I shut the door to our bedroom carefully, ignoring every instinct I had to slam it home. God, when had it become our room? Willa was not as careful with the bathroom door. I’m pretty sure the entire palace heard the wood crash.

I ripped off my jacket, tossing it on the armchair, and loosened the bowtie around my neck. I let the ends hang down and leaned back against the door, my head hitting it with a thump. I’d been so close. So fucking close.

But not really. I’d been ten thousand miles away from my goal—I just hadn’t known it. We’d been doomed from the very beginning, when I skipped over the erotica titles on that bookshelf, raising an eyebrow at her reading material while silently wondering if they turned her on. Hell, I’d gotten turned on for a flash just thinking about her reading them, but I’d passed over them and seen the Allie the Alligator books—the ones with her name.

The bathroom door flew open at the same speed she’d slammed it. “I can’t get this fucking thing undone!” she snapped and presented me with her back.

God, I’d planned to take the zipper down with my teeth, to ravish her body and tell her the good news. Instead, we’d been hit with hurricane Marco. Brie had apologized profusely, not that it was her fault. She’d met a model and brought him home, as usual. That model just happened to take off his clothes for my girlfriend’s books...her very not children’s books.

I sighed as I crossed the room, and unzipped Willa’s dress. She didn’t say thank you, simply stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door in my face.

A few moments later, she was out of the bathroom, wearing her soft, terry-cloth robe. “You know what I don’t understand?” she asked, her tone more than accusing.

“Please, do enlighten me,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

“How you could let me make a fool of myself this entire time!”

My eyes shot skyward. “You...a fool? I’m sorry? Do you not realize what happened in there? How that just became the most notorious state dinner in the thousand year history of Elleston? I’m pretty sure peace talks during the great war of 1583 was less awkward.” It took all of my self-control to keep my voice level, but I managed.

“She’s perfect!” Willa yelled. “You let me get close to her. To become friends with her, to envy her class, and her beauty and her fucking grace, and the whole time you knew. You knew, and you never told me. How could you never tell me?”

I blinked. “What the hell are you pissed about?”  I’d never seen her lose her temper, especially on a night when I had every right to lose mine.

“Charlotte!” she cried. “She’s the one you’re going to marry! And not in like a year, a few weeks after I leave!”

“Well, I was kind of hoping not to marry her until your secret blew us out of the water tonight.” Anger seethed out of every one of my pores, but I wouldn’t lose my cool. No matter how furious I was with Willa, I had to stay in control, because she clearly wasn’t.

“What the hell does that mean? Do you know what it’s like to befriend someone who is going to fuck the man you l—” she shook her head and blinked furiously.

Love. Say it. One of us has to.

“She’s perfect,” she repeated. “Perfect for you, the crown, your mother, just in general. Fucking perfect. And you’re going to marry her and make perfect little royal babies with her. I’m just this...fling. This trashy American who writes sex books and came here to help you, what? Sow your royal oats?”

“Are you finished?” I seethed.

“No,” she hurled back in a petulant tone.

“Yes, I’m betrothed to Charlotte. It never occurred to me that you didn’t know. That I didn’t tell you, or that you’d even wanted to know. You never asked, and it is absolutely on me that I never clarified. I have no problem owning up to the mistakes I make. But do you honestly think that I want her?”

“How could you not?”

“How could I, when I have you?” I snapped. So much for keeping your cool. “Do you have any idea what you cost us tonight? What keeping your secret did? For fuck’s sake woman, I’ve spent the last three weeks moving heaven and earth, bargaining politically, calling in every favor so I could pass a resolution so I wouldn’t have to marry Charlotte, and you threw it away!”

Her gaze snapped to mine, and her mouth dropped open slightly.

“That’s right. I was trying to get a bill ratified that would make it legal for me to marry a commoner. Not Charlotte. I had all the votes that I needed except one.”

“Senator Lambert,” she guessed, her voice soft.

“Senator Lambert,” I agreed. “And we could have gotten through the initial stumble—”

“Initial stumble? You mean where you don’t talk about the politics of your country, and I don’t push for details, so I’m a blithering idiot? You mean that stumble?”

I flexed my jaw. I should have educated her, she had every right to call me out for it, but I’d been so damned preoccupied trying to extend our time together that I spent all of our extra moments simply savoring what time we did have—just in case.

“Like I said, we could have recovered, but you writing erotica?”

Her shoulders straightened, and her chin rose a good inch. “What about it?”

“You lied to me!”

“I never said I wasn’t an erotica author,” she snapped. “I pointed to that shelf where you saw my books and said those were the ones I wrote.”

“You never clarified. You let me walk into that very public trap.”

