“I gotta find Gabby,” Leo said as he put his dick back in his pants, packed up the uneaten food, and helped put the princess to rights.
Put his dick in his pants and helped put the princess to rights. Eff him, but that was something he had never imagined himself thinking much less doing.
He smiled.
Because he had a feeling it might be something he would have the opportunity to do again. As he buttoned Marie’s coat up, his mind skittered back to the threat/promise of a blow job in “more comfortable environs.” It kept replaying that sentence—and another one. Show me the way you minister to yourself, and I will emulate it.
When he’d first met Marie in New York, her oddly formal manner and way of speaking had annoyed him. Then, as he’d come to understand that in many cases it was a front for nerves or insecurity, he’d minded it less.
But now? Now, it drove him wild.
It made him stiffen again when he thought about it.
Marie looked at her watch. “I suspect the horseback riding will be done by now, but I’m sure Gabby is well looked after.”
“I’m sure she is. She’s loving it here. But I hadn’t planned on being gone so long today. I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Let’s go find her, shall we?”
“Your braid is a mess.” He tried to smooth the destroyed hairdo, but it was no use.
She pulled off the elastic securing the bottom of the braid and combed her fingers through her hair. “It will just take me a moment to redo it.”
“Why don’t you leave it down?”
“You don’t like the braids?”
“I do,” he assured her, and it was true. The sometimes elaborate hairdos she wore in Eldovia were kind of like her white nightgown—maddening in their seeming primness. But he also liked her hair down. The way it had been in New York when he’d first been getting to know her.
Well, actually, what he liked best was her hair down after it had been in braids. It was the dishevelment he liked. It was being the disheveler. He wasn’t going to say that, though. So he pulled her hood up and said, “I like your hair all ways. You have good hair.”
And good eyelashes.
And good lips.
Okay, enough. He nodded toward the path. “Shall we?”
“I’m sorry again about the NDA,” she said quietly once they started walking.
“Forget about it.” He had.
“The first boy I slept with took a picture of me sleeping in his bed and tried to sell it to the student newspaper—this was at university.”
“What?” The fucker. “Did he succeed?”
“No. I called Mr. Benz, and he took care of it. I’m not even sure how.”
Maybe there was something to say for meddling Mr. Benz after all.
“I hadn’t had him sign anything—Mr. Benz had told me, when I left, to make sure anyone who might ‘be in a position to compromise me or my reputation’ signed an NDA. But I was afraid of insulting him.”
Shit. “Write me up a new one. I’ll sign it.” He contemplated asking her for the name of this dude, but checked the impulse. What was he going to do? Hunt him down vigilante-justice style?
“I don’t want you to. I just wanted to explain.”
“Princess, I appreciate the trust, but now I’m going to have to insist on signing one.” He had been thinking about the document as an affront to his pride, as a symbol of the gulf between them. He hadn’t been thinking of it from her point of view, about what she risked when she made herself vulnerable to men who might turn out to be dickheads.
“No,” she said decisively. “It’s good to reevaluate one’s habits periodically. Actions one performs by rote that may not . . . be serving one anymore.” He was ramping up to object again, but she cut him off. “Let’s find Gabby, shall we?”
Back at the castle, Frau Lehman reported that Gabby had enjoyed both skiing and horseback riding, that Mr. Benz had taken to his bed exhausted, and that she had escorted Gabby to the library to borrow a book, then tucked her into her room for a rest.
Except Gabby wasn’t in her room when Leo and Marie poked their heads in. “I bet she’s back in the library,” Leo had ventured, and yep. When they appeared, she sprang up from where she was sitting on an old-fashioned-looking sofa surrounded by haphazard piles of books. She was holding an equally old-fashioned-looking volume in her hands. “Oh my gosh, Leo! Look at this!” Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright with excitement.
“The Red Fairy Book,” he read aloud from the faded gold-leaf lettering on the battered cover. “Andrew Lang.”
“It’s in English, unlike a lot of the rest of the books in here, and it’s full of fairy tales I’ve never heard of!”
“Yes,” came a posh voice from behind them. Leo didn’t have to turn to know it was King Emil. He braced himself for a royal damper to be put on what had, so far, been an incredible day. “Remarkably,” the king drawled, “it turns out your Disney schlock isn’t the sum total of the world’s folklore.”
“Father,” Marie said.
