Page 95 of The Winter Princess

My throat is closing, and I plan to cry down three flights of stairs. “Freddie’s waiting. I have to go.”

Oskar doesn’t step back, only bends his head over his task to free the small metal tab at my waist. I could touch his hair and he might not even know.

Then he says, his voice low, the words forced from him, “I hate it when you go.”

He looks up and his hands tighten. The noise of the day skitters past like a puppy on a hardwood floor—the snowball splash of midday, the frozen breathlessness of being nose-to-nose, the cautious tightrope walk of speaking on camera. But, here, within the circle we form together, it’s perfectly quiet.

“Freja.” It’s a breath of sound. Expressions chase across his face, hope and hopelessness warring over the same ground. “Freja.”

“Stop thinking so much,” I say. Stop expecting so little. “What do you want?”

He smiles and his chin tips away like,Can you believe this girl?“I want to kiss you.”

I reward him with a reproving frown. “Finally.”

That’s the last word I get before he pulls me to him, hands spanning my waist. His mouth covers mine, and I push my fingers through his hair, inhaling his scent. I expected something tentative and cautious. Something nice as he crossed this threshold.

This isn’t nice. This is a wolf, I think as we ricochet slowly down the hall, searching for a place to forget that my security detail is waiting in a car on the street.

I touch his neck, feel the pulse race and his breath break in his lungs. It would be wise to withhold some portion of myself, setting it aside like a cookie folded into a napkin to be saved for later. But this isn’t that kind of kiss.

Curling my fingers around his shirt, I tug him closer as he presses me against a wall. I feel a light scrape of facial hair and smile. We have found our place.

He lifts his head a fraction, his eyes tracing the lines of my face.

“What?” he asks, bracing his forearms on either side of my head.

“You’ve been thinking about doing that for a while.”

He nuzzles my hair aside and kisses the spot under my ear. “How did you guess?”

A tremor runs along my veins, and I almost slide to the floor. “You’re too good to have never given it any thought.”

He shifts, pressing a soft kiss against the curve of my neck. I give a low laugh and he returns, eyes searching my face.

“We have to go on a date,” he says. “An actual date. Not takeout in the studio.”

The kiss was more momentous than a date, but this is a nod to conventions. We have to begin as others do.

I bite the smile spreading across my lips. “I’m booked up. It’ll have to be after Christmas.”

He nods, amused as I am by this conversation which has none of the tentative gestures between people who are at the beginning.

“After Christmas. Now, stop smiling. I can’t kiss you until you do.”

I rearrange my mouth. He leans forward, and there’s a tap on the door.

Right against my lips, Oskar utters a beastly oath. He gives me a quick kiss. I repair my lipstick with the pad of my thumb, willing my heart to get out of my throat.

He opens the door, and I turn to look. It’s Uncle Timo bearing a dish for Oskar’s dinner with two oversized Christmas oven mitts, his face beaming. A more merry sight would be impossible to imagine. Who wouldn’t want to see Uncle Timo?

Me. Right now, me.

“A guest,” the old man beams. “Your Royal Highness, are you going to stay—?”

Having dinner across the table from Oskar without being able to touch? It would taste like sawdust. “No, no, I really must go. My security officer is waiting.”

Uncle Timo gives me a brief bow, and Oskar catches my eyes above his head.