Peach

A couple weeks before the balloon incident, Zeus dropped by Weightless after working out, and I thought the smell was going to make me gag.

Joey pulled him into the broom closet and did things I wish I didn’t know about to him, smelly sweat and all, which made me want to gag even more.

Man sweat is not sexy.

But Viktor’s man sweat smells like hot summer night sex on a bed of pine needles under the Milky Way, and by the time we reach the family wing of the palace—him smelling like wet livestock, me with dirt under my fingernails and smears all over my T-shirt—I’ve mentally stripped him and taken a bite out of his ass cheeks at least twice over.

As soon as we’re in private, I drop his arm and pass through the family room quickly to the stairwell, where I bolt up to the bedroom hallway. “I need to check on Papaya. You shower first.”

I don’t wait for an answer, but none comes anyway except for the soft snick of the door shutting on our bedroom behind me.

Thank goodness.

Because between the way he smells and that kiss in the gardens and then the way his expression morphed from arrogant, I shall slay the dragon for the damsel in distress to angry the lady hath been wronged and it pains me, but I must let her slay the dragon herself, I’m in real danger of actually liking Viktor.

And that’s after all the time I’ve spent ignoring how very, very sweet he was when we first got here last week.

And how very, very hot he was when he got mad at me for faking my happiness.

Like my true happiness matters.

No one’s ever been mad at me before over me pretending to be exactly what they want me to be, and it’s weirdly touching.

Papaya’s locked me out of her room, and no amount of knocking, pleading, or bargaining to let Fred the alpacacorn come visit her will convince her to open the door.

I lean against the wall and sink into a squat, and I’m pretty sure I just took a few more chunks out of the plaster here too.

Meemaw pokes her head out of her room, her hair up in a towel, and I wonder if she’s washing it or dying it neon green.

“More fallout from the chocolate incident,” I grumble to her.

“Poor girl. Probably thinks she won’t get a date to the fall dance now, doesn’t she?”

“She’s not here to get dates. She’s here to get her head on straight.”

“She can do both. Part of growing up is figuring out how to navigate those dating waters too.”

I shudder, because my baby sister is smart enough to ride that line between causing trouble and getting caught, and dating implies crossing a lot of those lines, and I don’t know if she’s still a virgin.

I don’t know if my baby sister is a virgin.

I was fifteen when I started screwing around with my boyfriend.

She’ll be fifteen in February.

It doesn’t matter if the idea makes me want to hyperventilate, the reality is, she spent most of the summer running wild with a boy, and Meemaw’s probably right.

She’s going to date whether I like it or not. “Oh, god, I need to have the safe sex talk with her.”

“Honey, just do what I did.”

“You told me a banana could get me pregnant, and that a sausage could make my cooter fall off.”

“Psh. You understood what I meant. And I also told you a good eggplant was worth its weight in gold, so long as it was covered up and its farmer knew how to use it. Be glad I worked in food service. You know Jenny Gaughran’s mom worked at the firecracker factor. Imagine the talk she got.”

“I love you, but you are not right.” I lean over and put an ear to the door, but there’s no noise.

Dammit.

She’s probably going out the window.

I pull myself to my feet. “I’m going to find a guard.”

Fifteen minutes later, I’ve secured a master key—which will only work until Papaya figures out how to get her hands on super glue and jams the lock—and I peek in on her.

She’s flopped on her four-poster bed listening to music. Meemaw promises to keep an eye on her, which is better than nothing, so I slip back into my own bedroom.

Which now smells like spicy man soap and shaving cream.

Thor help me, I might’ve just ovulated again.

I don’t immediately see Viktor. One bonus of the bedrooms on this floor is that they’re either all connected, or they all have sitting rooms and dressing rooms attached to them, though it still has all the charm of the rest of the castle, with crooked chandeliers, faded tapestries featuring giant bugs kissing dinosaurs, and droopy curtain rods.

I thought I loved my cookie-cutter house in Alabama, but all the personality in this castle is growing on me by the day.

