Royal Pain (6 page)

As Bronte sat at her desk daydreaming about what Kate would wear on her first proper date—and whether or not she would take it off after dinner—she overheard Cecily’s side of one of her frequent conversations with her best friend, Giacomo Pietrello, and nearly fell off her chair. After Cecily hung up, Bronte marched into her boss’s immaculate office.

“Are you insane?”

“Probably… but about what in particular?” Cecily grinned.

“About choosing not to take
perfectly
good
Valentino castoffs, for example.” Giacomo was one of Valentino’s top designers in their New York atelier. “You are not the only size eight in the world who might benefit from such manna from heaven, you know? You might think of the little people every once in a while!” While Bronte was venting her sartorially jealous spleen, Cecily had picked up the phone and hit her speed dial. She spoke in quick Italian, laughed, and hung up.

“A little red dress is on its way. It will be here tomorrow afternoon in time for your
proper
date.” Cecily raised one eyebrow then flipped her hand toward the door with a smile. “And you are a size six, not an eight. Now out!”

Bronte tried to remain calm, but it was impossible. Even Kate would have let the same little squeal of delight escape at the thought of an honest-to-goodness Valentino red dress to call her very own.

And, oh, how Max ended up loving that little red dress.

It was hard to say which one of them had been more flummoxed by the other’s transformation. Having only seen each other in a parade of T-shirts and jeans for the previous days and weeks, when Max opened the door to Bronte’s flat and saw her in the little red Valentino dress, he clasped both hands over his heart, as if to stave off an attack. Bronte was similarly stunned by Max in full, debonair splendor. His broad shoulders and trim waist were even more appealing in his perfectly tailored navy suit, a few curls of brown hair touched the collar of his crisp white shirt, and he had finished it off with a pale-green Hermès tie. (They were going to have fun with that tie later, Bronte promised herself.)

Max hired a car and driver to chauffeur them around for the night, and Bronte winced slightly at the needless expense. He called her out.

“If you are constitutionally unable to enjoy spending a little bit of dosh on a night out, we need to have a talk.”

She laughed and decided, for one night at least, to let go of her financial hang-ups. “Fine! All right! I give in. Go ahead and spend. I’ll do my best to turn a blind eye to all this wild extravagance.” He obviously wasn’t the starving student she thought he was if that suit was any indication.

Max looked out the window of the relatively grimy dial-a-car and hid his amusement at Bronte’s idea of extravagance. She was in for a few surprises when she came to London. And it was definitely
when
she came, because as far as Max was concerned, there was no
if
about it.

They arrived at a small French restaurant and Bronte gave a brief note of thanks to the powers that be that she had never been wined and dined by any Texan suitors at this particular establishment.

“Since you have rescinded financial equality,” Max said after they were settled side by side in an intimate booth and looking over the outrageously expensive menu, “I was thinking maybe I should just take the reins altogether. I think I’ll order for you, feed you, intertwine my arms through yours as we drink a memorable bottle of Léoville-Las Cases…”

He brought his water glass to his lips and watched her face transition from brief, affronted shock, to humor, to something seductive and willing.

Right before he took a sip, he said, “Oh, Bron, please don’t look at me like that until we’re finished with dessert.”

“Okay,” she purred with false compliance. “Whatever you say, Your Grace.”

He almost spewed his water at her offhand remark, but instead pretended it had gone down the wrong tube and brought his napkin to his eyes to conceal his surprise.

She patted him on the back gently. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he sputtered, “fine, just excited I guess.”

Bronte finished rubbing his back then put both of her hands in her lap. “Me too. And nervous all of a sudden.”

He took one of her hands in his and gave her an encouraging smile. “Don’t say that. It’s one of my favorite things about you. You are never nervous.”

Her blood sped at the idea that he already had a
favorite
thing about her—one of many, apparently—then she swatted herself back into reality.

“Everybody’s nervous sometimes.” Bronte reached for her water glass. “Even Kate.”

Max looked at her with confusion. “Who?”

“You know, the Duchess of Cambridge.”

If he had been drinking water that time, Max would have spewed that mouthful for sure. The way Bronte had phrased the sentence made it sound like
you
know
the Duchess of Cambridge. Whom he did, in fact, know.

He paused again, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Either Bronte had spent the past two days scouring the Internet and knew all about his family and connections and had decided to taunt him into confessing, or she just happened to be stumbling blindly into it.