Her skin flushed pink. “Okay, I never clarified, you’re right. But a trap? I have nothing to be ashamed of and let’s face it, you think I do. What’s so wrong with me writing erotica? With a woman exploring her sexuality?”

“I am the Crown Prince of Elleston, merely a few months from being crowned King!” I yelled, uncaring if the guards, or hell, even Parliament heard me. “I cannot be with an erotica writer!”

“Says who?” she asked, her hands on her hips.

“Says all of Parliament!”

“That’s what this will always come down to, Xander. You’re a prince. A real life fucking prince, and I write sex. I’m a common American with inappropriate hair, and horrid manners, and no general knowledge of your history because I never liked history in college—that’s right, I went to college—and I’m horrible for you in every way. God, even without Shayla books, we live in separate universes.”

My fists clenched to keep from touching her, from pulling her to me and holding her. We’d been so fucking close to happily ever after, to what the fairy tales described in every book where the prince falls in love with the damsel.

But Willa was no damsel.

“I just...I don’t understand,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her stomach.

“Don’t understand what?”

“Why you’d fight parliament.? Why wouldn’t you want someone like Charlotte on your arm? Why does it matter what I do?”

“Charlotte is a sister to me. We’ve never been attracted to each other. Believe me, this whole thing would be a lot easier if we were. Instead, I want you. I need you. I drafted a bill to marry a commoner—to marry you!”

Her mouth dropped open, her eyes wide with unshed tears. “But why?”

“Because I love you! Because somewhere between ‘let’s just sleep together for a few months,’ and whatever we are now, I fell in love with you. With your smile, your laugh, the way you look at the world. I fell in love with the colors in your hair and your bravery, the way you took everything that was thrown at you and held your head high. I love that you make me look at things from a different angle, that you’re not satisfied with good enough. Hell, I love that you’re strong enough to give a damn what anyone thinks, to love what you do, including what you write.”

She dropped her gaze, and I gave in, crossing the room to lift her chin gently.

“Do you think I care?”

“You obviously do?”

“Willa, I don’t care if you write kid’s books, or horror, or erotica, or self-help books on underwater basket weaving. I love you, and that includes everything that goes on in your mind.”

“But I just cost us everything.”

I pulled her into my arms, feeling my shirt soak with her tears. “They’ll never let me marry you. Not now. It would be a scandal that the monarchy would never survive,” I admitted. “I knew it the minute Lambert heard.”

“You pulled away from me.”

“It hurt to touch you,” I whispered. “To know that what we have is something I’ll never share with anyone. That I won’t want anyone else. That you’ll be gone in a matter of weeks.”

Six to be exact. Six weeks until I announced my engagement, and another month after that when I’d wed the woman I didn’t love before coronation.

She trembled as she took a deep breath. “What are we going to do?”

I cupped her face and tilted it upward, gently kissing her lips. They tasted like the salt of her tears. God, she was beautiful. She was mine in every way but the one that would eventually matter—the one that would rip us apart.

We’d been inevitable and impossible from the moment she saved my life.

“We’re going to sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll come up with a plan.”

“Xander?”

I looked down into her eyes and fell even harder for her. How was that possible?

“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you.”

I forced a smile and wiped away the two tears that slid down her cheeks. “I’m not. If you’d told me, we’d never have made it this far. We wouldn’t know what to fight for. Don’t ever apologize for what you bring to my life.”

* * *

I walked the palace grounds all night after Willa had fallen asleep. Oliver at my heels, never complaining as we tromped through the gardens. He left me to my silent brooding as my mind raced, trying to come up with any solution for what we’d gotten ourselves into.

By seven a.m., I’d exhausted every option but one.

“Your Highness, you have a meeting with the Prime Minister in exactly a half hour,” Oliver reminded me as I walked back toward our bedroom.

“I need to see Willa first. Then I’ll deal with the fallout.”

He nodded, then turned his back, guarding the door. I didn’t miss his jaw-cracking yawn or the way his eyes drooped. “Oliver, thank you.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For the last ten years.”

A smile ghosted his face. “It has always been my pleasure. Except the year you were twenty-one. You were a pain in the ass that year.”

Laughing, I came into our bedroom and saw Willa on the bed, fully dressed. “There you are!” she said, breathing a huge sigh.

“I walked,” I said as I sat next to her on the bed.

“I thought...it doesn’t matter. What did you come up with on your walk?”

I took her hand, stroking over the soft skin of her palm. God, I didn’t want this. But I needed her. I couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t bear to never see her again, never touch her again. I had to try everything, to keep her at all costs.

“I can’t marry you. The Prime Minister is waiting for me right now to say the same exact thing. It’s already in the papers, and the rumors that I was trying to change the constitution to marry you.”

