Chapter 12

Brooks

In the space of time it took for us to get to the ferry and then arrive at my Smith Island house, things have changed between Charlotte and me. For the best or worst, I’m not sure.

Or maybe I do know.

We’re getting in deeper, revealing the vulnerable sides of our souls that we normally keep to ourselves. The worst thing about this happening with her—it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was just an obsession of mine—one with a family whose secret made me a star once I revealed it to the world. My phone didn’t stop ringing. My in-box swelled to almost capacity with thousands and thousands of emails.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to know me, wanted me to give talks, attend parties….I was granted more access than I ever had before, even as a U.S. senator’s son.

Maybe it all went to my head.

Maybe I simply couldn’t stop wanting to know more about the Sinclairs, Charlotte in particular. My twin is right, though, her sister appealed to me first. We’d frequented the same parties and I watched her from a distance. She was a wild child determined to give some unforeseen enemy the finger with her form of rebellion. It made no sense to me because I assumed the oldest brother, Colin, was destined to be king.

My research proved otherwise.

Six years ago, I stumbled across Charlotte’s blog by pure luck, or maybe it was the WordPress algorithms that made her little blog, Maiden in the Tower, pop up in my feed. In any case, after a shitty day at work, I read her post about a war between fish and worms over flowers.

I can’t imagine, as a fish or a worm, devoting my very short life to something so silly. Naturally, there are a great many things worth fighting for, but to argue over flowers is pointless. Then again, I’m human and don’t depend on flowers for shelter, air, or food.

Perhaps flowers represent more than that to them and should mean more to me as well because without them, the world would be devoid of beauty.

Devoid of bees and butterflies.

Of fairies.

Of daisy chains.

Of little girls who wish to pick bouquets for their parents’ headstones.

Perhaps…the war between worms and fish over flowers isn’t so silly after all.

Raw, real, and heartfelt words all but bled from the post. Hell, her words made me reconsider just how shitty a day I’d had. Made me reconsider a lot of things…it also made me use my hacking skills, skills I’d stopped using once I decided to go legit, to discover where she lived.

Who she was.

Or rather who she used to be.

Imagine my surprise to discover a royal family of siblings living in a suburb of Charlotte. Imagine my shock to discover that no one else knew. For all intents and purposes, the Sinclairs didn’t exist on the Internet.

Later I would discover that she’d posted about the war on the ninth anniversary of her parents’ death. By death I mean assassination.

I glance at Charlotte and my gut clenches.

She’s sitting in one of the comfortable chairs on the top deck of my beach home, her legs tucked to one side. The wind blows her dark hair around, the strands free and long, hanging to her waist.

She looks sad, reminding me of the story of a somber princess who never even smiled until a jester came along and won her hand for the very simple act of making her laugh.

While I’ll never marry the princess, I can be a fool for her.

I am such a fool when it comes to her.

“Dinner’s ready,” I call out from the doorway.

She turns slightly, her gaze crashing with mine. Her brows furrow. “I would have helped you.”

“Told you I was taking care of everything and that includes you, Princess.”

Unfolding herself from the chair, she moves to me, walking gracefully on bare feet. With another gust of wind, the pale purple sundress she’s wearing molds to her body, highlighting the sweet curves of her hips and the fullness of her breasts.

“I’m not helpless, Brooks.”

“I don’t think you are,” I say quickly. Too quickly because it’s partially a lie. I don’t think Charlotte could survive more than a day in the real world.

She frowns. “You’re not quite so handsome when you lie to me.”

“But I’m still handsome, so…” I wink at her, to let her know I’m teasing, but her frown doesn’t leave. “Come inside. We’ll eat and do whatever you want. I’ll even let you do the dishes.”

A faint smile appears on her lips. “Do you promise?”

I tap my chin. “To let a beautiful woman have kitchen duty so I can sit on my ass in the living room and watch television…yeah, I can promise that.”

“Fine,” she drawls out with a roll of her eyes. “It smells amazing.”

“You said you loved seafood,” I remind her, earning an even bigger smile that makes my chest puff out with pride. “I made it happen. Also, they’re all orphans. No family that will miss them.”

She laughs. “You remembered my rather silly problem.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all.” I pull out her chair and she sits. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep a family together. Even if your family is tasty.”