Bronte burst out laughing. “I mean, of course you don’t
know
her
know her. But you know what I mean. She’s always so authentic and calm and pretty and smiling and, you know, perfect.”

How the hell was he supposed to reply to that? Silence was always one of his best allies.

“Oh forget it. You men are all the same, pretending it’s all silly princess worship or whatever. Still, I bet it’s hard work being perennially cheerful all the time, and I certainly wouldn’t want to do that in a million years.”

Well
, Max thought,
that
wasn’t an acceptable alternative either
. He smiled suggestively. “I’m sure her position has its… advantages, wouldn’t you say?”

Bronte took the bait. “Oh, all right. William is pretty cute, I’ll give you that.”

Max didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that the future king’s cuteness was at the top of Bronte’s list of royal inducements.

“And?” Max prodded.

“Oh. Fine. One might also become… fond of… the clothes. And maybe the jewelry.”

Max smiled and Bronte gave him a small punch on the arm.

“What are you smiling about? I am not horribly shallow. Every girl likes clothes and jewelry.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So Kate is just like every girl, then?”

“Yes,” Bronte agreed, then shook her head. “No! You are twisting my words. She may
have
been
like other girls—past tense—but she can never be like other girls again. That’s the part that I think is weird and sad.”

Max watched as the waiter poured a bit of wine for him to taste. He sniffed it quickly to make sure it wasn’t rancid, then waved the waiter to fill both glasses. He hated all that pompous swishing and gurgling nonsense.

“Well, you probably know more about it than I do,” Bronte said. “Willa has some royal friends, I think. You must have met your share at Oxford, right?” She tasted the wine and let her eyes slide shut at the pleasure of it. “Yum. That is some good wine you chose.”

“Thanks,” he answered quietly. Now what? Did he just blurt out that he was probably one of the royal friends to whom Willa had been referring? He knew he was slipping dangerously close to prevarication.

She was waiting for him to answer.

“Yes. I guess I have met my share.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And everything! Are they happy? Are they snooty? Standoffish? Rude?”

A slow smile came to Max’s face as he thought of his father, his aunt, his grandmother… and his mother. In that order. “I suppose, yes.”

“What do you mean ‘yes’?” She took another sip of wine. “Mmmm. This is
particularly
delicious.”

He loved seeing the color rise in her cheeks as the wine hit her system. The skin across her neck and chest was turning a pale pink, probably from the alcohol, but maybe from the company—he hoped.

“Up here,” she joked, pointing his gaze back up to her eyes and away from the plunging V at the front of her dress.

“Sorry. I mean, of course I’m not the least bit sorry. You look gorgeous, by the way.”

“Why thank you.” She bowed her head slightly as she took the compliment. “Without sounding too corny, you make me feel pretty.”

She might as well have stuck one of the gleaming knives into his chest. His heart simply stopped for how badly he wanted to make her feel stunningly beautiful every minute of every day for the rest of her life.

“So?” She nudged him with her elbow. “Go on, give me some royal scoop.”

“Bronte, the thing is—”

At that very moment, the overly attentive waiter loomed over them and cleared his throat as if he were about to begin Hamlet’s soliloquy. And before Max could tell him to hive off, he launched into his well-rehearsed spiel with the grand conviction that the dinner specials took precedence over Max’s conversation. Bronte reached under the table and grabbed Max’s hand in hers, trying to prevent herself from bursting into laughter. The waiter was such a narcissistic idiot.

Max squeezed her hand back and watched as her eyes gleamed with humor.

“…the dory is then lightly breaded in a subtle blend of hand-shaved fennel…”

On and on he went, describing every ingredient of every dish. When he finished, Max was quite certain the aspiring thespian took a tiny bow.

“We’ll need a few minutes to process all that, I think,” Max said.

“I quite agree.” The waiter nodded and exited stage left.

Bronte pulled her napkin up to her face and proceeded to laugh until she cried into the fine white linen.

“Oh… God…” she finally gasped. “How could you keep a straight face?”

Max had one arm around Bronte’s shoulder, and his other hand lightly traced the stem of his wineglass. He looked into her face and rethought his decision to tell her anything at all about his ducal future. She was so joyful and vital. What was the point of undermining that? If things proceeded according to Max’s wishes (as they usually did), the two of them would have a lifetime to fulfill the expectations the outside world would impose upon them. For the next few weeks, he just wanted to be with the woman whose eyes could sparkle like that with sheer, unadulterated joy.

