I can’t keep my hands off her. We’re walking toward the fishing lodge, which is just a couple minutes’ walk from the island’s hot springs—and even now, her hand is locked in mine.

For a few minutes, she was walking just a pace or two in front of me, and I was looking at her ass. Then my eyes moved up her narrow back, then to her shoulders, down her arm and to her hand. I wanted to touch her, so I grabbed it.

Stupid. But she makes me feel so fucking good.

We should find something to drink at the lodge when we get there. Everything with Lucy is so fucking pleasant and relaxing. It makes me want to drink, like scotch would be the cherry on the sundae.

I’ve noticed Lucy never partakes, but she doesn’t seem to mind that I do. Kicking back is more fun when she’s around, because I don’t need alcohol the way I did before she showed up. I don’t feel so…crushed by my anxiety. I feel…hopeful.

Unfounded, the logical side of me reminds this dumbass side.

But right then, Lucy stops on our wooded trail and points to a little painted sign. “Hot springs? We can go to hot springs?” She’s grinning like a little fucking kid. I find myself nodding, smiling back at her.

“You want to go there?”

“Hell yes!” Her brow rumples. “Wait—how hot are they?”

“They’re not very hot, actually. A little warmer than lukewarm. Kind of like a bath, but not a hot tub. Maybe they should be called warm springs.”

“No—that’s perfect.” She grins back at me as she drags me up the springs trail. Her eyebrows are wiggling. “Can we get in? We’ll both behave ourselves and just relax and watch the sun go down. Like friends. Oh my God, is that it up there?” She points to the terrain up above us. “That little vein of water near the top of that mini mountain thing?”

I nod. “It winds around that little peak and makes a pool.”

“Amazing! This place is seriously paradise.” I see the shadow flit across her features as the words fall from her mouth. As if it might upset me that she’d call the island where I lost my mother paradise.

“It’s beautiful,” she amends, squeezing my hand. “I’m grateful that you brought me here.”

“I don’t come often, but I wanted to bring you.” It’s kind of awkward confessing that, but it’s the truth. I wanted Lucy to see this place.

In the past, if I ever do come here, it’s just for a couple of hours, and I’m by myself. I come here to think of Mum and feel alone. I only do it once a year or so.

Lucy tugs me closer, till we’re walking almost shoulder to shoulder.

“I was wondering at first if this was where you brought all the ladies. I imagine you have girls come and hang around the castle pretty often.”

I press my lips flat, giving her a poker face—not because it isn’t true, but because it is. Suddenly, I wish it wasn’t.

“Sometimes,” I hedge.

“It’s okay.” Her hand squeezes mine. “I know I called you a manwhore, and I thought of you that way. And I don’t know how you are with them—maybe you are. But I like you, Liam. That’s not all there is to you, and I can see that now that we’re friends.”

It makes me feel so fucking good, the way she says it. Lucy’s fingers stroke my hand, and she leans against my arm as we walk.

“I haven’t had a guy friend in a long time,” she says softly.

Fuck. I want to ask if that’s because of him—that sick fuck, Parsons—but I’m afraid of upsetting her.

“That surprises me a little,” I say instead.

“Because I’m so amazing?” She gives me a silly grin.

“Yeah. Because you’re fun. And beautiful. You’ve got this whole…this thing going.” She seems so real. “It’s like…you’re honest. I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Well, with you I sort of am. I’m not trying to impress you or seem like I’m somebody I’m not. Probably because of how things started off between us.”

“That night at Dec’s?”

She nods.

I squeeze her hand. “I like it that you feel comfortable with me.” It makes me feel different, too. Like I don’t have meet any expectations when I’m with her. “A lot of girls aren’t like that.”

“I’m sure they’re not.” She’s smirking…sort of frowning as her eyes narrow. “Do they all want to be your princess?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

“I’m sure that’s got to get tiring.”

“It does,” I say, and I’m surprised to realize just how much. I’ve tried to make it fun these last few years, to live it up, especially after what happened earlier this year, but… “It is tiring.”

Lucy snuggles up against my arm again. “You’re a real boy, Liam, not just a prince. Is that right?” She sounds like she’s teasing, but her face is sympathetic and sincere.

“I’m a man,” I tell her with a smirk.

“You better cut down on sexy. I’m trying to keep my chastity in tact, you know.”

“And here I thought I was the slut here.”

Her face twists in exaggerated hurt, and she punches me in the arm. “I can’t believe what you’re implying. No manners, Prince Liam. None at all.”

