Reign: A Royal Military Romance (8 page)

My eyes are wide. I’ve got one hand over my mouth just imagining the scene. The knot in my chest tightens.

“I was outside, standing guard in the road while the others went in,” he says, and pauses, staring at the stonework on the ground. “And suddenly, the hut exploded. It knocked me forward, onto my hands and knees, my face in the dirt, half my back covered in burns.”

“Oh, my God,” I whisper.

I’ve seen plenty of burns in med school and before that, as a volunteer EMT, and they’re ugly.

“The kid had volunteered himself as bait for a trap,” Kostya says. “We fell for it.
I
fell for it.”

“You couldn’t have known,” I say.

He takes a deep breath.

“I lost four men,” he says. “And I learned that trying to help people is dangerous. Two hard lessons.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “That’s what you dream about?”

“It’s one of the things,” he says.

“Are the others similar?”

Kostya just nods. He looks so distant and
alone
, standing there with his arms crossed, his hundred-yard stare raking over the stone castle. I can’t even begin to imagine doing what he did and not being able to even
tell
anyone.

I take a deep breath and reach one hand for his shoulder, because hugging the crown prince is probably off-limits, and I don’t even know if he wants one.

He looks at me as my fingers hover over his shoulder. I pause and we lock eyes, his face somehow softer, almost vulnerable. I swallow and touch him, his heat radiating through his thin t-shirt, and stoke small circles on the hard muscles of his shoulder

“What helps?” I ask. We’re still looking at each other.

“Reminding myself where I am,” he says, softly. “Coming up here when it’s dark and the moon is out and I can be alone.”

“I can leave,” I offer.

“Talking to bad American girls helps too,” he says.

I sigh, still rubbing slowly widening circles on his back, trying to ignore the way his body feels beneath my fingers and the effect it’s having on me.

“I’m burning this shirt,” I mutter.

He raises both eyebrows.

“Now?”

I stop rubbing for a moment, open my mouth to say
no
, blush, shut my mouth, keep rubbing, and swallow.

“Only if I can have yours instead,” I say instead.

What the fuck is wrong with you?
I think.

Slowly, Kostya smiles, and a teasing, challenging look comes into his gray eyes.

“I don’t think you’ll go through with it,” he says.

“Is that a dare?” I ask, my fingertips tracing a circle around his shoulder.

“It’s a challenge,” he says. “I’ll give you my shirt, but you have to burn yours. Right here, right now.”

Laugh, say no, and leave
, I think.
Just for once, try not to make a situation worse.

I take my hand from his shoulder, take the lighter from my pocket, and set it on the stone wall. Then I look back at Kostya just in time to see his gaze flick up from my way-too-perky nipples.

Heat floods downward through my body, even though it’s cool out. I’m pretty uncertain about a lot of things right now, but I know one thing for an absolute fact.

Prince Kostya wants to see me topless. He turns to face me, still smiling.

“No cowardice,” he says, and I laugh.

“You mean, don’t chicken out?” I say.

“Sure,” he says. “No chickens.”

“No chickens,” I say.

My heart is hammering in my chest, and as certain as I was that I shouldn’t have been smoking up on the ramparts, I am
super ultra really fucking certain
that I shouldn’t be getting half-naked with the prince up here. I’m equally certain that telling anyone who catches us that it was
his
idea will be useless.

I hold out one hand anyway, the other on my hip, my bravest stance.

“Your shirt,” I say.

He fucking
dared
me, after all.

W
hen the hottest
girl you’ve ever seen is standing in front of you, wearing short pajama shorts and demanding your shirt, there’s only one option.

You give the girl your shirt.

“No chickens,” Hazel says. “Your shirt.”

I think she’s laughing at me, but I reach behind my head and tug my undershirt off anyway, then deposit it in her outstretched hand, the soft white cotton crumpling. Her hand makes a fist around it.

Then she looks at me, her eyes traveling up from the waistband of my jeans. It takes a split second, but I can practically feel the burning trails that her gaze leaves behind.

It’s been a long time since a woman saw me shirtless, and I cross my arms over my chest, hoping the half-dark hides some of the scars.

