Her Royal Highness (Royals #2)(59)

“You’re dating a princess,” Saks goes on like I didn’t even say anything, fluttering one hand by her face, and I’m surprised by how much hearing those words feels like a punch to the gut.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not what—”

“That’s absolutely what’s happening,” Sakshi argues, and even Perry nods, his mouth full of bread.

“It really is, Millie,” he says, and I look back and forth between them.

“I like Flora,” I say in a low voice. “And she likes me. But what that means is . . . still something we’re figuring out.”

Saks wrinkles her nose a little. “Oh, darling,” she says. “It doesn’t work like that. Not with this crowd.”

I see Flora walk into the dining room then, and there’s that silly little trip in my chest at just seeing her.

Saks follows my gaze, then giggles, nudging me with her elbow. “Oh, you smitten kitten, you,” she teases, and I shove back at her.

“Staaaahp.”

“She doesn’t deserve you,” Perry says, but he’s smiling, too, and Saks reaches across me to pat his arm.

“That’s so loyal, Peregrine,” she says, and he grins back at her, and I suddenly realize I’m not the only smitten kitten at this table.

But then Saks shifts in her chair, picking up her fork and adding, “You know they found out who was telling reporters about Flora, right? It was Elisabeth! My former roommate turned Flora’s roommate, can you believe it?” She shakes her head. “Of all the people it could’ve been, it was a horsey girl.”

She lowers her voice. “Apparently she found out the papers paid well for Flora tidbits, and she wanted some fancy new . . . what was it, Perry? A saddle?” She shrugs. “I don’t know, I don’t like horses, much to my father’s horror.”

“Isn’t she, like, twelve?” I ask. “Some sixth grader was selling gossip?”

Picking at her own beans on toast, Saks glances at me. “I told you, darling,” she says. “Whole other world.”



Later that afternoon, I’m sitting in my room with Flora. Sakshi has cleared out to give us some privacy, and I’m on my bed while Flora sits at the desk, both of us working on our papers for Mrs. Collins’s lit class, but every once in a while, we peek up over our laptops at one another until finally, Flora puts her computer down with a thump and launches herself across the room to lie on my bed.

Giggling, I close my own laptop, leaning down to brush her hair back from her face. It’s still a weird feeling, just reaching out and touching her like that, but I like it.

Flora does, too, I think, as she rolls onto her back to look up at me, her lashes long around those golden eyes.

“You’re distracting me,” I tell her, and she shrugs, reaching up to tangle her fingers with mine there by her shoulder.

“What’s the fun of having a schoolmate you snog if you don’t distract her from schoolwork?”

The words are light, teasing, but they make some of that golden glow I was feeling dissipate.

Schoolmates who snog.

Friends who kiss.

But Flora isn’t Jude, I remind myself, and I lean down, still a little shy as I kiss her.

But Flora is definitely not shy, kissing me back with her hand at the back of my head, and soon it’s not so much kissing as it is making out, my paper and laptop and own name pretty much forgotten.

It’s not just the kissing (although I like that a lot) but all of it.

The way Flora’s fingers always dance over any piece of exposed skin, turning places I never thought of as all that sexy—the insides of my elbows, the spaces between my fingers, my forehead—into pulse points of want.

How her usually imperious “Quint” sounds so different when it’s whispered against the damp skin of my neck.

Or how she makes me so different. Bolder and braver, quicker to touch her in all the places where she wants to touch me.

This is one of those times when I feel like I can’t stop touching her, even with all our clothes on, and I probably would stay there wrapped up in her forever if my phone didn’t suddenly chime.

Lifting my face from Flora’s, I wrinkle my nose. “That’s my phone.”

Still draped across the bed, her face pink, Flora pushes her hair back. “So?”

“So it’s in the main office?” I say, and Flora gives me that smug smile.

“Is it?”

Groaning, I get off the bed as my phone beeps again, clearly coming from the top drawer of my desk.

“I just thought you’d want yours, too,” Flora says, pushing herself up on her elbows, and I open the drawer.

“Thank you for including me in your life of crime,” I say, but Flora is, not surprisingly, completely unapologetic.

I see now that the chimes are from my email, the personal one I still keep, not the one the school gave me, and they’re both from Lee.

Guilt hits me a little at that. I haven’t talked to Lee in a couple of weeks now, even though I’d been meaning to. It’s just things had gotten so— And then I see the subject lines of the emails.

The first one: WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL MILLIE

And the second: YOU ARE DATING A PRINCESS WHAT

Opening the first email, I see Lee has left me a link to some blog called Off with Their Heads. Charming.