I shrug. “Isn’t that your forte? Southern girl.”

“It is. And I have excellent manners.”

“Do you?” I tease.

“Abso-freaking-lutely.”

We’ve been walking uphill for a while. I can see the island’s little summit clearly now. “You keep your composure in any and all situations? Stay polite?” I ask, arching my brows.

“Of course I do. I’m a Southern belle.”

“That right?”

“That’s so right.”

“Okay.” I smirk, and give her a look that lets her know something is coming. When we crest the top of the trailhead a minute later, with a view looking over the steaming springs and the peak behind them, I scoop Lucy up, toss her over my shoulder, and bolt down the path toward the water.

Lucy’s shrieking, banging on my back. I hold onto her tightly, shifting her down into my arms when we reach the dock, and swinging her around in a circle.

“Noooo,” she wails, clutching my shoulders. “You can’t throw me in!”

I chuckle. Then I toss her.

The springs feel great. I know they do. They’re always the same temperature.

Lucy comes up with a gasp, then starts flailing on the side of the dock, shrieking like a girl and struggling to get up. I can tell she’s not in any real distress, so I start to strip my shirt and pants off.

I’m in my boxer-briefs by the time she flops onto the dock, staggers up, and lunges at me. I think about moving at the last second, so she overshoots it and falls back into the springs, but I can’t seem to make my feet obey, so she bulldozes into my abs, wrapping her arms around my lower back and pushing me as hard as she can.

I can’t help a chuckle.

“Go, you heavy motherfucker!” She pushes harder, and we both fall in.

I let go of her as soon as we’re submerged, then start feeling for her clothes. I saw her swim on TV so I know she’s a strong swimmer, but… There.

I brush against her arm, blink, and see her treading water out in front of me, long strands of dark hair pasted to her cheeks and forehead, her mouth pulled into an “o” of pseudo-fury.

“Liam, you dirty bastard!”

Something about hearing her say “motherfucker” and “bastard” in that sweet, drawling voice makes me laugh my ass off.

“Are you laughing at me?” She splashes my face.

I can’t help grinning.

“Tell me why! Because I’m wet—” she splashes me again— “and in my clothes?”

I chuckle. “Maybe.”

She treads closer to me, swatting at my hair; then her fingers catch a piece and she tugs.

“Ow!”

She splashes me again, then swims off in a huff. She looks over her shoulder, raising both eyebrows. “This friendship is over.”

I know she’s just joking, but my chest tightens a little.

“Don’t say that, now.”

“Oh, it’s over. You ambushed me!”

“For a good cause.”

“And what’s that, pray tell?” She’s treading water.

I smile slowly. “So I can see you when you get out.”

“I’m taking your dry clothes!”

“That’s why I took them off.”

She raises one brow.

“What?” I say, sounding defensive to my own ears. “I’m a gentleman.”

She swims a little closer, splashes me again. “I won’t fall for that act again.”

And now it’s my turn: I tread closer to her, close enough so I can touch her lightly on her collarbone. “Don’t say that, Lucille.”

“Am I hurting your feelings?” She shoots me a skeptical look.

“Maybe you are,” I tell her softly. But I’m smiling. Because being with her makes me fucking smile. I can’t control it.

Now it’s Lucy’s turn to come nearer. I feel her foot brush my calf, then her fingertip is dragging down the bridge of my nose. “Don’t be sad.” She runs her finger over my nose once more. “Did you break it?”

“Yes.”

“How old were you?” She moves her finger; I can feel the echo of her touch after it’s gone.

“Not very.”

“Was it sports?”

I tread a little harder. “Not exactly.”

“There’s a story here. I can tell.”

Fuck me, but I’m not quick enough to fabricate one. Not with Lucy throwing me off as she does.

I realize that I’ve got my lips pressed shut, something the family PR people are constantly schooling me on, but which I’ve done so often, the media has learned to love. It makes my dimples show.

“Oh, so not a fun story,” she says softly.

She’s right in front of me, not even two feet away. Little ripples from the fanning of her arms under the water crest over my pecs. And suddenly, I want to pull her closer. Close enough that she can’t see my face, but I can feel the softness of her breasts against my chest.

Instead, I back up just a little, and I try my best to give a little smirk.

“Wait—now you said you were a kid. It couldn’t be a funny sexcapade. Could it?”

My eyes shut briefly on their own. I pry them open, force my face to remain neutral. “Just an accident. Nothing exciting.”

