lucien working, and Max killing time.

“I still don’t get this,” Max muttered. He wasn’t really
talking to Lucien or to the other people in the library, but his exasperation
was enough that it spilled out into the real world.

“Give it to me,” Lucien said. Before Max could stop him,
Lucien grabbed the book and pulled it towards him. Lucien was working on some
complicated treatise on something to do with the media and their ways of
dealing with immigration through use of language. Max got the gist of what the
essay was about from Lucien’s explanation, but the language Lucien was using
was beyond him. Max was an engineer by interest and trade, and arty-airy words
that explained nothing meant very little to him.

Still, if Lucien was in the library, then Max was in the
library. After Max had chosen the quietest corner that also had clear views on
all sides apart from the wall to their back and that was close to the exits, he
had little left to do. So he’d brought his own book to look at. Well, newspaper
anyway. Lucien’s face was creased in thought, then it cleared and he nodded.

“See, six down is
effect
, not
affect
, which
means that one across is
zygote
. Six letters meaning a fertilized egg
cell.”

Lucien rubbed out the letters Max had inserted in
yesterday’s
Times
crossword and passed it back.

 “Give me an empty water bottle in a desert and I’ll fix
it,” Max muttered. He was doing a lot of that. Lucien was the academic; Max was
the kid who left school after his exams to fly and only passed exams when he
needed to further his RAF career. Good job he’d shown skills that had officers
pushing him, otherwise he’d not have made it as far as he did.

“Why did you end up doing what you do?” Lucien asked.

“Huh?”

Lucien lowered his voice. “A bodyguard? I saw your records
and I know you stopped being a pilot, but you must have been able to stay in
the Air Force or taken up civilian flying of some sort after the accident?”

Max knew that he should have a proper answer to this by now.
He’d not really had to explain himself to BI, they took him on his skills as a
bodyguard. He’d never talked about it to anyone outside the Air Force shrink,
and even that had been very matter-of-fact. There was no big reason why he had
decided on the route he’d taken. He just had and he refused to think of there
being anything he had buried to come to that conclusion.

“What do you know about the accident?”

“Teddy wasn’t given much personal information on you.”

“Well, it’s not pretty, I got caught with an STA, a
surface-to-air missile,” Max explained. “I had to limp the plane over the
border before ditching. Ejector seat jammed and only blew when it was getting
to the point of no return. I met the earth with force, damaged my lower spine,
my knee.”

“Jeez, Max.”

“I had the choice of a desk job, but I couldn’t pass the
physicals for what I really wanted to do, fly. My eyesight was affected, my left
knee is mostly metal, but that’s okay. If I couldn’t fly in the RAF, though, I
was ready to try something different.”

“That must have been so hard.”

Max shrugged. “I have a private license if I want to fly,
and hell, I love what I do now.”

“The accident—”

“You should be studying and not talking,” Max admonished. He
didn’t want to talk about the crash or flying or anything that wasn’t Lucien
focusing on his studies and him actually finishing one of these damn
crosswords.

Lucien smiled at him, then waggled his hand in front of
Max’s face. “How many fingers?”

Max didn’t follow at first. “What?”

“You said your vision is… y’know… I’m just checking that my
bodyguard can actually see.” Lucien was being tongue-in-cheek, mischief in his
dark eyes.

Max grabbed Lucien’s hand, entwining their fingers, and the
mischief disappeared to be replaced with heat.

Abruptly Lucien extricated his hand and began to gather his
books. “We’re leaving.”

When they left the library, it was nearly five p.m. and dark,
and by silent agreement they walked straight home, holding back the need to
touch until Max had done all his checks and they were safely inside their
locked house. No sign of Jamie meant they really did have the house to
themselves.

Lucien dumped his books and folders on the kitchen table, then
grabbed Max’s hand and dragged him up the stairs. They played a game of Max
pretending to tug away, but at the end of the day, Max wasn’t arguing. When
Lucien’s bedroom door shut behind them, they didn’t waste a single second,
meeting each other in the middle of the room in a heated, passionate, wanting
kiss. This was what it had become between them, hot and instant, and Max could
quite happily compartmentalize the sex and his job. Caring and all the messy
emotional side was a little harder to manage, but he was trying.

