Majesty (American Royals, #2)(48)

Beatrice sat up, letting her hair fall in a tumble around her shoulders. Unsatisfied desire clawed at her insides. She braced her hands on the mattress, tangling them in the sheets to ground herself. She felt dizzy and aching and hot and cold all at once.

“We’re going to be married, you know,” she reminded him, with irrefutable logic.

“We can’t do this tonight,” he amended.

“But I want you,” she added, drunk enough to speak baldly.

“Bee—you’re too drunk to make this kind of decision. No matter how much we both might want it,” he added, in a softer tone.

Some part of Beatrice wondered if she should feel embarrassed for throwing herself at Teddy. Yet she didn’t. Perhaps because Teddy made everything feel so steady, so clear.

Falling in love with Connor had been a breathless, heart-stopping whirlwind. While this—whatever it was between her and Teddy—didn’t stop her heart or crush the air from her lungs.

He made her pulse race faster, made it easier to breathe. As if she’d been trapped in a sealed room and now someone had finally thrown open a window.

Teddy had started to move off the bed, but Beatrice shook her head. “Stay. Just to sleep,” she pleaded. “I wasn’t lying about the nightmares.”

He hesitated, but leaned back onto the pillows.

Beatrice yawned and nestled herself against him, her head tucked onto his chest. Teddy shifted one arm carefully around her, playing idly with the strands of her hair; as if this weren’t strange or new or unusual, as if they’d done it a thousand times before. Within minutes Beatrice’s breaths had evened out, and she drifted to sleep, safe in the circle of his embrace.

For the first time in months, she slept through the night.





Nina started toward the palace’s front drive with weary resignation.

When she got to the party tonight, she’d been so worried about Ethan—and what she would say once she saw him—that for once she hadn’t really panicked about the prospect of running into Jeff.

All week she had been replaying that kiss in her head. She’d been too nervous to text Ethan, figuring that this was the type of conversation they should have in person. Then, when he hadn’t shown up at journalism class, she’d assumed he was avoiding her: that he wanted to pretend the whole thing was a drunken mistake and move on.

But what if Sam was right, and he was only staying away out of loyalty to Jeff?

Nina sighed when she saw the line that snaked around the front steps, unruly partygoers all waiting for one of the palace’s courtesy cars. This always happened when the twins’ parties ended too abruptly.

Earlier, after her talk with Sam, she’d gone back to the party and circled the dance floor in search of Ethan. But then Sam and Marshall had decided to go and make out in the pool, and now the party was rapidly disintegrating. Nina had offered to stay the night—so she would be there when Sam had to face tomorrow’s social media firestorm—but Sam kept insisting that this was precisely what she’d meant to do. She was acting like none of it bothered her, but Nina knew better.

She blinked, startled, when moonlight glinted on raven-dark hair at the front of the portico.

“Ethan!”

Before she could think better of it, she’d stepped off the sidewalk and was trotting down the driveway toward him. He paused, one hand poised on the car door, to glance uncertainly back at Nina.

“Hey,” she breathed, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. She felt tentative and eager and uncertain all at once, as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice and wanted desperately to jump off.

“Can I get a ride? I mean—we’re going to the same place, right?”

After a beat of hesitation, Ethan stepped aside, holding open the door for her. “Sure. Of course,” he said gruffly.

“Thanks.” Nina slid into the backseat, and Ethan followed.

“King’s College,” he told the driver.

The car turned obediently out of the driveway, and here they were, the two of them alone at last.

As they reached the edge of John Jay Park, light flickered over the tinted windows, the sharp beams of other cars’ headlights crisscrossing the lazy glow of streetlamps. A tense, taut silence stretched between them.

“I was looking for you tonight,” she said at last.

“Really?” Ethan gave one of his usual careless shrugs. “It was a crowded party. That tent definitely isn’t meant for the kind of dancing I saw inside.”

“Come on, Ethan, don’t act like we aren’t—like we didn’t—” She flushed, but went on with more certainty. “We should talk about what happened last weekend.”

“Nina…” There was a note of warning in his tone, but something else, too, that sounded almost like yearning.

“Ethan, I like you.”

Nina hardly recognized herself. Sam was always the one who wore her emotions on her sleeve, while Nina usually poured every ounce of energy into concealing those feelings, even from the people who actually needed to hear them.

Yet here she was, professing her feelings for Ethan—and the words had come out so easily, as if they’d been shaken loose from deep within her.

“I like you, too.”

At those words, Nina looked over, trying to catch his gaze in the darkened car. But his features were inscrutable as ever.