His Royal Secret (12 page)

He bit down on his lip as the first pain flashed through him, followed by more intense pleasure. Ben was inside him now, filling him up, making James gasp and burn and push against him because it still wasn’t enough. There was no such thing as enough.

Within moments, Ben was thrusting faster, deeper, then with abandon. In the darkness James saw Ben as hardly more than a silhouette above him, black on black, like a fantasy come to life. James clutched at Ben’s back, at his hips, trying to anchor himself against each thrust.

Ben never even touched his cock again, but it didn’t matter. Each stroke was hitting James just there, and he was getting harder and harder, more and more dizzy. The intoxicating silence around them shattered as James came, shouting out loud and long. Something about the shout got to Ben, because he tensed for a moment before redoubling his speed, pounding into James almost mercilessly for the few seconds it took him to finish.

When Ben collapsed beside James on the bed, they simply lay there in silence for a while. Not a word had been spoken by either of them, and James was surprised to realize he didn’t mind.

It’s just sex
, he told himself.
Pure sex. I can’t give Ben anything but my body, but that’s all he wants, and dear God does he know how to take it.

Where has this been all my life?

Just when James was beginning to wonder whether Ben expected to stay over—risky, they ought to have discussed the difficulties more—Ben rolled out of bed. He dressed himself without speaking; James got up too, and found his boxers on the floor.

Ben was still buttoning his shirt as they went together down the hallway, side by side. This time James walked down the stairs with him; he’d see Ben all the way to the exit into the palace complex. From there, Ben would be able to follow the protocol for letting himself out, which Glover would have tactfully shown him.

Only at the exit did James speak: “Until next time?”

There was a little more light here, enough for him to see Ben’s smile. “Make it soon.”

They kissed for the last time that night, and somehow it was better than all the rest.

•   •   •

London! Best city in the world. Forget the globe-trotting. Ben was going to somehow make a million pounds, which ought to be just about enough to buy him a studio flat in an unfashionable part of town. This was a place he could see himself staying forever . . . well, at least for a while. He even got off the Tube a stop early, the better to walk to work and enjoy the buzz of activity all around him. As he cut through Trafalgar Square, pigeons fluttered into the air before his steps, dotting the sky like confetti.

He’d already been at work for fifteen minutes before anyone else arrived. Fiona sidled up to his desk, her wrap dress vibrant in greens and blues, an eyebrow cocked. “Please tell me you didn’t spend last night here working.”

Ben knew her well enough by now to know she didn’t mind the odd dirty joke. “Actually I spent last night having the best sex of my life.”

“It’s all right for some, isn’t it? But don’t think that means I won’t expect your copy on my desk by deadline.”

“You’ll have it early,” he promised.

“Yeah, that’ll be the day. Reporters can always look into an editor’s eyes and see the last, drop-dead moment copy can possibly get in, and that’s when they get it done. Not one second earlier. After that’s in? I expect to hear all about this new romance.”

Uh-oh. Ben tried to make a joke of it. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Ugh, boring.” With that, Fiona headed to her office.

Ben knew he’d make good on his promise to get the story in before deadline. Energy flowed through him; the fact that he’d gotten less sleep than usual didn’t matter. Sex with James turned out to be more stimulating than a cup of black coffee. He felt as though he could type a hundred words a minute for the next eight hours, as though he could fly through the rest of the day.

Okay, probably he’d crash sometime in midafternoon, but until then he intended to enjoy the rush.

He still couldn’t get over it—not the fact that he was fucking the Prince of Wales (though, that too, the bloody
Prince of Wales
), but the fact that he seemed to have found the perfect sexual relationship in the absolute place he would ever have expected. James’s position, the very thing that ought to have made this impossible, instead made it ideal.

They had boundaries. They had limits. Those limits were absolute and unlikely ever to change. James would never ask for more, which meant Ben didn’t have to feel like a shit for having nothing more to give. They were lovers in the darkness of Clarence House and strangers everywhere else: no overlap, no blending, no messiness. It was utterly clean, perfectly self-contained: everything Ben had ever wanted.

