Tavish was sleeping; Portia was not. He had his arms around her and was holding her close and, honestly, who slept like that? Holding another human being like a koala hugged up on a eucalyptus tree. Ew.
She batted at her pillow and Tav’s arm tightened around her.
It wasn’t bad exactly, it was just that he was so warm. His chest hair tickled her back each time he inhaled and exhaled. He smelled—it was a good smell, but still. If she was a man-sweat sommelier, she would say it had hints of steel, citrus, and essence of Tavish. But she had never cared about a guy’s smell before unless it was a rando crushed against her on the train. It bothered her that she was sneaking whiffs of Tav’s elbow, partly because there would be no further elbow sniffing.
One and done. He was supposed to be out of her system. She was supposed to be sliding out from beneath his arm, then firmly but politely shoving him out the door, both of them much too mature to feel anything other than a bit of mischievous pride.
She nestled into him a little closer. Inhaled.
“Why is it you don’t allow yourself to become attached to any of these men, Portia?”
“It’s just easier that way. No muss, no fuss.”
She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but maybe none so grave as the three words she’d spoken the night before.
Let’s do it.
A chirping sound filled the room and for a moment she thought it was the morning birds, but as it grew more insistent she realized it was the sound of an incoming video call.
Oh shit.
She’d forgotten Ledi was on a flight to Thesolo and had said she would call at some godawful time. Portia slipped out of Tavish’s hold and smiled at the way he grumbled, then caught herself. She glanced at him, against her better judgment, and her breath caught for a moment.
He didn’t look boyish, with his disheveled salt-and-pepper hair and crow’s feet, and he didn’t look serene. He looked like he was dreaming about something salacious, a sly grin quirking a corner of his mouth and creasing the stubble on his cheeks, and the want that should have burned away with hours of sex flared up again, stronger than before.
She pulled on a T-shirt and grabbed her phone, slipping in her earpiece as she accepted the call.
Ledi was staring sleepily at the screen, her braids pineappled atop her head and poking out from her silk scarf. “Hey, girl.” Ledi’s brows went up. “Heyyyyy, girl. No headscarf. Crazy tangled hair. Yesterday’s makeup still on, kind of. Am I interrupting something?”
Portia’s gaze flicked guiltily toward the bed. “What had happened was, we went to dinner—”
Ledi burst into laughter and shook her head. “I knew it! I knew it! Biso, you owe me twenty dollars.”
The camera jostled and swiveled and then Prince Thabiso was on the screen, brows jumping suggestively over sleep-hooded eyes. “Got down and dirty with the duke, did you, Portia? How could you do this to me? I had twenty dollars that said you could resist his charms.”
“You guys bet on me?” Portia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Actually, she did know, and it wasn’t great. “And only twenty bucks? You’re royalty!”
“I have to reinvest my money into my country, Portia, I can’t go throwing it about gambling on sex acts,” Thabiso said gravely. “Besides, you know how cheap Ledi is. She wanted to bet five.”
Ledi appeared in the screen again, elbow first as she shoved Thabiso out of the way. “I showed Biso that video of Tavish pounding away on the anvil, and said if I were in your shoes, that metal wouldn’t be the only thing getting hit at the armory, so I didn’t know how you were holding out. This wasn’t some judgment on your character. It was vicarious living.”
“How is it that you’ve become more crude since you became a princess?” Portia asked, mentally smoothing her ruffled feathers.
“Portia, if the last few weeks has taught you anything, it should have been that the aristocracy is crude as they come,” Thabiso cut in. “The parties and jewels and ceremony are all to distract the rabble with shiny things while we engage in indecent behavior.”
“We?” Ledi asked archly.
“Sorry, I slipped into French. Must be because I just finished talking to Johan. They.” He winked at Portia through the screen, then his eyes went wide. “Did you say she called him Ass Man, Ledi? That is a spectacular ass. Shield your eyes.”
