Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)(61)

“You get feisty.”

“Don’t you call me feisty, Mr. Prince Boy.”

That makes me laugh. I find myself closing the distance between us, reaching out for her and wrapping both my hands around her forearms.

“You have little arms.”

“Maybe you just have big hands,” she murmurs.

I can tell she wants me by the way her face relaxes—too much; I can almost see her eyes slip shut, her tongue slide out over her lips. I’m hard as hell and I just want to set her on the dock and fuck her brains out.

No.

I let her go. Lucy looks a little flustered for a minute, slightly awkward, like being close to me has made her nervous.

Good, says the part of me I need to silence.

I watch her as she treads water, moving in a circle so her back’s away from me and she can see the peak.

“So tell me more about making apps.” She turns back toward me. “Does it take a lot of time?”

I shake my head. “I do most of the coding and designing in the first phase by myself, with Todd helping at times. The development—the broader things to get something ready for distribution—that’s not my part. I don’t test or package anything. That’s all done by teams that Todd runs.”

“But that first phase, you enjoy it?”

“I like building things.”

“Is your cousin impressed?”

I shrug. “He always knew I liked that kind of shit.”

Lucy nods slowly, stretching out on her back. “So does he usually live at the castle, Heath I mean?”

“We both travel around a lot, but he’s there some.”

“Where is he right now, again?”

I tell her about him playing for the country’s polo team.

“Wait—you used to play too, didn’t you?” She shifts from her back, so she’s submerged in the springs again.

“I did.”

“You quit?”

I nod.

“Just tired of it?”

I nod. Liar.

“So this summer you guys traveled a lot.”

“Yeah. Everywhere.”

“And you’ve been chilling at the castle since then? By yourself? I swear, I always pictured you having a harem.”

I arch an eyebrow, making a mysterious face.

“I bet there has been one, at one point.”

“I prefer just one.” I grin.

She splashes me. “You flirt.”

“I thought I was a slut.”

She splashes me again. “You are. A slutty flirt.”

But I can tell she likes me. I can tell she wants me. I swim behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. “You like it.” I feel her backside wiggle against my cock and swallow back a groan.

Before I lose my shit and rub myself against her, I shift myself away, treading water while I work her pony-tail out of the hair it’s still holding. My hand covers her nape, and I lean closer to her ear.

“Go under, Luce.”

She does, and when she comes back up, her hair is floating all around her. I rub a palm over the plume of silk.

Then, before I find her mouth with mine, I swim around in front of her again and shift so that I’m floating on my back.

“Tell me something about you, Lucille Rhodes. Something no one knows.”

She treads beside me, pressing her lips together thoughtfully. “Hmmmm. Well. I rode my bike without training wheels on the first try.” She gives me a bright smile.

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” She nods. “I was a very athletic child. Not sure what happened.”

Nothing. I watched enough Rhodes of Concord to know that. On this one episode, she was skateboarding, having never tried it before. Rather than ask about that and reveal exactly how many episodes I watched, I change the subject slightly. “What was it like to be the youngest?”

“Annoying. I wore everyone else’s clothes as a little kid, especially Celia’s—since we have similar coloring, and we were born a month apart.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“May twenty-fifth.”

“So you’re a…Taurus?”

She shakes her head. “Gemini. What about you?”

“You don’t know my birthday?”

“No.” She splashes me. “You bighead. Do all the other girls know it? Do they send flowers?”

“Of course.”

She rolls her eyes. “You get courted pretty hard, huh?”

I smirk, because I have a dick and she said hard.

“Oh, give me a break. But you really do, don’t you? I bet your whole life has been a long line of women throwing themselves at you. They probably know your birthday and your favorite color and your family history and all your old polo stats.”

“You know it’s true.”

“They want to be a princess or a queen.” She makes a face, in which her nose scrunches. “Blame Disney.”

I look at the veil of trees that fringe the water’s nearest edge, considering for not the first time who exactly is to blame—or what. Of course, the answer is no one and nothing. It’s just human nature to want what you can’t have. “I’m surprised so many people want those things to be part of their real life,” I finally say.