This was going all wrong, even if it felt all too right.
Thabiso had spent his evening distracted at a last-minute gathering at the Thesoloian embassy that Likotsi had arranged after he’d been left behind in the park. Thoughts of Ledi’s shattered hopes and the way she’d run before she let him see her break had taken too much of his attention. He’d saluted the Kenyan ambassador in French instead of Swahili, had offered the Moroccan envoy a bacon-wrapped scallop, and then turned and done the same to an Israeli minister.
“You’re a mess, friend,” Johan had noted, handing Thabiso a glass of wine. The tabloid Prince of Liechtienbourg, Johan was known in equal measure for his shocking red hair, his weekly brushes with infamy, and for being the stepson of a king—“all the fame, none of the responsibility” he’d teased Thabiso during their boarding school days.
“It’s a woman, isn’t it? Schietze de mierde.” Even the Liechtienbourger mashup of French and German hadn’t lifted Thabiso’s spirits.
“Any advice?” Thabiso had asked. Johan wasn’t exactly a font of wisdom on creating lasting relationships, but perhaps having a new woman every week had given him some special insight.
“Don’t get attached,” Johan had replied drily, before taking a sip of his own wine.
“Sounds like something she would say,” Thabiso had said.
“My kind of woman. Is she here?”
Thabiso had given Johan a playful shove before changing the subject to the upcoming climate talks in Paris.
He’d eventually recovered his wits enough to smooth everything over and send the guests of the Thesoloian embassy home happy; trade deals were unofficially set into motion, mutually beneficial political discourse had occurred without fisticuffs. He was the only one solemn and sullen after what had somehow turned out to be a success.
His return date loomed nearer, and the length of time left for him to tell Naledi the truth and beg her forgiveness was a ticking time bomb that grew ever larger in his mind. Likotsi’s suddenly expert opinions on relationships hadn’t helped either. She’d been smiling and sneaking text messages all night, and Thabiso was jealous. Jealous of his own assistant’s happiness.
So he’d stopped at the bodega on the way from the UN and bought two of the sandwiches Ledi loved, as well as some beer that seemed much too fancy for the cracked glass door it resided behind. He had a plan: he’d check in on her, make sure her school situation was in hand, and reveal every single lie he’d told, starting with his name.
But then she kissed him.
Her soft lips pressed against his and her tongue grazed over his mouth, which had sealed shut in prudish surprise. When he opened for her, she released such a moan of relief—of want—that it spiraled through him, sliding over his skin and down his spine like a living, hungry thing. With her tongue slicking over his as it did—with her soft cry reverberating through him as it did—Thabiso’s cock responded without further prodding. It wanted in on some of the action, his intentions be damned.
Thabiso backed her into the apartment and kicked the door shut behind them, his mouth not budging from hers, mostly because she had grabbed his face with both hands to keep him close. Her palms roughed over his beard as her hands slid behind his neck and her fingers interlaced, pulling him down, down toward the futon. He dropped the bag along the way, not even listening to hear whether the bottles clinked or shattered. His attention was fully directed on the heat of her mouth, of how her shirt was riding up beneath his hands, exposing the bare skin of her waist to his touch. His blood thrummed and his heart was doing some bizarre dance that knew no choreography but the joy of Naledi.
She was on the futon beneath him, her tongue tracing his mouth as her hands slid up under his shirt. Thabiso had never really given much thought to the palms of a woman’s hands, but Ledi’s were warm and capable and scorched over his bare skin. He’d compared her to the goddess of rain, but he’d been wrong. She was pure fire.
“Oh fuck, Naledi. Hold on. Hold on, hold on.” His forehead rested against hers and he gripped both of her wrists in one hand. She gazed at him, eyes wide and reflecting lust back at him.
“Oh, sorry. I kind of tackled you.”