“Here, we have a male engaged in the rarely captured walk of shame,” Ledi said in a faux nature show host voice, pushing Thabiso’s hand away. “The male is confused by awakening in a strange habitat. Human males are creatures of routine.”
Something pale moved behind Portia in the inset video on the phone and she turned to find a naked, spectacular-assed swordmaker blundering around her room searching for his boxers. She let out a horrified laugh and immediately swiveled the phone away.
“Morning,” he grumbled. “I have to go practice with the weans for the exhibition. It’s their first so I want to make sure they’re good and ready.”
“Oh! Great! I’m on a call!” Portia didn’t know why the words came out as high-pitched squeaks. Probably because her boss had just mooned her friends. Because he was naked in her room. Because she’d spent a hedonistic night with him.
She cleared her throat. “I’m on a call with Ledi and Thabiso.”
“Princess and her prince?” His voice was rough with sleep—his burr more pronounced—and Portia felt a pang that they hadn’t woken up earlier. She wanted to feel the rumble of his growl between her thighs one more time. But that wasn’t part of Project: New Portia, Electric Boogaloo, with the one-night stand amendment.
“Yes. You’ve officially mooned royalty,” she said.
He chuckled. “Ah. Dad will be so proud.”
“Unplug your headphones so we can talk to him,” Ledi urged.
“No. He’s not even wearing any pants,” Portia said. Besides, it would be too weird, her best friend talking to him. Ledi had never met any of Portia’s conquests, apart from being at a bar with Portia when she encountered them. Though Tavish wasn’t a conquest. He was her boss . . . and her friend?
Portia’s brain was muddled. Maybe she had OD’d on sex endorphins during the night.
“My friends want to chat with you,” she said, surprising herself.
Tav scoffed as he pulled on his pants. “Your friends can get in line behind my mum and dad. You know I don’t like video, Freckles.”
Portia tried not to let her disappointment show. Why did she care? It would have been weird, and they didn’t need weirdness. They needed for him to leave and for both of them to act like the night before hadn’t happened.
“He doesn’t like video chatting, sorry guys. Your dreams of conversing with a semi-nude duke have been dashed.” Footsteps approached and then Tav’s jean-clad legs appeared onscreen beside her. She saw his hand heading for her shoulder before she felt the weight of it, before her brain remembered all the things that hand had done to her the night before.
“Hello friends of Portia,” he said much too loudly, as if he was trying to shout toward their plane wherever it was in the sky. “I have to go serve the youth of Bodotria right now, and I also don’t want to overwhelm you with my devilish good looks, but nice meeting you. Cute scarf, Princess. Sweet robe, Prince.”
He ruffled Portia’s hair—what the hell? A hair ruffle?—and turned and left.
“Oh, his voice is even dreamier all gravelly like that,” Ledi said. “And the way he rolled the r in princess . . .”
Ledi sighed.
“I have an accent, too,” Thabiso said petulantly.
“You have the sexiest accent,” Ledi said, leaning her head on his shoulder and looking up at him. She had once been super reserved, but was so open with her affection now. Portia assumed it was because of Thabiso, and then felt a flash of envy. She wouldn’t have that with Tav. She was helping him get a handle on his life, and then she’d be on her way. Mary Poppins, indeed.
“I’m still here, guys,” Portia said.
“Oh sorry,” Thabiso said, his mood much improved. “I was going to tell the Duke of Assman that my friend Johan is going to be in Edinburgh and he owes me a favor. He can stop by to give him some advice.”
“Prince Johan? The Liechtienbourg guy?” Portia asked. “I mean, speaking of asses, his was on the cover of every tabloid after he got caught playing strip poker. Is he the best person to be giving Tav advice?”
“He’s not technically a prince, though that situation is rather awkward. Best not to bring it up when you meet him,” Thabiso said. “But yes, that Prince Johan. He’s a good guy, really. Really . . . insightful, I’d call him. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“So that wasn’t his butt?” Portia asked.