“I think I’ve just lost my appetite.”

I sit down in the chair beside her and serve her first, then fix my own plate. We eat in comfortable silence. Charlotte doesn’t look so sad anymore and I consider that a goal achieved.

“After dinner would you like to go to Shell Island?” I ask.

She nods. “Is it very far?”

“Nope. Low tide’s coming in, so we can walk to it.” I take a sip of my beer. “We’ll have about thirty minutes to explore before we’ll need to head back.”

“Sounds lovely.” She sets down her fork. “Why did you tell the entire world about us? Bring their deaths up again?”

I stare at her for a good ten seconds before I can think again. While ten seconds might not sound like a lot of time, when you’re asked to explain what you did to hurt the woman you care about, it’s a fucking eternity.

“Because I wanted to make a name for myself,” I answer truthfully. And really, saying that now sounds so…wrong somehow, but it happened a while ago and I’m not going to make excuses…because I’d do it again.

I know it and she knows it.

“You didn’t consider that making a name for yourself might hurt us?” she asks.

“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, Charlotte. I told the truth. The world needed to know the truth.”

She pushes back from the table. “Don’t lie to me. You got it right the first time. You wanted everyone to know you. You didn’t give a damn about who you hurt in the process.”

I place my palms flat on the table and stand, leaning toward her. “Listen to me, Princess. I’m not fucking lying. You weren’t real to me then. You were just a girl with a stupid blog that I couldn’t stop reading.”

She shrinks back from me. “A stupid blog?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “I don’t mean that what you wrote was stupid. I only meant that—”

“Do shut up.” She stands, as composed as a princess can be. “You always say what you mean. The entire world knows it. You pride yourself on it.”

“Are you telling me it wasn’t a good thing? You should thank me for unlocking the door to that fucking tower you lived in.”

“Thank you?” Her voice rises, then falls. “I will never thank you for making me relive their death. For making us learn that our father isn’t even ours. For nearly breaking my family apart.”

“What did you say?”

She slaps her hand over her mouth, face whitening, her eyes widening. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“The hell you didn’t.” She starts to walk away, but I grab her arm. “Charlotte, talk to me.”

“Please, don’t,” she whispers, her lips quivering. “If you care about me at all, you’ll pretend that I never said a word.”

Slowly, I shake my head. “I can’t do that, Princess, not even for you.”

“You’ll share what I said to you?” she asks, her voice small and scared.

“It stays between us, sweetheart, but I won’t pretend that you didn’t say it. I only hope that one day you can trust me enough to share every part of your life with me,” I hear myself say.

Meanwhile the evil part of me, the famewhore who would do anything for clicks and money roars its displeasure. I can imagine the headlines, the viral nature of such an article…the Campbell-Booth Award. The very thing Davies promised would happen if I were to share the contents of the envelope he gave me.

Except…this doesn’t sound like something that would rock a monarchy. No matter who is the father of Charlotte and Imogen, they are still in line for the throne because it’s matrilineal.

She all but slumps against me, only her pride keeping her on her feet. “Thank you.”

“Stop thanking me for being a decent human being.”

“Then stop treating kindness with contempt,” she snaps back.

Shame and guilt run through me. How far have I sunk that it’s out of character for me to be kind? “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say, but an apology seems like a good start.

“I think…I’d like to lie down now.” She starts to pull away, but my grip keeps her in place. I know that if I let her go, she won’t come back to me. That as soon as she’s had time to think, she’ll order me to take her home.

Except it won’t be an order. It will be a request because Charlotte is everything I’m not.

“Let me take you to bed, Princess,” I urge, my voice husky. “You don’t have to do anything but sleep. I’ll only hold you. Promise.”

“Oh—okay.”

Victory is supposed to be sweet, but right now everything tastes like ash.

We walk to my bedroom. I have to lead the way since I haven’t given her the grand tour yet. Contingent upon how the rest of the night goes, I might not ever.

As soon as we enter the room, I let go of her and shut the bedroom door. From here the ocean is bathed in oranges and reds, the sun setting directly behind us. I want to point out how pretty it looks because I know she’d appreciate it, but when I start to say something, she shakes her head and climbs into my bed.

