Page 84 of A Princess for Christmas

She perched on the end of the bed in front of a small TV mounted to the wall. “As it relates to Buffy, I’m in the middle of season four, which, frankly, is the long slog on Riley.”

“The long what?”

“To my mind, be Team Spike or be Team Angel—I suppose. I don’t really get the latter, but I respect it. But Riley? That’s like being pro-beige.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was, however, aware enough to understand that the princess was talking about American pop culture—and was talking circles around him. It was amusing.

Ignoring him, she picked up the remote and started the show.

The opening sequence seemed to be a girl engaged in hand-to-hand combat with vampires, but she would stop every now and then to trade banter with them. “Whatisthis?”

“It’s about a high school in California that happens to be built over the hellmouth, and all manner of vampires and other unpleasant creatures need to be slain, but handily one of the students happens to be the Slayer. It’s like being the chosen one, and...” Marie trailed off, perhaps because she had registered the confusion on Leo’s face. “This isn’t the best show to pick up in the middle.” She hopped off the bed and opened a cabinet underneath the TV to reveal rows and rows of DVDs, most of them titles he was vaguely familiar with but had never seen. “Let’s watch something else. You pick.”

“You’ve seen these all?”

“Yes. I grew up watching several hours of TV a night.”

It was hard to wrap his mind around. It was so incongruous with the idea of her as a princess, as a highly educated person who did things like address the United Nations.

“I learned English in school, of course—everyone here does. But I learnedidiomaticEnglish mostly from 1990s television.” She pulled out a disc calledThe Nannyand held it out to him with her eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”

He put his hand over hers and guided the disc back to its place on the shelf. “I think I didn’t come here to watch TV.”

She said, “Oh,” but she said it on a shuddery exhalation, and that was all it took to make him hard. “I have secured prophylactics.” Marie spoke initially with the utmost seriousness, but then she cracked a smile.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The way she talked.Whydid it drive him so wild?

Well, whatever, he didn’t feel like examining it right now. He felt like going with it, allowing the rush of affection her earnestness—which was somehow, paradoxically, also very sexy—inspired to propel him toward the bed. He heaved himself onto the mattress, leaning back against a mound of fluffy pillows and crooking a finger at her.

She flashed him a shy smile, but she came. He was sprawled on the bed, and she kneeled between his splayed legs, but she didn’t touch him.

He eyed her, all bundled up in her “casual” clothing that wasn’t casual.

He wanted to see her. All of her.

And he wanted her to see him.

So he sat up, inserted his hands into her blazer, and pushed it off her shoulders to reveal a white blouse done up with what seemed like a hundred buttons. They looked like tiny pearls. “That’s a lot of buttons you’ve got there, Princess,” he said, surprising himself with how low his voice had suddenly gone. He spared a moment to take off his shirt while he pondered this maddening little engineering problem.

She looked down. “It’s not very practical for our purposes, is it?” She started working on the buttons, her small, nimble fingers entrancing him as they moved with the same efficient precision she applied to so much of her life.

Healsoliked disrupting that precision. So even though it risked coming across as brutish, he reached out and applied his own brand of efficiency to the one-million-buttons problem and ripped the last several of them open. He used enough force to make her gasp—he was pretty sure no one had literally torn off Princess Marie’s clothing before—and to send some of the buttons over the edge of the bed where they made satisfyingpingsas they hit the wood floor.

Her eyes opened wide—and sparked. Taking a hold of one side of her now gaping blouse with each hand, he pulled her on top of him. She shrieked as she toppled and smiled so widely she practically blinded him with her dimples. Those fuckers were lethal.

He only had a moment to admire them, though, before she kissed him.

Her kiss was familiar by now. It started softly, her lips moving against his gently, but rapidly escalated until she was sighing into his mouth, opening for him and moaning as his tongue shamelessly slid inside, stroking hers. They kissed for a long time, andhe got more and more wound up. He had to make himself pause, remember his larger mission: to see her.

So he tore his mouth from hers, relishing the little moue of displeasure that resulted. He fumbled with the clasp at the back of her bra, and once he had it unhooked, pushed her back so she was sitting astride him. She was backlit by soft lamplight, and she wasperfect. Teardrop-shaped breasts with small, pink nipples at their tips made his jaw slacken like he was a goddamned caveman.

“I want to see all of you,” he rasped. “Will you let me see you?”

Without hesitation, she pushed herself off him and started wiggling out of her jeans. “I want to see you, too.”

Sliding his own jeans over his hips to free his aching cock was an enormous relief. So much so that he groaned and closed his eyes, needing to stem, for a moment, the sensory onslaught. When he opened them, she was naked and was crawling back from the edge of the bed. She was small and lithe and perfect.

“Oh, Princess.”

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