“Oh, it definitely was, and you should have seen the photos that didn’t get published,” Thabiso said. “His family paid a pretty penny to keep those under wraps.”
“I’ve seen them,” Ledi said primly. “Thabiso is already mad at me, so I won’t comment any further. But Johan’s actually a cool guy . . . beneath all the other stuff.”
“I could use some help actually. This is above my pay grade. Thanks for your help, guys.”
“We would have come ourselves but there’s a new energy plant opening—the one with the waterfalls that Thabiso had prioritized—and we need to be there. Optics.” Ledi said the last word as if it was a horrible disease.
“I know all about optics,” Portia said, fighting a sudden pang of homesickness as the end of the call neared. It tightened around her chest and tugged, pulling her toward the familiar. The reliable. “I miss you. The past few weeks have been . . . a lot.”
Taking the night off to enjoy herself—and all that had come with that—had given her the space to realize just how hard she had been working. Now she was thinking and feeling. She should have never let Tavish take her tablet away.
“Do you need me there?” Ledi asked. It was a ridiculous idea—they were en route to Thesolo—but Ledi was completely serious. She would come if needed, and that was enough for Portia.
“No, I’m okay. Gonna go shower.”
They said their goodbyes and Portia padded into the bathroom and stepped beneath the hot spray, ignoring the sore muscles that urged her into flashbacks of the night before. She took longer than usual in the shower, washing her hair, exfoliating her skin—trying to rid herself of that scent that she knew still lingered in her sheets. Trying to wash away the feel of Tavish’s hands and mouth on her body. She would be scrubbed free of everything that had happened between them the night before, his trusty platonic squire once again. That was all that she wanted to be, and that was all she would allow herself anyway.
She threw on her pink dry-tech workout pants, a T-shirt with the armory’s new logo emblazoned on it, and her matching pink hoodie, then grabbed a coffee from the kitchen before heading to the gymnasium. She’d snap some pics of the kids’ morning program for social media and then do Jamie’s Extreme Defending the Castle workout, which she needed more than ever.
When she got into the gym, Tav was working with Syed and some of the other children on a demonstration for the next exhibition. They had broomsticks with papier-mâché horse heads fixed on one end between their legs and were practicing jousting. She watched Tavish laugh and clap Syed on the back and felt a pang of longing.
This will pass. For sure.
“He’s great with kids. I wouldn’t have expected that.”
She looked beside her to find Leslie, David’s sister. Leslie was wearing Prada from head to toe, and there wasn’t a single strand of hair out of place on her head, though Portia could hear the wind howling off of the bay. Portia felt like a knight who had showed up at the tourney field in her thinnest, schlubbiest armor. She’d muddle through.
She stood straighter, made sure to turn the consonants in her words into sharp edges when she spoke, the better to wield them like daggers.
“Why, Leslie, how lovely to see you. May I ask what brought about this unexpected visit?”
Leslie looked away from Tavish then, and there was misery in her eyes, so plain that Portia wondered if she was even trying to hide it.
“I’m here to seduce a duke.”
“PARDON?” TAVISH ASKED, unfettered confusion scrunching his features. They were up in his office now, sipping tea. Portia noticed that Leslie stirred her tea in a circular motion, almost defiantly.
“Well, technically I am supposed to offer you my assistance,” Leslie explained, her voice flat and refined. “You know, the season is wrapping up, and there’s the ball at Essexlove House two Saturdays from now, to mark the official turning over of the title and properties and David’s farewell to the peerage.”
Tavish glanced at Portia, but she was already pulling out her phone and scanning emails. “Oh. Ms. Baker sent an email invitation last night,” she said. “I missed it. Because.”
She cleared her throat. A flush cupped Tav’s cheekbones.
Leslie reached into her bag and pulled out a paper invitation. “Yes. And I brought the paper one. There’s also the matter of the Queen’s garden party to kick of her arrival at Holyrood, which you co-host with Her Majesty herself. Three Saturdays from now.”