Since we’d both gotten comfortable by taking off our shoes when we first arrived, there’s no need for me to do anything but take off my shirt and jeans.

I pull my shirt up and over my head, then unbutton my pants and get rid of them, too, while Charlotte watches me, her lips parting. I’d like to say that it doesn’t turn me on, that I only want to make her feel better emotionally, but if I can’t be honest with myself…

“I thought you would only hold me,” Charlotte says, her eyes going straight to my groin where my cock is sticking out through my boxer briefs.

I climb in bed beside her. “You thought right, but I’m a messy cook. No telling what’s on my clothes and I don’t want my bed to smell like seafood….But I’m fucking turned on by you, Princess. Every second of every day.”

“Me, too.” She sits up and unbuttons her dress, letting it gape open. Her breasts all but spill out of her bra, which is made of only lace and ribbon. She shrugs out of the dress, letting it fall to her waist, and then shimmies the rest of the way out of it.

I swallow thickly. “You don’t have to get undressed.”

“I know.” She leans close, coming to hover over me, her long hair pooling on my shoulder like a cool wave of silk. My gaze bounces from her face to her tits and then back to her face. I don’t know exactly where to look because she’s sexy and gorgeous everywhere. “I shouldn’t make you apologize for doing your job.”

I touch her cheek, caressing her smooth skin as she lowers her head to kiss me. I don’t know what changed her mind, but I don’t deserve her kisses. Don’t even deserve to hold her, see her like this…I simply don’t deserve Charlotte.

“You were right. I didn’t think.”

“Not your job to consider feelings.” A warm puff of air touches my throat before her mouth does. “Fuck your feelings…isn’t that what you like to say?”

It’s a struggle to keep my hands in safe zones. I know she’s trying to teach me a lesson, not apologize, and I’m going to let her own this moment.

“I’d never say that to you,” I insist.

She lightly nips at my skin and I have to grab the sheet, my hands fisting. “Yes you would. You already did when you exposed my family to the world without talking to us first.”

“Yet here we are,” I point out. “You followed me, even after what I did, and you let me…” I groan as she travels lower, licking my chest and then my nipple before she bites the tip. “You let me fuck you.”

She smiles against my skin. “Just fuck me?”

“You let me in.” My abs contract as her hand brushes over them, then lower still as she run her knuckles across my cock. “You made me care about you.”

Her head follows the path her hand took, replacing her fingers with her mouth. She licks my shaft up and down, then takes the head into her mouth and I close my eyes in pleasure as she works me over. As she licks and sucks and drives me insane with her teeth and tongue.

“You could have helped us and we would have let you,” she says, looking up at me with her beautiful hazel eyes. I try to touch her. “No.”

One of the sexiest things a woman can do while blowing me is to look up at me, like she’s in total submission and serving my every need. But Charlotte…sweet Princess Charlotte is the one commanding my submission.

And in this moment, right this fucking moment, I love it.

“You’re wrong,” I say, taking the chance that she’ll stop lavishing attention on my cock. “I did ask, offered to help even, and your”—she takes me into her mouth again and my mind threatens to stop working—“brother said no. Told me to go fuck myself.”

She stops and I force my eyes open. “Are you quite certain?”

“I swear—I can show you the emails. I’m not all bad, sweetheart. I kept the part about your youngest brothers out. Wrote up a nice article about your sister-in-law.” My chest rises and falls like I’ve just finished a soccer game that’s gone into overtime.

“Never thought you were all bad, Brooks. You should know that by now, but if you don’t…” She wraps her hand around the base of my cock and starts to pump it up and down, her movements slightly jerky until I grab her hand and show her exactly what I love.

Her head dips and her mouth gets in on the action again. I try not to come, try to concentrate on the conversation we’ve been having, but it’s no use. She’s too damn good and I’m too far gone.

With a curse, I let go, come in hot spurts while she takes every drop. She takes everything out of me, every damn thing, until I’m stupid and mindless and—

“I did it for you,” I blurt.

“For me?” She sits up, her breasts bouncing and her hair falling over them. “What do you mean?”

“That post…about the fucking war between the fish and worms over flowers…I did it for you. I wanted you to be free.”