Page 42 of The Unlikely Spare (Unlikely Dilemmas #3)

“I feel guilty that I’m here now, halfway around the world, while he’s back in Belfast,” he continues.

He moves to sit in the chair across from me, but seems to reconsider at the last moment, choosing instead to sit on the sofa.

Not quite touching distance, but definitely closer than professionally appropriate.

“I feel guilty that I have a career that takes me away from him, even though he insists he doesn’t need looking after. ”

“Does he? Need looking after?”

Eoin’s lips twist in a complicated smile. “Not in the way I think. He’s more capable than anyone I know.”

Seeing the pride radiating from him causes a flash of jealousy to shoot through me.

What would it be like to have a man as capable as Eoin proud of you?

“But I still worry,” he continues. His hand rests on the sofa between us, close enough to touch if I shifted slightly. “It’s hard to break the habit of feeling responsible for someone.”

“I can imagine,” I say.

Eoin meets my gaze again. “Did you feel that way about your sister?”

The question lands like I’m the recipient of a particularly brutal rugby tackle. Amelia. The sister who colluded with Welsh nationalist terrorists to attempt to kill our brother Callum.

I don’t know what Eoin sees in my face because his brows come together.

“Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s…” My hand finds my signet ring, twisting it around my finger. “It’s just that I try not to think about her too much. Because it drove me crazy after it happened, wondering if I could have…helped somehow before it went so far. And it makes me wonder if you can ever truly know anyone.”

Amelia’s betrayal eviscerated me more than I’ve ever expressed to anyone.

Callum was the only other person who understood, but it wasn’t quite the same for him.

He’d grown up across the Atlantic Ocean from Amelia.

He hadn’t been there when Amelia and I had conspired to sneak extra puddings from the kitchen at Balmoral, when she’d covered for me missing curfew.

When our father died, Amelia had been almost three, and I’d been five. I still remember her hand clutching mine when we’d been forced to stand with our mother on St George’s chapel steps reviewing condolence flowers while photographers circled like vultures.

That image of us—two tiny figures in black holding hands against the vast stone building—became the defining shot of a nation’s collective grief.

Although the cameras missed how Amelia’s fingernails had drawn blood from my palm.

“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Eoin says.

“Couldn’t I? We grew up together. How did I miss that my own sister contained so much cunning and ambition that she was prepared to participate in a murder plot against our brother?”

Eoin’s hand moves as if he might reach for me, then stops. Instead, he shifts closer, our knees almost touching.

“People can hide a lot, even from those closest to them.”

“Is that meant to be reassuring?” A bitter laugh escapes me. “Because it rather confirms my point about never really knowing anyone.”

“No,” he says quietly. “It just means people are complicated. The sister you knew growing up is still real. What came after doesn’t erase that. People can be many things. Most of us are.”

“So, we’re back to everyone containing multitudes? Marvelous. Though some people’s multitudes are rather more homicidal than others. I don’t recall Whitman mentioning that particular caveat.”

Eoin fights a smile now, but his eyes betray him, crinkling at the corners. I find myself leaning toward him unconsciously.

Because it appears that is my spectacular weakness: Eoin O’Connell happy.

I want him.

Especially now that I know exactly how good it feels to actually have him.

My expression must betray my thought process because Eoin’s eyes darken. His gaze drops to my lips for a moment before shifting back to my eyes. The humor fades from his expression, replaced by something more intense.

The air between us shifts, thickens.

The space between us has shrunk to nothing. I should move away, reestablish distance. But instead, I’m focused on small details of him, the slight fray at his collar where he must tug at it when frustrated, the way he’s breathing through his mouth now, careful and controlled.

We sit there, the unspoken thing between us expanding like some monstrous soufflé of suppressed desire.

I glance down. The space between our hands is two inches, maximum.

I said last night was a one-and-done thing. To get this out of our system.

And I know that’s what it should be.

If people find out about us, Eoin would be disciplined, at the very least. Even if he kept his job, he’d be reassigned to another protection team. I’d never get to see him.

Yet all that logic melts as soon as I meet his eyes. Those storm-gray irises seem to see through every layer of royal polish to the real me beneath.

“Nicholas.” My name in his mouth sounds like something sacred. The Irish lilt makes it new, makes it mine.

What does he want with me? What could this man possibly see in the spare heir with a reputation for champagne breakfasts and diplomatic incidents?

He’s risking so much. Is it just for the thrill to say he landed a prince? Or does he feel the same irresistible draw to me as I feel toward him?

It’s like being caught in an undertow. The surface looks calm, manageable, but underneath, there’s this relentless pull dragging me toward something that will absolutely drown us both.

I should move from this sofa now. Make a joke. Reestablish boundaries.

Instead, my hand moves those final inches, fingers brushing against his.

The contact causes sparks to fly up my arm.

He turns his palm up, catching my fingers with his own, and the simple intimacy steals my breath.

“This is a terrible idea,” I say, staring at our intertwined fingers but making no move to pull back.

“The worst,” he agrees, but his thumb is already stroking across my knuckles.