Which meant Ben was free to enjoy the sex, to enjoy James’s perfect mouth and perfect cock and perfect ass, as long as they both wanted, and there was no fear that it would ever become more complicated than that.

•   •   •

It became more complicated the following Friday.

None of Ben’s sources on the latest mega-merger called him back until twenty minutes to deadline—par for the course—but then he wound up getting information that would radically reshape the story. Fiona gave him an extra hour to work, which meant he had about an hour and a half.

But that, in turn, was an hour after he’d told James he would arrive at Clarence House.

Ben had been given the number of the private landline for Clarence House. He’d memorized it but hadn’t called yet; James had taken the initiative for both of their meetings so far. Ben hadn’t phoned because he felt sure the butler would answer, which would be incredibly weird. Not that it wasn’t peculiar enough, being met by the man at St. James’s Palace and walked through the complex of royal houses until they reached Clarence House, and James. The butler was utterly unmoved by the entire thing, so much so Ben might as well have been delivering the groceries. But it was strange to think of this tall, gray-haired man knowing what was going on and saying nothing.

And what kind of message was Ben supposed to give the butler anyway?
Kindly tell His Royal Highness we must reschedule tonight’s fornication.

When he finally dialed the number, though, after a few rings, James picked up himself. “Hullo?”

“Oh. Hi. It’s me.”

“Hi.” James sounded surprised to hear him—surprised and glad—but caution crept into his next words. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve got to work late, is all.”

“Do you need to cancel?”

Ben had meant to; the day had been so stressful that he felt more like a quick scotch and sleep than sex, even phenomenal sex. But the sound of James’s voice melted over him like warm caramel. “Not if you don’t mind my showing up later.”

“Not at all. Just come when you can. Call when you’re leaving, and I’ll make sure you get in.”

One hour turned into two, and they were the kind of hours that felt like days. The merger, it turned out, was on weaker ground than the press releases declared, which meant Ben had to interrogate CFOs, and CFOs had to get extremely testy with Ben before remembering they were on the record. His story got better and better, and Fiona’s smile grew wider and wider, but Ben went from feeling tired to feeling like he was about to drop in his tracks. (He could sleep under the cubicle, couldn’t he? Enough room if he curled into a fetal position. Just ball up Roberto’s forgotten hoodie, use it as a pillow, and voila.)

But still he called James and took the Tube to the Green Park stop.

By the time he appeared at the side service entrance, Ben was wishing he’d bought a coffee on the way over. He’d come to as soon as he saw James, though—as soon as their lips touched—

The door opened, and Ben slipped through. Only after he was inside did he see that the person behind the door was not the butler, but James himself, less than grand in pajama pants and a sweatshirt.

“I try not to keep Glover too late,” James whispered as he latched the door. various security sensors around it blinked from green to red. “He has a wife.”

How careful James had been to stand behind the door, in case someone might have been outside with a camera. They walked in silence to Clarence House; Ben wondered whether they were avoiding being recorded or overheard by security guards. At any rate, he didn’t speak until they got to James’s private suite: “Sorry it took me so long.”

“Quite all right. You’re here now.” James drew Ben down for a kiss, long and soft, and for one moment Ben thought he might be able to set his exhaustion aside—

—at which point his stomach let out a grumble so loud that they both started to laugh, breaking the kiss. Ben shook his head. “Sorry again.”

“Have you not had dinner? You must be about to drop. Come on, let’s get you something.” Ben tensed, fearing the butler’s reappearance, or perhaps James taking him to a dining room where he’d ring a silver bell and they’d suddenly receive a four-course meal. Instead James added, “There’s a lasagna in the fridge.”

“What?”

“A lasagna. You like lasagna, right?”

“Everyone likes lasagna.”

James smiled, pleased.