And despite my irritation with this duke, and with Papaya’s mood swings and my panic over her dating, and with Viktor having the nerve to be all beefy and sweaty and sexy, I still smile when I catch sight of myself in the cracked mirror over the fireplace with the missing chunk of marble in the mantle.

My hair has twigs in it, there’s dirt smeared from my ear to my lip, and I’m wearing my T-shirt backwards.

I am one hot mess this morning.

Viktor appears in the mirror behind me. He looks up, we make eye contact—kind of, with the cracks, he has three eyeballs and I have four, but that’s not what makes me suck in a breath.

It’s that hot, heavy zing in his hooded gaze. The air crackles with suppressed energy, my pussy goes on high alert, and my nipples pebble so fast I get goosebumps all over my chest.

Men in suits have never done it for me, but Viktor in a stiff blue button-down with the collar turned up, tieless, while he slips in cufflinks is giving me a few dirty thoughts about boardrooms and palace thrones.

“There’s no need to rush,” he tells me. “The duke can wait all day.”

There’s no hint of innuendo in his voice, but I still imagine making the duke wait while Viktor bends me over the chair with the missing leg at the vanity and pounds his stiff cock into me until we both shatter.

It’s possible I’ve been neglecting private playing-with-Peach time.

Or it’s also possible I’ve just realized my husband-in-name-only is hot.

His brow furrows, and I realize I’m staring.

“May I be of assistance with something?” he asks.

I swallow the request that he scratch my itch. “That’s a bad idea,” I whisper.

“Is it?” His eyes—all three of them, two left and one right—are watching me so closely, I’m almost positive he can see into my brain where I’m mentally popping his buttons one by one so that I can lick a trail from the straining muscles in his neck, over the hard planes of his pecs, the ridges of his abdomen that I glimpsed two mornings ago when he thought I was sleeping, and all the way from the base to the tip of his rock-hard cock.

“A terrible idea.”

“A year is quite a long time to build one’s frustration, my lady.”

“I brought a few stress-relievers.”

His lips part and for the first time since I’ve known him, he can’t hide the sheer lust glossing his eyes. He clears his throat.

Twice.

“Have you, my lady?”

“And I’ve used them,” I add in a whisper.

My clit is throbbing and I’m hyper-aware of every slight movement in his facial muscles. The tick in his cheek. The flattening of his lips as he swallows again. The widening of his pupils and the flicker in his eyelids.

“In our bed, my lady?”

“Yes.”

Unless I’m completely inept at reading men and desire, he’s imagining me on the massive bed, with my legs spread, my fingers teasing my clit. I wonder if he’s imagining me thrusting my hips around a dildo or slipping a vibrator into my pussy. If he’s imagining himself licking me dry with my thighs clenched around his head.

Holy fuck, it’s hot in here.

“If you ever wish for a partner, I should be most happy to oblige.”

My throat’s dry and every inch of my skin tingles. All because of the most proper proposition I’ve ever had. “Bad idea, Viktor,” I force out.

“’Twould not be my first,” he counters, “though I daresay ‘twould be the most enjoyable.”

I clench my fists to keep from lunging for him, and I tell myself he’d be horrible in bed. All brute force and mechanics and no nuance or flexibility.

Except I don’t believe myself.

He nods once. “Your move, my lady. I shall be waiting in the sitting room.”

I tear my gaze from the mirror to watch him walk stiffly from the bedroom, and I don’t miss the unmistakable adjustment to his dick in his pants, even though his back is to me.

“Take as long as you wish in the shower,” he adds without turning around. “I shan’t speak with the duke without you.”

I belatedly process that his invitation to the sitting room wasn’t an offer to come let me ride him.

But the relief I expect at him walking away doesn’t come.

And not even fingering myself in the shower helps.

Because I’m picturing him the whole time my fingers are jerking into my pussy, and for the first time in forever, a self-induced orgasm isn’t enough.

This is going to be a long, long year.