He brings our joined hands up between us, pressing his lips to my palm.

“Nicholas,” he says against my skin, and I feel the shape of my name more than hear it.

When he leans forward to kiss me, it’s different from our previous kisses. Slower, deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of me. His free hand comes up to cradle my jaw, thumb brushing over my cheekbone.

Bloody hell, this will undo me. He’s not just kissing me like he wants and desires me. He’s kissing me like he treasures me too.

We kiss sweetly, but my body is definitely not focused on sweet.

I grow embarrassingly hard in a short space of time.

When Eoin eases me back on the sofa, one thigh pressing between my legs, I grind against him shamelessly.

I need the friction, need proof he’s as thoroughly compromised as I am.

Sure enough, his cock is hardening too, and he groans into my mouth as I roll my hips up again.

Then our kiss turns from gentle to molten, the fire between us igniting, and now we’re all desperate hands and broken breathing, any pretense of control abandoned.

“Bathroom,” I manage to get out between kisses. It appears one small part of my brain still possesses a modicum of self-preservation and remembers that it is only early evening and there’s a protection officer outside my door.

Eoin doesn’t question my words, moving off me to stand, then grabbing my hand and pulling me across the suite. The bathroom door slams shut behind us. Then he lifts me onto the marble counter, his hands pushing my legs apart to stand between them.

His mouth is everywhere—my lips, my jaw, the sensitive spot just below my ear that makes my back arch. But it’s the way he murmurs my name between kisses, the way his hands shake slightly as he touches me, that undoes me completely.

I’m frantic now, tugging at his shirt so I can slide my hands under it, needing to feel his skin.

“God, Nicholas,” he groans as my hands find his belt and start to undo the buckle. “I’ve spent all day pretending I wasn’t thinking about doing this again.”

“Then do something about it,” I challenge.

His eyes darken at my words, the gray turning nearly black. With swift, efficient movements, he manhandles me off the counter and turns me around. Our eyes meet in the mirror, his gaze burning into mine as he works open my trousers with unsteady hands.

“Is this okay?” His voice is rough.

“Yes,” I breathe, already pushing back against him. “But for the love of all that’s holy, hurry up.”

He reaches into his pocket, producing a small packet of lube and a condom. The fact that he came prepared sends heat spiraling through me. He wants this as badly as I do.

He slicks his fingers, and then he’s pressing into me, and I’m still sensitive from last night, but the slight burn only intensifies everything. He works me open carefully, reading my body’s responses with unerring accuracy.

Because, of course, he does. Despite my desperation, my pressing back on him and insisting through bitten lips that I can take more, he maintains his torturous pace, fingers crooking just so until my thighs shake.

When he finally deems me ready and pushes inside me, we both groan. I close my eyes because the fullness, pleasure, and the faintest edge of pain combine into something that makes coherent thought impossible.

But it’s more than physical. It’s the feeling of being completely connected to another person, of being seen and wanted exactly as I am.

“Look at me,” he commands in my ear, his voice a low growl.

My eyes fly open, meeting his gaze in the mirror. The image sears itself into my brain—him behind me, fully clothed except for his open trousers, me half-dressed and bent over the counter, my face flushed with desire.

But it’s the expression on his face that stops my breath. It’s raw and open and utterly without pretense.

His thrusts are deep and deliberate, like he’s trying to reach as far inside me as possible.

They are also relentless, each one hitting that perfect spot. One of his hands grips my hip with bruising force, the other sliding beneath my shirt to splay across my chest, holding me against him.

“Eoin,” I gasp, already embarrassingly close. “I need?—”

“I know,” he says, and he does. He knows exactly what I need because somehow, impossibly, he knows me.

He moves his hand to stroke my cock in time with his thrusts, but it’s not the feel of his calloused hand that sends me over the edge.

Instead, it’s the way he presses his forehead between my shoulder blades, the broken way he chokes out my name.

My release crashes over me with all the subtlety of a cavalry charge.

He follows moments later, his rhythm faltering as he presses deep inside me, my name a rough prayer on his lips.

For a few seconds, we stay frozen in position, breathing heavily. His heart hammers against my back, matching the wild rhythm of my own.

Then slowly, carefully, he pulls out, turning me to face him. His hands cup my face as he presses a gentle kiss to my lips, the softness so at odds with the frantic pace of moments before.

“Are you all right?” His thumbs brush over my cheekbones. There’s concern in his eyes, but also something deeper—a tenderness that makes my throat tight.

“More than all right,” I manage to say, and his answering smile is like watching the sun break through storm clouds.

“Merry Christmas, Nicholas.”

Meeting his gaze, I can’t help but think that despite everything—the distance from home, the upside-down seasons that make Christmas feel surreal in the summer heat, the political complexities of being a royal in a former colony—this might be the most authentic Christmas I’ve ever experienced.

Because with Eoin, I don’t have to perform. There’s no mask, no false persona.

There’s just me. Somehow, impossibly, that appears to be enough for this man.

And that seems like the greatest gift I could ever receive.