They went upstairs, and through a side door that Ben had never entered before; he’d always taken the most direct path to the bedroom. This was also the first part of the house he’d ever been in where the lights were on—just a couple of lamps, but it let him take a look around. To Ben’s surprise, he was surrounded not by grandeur but by a fairly ordinary kitchen. It was a large room, well-appointed, with marble countertops and top-of-the-line appliances, the sort of thing he’d seen in magazine spreads about the rich and famous. But what threw Ben was the fact that this was clearly a kitchen for James, rather than for the servants. He spotted a microwave, a bottle opener, a set of chef’s knives, and even, in one corner, bright silver bowls for dog food and water. The entire place looked . . . cozy.

“I wouldn’t have thought you even knew where your kitchen was,” Ben said, taking a seat at the elegant—but small—table and chairs in the far corner.

James gave him a look as he went to the refrigerator. “My grandparents don’t know where theirs is. I feel sure my Uncle Richard doesn’t either. But when my parents renovated Clarence House fifteen years ago in preparation for our move from Kensington, my mother insisted that we have an area where we could live like any other family. Someplace not nearly as stiff as Kensington Palace. She wanted to cook for us sometimes, and she did, when she could find the time away from her schedule of events. For my father it was more of a novelty, but he liked it too.”

Ben took a seat at the table, feeling awkward. Paradoxically, the very ordinariness of the kitchen had left him at a loss. “You don’t have, I don’t know, a chef?”

“There are cooks in the main kitchen downstairs who send up dinner most nights. Luncheon I usually have out, and Glover serves tea if I ask him to. And of course, whenever I host a gathering here, the catering staff takes over. But Mum taught us all to shift for ourselves; she enjoyed teaching us some basics. Having servants means sacrificing privacy, you see, and she valued hers, just as I’ve come to value mine. I see to my own breakfast, usually.” James held out a butter yellow Le Creuset casserole dish with some pride. “And I make a mean lasagna.”

James’s mother was the beloved Princess Rose. She’d been the darling of the media from the time of her engagement until her death. The courtship was fairy-tale stuff; she’d been a student doctor on rotation in A&E when a young man brought a friend in after a bicycling accident, and the young man in question was a prince. Six months later, they’d announced their impending marriage, and it seemed as though the tabloids had wanted to write about no one else for the rest of her life. It was precisely the sort of thing Ben was inclined to sneer at—and yet even he had liked looking at pictures of Princess Rose, had paused when her face flickered across a TV screen. She’d had the kind of face that commanded attention: long, soft brown hair like her daughter’s, startling green eyes like her son. No, she didn’t look like an actress or a model; James’s large nose was another of his inheritances from his mother, and it looked better on him than it had on her. But Ben had heard it said that perfection was merely pretty, while great beauty always contained flaws. That had been true for Princess Rose, at least. How odd to think of her pottering around in a kitchen, or teaching her son how to make an omelet.

As James popped a bowlful of lasagna into the microwave, Ben heard a faint
click-click-click
near the door. He glanced over to see two corgis waddling in, fat of haunch and gray of muzzle, who seemed very interested in smelling his shoes.

“You don’t mind the dogs, do you?” James said. Standing there in his PJs and sweatshirt, he might as well have been any other guy in any other house in Britain. “I’ve kept them out of the bedroom area when you visited.”

“They’re fine.” Ben liked dogs, actually. His peripatetic life had never allowed him to own one, but he’d always imagined that might be a thing he’d do if he ever got stuck someplace. Though he’d thought of a proper dog, a German shepherd or a border collie, not these squat little things. Still, as they panted up at him, he had to smile. “What are they called?”

“Oh. My father picked the names.” James’s cheeks flushed. “They’re, ah, Happy and Glorious.”

Apparently there was some joke to that Ben wasn’t getting. He just scratched the dogs behind their ears.

The microwave beeped, and James delivered the bowl to the table with a flourish. “Water or wine?”

“Wine would be great. Thanks.”

Domestic situations like this were precisely what Ben tried to avoid, most of the time. But he was too tired to duck out, and too hungry. So there was no reason not to relax, wait for James to bring him a glass of wine, and try the lasagna. It turned out to be excellent. The wine was even better.

“You could be a chef or a sommelier,” Ben said to James, who’d taken a seat beside him at the table. “If the monarchy thing ever falls through.”

James smiled. “Nice to have something to fall back on.”