“Well,
zloyushka
?” I ask. “Feeling some chickens now?”

I know that’s not quite the English phrase, but I’m too fucking distracted to remember idioms.

“It’s
chickening out
,” she says, the teasing look back in her eyes. “And I’m not.”

She tosses my shirt on the stone wall, next to the lighter, and then turns her back to me.

I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed. My cock twitches anyway, half-hard no matter how much I try to keep it down.

Hazel whips her shirt off, and suddenly she’s half-naked on the palace roof, her black hair swishing over her shoulder blades. She’s got those perfect dimples in her lower back, right above her shorts, and despite myself I go rock hard just looking at them.

I clench my fingers into my arms. I swear, it looks like those indents were put there so I could grab her by the hips and sink my thumbs into them, and it’s all I can think about.

My hands on her skin, pulling her toward me. The
gasp
she’d make, the way the curve of her ass would rub against me.

I grind my teeth together, but I can’t stop
staring
.

She tosses her shirt onto the stone wall, and as she does, I can just
barely
see the outer curve of one breast, and I clench my teeth even harder. As she grabs my shirt, she glances over her shoulder at me for one instant, as if to say
I told you I’d do it
.

Then she slides my shirt over her head, and I exhale. She sweeps her hair and and turns around, a triumphant look in her eyes, and I’m just praying she doesn’t look down and see Mount Kostya practically exploding out of my jeans.

“Told you,” she said.

My shirt is swimming on her, the v-neck coming almost down to her sternum, the slight curve of her cleavage visible in the moonlight.

That’s not why I’m staring, though. I’m staring because it’s a thin white shirt and her nipples are very, very prominently staring right back. She catches me, looks down, makes a face, and crosses her arms.

“It’s cold out here,” she says, but she won’t look me in the eye.

“I don’t even have a shirt,” I say.

“Whose fault is that?” she asks, tilting her head to one side.

“Yours,” I say. “You did demand the shirt off my back,
zloyushka
.”

She grabs the t-shirt and lighter from the stone wall and dangles the shirt in front of her, looking at it one last time.

“Sorry, Courtney,” she says. I assume Courtney is the friend who gave her the shirt.

Hazel flicks the lighter underneath the shirt and holds the flame to the hem. She holds it there for a long time, waiting for it to catch, glancing up at me every couple of seconds.

At last, it does, and she pulls the lighter away. Immediately, the shirt stops burning, the hem barely worse than scorched.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“Remind me not to take you on a wilderness mission,” I say. “We’d starve, then freeze to death.”

She snorts.

“Were you thinking of doing that?” she says, flicking the lighter again.

In the tower behind me, I hear a
thump
as a heavy door shuts. Hazel freezes, her eyes going wide.

“Oh fuck,” she says, not moving.

I point at the spot where there’s a corner in the opposite wall. Behind it’s a notch, black with shadows. She looks at it and then back at me.

“Your shirt,” she whispers.

The footsteps in the tower get closer, and even though I’m beyond tempted to tell her that I need my shirt back,
now
, I have a little mercy.

“It’s under control,” I whisper.

“Won’t it look worse if I’m hiding?” she whispers.

“Only if you’re found,” I whisper back.

Hazel scampers over, tosses me one last glance, then disappears. I turn toward the stone wall and look out over the ocean, breathing the cool, salty air deeply, pretending that I’m just up here to clear my head.

Hopefully whoever’s coming won’t notice my massive, aching erection.

Twelve times three is thirty-six
, I think.
Twelve times four is forty-eight, twelve times five is sixty —

The heavy wooden door opens and a palace guard comes out. The moment he sees me, he snaps to attention and bows his head slightly.

“Your majesty,” he says.

“At ease,” I say, the words almost automatic.

He doesn’t relax.

“I heard voices and thought it best to investigate,” he says.

“It’s only me,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”

He nods again, brusquely. Then he pauses and sniffs the air slightly, his brow furrowing. It’s obvious he’s about to say something he doesn’t want to say.

“I’m obligated to tell you that these ramparts are off-limits for safety reasons,” he says stiffly.