Emil ignored his daughter and turned to Gabby. “Miss Ricci, I must ask you not to use my library if you’re going to treat its contents so carelessly.”
Leo sighed and turned back to his sister, the princess of clutter. On the one hand, he couldn’t really argue with the king. Gabby’s room at home was a complete sty. And that was saying something, because it wasn’t like Leo had the highest standards himself on the domestic front—it was another arena where he constantly felt he wasn’t keeping up.
“Oh!” Gabby turned red and started stacking books like she was on speed.
On the other hand, King Emil could go fuck himself.
Leo turned to say as much, but Marie had her father by the elbow and was in the process of yanking him out of the room.
Well. Okay then.
“He’s a royal jerkface,” Leo muttered as he helped Gabby put the books back on the shelves.
Gabby giggled, which had been his aim, but then said, quietly, “Frau Lehman said I could use the library.”
“Yes,” Leo said. “But did she say you could treat it like your own personal property and mess it up like this?”
“No. She said I could borrow one book and take it to my room, which I did . . . but then I came back.” She hung her head. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to, kiddo.” As much as he hated it.
Marie invited Mr. Benz to stay for cocktails and dinner. He was startled by her invitation but accepted, as she’d known he would. Instead of seeing it as an invitation he was free to refuse, he would regard it as his duty. She was using him, shamelessly, as she had that morning. It wasn’t something she normally did, and she vowed not to make a habit of it. But she hoped his presence might act as a buffer between her father and the Riccis. Not that Mr. Benz was known for his sparkling, upbeat personality, but she didn’t have a lot of options here. Anyway, he was often so wound up this time of year that it might have the side effect of doing him some good.
To her surprise, though, they didn’t really need him.
Gabby marched straight up to her father and said, “Your Majesty, I would like to apologize for using your library uninvited and for treating it disrespectfully. I got carried away with my enthusiasm for some of the books I found there, and I lost track of my manners. It won’t happen again.”
She performed another of her little half curtsies—Marie really needed to impress upon her that she didn’t need to do that—and turned to Leo, who nodded very slightly, as if signing off on the statement of remorse.
Her father remained silent, staring at Gabby.
“Miss Ricci,” Mr. Benz said, “if you would be so kind as to inform me what sorts of books you like, I will see to it that—”
The king held up a hand, silencing his equerry, and Marie suppressed a sigh. This was exactly why she’d invited Mr. Benz. He had a talent for smoothing things over, especially where her father was concerned. But if her father wasn’t even going to let him speak, he might as well go home.
“I accept your apology, and I offer you one of my own,” her father said, and Marie was certain that hers was not the only jaw in the room that dropped. “My reaction to your presence in the library was out of proportion.”
She could see that Gabby, who had so clearly rehearsed her apology with Leo, had not covered what to do when presented with one of her own. The correct response, of course, was to murmur her acceptance. Instead, her eyes went wide and she spent a long moment looking like a fox at the culmination of a hunt before blurting, “No biggie!”
Marie had to stifle laughter. She would bet her kingdom—her literal kingdom—that no one had ever said “No biggie” to her father before.
The king, to his credit, did not react. He turned to Mr. Benz. “Miss Ricci is a devotee of fairy tales and yesterday she encountered a volume that contained some stories that had, heretofore, been unfamiliar to her.”
“Ah.” Mr. Benz nodded. “Miss Ricci, are you aware that His Majesty is himself the author of an English translation of a collection of traditional Eldovian fairy tales?”
“You are?” Gabby exclaimed.
“Mr. Benz exaggerates the situation. I studied comparative literature in my undergraduate days. I undertook a project collecting some of the traditional tales of these mountains, mostly passed down orally in German. Since I was doing it anyway, I thought I might as well translate them into the languages I already spoke. They aren’t formally published.”
Marie could see that this news both astounded and delighted Gabby. The girl remained silent, though, probably afraid of saying the wrong thing.
“My father used to tell me fairy stories when I was a girl,” Marie said to Gabby. She turned to her father. “Remember? I never wanted to go to sleep. Maman would insist, but sometimes you’d wink at me, and then you’d sneak back into my room later and tell me another.”
He smiled. A real one. “I’d forgotten that.” His expression became quizzical. “I think of your mother as the rebellious one, but we did deceive her from time to time with our bedtime stories, didn’t we?”
“Yes!” Marie agreed. “She was the rebellious one. But not when it came to bedtime, for some reason. I never could puzzle that out.”
