Page 143 of The Thing About My Prince

Not that I want her to leave. I’ve been desperate for the moment when she’s here to spend the night with me. Always at the back of my mind when I was viewing places was whether it was somewhere I’d be excited to walk into with Lexi, show her around, then take her to bed.

And now, finally, that moment is here.

“Of course not,” she says. “It’s been a long three weeks. I’m not letting you out of my sight tonight.”

I wrap my arm around her shoulder and kiss the top of her head. “I don’t ever want to be apart for that long again.”

She tips her face up toward me with a smile that breaks through her jet lag and champagne-induced sleepiness, and fills my chest with a surge of love.

“Absolutely not,” she says.

When the doors open, Dane gets out first, scans the main room, then walks down the hallway to check the others.

“Wow, look at this.” Lexi bends to undo her trainers, but her eyes are scanning the space, her mouth open.

I was confident she’d like it, but I still sigh out a breath of relief that she does.

She kicks off the shoes and unbuttons her coat as she steps toward the room, but I pull her back. “Gotta wait for the all clear.”

Lexi, Cole, and I stand in a slightly awkward silence for a minute or so before Dane reappears, gives the nod that indicates it’s safe for Lexi and me to join him, and for Cole to go home.

I put down the bag containing the heels that Lexi never put back on, and she pads barefoot ahead of me into the vast open-plan living space. “Wow, these brick walls are amazing. Oh my God, and look at this kitchen.”

She runs her hand along the shiny white counter of the island before turning her attention back to the living area.

“Did you pick all this stuff yourself?” she asks. “These gorgeous sofas and everything?”

“Kind of. I had a designer who narrowed down some choices, and I picked from her final list.” And everything I chose, I chose with a thought as to whether Lexi would love it.

“It’s gorgeous.” She moves toward the row of old factory windows that start just a couple of feet above the floor and reach almost to the ceiling. They’re surrounded by white-washed brick.

“Apparently, this was originally a pattern-cutting and sewing room for a company that made men’s ready-to-wear suits. Hence all the windows, because they needed natural light.”

She peers out of one of them to the street six floors below. “I’d thought you’d prefer to be somewhere higher. That’s maybe safer.”

Stepping up behind her, I circle my arms around her waist and rest my cheek against the side of her head, pausing to wallow in the slight floral scent of her hair.

“I wanted somewhere where I could see what was going on. Where I feel part of the neighborhood, not floating way above it.”

She turns in my arms. “And that is one of the things I love about you most.”

“If I started to list all the things I love about you”—I push my hands inside her coat and ease it off a little so I can drop my lips to one of the delicious bare shoulders I gazed at across the dinner table all evening—“we’d be here for a very long time.”

“That’s okay.” She sighs as her head falls to the side, giving me a long stretch of vulnerable skin to kiss all the way up to her ear. “Because I have the rest of my life for you to tell me all about them.”

Those are the most thrilling, and yet comforting, words I could ever hear her say. They are simultaneously a balm to my soul and a firecracker to my groin.

The idea that this incredible, smart, gorgeous woman would even consider that I am the person she wants to spend her life with is still shocking.

“I never thought I’d ever be this lucky.” I drag my hands up her sides and stop level with her breasts, where my thumbs can stroke their gentle curves. Just that slight touch makes my cock rock hard. “Never thought I would ever feel as safe and loved as you make me feel. Never even thought I’d get to know anyone the way I’ve gotten to know you. Or feel as close to anyone the way I feel close to you.”

“It’s amazing what twenty-one days of video calls can do.” She rises to her toes to kiss me.

And it is exactly twenty-one. I know because I countedtoo. “I know you don’t want to move in straight away. But you will move in soon, right?”

“What would your parents think of that?”

“When I told them I’m going to be with you and there was no point to them arguing about it, Mum said, ‘If you dohaveto live together, couldn’t you at least get married?’”