Page 8 of Her Royal Christmas

How many nights had she lain next to Alex, muscles humming with want, and not reached out because she knew her wife was exhausted? Because a child would cry any minute? Because the idea of being interrupted mid-kiss, mid-touch, mid-fuck had become more frustrating than never starting?

Too many. Far too many.

Snow pattered softly around them, making a small, private sound bubble in the space between.

Erin leaned in, stopping just close enough that she could feel Alex’s breath against her mouth. “So,” she said. “We are… actually here. No one’s throwing anything at you, no one’s shouting, no one’s leaked anything horrifying in the last three hours.”

Alex’s mouth crooked. “That we know of.”

“Let me have the fantasy for ten seconds,” Erin said, half amused, half pleading.

“Ten whole seconds?” Alex murmured. “You spoil me, Kennedy.”

The old nickname made something hot curl low in Erin’s stomach.

She swallowed, suddenly nervous in a way she hadn’t been with Alex in a long time. Not because she feared rejection, but because she feared… letting the moment dissolve again. Not getting the timing right. Pushing when Alex was still too tightly strung.

“I was thinking,” Erin began, heart thudding. “As soon as we get them settled—soonish, like within the decade—wecould, I don’t know… go for a walk. Or… a bath together. Or a walk that mysteriously ends in a bath…”

She trailed off, because Alex’s beautiful blue eyes had darkened in a way that made coherent speech slightly difficult.

“A bath, hmm?” Alex said, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Is that what they’re calling it in the bodyguard world these days?”

“We never had baths in the bodyguard world. And if we did, they certainly weren’t like a luxury spa with the most beautiful woman in the world,” Erin muttered. “There were a lot more mouldy tiles and people yelling about inspections.”

“And here?”

“Here,” Erin said, and allowed herself to let some of the want thicken her voice, “we have claw-foot tubs and doors that lock and a babysitter list longer than the line of succession.”

Alex made a quiet, appreciative sound. “Tempter,” she said.

“You like that about me.”

“I do,” Alex agreed. Her gaze dropped briefly to Erin’s mouth, then back up. “More than slightly.”

Everything in Erin tightened, a live wire being fed voltage. She wanted to close the final inch of distance so badly she could feel her muscles vibrate with it. All she had to do was lean in. Just a fraction.

Kids in the snow. Staff at the doors. Cameras nowhere. Vic—God only knew, probably terrorising the kitchen.

Six years of love. Months without properly touching each other. A whole estate full of rooms and they were still always tripping over someone else.

Not this time.

She leaned in.

Alex’s breath hitched, just a little.

And then someone yelled, at a volume completely inappropriate for anyone within a ten-mile radius of a royal residence:

“YOU’RE HERE! THANK BLOODY GOD! WE HAVE EMERGENCIES!”

Vic.

Of course it was Vic.

Erin’s forehead thunked lightly against Alex’s shoulder as her wife dissolved into helpless laughter.

“I swear to God,” Erin said into the soft wool of Alex’s cloak. “I am going to have her reassigned to a distant outpost. Like… Mars.”