“She was strict about your bedtime because she and I watched TV together after you went to sleep.” Father smiled in a way Marie might have characterized as dreamy, though dreamy didn’t seem like a word that should ever describe her father.
As if to prove her point, he shook his head and cleared his throat as the smile disappeared. “Miss Ricci, perhaps we can strike a bargain. I do much of my work in the library.”
What work? Marie was tempted to ask, but she knew better than to disturb this rare moment of goodwill.
“Therefore, I prefer not to be interrupted,” he went on. “Perhaps we can agree that you may borrow whichever volumes you like, but you’ll need to find another place to read them.”
Marie was amazed. She hadn’t seen her father give way to anyone in years. She wasn’t sure if the fact that this someone was an eleven-year-old and not, say, a member of parliament who held an opposing view, made it more or less remarkable.
Either way, dinner was less fraught than last night’s.
And the best part of it was when it was over. They parted ways with good-night greetings, but when she said hers to Leo, he licked his lips and said, “Yes, I think it is going to be a very good night.”
The text arrived an hour after Gabby had gone to bed. Would you like to come to my suite and see Buffy?
Leo: Buffy? Is that a euphemism?
Never in a million years would Leo have pegged Princess Marie as the type to name her vagina.
Marie: What would that be a euphemism for?
Leo: Do you really need it explained to you?
She sent him a photo of a DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It made him laugh out loud as he typed Yes, I would like to come to your suite and see Buffy. And hopefully a few other things of the noneuphemistic variety as well.
Marie: Buffy was one of my mother’s favorites. We watched it together when I was a teenager. I’ve been rewatching it recently.
When Leo arrived, Marie ushered him past the sitting room he’d been in before—the room in which they’d conducted their dancing lessons. On its far side was a small hallway.
“It’s a whole apartment in here,” he remarked, registering that she was still dressed in the jeans and blazer she’d worn at dinner. He’d been hoping to see the white nightgown again. Or maybe the black panties.
Or maybe both?
She was confusing.
“Yes and no,” she said. “My suite is not like the large-scale apartments in the famous British palaces, which are effectively self-contained residences. It’s merely a semiformal sitting room, where I receive personal guests, and a few other rooms.” She gestured at an open doorway as they passed it. “This is my office.” He peeked in. It was a small room dominated by a large desk and a wall of built-in shelving. That must be Kai’s handiwork. Leo would have called the room fancy—the walls were papered in an elaborate floral pattern and the desk was as ornate as they came—but it was strewn with papers and books. He would even go so far as to call it messy. Which surprised him.
“This is the small parlor.” She gestured into the next room as they continued down the hall. “I think perhaps you would call it a den.”
A glance inside confirmed her interpretation. There was a sofa on one wall and an entertainment system ensconced on the opposite one nestled in a perfectly sized built-in shelf—probably more of Kai’s work. “We can watch in here, or . . .”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Another option is to watch in my bedroom. I have a small television in there.”
Was she propositioning him? It was hard to tell. She might just be genuinely—and innocently—inviting him into her inner sanctum.
Heh. Her inner sanctum. Was it just him or did everything tonight sound like innuendo?
“I also thought it would be the more efficient option in the sense that if we want to have sex, we’re already in the bedroom,” she said almost brusquely.
He burst out laughing. Well, that solved that.
“I’ve said something wrong.” There was a hint of dismay in her tone.
“No. Not at all.” He made a shooing motion down the corridor. “I vote for the bedroom.”
“Would you like me to have something sent up to eat? My suite doesn’t have a kitchen. Are you hungry?”
He winked and said, “I am hungry, but not for food.”
It was one hundred percent cheesy but one hundred percent true.
Thankfully, one hundred percent cheesy plus one hundred percent true worked on princesses of bonkers Hallmark-style Alpine countries.
She perched on the end of the bed in front of a small TV mounted to the wall. “As it relates to Buffy, I’m in the middle of season four, which, frankly, is the long slog on Riley.”
“The long what?”
“To my mind, be Team Spike or be Team Angel—I suppose. I don’t really get the latter, but I respect it. But Riley? That’s like being pro-beige.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was, however, aware enough to understand that the princess was talking about American pop culture—and was talking circles around him. It was amusing.
Ignoring him, she picked up the remote and started the show.