“Bloody hell,” Tavish said. “The weans have their exhibition that day.”
“Well, you’ll have to skip it. Queens over weans, I’m afraid,” Leslie said matter-of-factly. She handed off the invitation to Portia. “I was also supposed to see if you’d like to take me as your date to the ball.”
“Me?” Portia asked.
“No, though that would be lovely. Tavish. A night spent together at the ball, an offer of aid that would draw us closer—things that would of course lead to our eventual union.”
“There are many problems with this plan, but first—aren’t we cousins?” Tavish asked, brow furrowed.
Leslie tilted her head and regarded Tav. “Oh dear. You really don’t know anything about the aristocracy at all. How adorable.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Portia asked.
“Because I’m tired.” Leslie picked at her cardigan. “David doesn’t have a wife. He was looking into some heiresses, and there was a music producer’s daughter, too. I’ve spent the last year doing all those duchess things for him—managing the estates, setting up parties, being friendly to people while he was off having affair after affair or stirring the political pot. Before that, as soon as it became clear that your father wasn’t going to have any children, my parents became obsessed with David and his eventual entry into the peerage. No one cared about what I wanted.”
She glanced at Portia and her expression became guarded. “I don’t want to date. Or to marry. Anyone. I’m not . . . wired that way, I suppose. David said since I didn’t want anyone else, that it should be no matter to marry Tavish. That it was my duty to the family.”
Portia knew family expectations could be painful, but her family had always wanted her to be happy and secure, even when their words hurt her. David didn’t seem to care about Leslie’s happiness at all.
“Doesn’t he think I’m a disgusting social climber?” Tav asked.
“Yes, but only because you didn’t go to Eton,” Leslie said. “That’s where proper social climbers meet, you know.”
“And the refugee trash part?” Tav added.
“I don’t want children, and suddenly what I want matters if it means the family name won’t be ‘tarnished by the fruit of miscegenation,’” Leslie replied, a grimace on her face. “David’s taken everything into account it seems.”
“I’m sorry,” Portia said. “I’m sorry your brother would do that to you. He’s supposed to protect you.”
Sudden emotion clogged Portia’s throat as a realization hit her. That was what she had drank and studied and fucked away from for all these years. She hadn’t protected Reggie, illogical as it was. How could she have protected someone from an illness? She couldn’t have. That hadn’t made it hurt less. And then she hadn’t even lived up to anyone’s wishes and dreams, compounding that failure.
Portia took a swallow of tea. This wasn’t the time for plumbing her emotional depths, though maybe she should call Dr. Lewis after throwing her goals away for a night in bed and having traumatic revelations.
“Honestly, I knew he was an asshole, but this is horrifying.” She fixed Leslie with a stern look. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, especially not seducing someone you aren’t attracted to. You do understand that, right?”
Leslie’s glossy eyes met Portia’s. “See? That’s it. I saw how you defended Tavish, how you looked at David like you would rip him in half when he insulted him, and it all fell into place. No one has ever . . .” A stray tear slipped down her cheek and she dashed it away. “Oh. Pardon me. Your sister must feel very lucky to have you, is all.”
“Not sure she feels that way, but thanks,” Portia said, then realized something. “How do you know I have a sister?”
Leslie did her head tilt thing again. “You two haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve gotten into.”
She stood, threw back the rest of her tea like it was a tumbler of whiskey, and straightened her dress. “The offer still stands of course. I can be your date to the ball, and more, if you want, Tavish.”
“But. You just said you didn’t want to?” Tavish looked as confused as Portia felt.
“You will soon understand that one must do a great many things one doesn’t want to. David gave me a command. I wanted to give you a choice. We could figure something out, if you wanted to make it work.” She looked between him and Portia, then breezed out of the office.
Portia’s phone vibrated in her hand, a message from Reggie on the screen.