Her brows drew and she moved to roll away from him, but he leaned and caught her lips with his. He kissed her slowly, sipping at her like a butterfly savoring the sweetest nectar. She arched up beneath him, pressing the V where the seams of her jeans met right up against the hard length of him, undulating her hips as she kissed him back with abandon.
“I need to tell you,” he said between kisses. “Who I am.”
“I know who you are,” she said. She pushed away from him and pulled off the screenprinted T-shirt she was wearing, revealing a soft, worn-looking gray bra cupping her silky brown breasts. “You’re the guy who learned to cook for me. The guy who’s made me laugh harder than I have maybe ever. Who made me come so hard I thought I’d peed myself.”
That shouldn’t have made him harder, but it did. Oh, praise the goddess for American oversharing, it did. He ran a fingertip over the frayed faux lace that edged her bra. She shuddered at the merest accidental brush against her skin, and he chuckled.
“I love that you speak so freely,” he said. Her hand came to cover his, and when he looked up at her, she was shaking her head.
“I usually don’t, to be honest. I feel like my entire life has been me trying to keep everything together, but right now I want to fall apart. And I want you to be the guy that makes me.” She was gazing at him hard, and he could see the want in her eyes and the loneliness that he’d caught glimpses of. One of the things he’d grown to adore about her was how in control she was, but now she’d bared herself to him.
“You’re leaving soon,” she said, and those were the words that broke him.
“We still have to talk,” he said, but he was on his knees on the futon now, pulling her toward him. He unhooked her bra with one deft flick of his thumb, and then eased her bra down her arms. He’d been draped in the smoothest silks, the softest wools, as a matter of course, but her skin was the finest texture to ever grace his sense of touch.
“Okay. I know you’re some kind of runaway trust fund baby. But you have me here saying corny things that will kill me from mortification in the morning.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “Ugh. Make sure my last night is a good one, okay?”
Thabiso ran his hands up her torso and cupped the weight of her breasts in his hands. “I can do that.”
And he did.
He pushed her breasts together and licked and sucked at her nipples, wasting no time with soft caresses. He licked at her with his tongue rigid and flat, circled and teased her peaks with its tip, then caught a nipple between his teeth and pulled, ever so slightly.
“Ooookay,” she said, her voice going breathy. “You might kill me before my embarrassment does. That works, too.”
Her hands went to his jeans, tugged at the button fly until she had enough room to work her hand inside and grip him. Thabiso paused midnibble as the heat of her hand registered, and then the clumsy stroke as she tried to work over the length of him in such a restricted space.
He leaned back and pulled his shirt over his head, stood and shucked his jeans, moving with efficient motions that meant his mouth and his hands wouldn’t be away from her for long. On the bed, she was pulling off her pajama pants, revealing underwear that were a different color and material from her bra but hugged her curves and accented her hips so perfectly he wondered at the appeal of matching sets.
“You’re gorgeous.” He dropped back down into the bed, pinning the hot, soft length of her beneath him. She giggled, but looked away.
“Naledi, you have no idea . . .” He didn’t think it respectful to compare her to other women, or other women to her. She was beautiful, just as other women he’d been with had been beautiful, but they hadn’t made him feel like this. “You are lovely, yes, but you make me feel . . . you make me feel like I can be anything.”
And it was true. Everyone else had been taught to treat him like a future king, but Ledi released him from that confinement, showed him that he was more than the Moshoeshoe lineage he’d been born into.
She smiled and her arms went around him, banding him in something that felt like much more than lust. “And you make me feel like I’m already something.”
He kissed her then, and all the words left them. Her hands rubbed over his back, sending tiny, electric thrills coursing through him. He worked his hand between them, to the juncture between her thighs where she was wet and hot. His fingers teased along her slit, and then rubbed hard, and when he could see she preferred his touch rough he kept at it, kissing her all the while.
“Oh god, yes.” She writhed under him, her soft body going stiff as the climax claimed her, bit by bit. First her toes pointing, then her legs pressing into him, and then she arched up and broke with a cry that almost dragged him along with her. She was suddenly pliant beneath him, breathing heavily.