The opening sequence seemed to be a girl engaged in hand-to-hand combat with vampires, but she would stop every now and then to trade banter with them. “What is this?”
“It’s about a high school in California that happens to be built over the hellmouth, and all manner of vampires and other unpleasant creatures need to be slain, but handily one of the students happens to be the Slayer. It’s like being the chosen one, and . . .” Marie trailed off, perhaps because she had registered the confusion on Leo’s face. “This isn’t the best show to pick up in the middle.” She hopped off the bed and opened a cabinet underneath the TV to reveal rows and rows of DVDs, most of them titles he was vaguely familiar with but had never seen. “Let’s watch something else. You pick.”
“You’ve seen these all?”
“Yes. I grew up watching several hours of TV a night.”
It was hard to wrap his mind around. It was so incongruous with the idea of her as a princess, as a highly educated person who did things like address the United Nations.
“I learned English in school, of course—everyone here does. But I learned idiomatic English mostly from 1990s television.” She pulled out a disc called The Nanny and held it out to him with her eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”
He put his hand over hers and guided the disc back to its place on the shelf. “I think I didn’t come here to watch TV.”
She said, “Oh,” but she said it on a shuddery exhalation, and that was all it took to make him hard. “I have secured prophylactics.” Marie spoke initially with the utmost seriousness, but then she cracked a smile.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The way she talked. Why did it drive him so wild?
Well, whatever, he didn’t feel like examining it right now. He felt like going with it, allowing the rush of affection her earnestness—which was somehow, paradoxically, also very sexy—inspired to propel him toward the bed. He heaved himself onto the mattress, leaning back against a mound of fluffy pillows and crooking a finger at her.
She flashed him a shy smile, but she came. He was sprawled on the bed, and she kneeled between his splayed legs, but she didn’t touch him.
He eyed her, all bundled up in her “casual” clothing that wasn’t casual.
He wanted to see her. All of her.
And he wanted her to see him.
So he sat up, inserted his hands into her blazer, and pushed it off her shoulders to reveal a white blouse done up with what seemed like a hundred buttons. They looked like tiny pearls. “That’s a lot of buttons you’ve got there, Princess,” he said, surprising himself with how low his voice had suddenly gone. He spared a moment to take off his shirt while he pondered this maddening little engineering problem.
She looked down. “It’s not very practical for our purposes, is it?” She started working on the buttons, her small, nimble fingers entrancing him as they moved with the same efficient precision she applied to so much of her life.
He also liked disrupting that precision. So even though it risked coming across as brutish, he reached out and applied his own brand of efficiency to the one-million-buttons problem and ripped the last several of them open. He used enough force to make her gasp—he was pretty sure no one had literally torn off Princess Marie’s clothing before—and to send some of the buttons over the edge of the bed where they made satisfying pings as they hit the wood floor.
Her eyes opened wide—and sparked. Taking a hold of one side of her now gaping blouse with each hand, he pulled her on top of him. She shrieked as she toppled and smiled so widely she practically blinded him with her dimples. Those fuckers were lethal.
He only had a moment to admire them, though, before she kissed him.
Her kiss was familiar by now. It started softly, her lips moving against his gently, but rapidly escalated until she was sighing into his mouth, opening for him and moaning as his tongue shamelessly slid inside, stroking hers. They kissed for a long time, and he got more and more wound up. He had to make himself pause, remember his larger mission: to see her.
So he tore his mouth from hers, relishing the little moue of displeasure that resulted. He fumbled with the clasp at the back of her bra, and once he had it unhooked, pushed her back so she was sitting astride him. She was backlit by soft lamplight, and she was perfect. Teardrop-shaped breasts with small, pink nipples at their tips made his jaw slacken like he was a goddamned caveman.
“I want to see all of you,” he rasped. “Will you let me see you?”
Without hesitation, she pushed herself off him and started wiggling out of her jeans. “I want to see you, too.”
Sliding his own jeans over his hips to free his aching cock was an enormous relief. So much so that he groaned and closed his eyes, needing to stem, for a moment, the sensory onslaught. When he opened them, she was naked and was crawling back from the edge of the bed. She was small and lithe and perfect.
“Oh, Princess.”
She climbed right back on top of him, except this time there was nothing between them, so it was her, the slick, soft heat of her, that slid against his thighs as she straddled them. She tilted her head and did that thing where her brow knit—just a little, almost not even enough to notice—as she braced herself on his chest and leaned forward.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, suddenly feeling like she was trying to see into his soul or some shit.