“So what happened?”

“Come now, it was an accident.” His words echo through my memory. I try to swallow and I find I can’t, so I turn around, then flail a little.

“Fuck, was that a fish?” I choke out.

“Oh shit, are there fish in here? Big ones? Like Loch Ness monsters?”

There’s my save. I go under, swimming deep and blinking in the green water until I see her flailing feet. Then, of course, I grab one—grab a toe. I watch her body bob, as if she’s trying to jump out of the water. By the time I surface, laughing, that hot pressure behind my eyes is gone.

Lucy smacks me in the shoulder, mimes slapping my cheek.

“I’m going to get you, Liam! I’m going to get you really good, and when you’re not expecting it!”

“I’ll be expecting it.” I smirk.

Lucy splashes me. I’m grinning as I rub my wrist over my eyes.

“You get feisty.”

“Don’t you call me feisty, Mr. Prince Boy.”

That makes me laugh. I find myself closing the distance between us, reaching out for her and wrapping both my hands around her forearms.

“You have skinny little arms.”

“Maybe you just have big hands.”

I can tell she wants me by the way her face relaxes—too much; I watch her lashes lower, her tongue slide out along her lower lip. I’m hard as hell, and I just want to set her on the dock and fuck her brains out.

No.

I let her go. Lucy looks a little flustered for a minute, slightly awkward, like being close to me has made her nervous.

Good.

I watch her as she treads water, moving in a circle so her back’s away from me and she can see the peak. After a long moment, she turns back toward me, her face politely neutral.

“So tell me more about making apps,” she says. “Does it take a lot of time?”

I feel a pang at pushing her away, but fight it off. I shake my head. “I do most of the coding and designing in the first phase by myself, with Todd helping at times. The development—the broader things to get something ready for distribution—that’s not my part. I don’t test or package anything. That’s all done by teams that Todd runs.”

“But that first phase, you enjoy it?”

“I like building things.”

She smiles. “Is your cousin impressed?”

I shrug. “He always knew I liked that kind of shit.”

Lucy nods slowly, stretching out on her back, where she moves in slow, jumping-jack form, her breasts jutting slightly out of the water. “So does he usually live at the castle—Heath?”

“We both travel around a lot, but he’s there some.”

“Where is he right now, again?”

I tell her about him playing for the country’s polo team.

“Wait—you used to play too, didn’t you?” She shifts from her back, so she’s submerged up to her chin.

“I did.”

“You quit?”

I nod.

“Just tired of it?”

I nod. Liar.

“So this summer, you guys traveled a lot.”

“Everywhere.”

“And you’ve been chilling at the castle since then? By yourself? I swear, I always pictured you having a harem.”

I arch an eyebrow, making a mysterious face.

“I bet there has been one, at one point.”

“I prefer my women one at a time.”

“Well I know that’s not true!”

“Wrong women.” I shrug.

Lucy splashes me. “You flirt.”

“I thought I was a slut.”

She splashes me again. “You are. A slutty flirt.”

But I can tell she likes me. I can tell she wants me. I swim behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. “You like it.” I feel her backside wiggle against my cock and swallow back a groan.

Before I lose my shit and rub myself against her, I shift slightly away, treading water while I work her pony-tail out of the small amount of hair it’s still holding. My hand covers her nape, and I lean closer to her ear.

“Go under, Luce.”

She does, and when she comes back up, her hair is a dark, silk cape around her. I rub a palm over it.

Then, before I find her mouth with mine, I swim around in front of her again and shift so that I’m floating on my back. I blink up at a drifting cloud.

“Tell me something about you, Lucille Rhodes. Something no one knows.”

She treads beside me, pressing her lips together thoughtfully. “Hmmmm. Well. I rode my bike without training wheels on the first try.” She gives me a bright smile.

“Yeah?”

She nods. “I was a very athletic child. Not sure what happened there.”

Nothing. I watched enough Rhodes of Concord to know that. On one episode, she was skateboarding like a champ, having never tried it before. Rather than ask about that and reveal exactly how many episodes I watched, I change the subject slightly. “What was it like to be the youngest?”

“Annoying. I wore everyone else’s clothes as a little kid, especially Celia’s—since we have similar coloring, and we were born at similar times of the year.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“May twenty-fifth.”

“So you’re a…Taurus?”

She shakes her head. “Gemini. What about you?”

“You don’t know my birthday?”