The rest of the meal sped by in a blur of suggestive banter punctuated by jammy wine, under-the-table hand-holding (and thigh-holding… and inner-thigh-holding), and rich food (some of which he actually did feed her from his own fork).

They decided to give up on dessert altogether.

“Since you refuse to obey my request that you cease looking at me with that open, smoky look in those misty green eyes of yours, I am forced to put an end to this date.”

Bronte gave him a little pout and unconsciously wiggled in her seat. “An end to the dinner portion of the date, you mean?”

“Yes,” he said in a low voice very close to her ear. “And stop moving your hips against the banquette like that or we won’t even make it back to the car.”

Bronte’s apartment was closest, so they opted for that. After a quick ten minutes of mauling each other in the back of the Lincoln Town Car, they tumbled through the front door of what Max referred to as Bronte’s lower-ground-floor flat.

“I love telling people I live in a basement… it’s positively medieval, don’t you think?”

Max stood in the small living room and ran his fingers absently across the back of the pale-green velvet sofa as he watched Bronte make her way around the charming apartment, turning on a lamp, unlocking and opening the French doors out to the small, intimate garden at the rear, which was just starting to come into bloom.

“And this,” Bronte said, gesturing Max out toward the garden, “is what makes it all worthwhile.”

As she turned back to see if he was coming out to join her, she bumped directly into his solid form, both of her hands flat and firm against his muscled shoulders, then moving, more slowly now, down over his chest. Max’s arms circled her small waist as his mouth captured hers in a fierce, possessive kiss, totally unlike the more exploratory variety they had shared up until then. This was the knowing kiss of more to come. This was a kiss full of promise.

Bronte gave herself up to it entirely. Her tongue caressed the underside of his tongue; she nipped at his lower lip; her hands made their way up his neck, skimming over muscled shoulders, then finally, her fingers dug greedily into his thick, brown, wavy hair. The strong cords of his neck flexed involuntarily at her touch. Her lips moved to his neck as his hands made their way under the hem of her very short red dress. Then he pulled her flush up against the length of him, his erection firm against her belly, sending shocks of warm anticipation between her legs.

“I think I may be panting,” she whispered into his ear.

“I am totally in favor of panting,” Max breathed huskily, and then repositioned his hands to a tight hold around her waist, easily lifting her up and swinging her back into the apartment and onto the oversized velvet sofa. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes, then propped herself up on her elbows to watch as Max whipped off his suit coat, loosened his tie, and nearly tore his white dress shirt as he pulled it over his head. Bronte could not help the lascivious grin that stole over her face at the sight of his miraculous stomach.

“Well, if you aren’t the cat who got the cream, miss.”

“Yes, sir. Get your ass over here.” With that demure invitation, Max and his rock-hard torso were lying along the length of Bronte’s body in moments.

“Do you want to get rid of this bothersome bit of a dress or shall I?” asked Max peevishly. “I need skin… now… badly…”

“I think you should. I’m feeling rather self-conscious of my skinniness all of a sudden.”

“In that case, maybe a slower approach is in order.” Max gave her hips a firm yank, moving her entire body far enough down the couch to have her fully reclined, putting her arms above her head, and clenching her wrists gently but firmly in his grip.

“How am I supposed to touch all that fine flesh of yours if I am in a half nelson?” Bronte whined.

“First of all, this is not a half nelson, and second of all, I need to—how shall I say—narrow your focus for a few moments to relieve you of this absurd body image situation.”

“As you wish, m’lord.”

“And stop calling me that,” Max replied tartly.

“I can’t help it if I have a thing for Regency romances… just play along, you big spoilsport. This is a fantasy I’ve been fine-tuning since middle school. What’s it to you if I like to imagine you as some rakish duke or fallen-away marquess? I mean, you have to admit your accent is deliciously
plummy
.”

“Very well then,” Max growled. “I am a fallen-away marquess.”

“Oooh! Yay! That’s the spirit!”

There
, he thought to himself.
Technically
I’ve told her the truth
. Then he started in on a loving disputation of Bronte’s misguided view of her stellar body.

She gasped as his left hand held her wrists while his right made a slow trail along the side of one breast, through the red silk material. One of his legs moved firmly between her thighs, exerting pressure and heat there. His thumb grazed her nipple, and her back arched in response as her breasts responded to his touch.