Incoming. We got scooped. #swordbae’s duke news is the Looking Glass Daily’s breaking news. Your notifications are gonna be a mess.
Portia clicked on the link and held her breath—the Looking Glass Daily was world renowned for its sensationalist, lie-riddled stories—but this one was mild. It listed basic information about Tavish in a bullet point format, discussed the #swordbae meme, and talked about the Scottish peerage in general and what being a duke meant. There was the picture of them from the Bodotria Eagle, but the caption read “The new duke in town, and (more than?) friend.”
“You might want to see this,” she said, handing the phone to Tavish. She hated his frown when he saw the still from the video she’d posted and how it deepened as he read.
He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. “This is only the beginning, isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
He threw himself back into his chair. “What do we do now?”
Portia felt momentary confusion at the “we.” Not at the pronoun, but at what it connoted. Tavish was still the Duke of Edinburgh, but where did she stand in relation to him after last night?
“I really am going to have to pay you a million pounds for helping me manage this shite,” he said irritably, and Portia cringed. It was ridiculous—so ridiculous. She was the one who had said there couldn’t be anything more between them, but still, nothing clarified your relationship to a man better than an offer of pounds sterling for your services.
“We’ll post a statement on the armory’s social media sites,” she said, already trying to figure out what angle to take in the wording. “I wrote up something fun and charming for Reggie’s site, and she’s likely hitting publish now if I know her well enough. We’ll play this calm and casual. It was a surprise. You’re an underdog. Who doesn’t love an underdog?”
He looked over at her. “Okay. I can write the statement. You don’t have to take care of everything.”
She thought about what Leslie had said. And Tav’s offer.
“Since you’re talking about payment beyond the apprenticeship stipend, maybe you should consider getting a publicist. Or someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” She felt silly saying she didn’t want his money. Her entire trip to Scotland had been predicated on taking his money, though she was now going above and beyond anything she’d imagined her apprenticeship would entail. She was working hard and deserved payment for her work. But it felt . . . not great. Which was one of many reasons why she shouldn’t have slept with her boss.
“I don’t want anyone else,” Tav said, so quickly and definitively that her pulse raced to catch up. “But I understand if this is getting to be too much. It’s too much for me and it’s my life. Just let me know. We can go back to the original terms of the apprenticeship.”
His gaze searched her face and she tried to reveal nothing, like confusion as to why she would stay on as an apprentice—or anything at all—if he hired someone else. She didn’t think there was any going back to before, but she didn’t want to get into that.
“I don’t want to mess anything up,” she said. That was the truth, if not the whole truth.
“I don’t want you to assume you will,” he said. “It seems we’re at an impasse.”
“Tavish, this is serious,” she said. He didn’t know any better and was relying on the fact that she was already there. “This is your life. I don’t want you to put it in my hands because it’s the easy thing to do.”
“I think that’s exactly the reason I should put my life in your hands. It’s scarily easy for me. There’s that impasse again.”
A thought that had somehow been lost beneath all the madness pushed its way to the front, putting everything into a perspective of sorts.
“There are only a few weeks left in this apprenticeship,” she quietly reminded him. “You need to start thinking about what you’re going to do moving forward.”
When I’m gone. In a few weeks she’d likely assume her position at her parents’ company, cementing herself in her new, serious life and forgetting this had ever happened. Or pretending it hadn’t. Forgetting didn’t seem likely.
They stared at each other, and Portia was overcome with the urge to be hugged. It was the same feeling of homesickness that had overwhelmed her while talking to Ledi and Thabiso, except the hug she wanted—needed—was from Tav, who was about as far from home as she could get.
“How’s your system?” he asked. His gaze was weighted, and not by frustration as it had been a few minutes before.
“What?”
He swiveled back and forth in his office chair. “Your system. Am I out of it? We didn’t get to discuss before I flashed your friends and was almost seduced by an aristocrat.”