“No.” She laughs, and splashes me. “You bighead. Do all the other girls know it? Do they send flowers?”

“Of course.”

She rolls her eyes. “You get courted pretty hard, huh?”

I smirk, because I have a dick and she said hard.

“Oh, give me a break. But you really do, don’t you? I bet your whole life has been a long line of women throwing themselves at you. They probably know your birthday and your favorite color and your family history and all your old polo stats.”

I chuckle. “You know it’s true.”

“They want to be a princess or a queen.” She makes a face, in which her nose scrunches. “Blame Disney.”

I look at the veil of trees that fringe the water’s nearest edge, considering for not the first time who exactly is to blame—or what. Of course, the answer is no one and nothing. It’s just human nature to want what you can’t have. “I’m surprised so many people want those things to be part of their real life,” I finally say.

“I know, right. It’s so weird, how people see something like that—like royalty, or like a TV show—and want it to be totally real. It’s a fantasy. We had our moments with the show—I think my family still does, for sure—but it’s got to be worse when you’re a royal.” She paddles on her back, and I stretch out and kick, so I can stay beside her. “How did your family come to power anyway? Anointed by the faeries?”

I can’t help smiling. “What do you think?”

She reaches out and thumps my bicep. “Tell me. I don’t know, you goose.”

“A war,” I tell her, smiling at the audacity of being called ‘goose’. “In 1494, hardly anyone lived here. A few dozen what you might call Irish lived here, descendants of those who came in the twelfth century. There were also several Scottish clans—people who had been here when the Irish arrived, run out of Scotland, most of them. But the Irish and the Scottish Gaels had made their peace, and even intermarried some. And then, in late 1494, the English came, under Henry VII. My family’s clan, the Gaels, was a mixture of wild Scots and the immigrating Irish. They were settled near Clary.

“The legend goes, my many-times-great grandfather, the leader of the clan, rode across a bridge on horseback, leading an army, and defeated the small group of English. Mind you, they weren’t necessarily here to fight.” I arch my brows, and Lucy shakes her head, smiling.

“There’s a volcano on the mountain range, don’t know if you noticed, but no one knew at the time it was inactive. My grandfather and his crew wailed on the English, then retreated—screaming about the volcano erupting. So the legend goes, it was a dark day, with very dark clouds. The English bought it, and they made a hasty exit. From that point forward, the other clans revered him. And so he became the King of Gael. His son perpetuated the myth by sucking up to the regional religious powers, which by the time of the fifteenth century did include some Catholics.”

“So that’s all you are then,” she says, smiling a little. “You’re the descendant of a clever warrior.”

“You’re telling me you’re not impressed?” I tease.

“Oh, I’m impressed. But not with your family tree.” She treads closer, swimming right in front of me. Her pink mouth is so close; it looks so soft. Her eyes are fixed on mine, unwavering and…interested. As if she finds everything about me worthy of her contemplation. As if she wants me to kiss her.

I can’t help leaning in and closing the distance between us.

My mouth on hers is soft at first, until I feel her hand glide up my shoulder. Then I can’t hold back. She feels so good. She tastes so good.

We kiss until we’re almost drowning, until our legs are tangled. Until I’m hard as fuck and want to bury myself in her. Christ, I need her. But it’s me who pulls away. I’m aching, my cock pushed against the prison of my boxer-briefs. I can barely keep myself afloat.

Lucy’s cheeks are flushed, her dark hair tangled all around her face. She’s breathing hard. That’s all I hear as we float two feet apart, just the gentle lapping of the water at our shoulders and our heavy breaths.

I push a lock of my own hair out of my face and shake my head, trying to think of something that will get my dick deflated. A bead of water rolls down Lucy’s throat, and my cock twitches. “Fucking aye.”

She reaches for me, her hands closing on my biceps. “You floated away.” She laughs.

I laugh along with her, even though it’s strained.

She runs her hand down my chest and looks into my eyes. “I shouldn’t be this way with you. I said I wouldn’t be,” she tells me in a husky voice. “So why am I?”

I bring her hand up to my mouth and kiss her fingers. “I don’t know, Lucy. Why are you?”

“I like you…I think.” She looks thoughtful. So thoughtful and cautious, her face makes me want to make her smile. I reach out, thumping her little nose. “You only think?”

Her cheeks redden, and it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I stroke her cheek. “Then let me see if I can make you know.”

I take her mouth again, wrapping my arms around her back while I kick, propelling us both toward the dock.