She leaned a little closer, and her attention intensified. “I’m thinking how much I enjoy looking at this lip.” One of her hands floated up, and she rubbed her thumb over his lower lip, letting its tip make an incursion into his mouth. “Sometimes I want to bite it.”
He huffed a startled chuckle. Startled was the word of the day, apparently. She was constantly startling him.
“So why don’t you then?”
She leaned forward and did just that—and he was startled anew.
He’d been expecting a little nip, and that maybe she’d then soothe that nip with another kiss, but no, not his princess. She did exactly what he’d told her to do—she bit him. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt.
The quick infusion of pain was a jolt to his system. It ratcheted up his need. He growled and flipped them. Covered her with his body and took control. He dragged his mouth along her throat, enjoying the feeling of her pulse thundering under his lips.
She threw her head back and moaned, arching her chest. He reached for her breasts, and the sound she made as his hands made contact was half relief, half dismay. She was so soft. But also so hard. He’d thought her nipples had gotten so hard earlier because they’d been out in the cold, but it turned out it was just her. He adored the way the little nubs grew sharper and sharper as he twisted them gently between thumb and forefinger.
“Leo,” she gasped. “Leo.”
“You like this, Princess?” Experimentally, he twisted a little harder.
“Yes!” she cried.
“What does it feel like?”
“It feels like . . . too much but also not enough.” She wiggled underneath him until she was splayed open beneath one of his thighs. “And, when you touch me there”—she nodded at the nipple he was still working over—“I feel it here.” She ground up against him. She was so slick, so warm, he suddenly felt like he would die if he didn’t get his hands or his mouth on that incredible softness. Not wanting to stop with the nipple onslaught she seemed to be enjoying so much, he replaced one hand with his mouth, which made her jerk.
“Shh,” he soothed, before he refastened his mouth over a perfect pink peak. He sent his now-free hand between her legs, parting her folds and stroking her. After a few minutes, she was restless again. It took a moment for him to register that she was trying to get out from under him. With regret—sharp, metallic regret—he rolled away, panting.
She crawled over to a heavy oaken nightstand, yanked open a drawer, produced a box of condoms—prophylactics, to use her term—and tossed it at him. He sucked in a breath as he was overcome with . . . something. Lust, yes, but not only that. His chest felt light. It felt like . . . joy?
Okay, enough of that. There was no call for melodrama. He was just really glad she wasn’t calling a halt to the proceedings.
“Well?” she said, drawing him from his uncharacteristic bout of self-examination.
The impatience in Marie’s tone made Leo smile. It made him feel like a million bucks, actually. He tore open the box, then an individual condom packet, and sheathed himself.
He reclined on the mound of pillows against the headboard and held out a hand.
“I’m meant to be on top?” she asked.
“You’re meant to be whatever you want, but if you’re on top you’ll have more control.”
Her eyes widened and a slow smile blossomed. She took his hand, and he had the sudden, absurd notion that he was helping her into a carriage that would take her to a ball or some shit. She reached for his dick with her free hand and he groaned just at that. She kept hold of his hand with her other hand, and slowly, slowly, guided him inside her.
“Oh, fuck, you feel good,” he ground out, and she let loose a needy moan. “You’re so wet, I fucking love it.”
She started moving, and soon they’d established a rhythm, a slow, steady . . . dance, almost. That, along with the fact that she hadn’t let go of his hand, sort of reminded him of when they’d actually been dancing.
Except dancing hadn’t made him feel like he was going to explode. He tried to slow himself down, but it was no use. The pressure gathering was an unstoppable force.
So as with the dancing, he moved her where he wanted her. He slid himself down on the bed so he was lying flat, taking her with him. She’d been sitting up, grinding herself on him, but he pressed on one thigh to indicate that he wanted her to straighten her legs and lie on him. “C’mere,” he said gruffly, and she did, tipping forward until she was stretched out on top of him, those maddening, sharp little nipples scratching his chest. He slid himself down a bit, aiming to line up their bodies so her clit made contact with the base of his dick. Another of her moans told him when he’d hit a good spot, and he let one hand settle heavily on the curve of her ass to keep her in place. “Rock yourself on me.”
She did, burying her face in his neck. The hand that was still holding his pressed his own down on the bed next to his head, her fingers laced in his. Pinned down by the princess.