“Do you have condoms?” he asked.
“I’m a public health student,” she replied with a sharp look. She pulled off the top of a small footstool beside her bed and fished lazily around, until she came up with a catch—a silvery sleeve of condoms.
He took it, carefully tore open a packet and sheathed himself before resettling himself between her legs and slowly pushing his way in. Her muscles clenched at him, immediately, and the squeeze of her against his cock was excruciating.
“Ledi,” he whispered, and then prayed she didn’t respond with a name that wasn’t his. He paused, reality creeping in at the edges of his pleasure.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, misunderstanding. “Better than fine.”
She pulled his mouth to hers and thrust her hips toward him, taking him into her completely. Thabiso couldn’t say what happened then. He went up onto his elbows so he could look at her as he thrust like a madman, performing acrobatics with his hips that most certainly could only have been the result of possession. He was fit, he knew that, and he put every ounce of his musculature to work with the single goal of giving her pleasure. And when her eyes went wide with shocked arousal, when her head pressed back into the futon and her hands grasped his hips and the sheets and anything that could provide purchase, he slid his hand between them again and pressed at her clit.
She let out a short, sharp cry as the orgasm crashed into her, but he’d already felt it coming from deep within. Her inner walls squeezed him tightly, again and again, and he let go a hoarse cry of his own as his senses shorted out from pleasure.
He collapsed on top of her and she swatted weakly at him, so he used his last ounce of strength to roll onto his side and take her with him. He inhaled, taking in the scent of her hair oils, her sweat, her soap.
“Are you sniffing me?” she asked, snuggling closer to him. Her kinky curls pressed into his arm, and her breath tickled his chest hairs.
“Maybe.” He grabbed some tissues from the box next to the bed and disposed of the condom. He heard scuttling across the room and turned to find two sets of beady eyes focused on him.
“Your mice were watching us,” he said as he pulled her back into his embrace. “Voyeuristic vermin. That’s a first.”
“I knew those two were freaky.” She giggled, truly carefree for perhaps the first time since he’d known her. His heart constricted painfully as he looked at her. Being watched by rodents wasn’t the only first for him that night. He didn’t want to investigate whatever it was he was feeling for her—not when everything he hadn’t said came crashing back down, sucking all of the amazing after-sex feeling from him and leaving him with the realization that she still thought he was Jamal. Just Jamal.
She still didn’t know about him, or her parents, or her homeland, and she shouldn’t have known what he felt like pushing inside of her before any one of those things.
His body went cold, his hold on her slackened.
“Ledi. Look, we really need to talk.” He pinched his nose as he sorted just exactly how he was going to explain himself, especially while sitting naked as a mangy hyena.
She stopped laughing and leaned back, away from him. Just like that, the openness was gone. “Hey, don’t go getting weird now. It was just sex.”
She hopped out of the bed and headed for the bathroom.
He sat up, and stared after her, her words dashing away even his own self-loathing. “Pardon? Just sex? That was not just sex.”
“It definitely was. Exhibit A, I’m going to pee now so I don’t get a urinary tract infection. Something you do after just having sex.” She shrugged and went into the bathroom; she didn’t slam the door.
“Ledi, there is a misunderstanding underway right now.” Thabiso paused, and then dropped his head in his hands. “There are actually several misunderstandings going on. How about we clear up this fairly simple one. That wasn’t ‘just sex’ for me. I like you a lot and nothing has changed.”
The toilet flushed. Water ran, and he heard her humming the happy birthday song, and then the water stopped.
He pulled on his boxers and jeans and shirt and finally she stepped out, now wearing a pink bathrobe that would have been cute if her gaze hadn’t been so wary.
“Okay. It was pretty good just sex,” she said with a shrug that he supposed was meant to indicate she was indifferent. But she sat down beside him anyway, folding her legs beneath her and exposing a smooth brown stretch of thigh. He traced his knuckle down her knee and over the sensitive skin, then stopped and took her hand.