Lucien wrenched himself away. “I did something,” he
confessed.

“What?” Max couldn’t help his instant fear. What had Lucien
done? Seen something? Not told Max if he was worried about something?

“This is sex, right?” Lucien waved a hand between them.

Max pulled Lucien back for a kiss. “Very nice sex,” he
chuckled.

“I’ve never… and I want to.” Lucien tugged out of his reach
and opened the drawer of his bedside table, pulling out lube and condoms. Max
went from turned-on to passion-blind in a second.

“You want me to…” He tumbled Lucien onto the bed,
encouraging him to scoot up until his head was on the pillow and kissing him
soundly until Lucien was wriggling under him. He pulled back. “Are you sure?”

“Does it go against bodyguard-client rules or something?”
Lucien said with a smile.

Max buried his face in Lucien’s neck. He wanted to stay
there for a very long time, quite apart from the whole sex offer that meant
he’d have to move. “Everything we do is probably on the
no way
list.”

“But?”

“I want you, I want this.” He admitted he wanted to take
this further, despite the fact that he should be staying at least half-conscious
of the world around him and not lose himself entirely in Lucien.

Lucien wriggled again, but not to escape, just to push at
his jeans. Finally Max got with the act and raised himself up and off a little
so Lucien could expose more flesh. He was halfway down with his jeans when Max
stopped him.

“I don’t want to rush,” he said. To underscore that comment,
he kissed Lucien, long and slow, tasting each inch of skin. Lucien moved
impatiently beneath him, his fingers digging into Max’s biceps and his legs
trapped in denim. Max loved this, the fact Lucien could hardly move and Max
could take the time to tease.

He traced pathways of kisses on taut skin, recognizing the
faint taste of chlorine under the clean shower gel. Lucien had attempted to
push his boxers down at the same time as his jeans, but they’d become caught on
his erect cock, damp where precome had soaked into the light blue jersey. Max
gently freed Lucien’s cock while at the same time Lucien moved his hands from
gripping skin to twist into Max’s hair, accompanying the move with a low
whimpering plea.

“Please…”

Max took his time, teasing, nuzzling, licking from base to
top, the jersey caught up and under Lucien’s balls, and when he closed his lips
around the tip of Lucien’s length, Max was gratified by the groan and the
pressing up against his tongue.

Max brought Lucien to the edge, backing off when Lucien
gripped his hair tighter.

“No…” Lucien whined.

“Shh.” Max rolled away from Lucien. “Take off your jeans.”

Lucien scrambled to comply, and Max copied his actions,
although he was all fingers and thumbs. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d
been with someone who hadn’t… He flipped the lid of the lube and waited until
Lucien settled on the bed. He lay on his front, his feet slightly apart, and the
view of his muscled back and his tight ass was enough to have Max pressing down
on his cock just to stop himself from losing it. He had a job to do and he was
going to do it well.

“You have to tell me if you’re uncomfortable,” Max said. He
recalled the guy he’d first been with saying the same thing to him.

Lucien looked over his shoulder pointedly. “Hurry up.”

Max shook his head, then straddled Lucien’s knees, leaning
on one hand, and they kissed awkward and sloppy and kind of sideways. Max
didn’t think he’d ever had such an erotic kiss in his life.

He took his time, kissing from Lucien’s spine over to each
cheek, the entire time pressing his fingers, slick with lube, against Lucien
and stretching him. The sounds that Lucien made, the pleas and the inhalations,
were enough to make Max come without even being inside Lucien, and he used
every trick he knew to hold off. When Max wiped off his hands and rolled on the
condom, he hoped to hell he was going to be able to handle this without losing
it too fast. He guided Lucien up to all fours and pressed inside, slowly, excruciatingly
slowly, waiting to be told to stop, waiting for Lucien to stop.

But all Lucien did was press back against him, and they moved
until they set a slow, deep rhythm. Then he sat back and pulled Lucien down
with him, taking his weight on his thighs and feeling himself sink even deeper.
They kissed messily, Lucien with eyes closed and the kisses little more than
taste and words. Lucien’s hands rested on Max’s thighs, and Max couldn’t reach
around without losing the grip he had on Lucien because his other arm was firmly
on the bed, holding them steady.

