Page 12 of The Royal's Pet: A MMF Ménage Royal Romance

“Fire him?” I scoff. “I’m bringing back the bloody guillotine.”

“Please don’t,” she says suddenly. “I mean… that’s a joke, right? I hope it was a joke. Listen—” She twists to face me, and my shoulders stiffen. Listen. I’m not used to having a Normal tell me what to do. Normal—that’s my mum’s word. Normal, common-blood, not one of us. Rory sighs and says, “I mean, it’s silly, really. We don’t know each other. But the funny thing is, honestly, if he’d just said, ‘Hey, want to come back to the palace and have a threesome with me and Prince Roland?’ Then, yeah, I’d be all about that.”

My heart suddenly starts to ricochet against my rib cage so loudly I’m afraid she can hear it. My mouth goes dry as possibilities swirl in my head. Rory is beautiful, bold, and kinky as hell…

She’s perfect.

I’m nearly trembling with excitement. I need to contain myself. I put my hand on her thigh. She jumps at first, but she doesn’t pull away. I haven’t taken a woman without Ben… in a long time. But she’s tempting me to break our unspoken pact. I need to keep this woman to me, if only for a little longer.

“Can I interest you in tea?” I ask.

She looks at me, and a smile broadens her mouth. “Yeah. Sure. I’d like that.”

8

Rory

This is a dream.

This has to be a dream, right? Any second, I’ll wake up back on the top bunk at the hostel, panties wet, swooning.

This doesn’t happen to women like me. Women like me don’t have tea with royalty after having the prince’s lips all over her.

But here I am. Ragged jeans, combat boots and all, sitting on a chair that’s probably worth my parents’ mortgage and trying to figure out if I should actually lift my pinky when I take a sip or if that’s just something people do in the movies.

Roland sits at his own chair across from me. We’re in the sitting room, or entertainment room, or whatever he called it. Every room here seems to have a title, and I can barely fathom how they can find a different purpose for all of these rooms, but I know this one has a piano, paisley walls, a small rolling bar, and a twittering cage of canaries. The bird room, maybe.

Roland has pulled his shoulder-length hair back now so it’s contained tightly behind him. This is more how I’m used to seeing him—or how he looks on TV and in the magazines anyway, when the paparazzi catches a stray glimpse of him through the window. He’s composed, tucked away into a powder-blue button-up and nice slacks. The top button of his shirt is undone, which only gives him a slightly more casual look, but to me the hint of bare chest is enough to make me slippery between my legs again.

I can’t help it. This man does strange things to me. I only take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone—he’s literally the royal heartthrob to thousands. The caged, incredibly private Prince Roland has been the subject of many a woman’s wet fantasy. Even I, who generally stays away from celebrity gossip, have stopped when I come across a Prince Roland headline.

Not that there’s a lot to say about him. As far as anyone knows, Prince Roland never leaves the castle. He’s never even been caught drinking tea at a café. Nothing. I remember that, once, some reporter leaked that all of Prince Roland’s (rare) interviews were conducted at the palace with a green-screen backdrop. A rumor went around for a couple days that maybe the prince had some terrible medical condition that kept him from leaving the palace. And then Missy Gadot had a nip slip at her concert, and everyone forgot about it.

Looking at him now, he doesn’t look sick. In fact, he looks quite strong. His sleeves are pulled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms, and I can see the pure muscle there and the ropey veins that lie just underneath the surface. He’s lean, svelte, and his eyes are clear and unbearably intoxicating. I’ve noticed now that they seem to change color depending on the lighting. In the bedroom, they looked hot and violet. Here, under the crisp overhead light twinkling from the chandelier, his irises are cool, deep-blue pools.

We’ve been talking for an hour, maybe, just sitting here, sipping tea, and chatting, and I still can’t get look away from those eyes.

“That’s very brave of you,” he comments, though I’ve gotten lost in his gaze again and forgotten what we’re talking about.

“What is?” I chirp.

“Traveling on your own,” he explains. “It’s hard enough to get on in a foreign place, but… I imagine it must be harder for a young woman. The state of this world being what it is. Especially one as attractive as you.”

He winks at me when he says it. What kind of person actually winks these days? The prince of England, apparently. It’s not the first time he’s done something like this. I’ve noticed that he talks like a man who picked up all his vocabulary from books—earlier, he called my eyes verdant, overpronouncing the a, as though he’s never had an opportunity to use that word in a sentence. And now the winking. He clearly read enough Ian Fleming to think that that was just how people interacted with each other.

I can’t blame him for being stilted. He probably hasn’t had a decent conversation in… what. Ten years? That would make me animatronic, too.

Honestly, I think it’s cute. Charming.

I shrug off a blush. “It’s not that bad. And I’m not alone.”

His eyebrows lift. “No?”

I’ve carried my backpack with us, and it takes only a little force to drag it over to my seat. I unbuckle the top and dig in until I find what I’m looking for. “Meet Oscar,” I say and sit the stuffed otter upright on my knee.

A laugh explodes from Roland’s chest. It’s a delightful noise, and I find myself bubbling with pride for pulling it out for him. I can tell his laugh is genuine, not canned, since it creases the corners of his eyes, and all at once, he looks less like rigid royalty and more like an ecstatic boy who just saw Jack pop out of the box for the first time.

“All right,” he says, grin still lingering on his lips. “You have to tell me the story behind that.”

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