I didn’t miss the flash of pain in her eyes before she forced a smile. “Well, that’s nothing we didn’t already know. Right? I guess we keep to the plan. I’ll head back to the states—”

It was now or never.

“Or maybe you stay,” I suggested.

“What? How?” Her little eyebrows furrowed.

“I can’t marry you, but I can’t lose you, either. I will have to marry Charlotte to secure the throne. That can’t be helped anymore, not with what’s happened.”

“Right…”

My mouth tensed, trying to keep the words inside. How could I ask this of her? Would I agree to it if the shoe was on the other foot? Watch her marry another man? Carry his child? But how could I not give her the option? The choice?

“Stay anyway.”

“What?” She sat up straight, leaning away from me.

“Stay with me. I don’t love Charlotte. She doesn’t love me. Many royal marriages work this way, with a partnership in the marriage and love...elsewhere.”

“Stay as your mistress?” she whispered, her face horror-stricken.

I swallowed, and in that moment, being one of the most powerful men in the world did nothing for me. I couldn’t make her choose me. I couldn’t make her stay.

She held all the power.

“Yes.” The word was damning.

“Xander…” she shook her head.

“I know. I know it’s too much to ask. I know it’s impossible. I know it’s not what either of us want, and that it will slowly break our hearts when we could just get the big break over with now. But Willa, I don’t know how to breathe without you, and I know you love me. You might not say it, but I know you do. I don’t want to lose you. You could write here, work from here, be happy here.”

“With you married to another woman!”

“Yes,” I whispered. “There is no other way for us, no matter how much I wish that wasn’t true. I don’t want you as my mistress. I want you as my wife. But I will take anything you’ll give me. The scraps from your table. I’ll beg. Whatever you’re willing to do, I will say yes. I know it’s…”

“Despicable,” she suggested.

“Yes. But it gives us each other, and one thing I know about you is that you’ve never cared about what other people think. Please don’t start now. Please stay with me. Let me love you. I’ll give you everything—”

“Except your name.” Her voice was soft. Broken, and I instantly hated myself for what I’d proposed. But what else could I do? Let her go? Let her walk away without giving her the option to stay? Let her leave without knowing how much I loved her?

“Except my name.”

“And if we had children?”

My heart swelled to near bursting at the thought. A baby held tight against Willa’s chest...our baby. With her eyes and my temper. Her brain and my ability to argue. God, I wanted that more than anything, to see a part of us in a child we could raise in love, who would never know what it meant to be duty-bound from the moment he or she was born…

My eyes slid shut as reality crashed around me.

“We could never have a child. It would blur the line of succession. It’s one thing to have a love affair, and another to bring a child into the world who wouldn't understand why she was a secret, or why he couldn’t claim his father’s name.”

“Your children would be with Charlotte.”

Children with Charlotte. Not with Willa. My entire body rebelled at the thought.

I stood up, unable to contain myself any longer. “Nevermind. It’s too much. I can’t ask that of you. Fuck, I can’t ask that of me. To hold you, to love you, to worship your body every night and then have to turn to her. To imagine she’s you. This would destroy you, and I couldn’t watch you waste away. I love you too much for that.”

I was halfway to the door when Willa caught up with me. Her arms wrapped around my waist and her cheek rested on my back.

“You don’t get to decide what I can take,” she whispered. “That’s my choice. And if I choose to stay here knowing what the rules are, then that’s on me. The same as when I chose to come here, knowing it would only be a few months. Don’t apologize for giving me the only option that allows me to have you...even if only in pieces.”

I turned and kissed her, our tongues twining, our sadness beaten back by the heat of our mouths, the love that poured between us whether or not she would speak the words. Our kiss turned desperate as her hands tunneled through my hair. This was what I wanted. I wanted Willa. I wanted passion, and lust, and love. I wanted her to tell me when I was an ass. I wanted her to make me laugh, to make the stuck-up society realize how out of touch they were.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Your Highness, the Prime Minister has arrived.” Oliver’s voice drifted through the doors.

We broke apart, our breaths harsh.

“Willa…” I questioned. What did it mean? Yes? No?

“I need time,” she begged. “I just need to think, because from the start, this has all been so fast, so surreal, and a decision like this…”

I kissed her again softly until she whimpered in a sound like pain. “Willa, honey.”

“Don’t. You kiss me, and everything jumbles. Just...just give me a few hours by myself to think, okay?”

I nodded and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I can do that. I love you,” I told her as I pulled away reluctantly.

“I know,” she said with a smile.

“Star Wars,” I almost laughed.

She shrugged with a tearful grin.

I walked out, leaving my heart in her hands. The decision was hers. How like my life—I could live it, but I could make no choices regarding my own fate.

She was my fate.

I just hope she was willing to fight for it.