“Finish yourself,” Max demanded.

Lucien turned his head and they kissed as he closed a hand
around himself. In a few movements, he was shooting between his fingers and
tightening around Max. The squeezing was enough to push Max over the edge and he
followed Lucien, fucking up into his lover and coming hard.

They kissed—or tried to—then extricated themselves carefully
until they lay flat next to each other, close together on the small bed.

“Fuck me,” Max whispered. “That was…”

Lucien simply rolled into his hold and snuggled in. “Yeah,”
he said. “Yeah.”

* * *
* *

They fell asleep, and at some point Max must have turned off
the side light because they were in darkness. Lucien felt uncomfortable, a
little sore, but God, how he wanted to do it all again. Now. And the thought
crossed his mind that maybe Max was one of these switchers who would let
Lucien…

His stomach rumbled and he remembered they hadn’t actually
eaten anything since lunchtime, not counting the three p.m. emergency cereal
bar.

He extricated himself from Max, then pulled on his robe and
went downstairs to grab snacks and coffee. Within a few minutes, he was back upstairs.
Max hadn’t moved, still breathing heavily and sprawled this way and that with
one foot over the edge of the bed.

“I brought food,” he whispered into Max’s ear. “Wake up.”

“M’wake,” Max mumbled and turned on his side, his eyes
blinking open. Lucien saw a different Max there, not a man on high alert but a
man totally relaxed and normal. That only lasted for a second, though, and
pretty quickly Max was back into bodyguard mode. Lucien saw him check out the
door, check out Lucien, then glance at the food before relaxing.

The plate Lucien had gathered was a collection of snack
bars, grapes he’d found in the fridge, some bread they’d picked up this morning,
and ham.

They ate in companionable silence, but Lucien caught Max’s
frown when Lucien winced as he moved.

“I hurt you,” Max said.

“No.” Lucien leaned up and they kissed. “You made me feel.”

Max grunted but fell back into eating one-handed while
grasping Lucien’s hand with the other.

“So, you’re twenty-eight.”

Max glanced up at him from where he’d been carefully piling
ham on bread. “Yeah…?” he said cautiously.

“Do you think it’s a blessing or curse that you look younger
than that?”

Max stopped fiddling with the ham. “I was always cute as a
kid, which was good when it came to fostering. I was still young-looking in the
RAF. It earned me the nickname of ‘baby,’ which lasted until I thumped the guy
who started it.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

“Dave was my best friend, a good guy, never said a word
after I thumped him; in fact, we bonded over it.”

“
Was
a good guy?”

 “He was killed in an airstrike in Gaza.”

“I’m sorry.”

Max lifted a shoulder in an approximation of a shrug. “It is
what it is.”

“He was your friend, and it must have hurt. He was a real
person.”

Max looked at him and smiled softly. “Yeah, it did.” So much
was in those few words, compassion and sorrow aside.

Lucien considered whether to focus in on the other part of
what Max had said, but then he figured what the hell. After all, he’d already
put his size tens into dying in war. “So you were fostered?”

Max nodded. “From the age of five. Dad died when I was
young, mum couldn’t handle it, usual story. She died when I was sixteen. No, I
don’t have any siblings and no, I don’t miss that.”

He said it all so matter-of-factly, like none of it was part
of what shaped him to be the man he was today.

“I get it,” Lucien offered. “The RAF was probably like a
family, and now BI.”

“Uh-huh. You want any more of this bread?”

Lucien looked down at the plate. All the ham was gone, the
grapes, only bread remained, a small piece. “Uhm, no thanks.”

Max finished it off in one bite and chased it down with
coffee before releasing his grasp of Lucien’s hand and scooting up the bed to
get comfortable. Lucien put the plate on the floor, stripped his robe, and
climbed into bed to cuddle in to a very accommodating Max. He didn’t expect any
more talking from Max. That was fine, sleeping he could do, cuddling he could
do, and while in reality he might want to avoid the whole butt sex thing again for
a while longer, he’d probably be up for a blow job a bit later. Which was why
he was a little surprised when Max began to talk.