Dirty Rogue: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance(100)
I have back-to-back meetings and briefings all morning. After three days, I successfully booked myself an hour alone to work out in the palace gym in the afternoon. The only problem is that it means the final meeting of the day gets pushed past dinner.
And nothing ever runs on schedule.
Meetings go over the scheduled time, and over, and over, and by the time I’m done for the day, the only thing I have energy for is going back to my rooms and collapsing into bed. Alone. To sleep.
On the fifth day, I miss Jessica so much that I go to her rooms instead of mine. I’m tired of seeing her only in my daydreams or at mealtimes, and then only when I’m not being spoon-fed classified information from the revolving door of agents and cabinet members. When I arrive, she’s reading curled up on the window seat, a book open in her lap, and when I see her, I’m nearly pulled apart by envy and lust. The envy quickly dies away in a burst of empathy. Phillip doesn’t brief me on her daily schedule, but if mine is any indication, she’s busy all day, too.
When the door opens, she looks up and smiles at me, her radiant expression filled with love and adoration.
Fuck me if anything in the world means more to me than Jessica.
She stands up and tosses the book onto her seat, rushing across the room to get to me and flinging herself into my arms.
“I thought you’d never come,” she says into my ear, then takes my earlobe between her teeth and bites down just enough.
My cock is instantly hard, pressing up against the fabric of my pants, and I set her feet on the floor so she can steady herself while I kiss her deeply, then softly, then passionately enough to make up for the last five days away from one another.
When I break the kiss, she gasps for breath, her eyes glittering in the low light of her rooms. “There’s more where that came from,” she says with a wicked grin and takes hold of my hand, guiding me behind her as she makes her way to the bedroom.
I haven’t told her this, but the bedroom in the queen’s rooms is the largest in the palace. The first King of Saintland, King Harold, loved his wife, Queen Sarah, so much that he designed her rooms to be the most opulent in the entire palace.
Someday, I’ll let Jessica in on this piece of history. For now, she has enough on her plate without worrying about one day becoming queen.
Jessica strips off her shirt in front of the bed, leaving her bra and panties on, and I let my eyes linger on the lush lines of her curves. My cock throbs painfully against my zipper.
Goddamn it, she is perfection in human form.
I have to have her.
She reaches out a hand and beckons me toward her by crooking one finger seductively, then falls onto her back on the bed.
Jessica stretches out, her head on the plush pillow, her body exposed to me, and her thighs parted, inviting me to strip off the remaining fabric separating her from me.
It takes seconds to get undressed down to my boxers, and only another second to climb up next to her on the bed, lean down close to her, start kissing her collarbone, and then for one second—one second only—to clear my mind. I rest my head down on the pillow beside her, breathing in her skin, feeling her warm body next to me, so whole, so alive, under my touch…
And I fall asleep.
Chapter 31
Jessica
At first, I’m nearly undone by the sweetness of Alec falling so deeply asleep, his head on the pillow next to mine, his body relaxed. I consider waking him up, but only for a second. A man like Alec won’t be thrilled about passing out when he meant to f*ck me at least once. He’s just been so exhausted lately, and so much has happened, that it seems cruel to shake him out of the dreamland that he’s tumbled into headfirst. For a long time, I lie still, enjoying the sensation of his body against mine, his hard muscles and soft skin against my side.
Because they’ve thought of everything for the queen’s rooms at Sainthall Palace, there’s a switch hidden in the antique cherry wood of the bedside table that controls all the lights. You can turn them off when you’re done reading at night, and you never have to get out of bed and fumble along the wall to turn them on in the middle of the night. After Alec’s breathing has been steady for about fifteen minutes, I reach over and slide the switches down, plunging the room into darkness.
It’s late enough for me to fall asleep, but even though I close my eyes and run through several deep breaths, my mind is too alert to let go. My body hums with the closeness of my boyfriend—even thinking the word makes my heart pound—and thoughts race through my head.
It’s not long before one crosses my mind that makes my stomach twist with anxiety.
Is this what my entire life is going to be like?
Alec is the crown prince now, and although no one has said it in so many words, it does mean that he won’t be able to have as much of a private life, not least because he has so much to do. One day, he’ll assume the crown.
What’s the scheduling like for that?
Will he always be so exhausted?
We’ve hardly been seeing each other, and it’s killing me. I want to be with him every moment of the day, and my chest aches with the longing. Alec has also brought an intense need to be sexual roaring to the forefront, and being in Sainthall Palace is a far cry from the marathon lovemaking sessions we used to have in New York.
Not that I expected that to last forever, but things have tapered off awfully soon.