I nod once.

“I’m being very careful,” I say.

“Have a good night, your majesty,” he says, then nods and disappears.

I listen to his footsteps fade down the tower stairs, then walk to the spot where Hazel’s hidden in the shadows.

She’s sitting with her back against the wall, elbows propped on her knees.

“Coast is clear?” she asks, her voice low.

I offer her my hand, and she takes it. I pull her to her feet so that she’s standing just a little too close to me, just close enough that I can smell her, a combination of sweet floral shampoo and the bite of pot smoke.

“I should go,” she whispers, but she doesn’t try to remove her hand from mine. The air between us feels like it’s sparking, charged with static, and it’s all I can do not to press her against the stone wall and fit my fingers to the dimples in her back.

I’m hard again. The multiplication tables barely helped, and we’re so close that it’s a miracle if she can’t tell. I should let her go and tell her to go back to her bedroom, forget any of this ever happened.

Instead I ask,
“How much of Velinsk have you seen?”

Hazel blinks.

“Most of it, I think,” she says. “It isn’t very big.”

I’m close enough to see the shape of every freckle, even though here in the shadows it’s nearly dark.

“Do you want to see the real Velinsk?” I ask. “The parts the palace tour guide doesn’t show visitors?”

Hazel hesitates, pressing her lips together and looking down.

“Why do I get the feeling it’s something else I shouldn’t do?” she asks, looking up at me.

“Because it is,” I say, and half-smile.

“You know, Kostya, everyone thinks you’re the perfectly upstanding, well-behaved prince, and here you are telling me to burn my clothes and asking me if I want to see the seedy parts of the city.”

“It’s a good reputation to have,” I say, and I let my mouth curve up, just a little. “Do you think you believe it,
zloyushka
?”

“I think I need to find out what that word means before I say yes to anything else,” she says, eyebrows raised.

“I’m sure you can figure it out,” I say.

“So you’re not going to tell me.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Her hand is still in mine. Neither of us has let go, and the warmth of her skin against mine is making electric ripples spread up my arm and across my chest.

“It must mean something bad,” she says. “What is it? Loud? Mouthy?”

Now she’s smiling up at me, the challenge back in her eyes.

“Déclassé drug smuggler,” she guesses.

“We don’t have a single word for that,” I say.

“Rude foreigner,” she goes on.

I put one hand on the stone wall above her head and lean over her, just a bit. She doesn’t move or flinch, and it takes every ounce of self control I’ve got not to push her against it right then and there.

“Tomorrow night,” I say. “The bench in the garden nearest the stone arch. Midnight. If someone sees you, say you can’t sleep and you’re taking a walk.”

She cocks her head to one side and examines me. I can’t remember the last time I was this close to someone else. The air between us is crackling and snapping, and it feels like I’m breathing in electricity.

I don’t know how much is the pot and how much is Hazel, but I’m not that high. Barely buzzed.

“Does it mean something like
hot mess
?” she asks.

“No, but that’s closer than
déclassé drug smuggler
,” I say.

“You won’t tell me where we’re going, you won’t tell me what
zloshka
means,” she says.

“
Zloy-ush-ka
,” I say, very slowly. “You’ve got to spell it right if you want to figure it out.”

“Or you could tell me,” she says, her voice low and quiet.

Somehow, her face is even closer to mine than it was before, and the urge to kiss her, to push her back against the wall and press myself against her is overwhelming.

This is stupid
, I think.
This is impossibly stupid.

“Tomorrow night,” I say.

Then I finally drop her hand and step back. The electricity disappears. I almost feel like I can breathe again.

Hazel gives me another long look, and then the corners of her eyes crinkle, just a little.

“Maybe,” she says.

Then she walks back to the door in the tower, still wearing my shirt and carrying hers, heaves it open, and disappears inside. I watch the door shut behind her, then walk back to the wall.

I look out over the ocean and force my breathing to slow. I force myself to stop thinking about the swell of her breast, the dimples in her back, her nipples poking through my shirt.

Most of all, I wonder what the hell I was thinking, inviting her out tomorrow night.