There were worse places to be.
He rocked in sync with her, resisting the urge to thrust in opposition to the movement of her hips and letting his free hand slide back and forth over the curve of her ass.
“Leo,” she panted against his neck.
As with the times she’d come before, her breathing changed. Her fingers tightened around his, and a shudder ripped through her as she came. He could feel her inner muscles spasming around his dick. He couldn’t hold himself back anymore. His hips had taken over, and they were going to move. With a groan, he snapped them up, a big, almost involuntary thrust that turned her moan-in-progress into a surprised-but-delighted yelp. It only took one more thrust, and he was emptying himself into the condom.
She pushed herself back up, and he grabbed the base of the condom, thinking she was going to climb off him, but she just sat there grinning at him, her face red and her braids mostly undone, looking both thoroughly fucked and thoroughly self-satisfied. She lifted their entwined hands, and suddenly, he didn’t want to let go. So he pulled her hand back. Brought it to his lips and kissed it.
“You are a very interesting mixture of qualities,” she informed him as she took her hand back—he had to let her—and slid off him.
“What do you mean?”
“You are very chivalrous, but you have such a dirty mouth.”
He shrugged. He liked sex and he had manners. He didn’t think that was such a remarkable combination.
Marie flopped down on her back next to Leo. “I can’t usually come with a man.”
“You mean from just dick?”
She sputtered with laughter and turned her head toward him. “No. I gather that’s not that unusual? I meant with a man at all. From his ministrations—regardless of which appendage is being employed. Yet that was the third time with you, so clearly I was mistaken.”
“So what you’re saying,” he asked, to make sure he had this right, “is that you can rub one out but you don’t come when you’re with a partner?”
“That might not be how I would phrase it, but yes. Usually when I’m having sex, I get the same feeling I do when I have to dance in public—like I’m the object of too much scrutiny to fully relax.”
He took that in as he stared at the—gilded—ceiling. He couldn’t have wiped the grin off his face if he tried. It was stupid to get such a boost from something as mundane as making a woman come. In addition to being good manners—literally, the least he could do—in his experience, reciprocity usually meant better, more frequent sex.
He supposed he was disproportionally pleased by the princess’s praise because it had been so long since he’d done anything that felt like more than merely surviving. And even then, he usually ended up feeling like he was falling short.
Regardless of his feelings on the matter, though, Marie should know that expecting an orgasm out of sex was not an outlandish demand. “What the hell were those Casanovas from your past doing? Besides selling you out to the school newspaper?” She made a noncommittal murmur. He could imagine what they’d been doing. “I’m no rocket scientist, but even I know that most women can’t come from a guy just hammering away at them with his dick.”
“Hmm.”
He rolled onto his side. “What?”
She smiled. “I’m thinking about the image that conjures. A man hammering away at a woman with his dick. I think I’d like to try that.”
“It’s supposed to be a negative example.”
“Still. A little controlled experiment might be fun, no? Besides, I am confident you would find a way. You seem to have a talent for multitasking.”
He shook his head. “You are something else, Princess.”
“I should stop calling you that,” Leo said, examining Marie from above—he’d propped his head on one hand, and she was flat on her back. She wasn’t sure she could move her limbs yet.
“No you shouldn’t,” she said automatically.
“But the whole point of our thing is that I don’t give a shit that you’re a princess. So why do I keep calling you that?”
“It’s a term of endearment, I think.” Was that the right word? She was conscious of the fact that she didn’t want him to feel trapped, as though she had expectations of him, but she liked him, and she was pretty sure he liked her, too. “I think you would call me Princess if I was a . . . banker. Or a teacher.”
“That’s . . . true.” He looked surprised at that interpretation.
“I think it’s also a little dirty, sometimes. I think you like the idea of sullying me.”
“Hmm.” His brow furrowed. “That’s also true.” He tucked some hair behind her ear, and the gesture felt almost unbearably tender. “But not because you’re a princess.”
“No,” she agreed. “Because I’m a little . . . wound up.”
The confusion left his face then, chased off by a wicked smile. “Yes. And I enjoy unwinding you.”
“So don’t stop.” Please don’t stop.
“Unwinding you?”
“Unwinding me, yes, but calling me Princess, too. I like it when you call me Princess.”
“Okay. But you know I’m not going to do it now because that would be too much like obeying a royal proclamation, right?”
