Page 38 of The Thing About My Prince

I part my lips and sense my eyelids closing of their own free will as I tilt my head to the side and?—

“Oliver!” There’s a series of sharp raps on the distant bedroom door. “Oliver!” his mother shouts again. “Did you not hear Flora call you down for dinner?”

He immediately pulls away from me, leaning back against the wall with a sharp, loud groan that makes me jump.

“Oh God! Lexi!” He raises his voice while slapping the tiles, eyes closed as he starts the game all over again. “You’re the best. You make me come like a speeding train.”

“No.” I poke him with my elbow. “Stop.”

We might not know who’s on the other end of the bug, but we do know for certain that his mother is on the other side of the door, and that makes this cringingly embarrassing.

“And your tits are spec-fucking-tacular,” he shouts with a long, low groan.

He turns his head to look down at me and winks one of those bewitching eyes.

That tiny action says we’re on the same side. In this together. And we dissolve into a pile of giggles like a pair of mischievous kids.

Except parts of me are feeling things that are decidedly adult.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

OLIVER

Having Lexi next to me at the dinner table with my parents, my sister Sofia, and her fiancé Jeremy feels like the first time I’ve had someone on my side here in…well, ever.

Not that my sister isn’t supportive. She’s just very much a peacemaker who takes her royal duty seriously and tries to straddle the line between backing me when Mum and Dad are being unreasonable or harsh and toeing the royal party line.

She and Jeremy live on his family’s stud farm outside Cambridge, but they’re here for the run-up to the wedding, which is being held at a small, old stone church in the village.

It was one mighty relief when Sofia and Lexi hit it off the second my sister pulled her into a hug and told her she must be a “real trooper” for putting up with me.

Yup, Lexi tolerated me for a whole two-hour meeting at my New York apartment before coming here to spend two weeks with me.

When she barreled onto the plane and used her persuasive powers to get me to stick to our agreement and let her come, Iwas worried I was making a giant mistake and that bringing her here under this fake-girlfriend ruse would be a total disaster.

But everything she’s done so far has made this visit a lot more fun than it otherwise would have been.

Not to mention she found the fucking bug in my room that I would never have known was there. So at least I know to be on my guard from now on.

If whoever planted it has been doing it for years, since I was a teenager, they must have heard some bloody awful things.

Wanking, for a start. An inordinate amount of wanking.

And God knows how many late-night rants in which I replayed that day’s conversations with my parents in the way I wished I could have had them—a way in which I told them exactly what I thought, rather than biting my tongue for the sake of trying to be the good son that they never thought I was anyway.

Yeah, the spies would have heard an inordinate amount of profanity too.

But right now, with Lexi in the chair next to me in the family dining room—there’s a state dining room in the more formal part of Glenwither that has all kinds of old royal shit in it—I have a sense of being less alone than I’ve ever felt before.

I guess if I’d ever had a real girlfriend who’d lasted long enough for me to bring her home, I might have experienced it before now. The bartender I was seeing before I moved to the US never came here because I’d tried to keep the whole thing a secret to protect her. Then when the press blew our cover, my parents said she wasn’t the “type of girl” I should bring home. Shame on them.

Sometimes I almost envy Sofia and Jeremy.Almost, because I wouldn’t crave to be engaged to a boring English toff who runs Daddy’s thoroughbred stables. But he dotes onmy sister and she obviously adores him, and that’s all that matters.

When she brought him out to New York to meet me a couple of years ago and I watched them share little glances and in-jokes, I knew she’d struck relationship gold.

I also knew I’d be lucky if I ever struck bronze. Because what woman with any sense would ever take the tabloids’ favorite party prince seriously as a relationship contender?

“That’s an interesting way of using cutlery.” My mother’s eyes have been scrutinizing Lexi’s knife and fork usage for a while.