“So beautiful,” he half whispered, half moaned right before he slid the plunging V-neckline aside and took the taut nipple into his mouth, through the sheer-lace fabric of her bra. His free hand was making a slow, determined path up the inside of her thigh as his mouth made its way over to the other breast. Before Bronte realized what he was doing, he had lifted the hem of the dress and revealed her pale, smooth stomach.

“God in heaven.”

Max just stared at her lovely waist, and below, as he taunted her with slow back-and-forth caresses across her lower abdomen. A single finger, tantalizingly close to the top of her white sheer-lace underwear, caused the most delicious, involuntary quiver to ripple across Bronte’s skin.

Max lowered his mouth to her navel and let his tongue dart in, then around her center. The heat between her legs was infernal; her underwear was a confining, wet bother.

“Please. Max. Please,” she begged in a voice that was not entirely her own.

“Please what, Bron?” he taunted, continuing to bring his tongue farther down, now nipping at the edge of her underwear wolfishly. He suddenly moved so he was kneeling on the floor next to the sofa, and Bronte had a momentary panic that he was going to leave her in this state of intense desire and she would somehow be stuck in this exquisite torture for all eternity.

He was going to play her like a harp, he mused. He pulled her outstretched hands even farther over her head and used his other hand to run long, smooth strokes along her endless legs as he breathed hot, demanding breaths across her tiny underwear, which really did nothing to conceal the triangle of silky brown hair beneath.

Bronte was desperate. Her fingers were flexing and unflexing with desire: to scrape her nails against his rippling back, to drag her fingertips lightly across the hair on his chest, to feel the hard evidence of his desire in her palm. The deprivation was becoming so intense she could barely tolerate it.

“Please, Max. I am desperate to touch you.”

He merely chuckled and let his hands loosen away from her wrists, and then used both of his hands to slowly peel off her dress and the offending scraps of bra and underwear, taking his time down her legs, then tossing the tiny panties aside carelessly. He worked his way back up her legs, kissing the sensitive skin behind her knee, rubbing her thighs more deeply, and slowly parting her legs as his head began to approach her warmth.

“Oh, God. I can’t,” she whimpered.

Max laughed again, low and male this time, the smell of her desire so close, nearly sending him over the edge. “Then you are in luck, because I can,” he stated matter-of-factly, then his tongue dragged a slow, languorous path.

Bronte nearly pitched off the couch, as if she had been stuck by a cattle prod, and grabbed Max’s thick head of hair frantically with both hands. Whether it was to prevent or encourage him, she had no idea.

“Easy, Bron,” he cooed, giving her another incendiary lick and then another, until he was moaning his own pleasure as he brought her precipitously close to her release.

“I can’t… I just can’t do it this way… it’s too intimate…”

He was relentless. Demonically, gloriously, perversely, fantastically relentless. One stroke of his tongue was inside her, the next a tender tease, then his teeth grazed her and she screamed a dry, raspy cry.

“Max,” she begged feebly.

Then he slowly put his thumb with exquisite pressure right below her entrance, as his tongue penetrated in and out, over and over, until she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t… her head was flailing from side to side, her hands had a death grip on his skull, he did something miraculous with his lips and then she exploded, with a kaleidoscope of color and fragments of sound and light breaking all around her.

It was pure: unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She thought she might have been idiotically calling out, “Max I can’t” at the very moment he manifestly proved she could.

When she started to come back to herself, she raised her head slightly and opened one eye to see Max’s head in the same general location but turned sideways, with his cheek resting against the tender skin just above her thatch of hair, looking up expectantly, waiting adoringly for her to return to earth. Her frenzied attack on his hair had left it boyishly disheveled, a few brown locks dangling into one eye.

He smiled, unwilling to break the wonderful silence with a silly quip or retort. She met his gaze for a few long seconds, then let her head flop back against the sofa cushion with one arm cast limply across her eyes.

“Fucking. A. Where have I been all my life?” Bronte sighed.

“With the wrong guys.”

“Very funny.”

“I didn’t mean it as a joke.”

When he spoke, his voice vibrated through her womb, mirroring the reverberation of her orgasm.