She laughed. “Of course.”
He kept his fingers in her hair, playing with it, undoing the putting-to-rights he’d done a moment ago.
“Thank you, Leo.”
“Are you thanking me for having sex with you? Because I can assure you, it was my pleasure.”
She was, but really, she meant it more holistically. “For everything. For coming here. For putting up with my father. For the cabin.”
“About that. I’m not going to be able to get more than the rudimentary structure done before I leave. But if you can get it past your father, you could have Kai put in windows and floors. And we’re leaving a spot where a wood-burning stove could vent.”
Marie hated to think of Leo not being around to see the finished cabin. She was going to furnish it in the summer, too, she’d decided, her father be damned. Make it fully functional. Maybe she’d even figure out a way to spend a night there.
“How did you get interested in architecture?” she asked, suddenly curious.
He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. She, having got control of her limbs, rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin on his chest, worrying belatedly that maybe she was getting too cozy. But his arms came immediately around her and he started playing with her hair again as he spoke.
“I told you I used to work construction?” She nodded. “It was what my dad did. So he would get me on his crews in the summers, when I was in high school. I thought it was interesting. The way a building comes together physically from what starts out as a plan on paper—and before that, just an idea in someone’s head. I always assumed I’d follow him into the business full-time, but when he got wind of that he read me the riot act. Pointed out all his injuries and maladies—it was true that his back was all screwed up from that job. He said he hadn’t worked so hard his whole life so his kids could do manual labor. He marched me into the high-school guidance counsellor, and before I knew it I’d been set up to job-shadow an architect.”
“And you liked it.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “It was all the stuff I loved about buildings, but also all this problem solving, you know? How to make the most of a site. How to incorporate what people said they wanted but also what you thought they needed. How to do all that and make it look good. It sounds dumb, but it kind of reminded me of a real-life video game.”
It didn’t sound dumb. It sounded exactly like Leo. “So what happened?” She recognized that as the wrong question the moment it was out. “Well, I know what happened.”
“Yeah. I mean, yeah. But it wasn’t . . . just that.”
“What was it?” she asked gently.
“I was the first person in my family to go to college. It was a big deal for someone like me to be in architecture school.”
“That’s good, though, isn’t it? You should be proud of yourself.”
He blew out a breath. “There wasn’t a day that I didn’t question whether I belonged there. If I should just give up.”
“Of course you belonged there. They admitted you, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but I was barely hanging on. I worked my ass off for middling grades. I tried, but it was just . . . never enough.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Which actually turned out to be good practice for what came next.”
“What does that mean?” she said sharply. She hadn’t meant it to come out like a rebuke, but she hated to hear him talk like this.
“It means Gabby. I try with her, but it’s never enough.”
“Leo! That’s objectively not true!” She had seen the love between the siblings. She had envied it.
“It is, though,” he insisted.
“Give me one example.”
“Braids.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She always wants braids, and I can never get them right.”
“Oh, Leo.” He was breaking her heart. He didn’t see how wonderful he was. “Girls need love, not braids.”
He swung himself off the bed without answering. He didn’t seem angry, but clearly he didn’t want to continue this conversation.
She asked one more question anyway. She couldn’t help herself. “Do you ever think of going back to school?”
“I don’t see how I can swing it until Gabby’s much older.” Leo darted a glance at her but looked away quickly. “As it is, we get by, but barely.”
She was certain it hurt him to admit that. Leo was proud—though there was no shame in what he was saying. She was absurdly pleased, though, that he regarded her as a person he could say such things to. She resisted the urge to offer to pay for his school, or to help them in some way. He was only confiding in her because he trusted she wouldn’t react that way.
“My mother used to talk about the accident of birth,” he said thoughtfully.
“You mean like unplanned pregnancy?”
“No. The randomness of the life circumstances a person is born into.”
“Ahh. Meaning some people are princesses and some people aren’t?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But I meant more that even though some shit has happened lately, I have a good life. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.”
“I know,” she said. And that was what was so great about Leo Ricci.
They stared at each other for a long moment, him standing and her on the bed. She knew he had to go back to his own room eventually, but didn’t want him to leave yet. “Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you stay a little longer?”
“Yeah.”
“If you stay past midnight, it will be the twenty-third.” She wasn’t sure why she was still talking. He was already sliding back into bed. “It will be the day after the anniversary of the day my mother died.”
“I know, Princess. I know.”