She should’ve given him a definitive “Yes” and continued about her business. But she’d mixed business with pleasure and, despite her intentions, after just one night they’d become hopelessly tangled. And like she’d just said, there were only a few weeks left of the apprenticeship. Whatever it was between them had an expiration date. It was only a question of sooner or later.
“I think—I think there are still some trace amounts,” she said.
She couldn’t even lie and say that she hoped pulling at this string would undo the knots last night’s roll in the hay had created. She knew very well that she was taking the express train to “Why the fuck did I do that?”-ville, but it was a very pleasant ride that made up for the final destination.
She wanted Tav’s mouth on her again, no more, no less.
“The thing with all these treatises I studied is that you have to be very specific when brokering a deal,” he said. “We were not very specific. Our agreement could technically be read as one day and done, right? It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Portia said. “But we have to work on your statement. And—”
“It can wait. Come here,” he said, then added, “Please.”
He leaned back in his chair, but it wasn’t imperious. It was vulnerable somehow, the way he sat back just a bit awkwardly and hoped that she came to him.
“How polite of you.” She walked over slowly, placing her tablet down on the seat in front of his desk before making her way around. He reached out and tugged at the waistband of her workout pants. She thought he’d pull her into his lap, but instead both of his hands went around her waist and he marched her back until her ass was against his desk.
He leaned down and pulled off her sneakers, then her ankle socks, tugging them off slowly and stroking the bare skin of her feet. She ran her hand through his hair.
“Is this where you reveal you’ve got a thing for feet?” she asked.
He glanced up at her, smirk on his lips and gray at his temples. Damn, he was handsome. “I’m discovering I have a lot of ‘things.’ Feet. Ass. Collarbones. Nose. Freckles. One common denominator, though.”
Portia swallowed hard.
He stood, his hazel-green gaze boring into hers, then his mouth was on hers, lush, warm, tasting of coffee and pleasure. His hands skimmed over her chest, unzipping her hoodie and smoothing over her breasts, constrained beneath her sports bra. Even the specially designed elastic couldn’t suppress her hardening nipples, and he teased them through the fabric, rubbing his thumbs over them achingly slow before pinching, then repeating, lashing at her gasps with his insistent tongue all the while.
“Tavish,” she whispered, and his hands dropped back to her waistband.
“I’m gonna take these off now, love,” he said. She nodded into the rough kiss he pressed against her mouth before pulling away.
He hooked his fingertips into the waistband and pulled, dragging the material down to her ankles and off, finishing in the kneeling position. “See how easy that was after I was chosen by Pantscalibur?”
His voice was too low to carry the joke, and his intent gaze rested between her legs. His hands went to her knees and pushed them apart.
“Tav,” she whispered as the first soft kiss landed on her inner thigh. A shiver went through her at the scrape of his stubble against her sensitive skin. His hands slid up her outer thighs and up to her ass as his mouth and stubbled cheeks worked their way upward, upward until she could feel his breath hot against her mound.
“Tavish.” She couldn’t quite whisper anymore. Or say anything other than his name.
He pulled her forward, closing the space between them, and then she knew for certain she’d get no response because his mouth was busy giving her the best head of her life. Long, hard licks against her slit, followed by soft suckling of her clit that grew stronger and stronger until she was gripping the desk and grinding against his face trying not to shout.
Her toes curled and her abs flexed convulsively to some innate rhythm as Tav nuzzled deeper into her folds, alternating between soft and hard licks against her sensitive nub.
“Fuck, fuck!” She ground her teeth together and bucked up against his face as she came, maybe quicker than she ever had, just from the pleasant surprise of his intense focus.
She tried gathering her senses, which had been scattered like billiard balls after a wild breaking shot, but it was a fruitless endeavor. When she opened her eyes, Tav was watching her, cock in his hand as he rolled on a condom.
He approached, stroking himself as he bent over to kiss her. His arm brushed against her side as he placed a hand onto the desk for balance and pressed against her opening.