The physical sensation was stellar, but the gravity in his tone shook Bronte from her stupor. “I’m not laughing. Come here.” She pulled on his hands and urged him back onto the couch and along the length of her naked body. He nuzzled his head into the crook of her neck in a heartbreakingly tender motion, then he gripped her hair fiercely, propping his elbows on either side of her and forcing her to look directly into his eyes.

“Okay, so this is how this is going to go,” Bronte began, trying to assume a tone of authority, despite his position over her and the aftermath of her pleasure still pulsing through her.

Max smiled a wide, toothy grin.

“What? Why are you smiling at me?”

“Because I—” He caught himself, then clearing his throat he began again. “Because I think it is adorable how you think you can manage everything… anything…”

“That makes it sound like I am a controlling bitch, when in reality I’m just trying to let you off easy. Establish a few ground rules. Lay of the land and all that. Just that we should keep it casual. You know. No strings attached.” She tried to accelerate her speech so it wouldn’t be so obvious that she had never talked so carelessly to any man.

Despite her cavalier talk with April and Carol about TMs and sex with Mr. Texas, in actual fact, she had only slept with three men (soon to be four, she conceded) in her entire life. And one of them was that bastard from Cal who had never called her again, so that barely counted. But something about Max trusting that she was sexually liberated and breezy and uncomplicated made her want to really be that way.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I have what might well be the hardest cock of my life pressed up against you, so I’ll pretty much agree to anything you say. But I’d much rather quit the jawing.”

“So much for my worries about being too forward,” Bronte replied dryly, moving her hips against his.

“Since it is brutal honesty you are after, Bron, I shall feel quite within the bounds of your… constraints”—he tightened his hold on her hair momentarily for effect—“to speak plainly for the duration of our… what? …arrangement?” he asked with one raised eyebrow.

“Yes!” she agreed, then, as if just remembering something, she added, “I’ll be right back!”

Bronte wriggled out from under him, trotted into the bathroom, and then returned a few seconds later with an unopened box of one hundred condoms and a very naked Max waiting for her on her bed.

“What the hell is that?” Max asked through a laugh as Bronte hopped onto the bed and sat up on her knees next to him.

“So here’s the deal. I have always been a sort of belts-and-suspenders kind of gal about birth control. I’ve been on the pill for years—”

Max looked momentarily taken aback at the vision that conjured of Bronte sleeping with every unprotected male in her path.

She laughed and continued. “Not like that! It wasn’t to do with sex—I mean, it’s kind of useless as a prophylactic, really—well, whatever, for girl reasons.” She looked flustered and rolled her eyes. “Moving on! So anyway, I am in Costco, like four months ago, and I just stood there staring at this, er, product, and thought, ‘I wonder if I will ever have sex again. Ever.’ And then I thought, ‘Fuck that. Not only will I have sex again, I will have it hundreds of times. I will use every condom in this goddamned box.’ I am an optimist for chrissake. This, my new sexy friend Max, is the symbol of the human spirit. This is Hope.”

“Yes! I like the way you think, Bron. Better yet, why don’t we make it our goal, our mutual endeavor, to dispense with the entire contents of that Box of Hope by the time we part ways in July?”

“Now you’re talking!” Bronte said.

But something dreadful clanged against her chest when Max managed to say “part ways” with a smile on his face, even though she had to admit to herself that she was the one who had thrown down
that
gauntlet. And she wasn’t about to mess with a good thing now.

Everything always went pear-shaped after eight weeks anyway, right? This way, she would get all the hot, new, you-are-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread sex she could stand, long before it turned into that’s-not-how-I-like-my-bread-sliced.

Max grabbed the cellophane-covered box out of Bronte’s hand and tore it open.

“A hundred condoms in fifty-six days… I’m liking the odds.”

He pulled one out, tore the edge of the wrapper, and had it on in seconds. Bronte squirmed with delight, giggling like a schoolgirl as his strong arms tossed her down on her back then rested firmly on either side of her head as he was poised to enter her. “Any last words, m’lady?”

“Speechless, m’lo—”

He drove into her then with one powerful thrust before she could finish her sentence, her head flying back in a paroxysm of sheer delight. Max marveled at the sinuous beauty of her neck and let the rising surge of his own desire crowd out the already-looming menace that was July 15.

If she was somehow attached to the pretense that they were only indulging in a short-term dalliance, he would humor her for the time being. Come July, Max vowed to himself, she’d be disabused of that notion entirely.