A Duke by Default (Reluctant Royals #2)(73)

One and done. He was supposed to be out of her system. She was supposed to be sliding out from beneath his arm, then firmly but politely shoving him out the door, both of them much too mature to feel anything other than a bit of mischievous pride.

She nestled into him a little closer. Inhaled.

“Why is it you don’t allow yourself to become attached to any of these men, Portia?”

“It’s just easier that way. No muss, no fuss.”

She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but maybe none so grave as the three words she’d spoken the night before.

Let’s do it.

A chirping sound filled the room and for a moment she thought it was the morning birds, but as it grew more insistent she realized it was the sound of an incoming video call.

Oh shit.

She’d forgotten Ledi was on a flight to Thesolo and had said she would call at some godawful time. Portia slipped out of Tavish’s hold and smiled at the way he grumbled, then caught herself. She glanced at him, against her better judgment, and her breath caught for a moment.

He didn’t look boyish, with his disheveled salt-and-pepper hair and crow’s feet, and he didn’t look serene. He looked like he was dreaming about something salacious, a sly grin quirking a corner of his mouth and creasing the stubble on his cheeks, and the want that should have burned away with hours of sex flared up again, stronger than before.

She pulled on a T-shirt and grabbed her phone, slipping in her earpiece as she accepted the call.

Ledi was staring sleepily at the screen, her braids pineappled atop her head and poking out from her silk scarf. “Hey, girl.” Ledi’s brows went up. “Heyyyyy, girl. No headscarf. Crazy tangled hair. Yesterday’s makeup still on, kind of. Am I interrupting something?”

Portia’s gaze flicked guiltily toward the bed. “What had happened was, we went to dinner—”

Ledi burst into laughter and shook her head. “I knew it! I knew it! Biso, you owe me twenty dollars.”

The camera jostled and swiveled and then Prince Thabiso was on the screen, brows jumping suggestively over sleep-hooded eyes. “Got down and dirty with the duke, did you, Portia? How could you do this to me? I had twenty dollars that said you could resist his charms.”

“You guys bet on me?” Portia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Actually, she did know, and it wasn’t great. “And only twenty bucks? You’re royalty!”

“I have to reinvest my money into my country, Portia, I can’t go throwing it about gambling on sex acts,” Thabiso said gravely. “Besides, you know how cheap Ledi is. She wanted to bet five.”

Ledi appeared in the screen again, elbow first as she shoved Thabiso out of the way. “I showed Biso that video of Tavish pounding away on the anvil, and said if I were in your shoes, that metal wouldn’t be the only thing getting hit at the armory, so I didn’t know how you were holding out. This wasn’t some judgment on your character. It was vicarious living.”

“How is it that you’ve become more crude since you became a princess?” Portia asked, mentally smoothing her ruffled feathers.

“Portia, if the last few weeks has taught you anything, it should have been that the aristocracy is crude as they come,” Thabiso cut in. “The parties and jewels and ceremony are all to distract the rabble with shiny things while we engage in indecent behavior.”

“We?” Ledi asked archly.

“Sorry, I slipped into French. Must be because I just finished talking to Johan. They.” He winked at Portia through the screen, then his eyes went wide. “Did you say she called him Ass Man, Ledi? That is a spectacular ass. Shield your eyes.”

“Here, we have a male engaged in the rarely captured walk of shame,” Ledi said in a faux nature show host voice, pushing Thabiso’s hand away. “The male is confused by awakening in a strange habitat. Human males are creatures of routine.”

Something pale moved behind Portia in the inset video on the phone and she turned to find a naked, spectacular-assed swordmaker blundering around her room searching for his boxers. She let out a horrified laugh and immediately swiveled the phone away.

“Morning,” he grumbled. “I have to go practice with the weans for the exhibition. It’s their first so I want to make sure they’re good and ready.”

“Oh! Great! I’m on a call!” Portia didn’t know why the words came out as high-pitched squeaks. Probably because her boss had just mooned her friends. Because he was naked in her room. Because she’d spent a hedonistic night with him.

She cleared her throat. “I’m on a call with Ledi and Thabiso.”

“Princess and her prince?” His voice was rough with sleep—his burr more pronounced—and Portia felt a pang that they hadn’t woken up earlier. She wanted to feel the rumble of his growl between her thighs one more time. But that wasn’t part of Project: New Portia, Electric Boogaloo, with the one-night stand amendment.

“Yes. You’ve officially mooned royalty,” she said.

He chuckled. “Ah. Dad will be so proud.”

“Unplug your headphones so we can talk to him,” Ledi urged.

“No. He’s not even wearing any pants,” Portia said. Besides, it would be too weird, her best friend talking to him. Ledi had never met any of Portia’s conquests, apart from being at a bar with Portia when she encountered them. Though Tavish wasn’t a conquest. He was her boss . . . and her friend?