“God, we’re such a cliché right now,” Portia muttered. “Banging on the boss’s desk.”
“You know what a fan I am of dated clichés,” he said and pushed into her, eliciting a gasp. Her arms went around his neck and her head dropped back. Her hips swiveled to meet his short, controlled thrusts.
“Oh god, okay this is one cliché you can keep,” she groaned, and he chuckled and kissed her. They had spent the entire night together, but something about their joining felt urgent. He didn’t take his time, as he had the second, fourth, and fifth time they’d come together in her bed. He thrust fast and hard, plunging more deeply each time, and groaning to match the muffled squeals of pleasure Portia released against his lips as she held on for dear life.
His desk began rocking loudly, slamming with each thrust, and then Portia felt his hands scoop under her and lift her up. Her legs wrapped around him, and she used them to lever herself up and down as he lifted. The new position provided a different and deeper kind of friction, and she rocked against him, taking his mouth with her own, not thinking of anything but her tongue against his and his hands holding her tight and his cock sliding against a spot she hadn’t known existed.
“Fuck, Portia, I’m so close,” he said, and the strain in his voice as he tried to hold back—and one frantic, solid stroke—sent her spinning into her next orgasm, shuddering against him as he groaned and tightened his hold on her.
He dropped into his chair and they rolled back until they hit the shelving behind his desk. There was nothing but the sound of their heavy breathing and cold summer rain pattering against the window. She realized she would miss the rain and cold when she left, even though she missed the heat and humidity of New York. She would miss Tav holding her like this even more, which was why she needed to end this, now. Why she shouldn’t have ever convinced herself to start it.
“About this ball,” Tav said, breaking the silence. “I’m gonna need a date, I figure.”
“You can go with Leslie,” Portia said. In that moment, she was deep in her head, had already pushed him away. She was already gone.
Tav’s exasperated sigh shifted her from her comfortable position on his chest. “Fuck’s sake, can you wait until I pull out before fobbing me off on another woman?”
Portia twisted her head so that she was looking up at him. “Oh. You were asking me.”
She hoped he attributed her quick heartbeat to the impromptu workout they’d just had. She hadn’t defended her castle well at all. She’d let down the drawbridge and invited the invader in, and now he was wreaking havoc on her heart, and not just with his heavy, long two-hander.
Tav shrugged, not knowing that she was already deep in PANIC! EJECT! mode. “It’s the kind of thing you like, right? Fancy clothes and dancing and all that shite. Who else would I bring?”
“Oh, you hopeless romantic, Tavish.” She didn’t know why she was disappointed. He wasn’t her boyfriend. This wasn’t some fairy tale where he would get on one knee and beg her to go to the ball. He was being practical, and so should she.
“Maybe you want to bring someone else?” he asked. “That’s fine, too. I know you don’t want anything serious. I just thought it could be a bit of fun in all this madness.”
She drew back and glared at him. He had crossed the line from practical into annoying. “Remember that ‘still inside me’ thing from a few seconds ago?”
She stood slowly, separating them, and grabbed her underwear. “I don’t have a date. I’m going with you. As your squire.” She had to rebuild those boundaries and this was as good a place to start as any. “I’ll go work on the statement and then we’ll figure out what you need to get prepped for the ball.”
“Sure thing,” he said. His voice was flat. There was barely any burr on the r in sure. She felt awkward and stiff as she pulled on her pants, and she fumbled her tablet as she snagged it from the seat.
“Well. I guess our systems have been flushed,” she said in what she hoped was a carefree and casual voice. They had wanted to cut the attraction between them, it had worked, and now she wanted to be as far away from him as possible.
“Mission accomplished,” he said darkly.
This was good. Right?
“Later.”
Tav grunted in response. She didn’t look back as she hurried out the door. She had a second shower to take, and maybe this one would succeed at washing him from under her skin.