“Look—”
Just then, there was a pounding at the door. Ledi squeezed her eyes shut in frustration, hopping out of bed as a second barrage of knocks sounded in the quiet.
“Portia, I’m sorry but this really isn’t a good time,” she said as she swung the door open. “Oh.”
She looked back over her shoulder at him. “It’s for you.”
Dread gathered in his stomach, but he rose and faced Likotsi’s stern glare anyway.
“Jamal.”
The single word was rife with accusation and disgust.
“Erm. Hello.” He didn’t know how to explain her presence to Naledi. “This is my friend.”
“Pleasure to meet you again,” Likotsi said with a sweet smile for Naledi, but her dour expression returned when she faced him. “There is a problem. I’ve received news from your family and, before you ask, no, it cannot wait. I’m sorry to interrupt your fun, but this is extremely important.”
“Well,” Ledi said, obviously uncomfortable, “we can talk tomorrow about the trust fund stuff. Wait, you’re not like, a rich serial killer or an investment banker or anything, right?”
Thabiso huffed. “I already told you I’m not a serial killer.”
“So you’re a banker?” she asked with mock horror. Thabiso couldn’t help but laugh. She could pull that out of him, even though he was neck deep in shit.
“I have to study all day,” Ledi said, and her gaze darted toward the door across the hall. She sighed and he knew what she was thinking. Mrs. Garcia would be back soon—Likotsi had received the online check-in info for her flight in an email. Thabiso didn’t want to think of going back to his real life.
“Do you have plans tomorrow night?” he asked.
“You have plans tomorrow night,” Likotsi interjected.
“I do,” Ledi said, gaze darting between them. “Maybe I can make time for you afterward.”
Thabiso knew her well enough to understand many men probably hadn’t received that grace from her. He was tempted to have Likotsi tell Ledi the truth right then so it could be done—wasn’t that part of her duties as a royal assistant?—but he owed Ledi more than that.
Likotsi cleared her throat. Thabiso squeezed Ledi’s hand, and then stepped out the door and crossed the hall with his enraged assistant.
As soon they got into the apartment, she whirled on him. “You silly, self-important, rhinoceros-skulled man! What are you thinking? How could you toy with her like this?”
He noticed the tears standing in Likotsi’s eyes then, but she quickly dashed them away. “Oh never mind. Some people enjoy playing games with others’ emotions, it seems. I’m tired of being your conscience. You’ll have to develop your own.”
Thabiso was unsure of how to proceed. Earlier in the evening, she’d been walking on cloud nine as she headed off for a date with her mystery woman. “Do you want to talk? Did something happen with the woman you’re seeing? Is that why you fetched me?”
Likotsi sucked her teeth. “I would never be so unprofessional as to burst into a room and demand you listen to my problems. That’s your job.”
Thabiso couldn’t argue with that.
She sighed. “I’m not seeing her anymore, so there’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes glistened but she kept her face expressionless. “You, on the other hand, have a problem.”
“I was trying to solve that problem by telling Naledi the truth when you interrupted us,” Thabiso gritted out. Why was everyone making this so bloody difficult?
“No, actually there’s a new problem,” Likotsi said as she pulled her handy tablet out and tapped and dragged. “An email from your parents, Your Highness.”
She handed the tablet over.
Subject: Your Fiancée Has Been Selected.
Thabiso glanced up at Likotsi, whose expression was perfectly blank.
“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked, scraping a hand through his beard. He still smelled of Ledi.
Likotsi shrugged. “I’ve offered you romantic advice several times over this trip, to no avail. Figure it out yourself. Sire.”
With that, she clicked the heels of her spats and wandered into the bathroom, one of the few places in the apartment where she wouldn’t have to look at him.
Thabiso dropped down onto the couch. Perhaps he could be Thesolo’s first bachelor king? At this rate, his love life was more complicated than keeping a small nation thriving.