Page 36 of Samhain

“What emergency?” Sandra’s wide eyes hinted at her panic.

“It’s a friend.” I grimaced against the rush that went through me. “They’re sick. Real sick.” I was sick, too, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Miriam,” she said. My gaze snapped to hers at the use of my formal name. She corrected herself. “Your Highness, please.”

“My grandmother’s going to be upset,” I said. “And I apologize for that. But this is really an emer?—”

“Emergency, yes, you’ve said that. But if it’s not a direct family member, I can’t authorize?—”

“Authorize?” This time, I cut her off. “I’m twenty-four years old. I don’t need you to authorize anything.”

Which was technically true, but the rules of the general populace did not apply to those with HRH in front of their name. I barely gotten in the limo and slammed the door in her bird face before the wave became too overbearing to stand. I put up the partition, cranked the music, and worked myself to another agonizing climax.

At this point, my pussy hurt to touch and my wrist ached from bringing myself there time and time again. What choice did I have? This wouldn’t be over until we were together, and like it or not, I had to get to them.

Everything in me urged my compliance. It was a compulsion like none other I’d ever known, like magnets seeking out their counterparts, pulled together despite gravity and the space between. The flight nearly killed me, and when my driver got stuck in traffic on I-495, I clenched my legs together and took deep inhales, focusing on anything but the pain and agony of lust.

The scars on my hand burned like they’d been made yesterday.

Every jolting stop…start…stop…start…sent my blood pressure higher.

Be calm. Almost there.

When the limo finally pulled up in front of the townhouse, it only then occurred to me that I had no idea if they were home or if they’d want to see me. They had a bodyguard posting sentry out in front of their house, and a few people with cameras hung out on either side, already focused on my limo, waiting to see who would get out of it.

“Drive around back,” I told my escort, and he circled the block while I debated what to do. It had been years since I’d talked to either of them, so long that this seemed idiotic. My heart beat wildly in my chest and my hands shook, sweat beading on my forehead.

I should have had no reason to be nervous. It was them, after all. Ivy and Lex. The two people I’d loved the longest in my life. I should have figured out a way to contact them before now. But no, I’d blindly flown over here assuming they’d see me.

They couldn’t refuse me…right? Oh, God. What if I came all this way for nothing? What if I was the only one experiencing this? What if I was all alone in my misery and had been all this time?

My driver stopped in front of the garage behind their townhome, and I got out, quickly darting through the backyard to the door. A bodyguard held up his hands to stop me.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said. “That’s close enough.”

“It’s okay,” came the sultry voice from the back door. “She’s an old friend.”

I met Lex’s hazel gaze and every feeling I’d ever had for him rushed to the center of my chest like a shock wave, like the first time again.

My prince of darkness.

His hair had gotten longer and his body had filled out with muscle, but his eyes were as piercing and intimidating as I remembered. The cheekbones were more defined, accenting the angles in his face. He looked at me like I was fresh air, and he’d been suffocating for decades. None of it had dulled since I’d last seen him. He wore gray sweatpants and nothing else, his tattooed body red and flushed from the last twelve hours of what we’d been through.

I did my best to slowly ascend the stairs to their back door, minding my manners, while he said, “We’re expecting another person, Carter Scott. If he happens to show up, no need to stop him. Let him through.”

I took two steps inside, Lex shut the door behind me, and I jumped into his arms.

I didn’t care about the two years between us. I didn’t care that he’d gotten engaged to my former best friend weeks ago or that he’d broken up with me via text.

I needed to have his body pressed against mine. I needed his depravity and perverse gentleness, just like he’d used to give it to me. I just needed him.

Our lips collided, and I tasted sex and cigarettes and weed, a familiar cocktail for my deviant prince. The magic inside me, whatever it was that tortured us with this madness, vibrated at the slide of his skin against mine again.

His tongue explored my mouth and his hands, strong and familiar, went to my backside, squeezing me tighter to him, rubbing my cunt up against his cock, which had been hard since he saw me.

Footsteps to my right brought me back to my senses, and I dropped my legs as I broke the kiss to look in that direction. I felt her before I saw her, hot and vibrant in my molecules, like summer had been personified in real life.

Ivy.

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