Double Team: A Menage Romance Read online

  Albie

  Belle and I have been sneaking around for a month now. It’s a miracle we haven’t gotten caught. The bodyguards suspect something, I’m sure. Nothing gets past Noah, but he hasn’t said a word. He just nods and gives me a look when I make one of my many excuses before disappearing. He likes Belle, though; I can tell. But he hasn’t said a word.

  I’ve gotten lots of crap from Price for avoiding the social scene, the clubs and bullshit and picking up women.

  I thought I’d get tired of Belle. When I hooked up with her the first time, I swore to myself it would be a one-time only thing. We’d screw and get it out of our systems, and that would be that. That’s how it’s gone before. Every other time in my life, it’s been that way. I’m fine with bedding a girl and then walking away.

  Every time but this time.

  Belle is an addiction. She’s a drug I can’t get enough of. I can’t stop fucking her – taking her in the secret passageways that separate our rooms, in the tree house in the woods, up against the wall in the library, or on the sofa in the observatory. I want my mouth on hers, my cock inside her all the time.

  But the most unfamiliar feeling of all is that I want her outside of the bedroom. I find myself wanting to know what she wants from life, the things that make her happy.

  She likes tea but not coffee. She scrapes the frosting off cake before she eats it. Only eats the top half of a muffin. Snorts when she laughs, then clasps her hand over her mouth to hide it.

  She wants to help people. She has opinions about world politics and government policy. She lies on her back in my bed at two in the morning, her head in the crook of my arm, talking about things she wants from life, gesturing animatedly and trying to keep her voice low.

  I’ve never laid in bed and listened to anyone talk at two in the morning before. But this girl…I find myself hanging on every word that rolls off her tongue.

  As the summer draws to a close, my father and Belle’s mother have been busier with the wedding preparations. The royal wedding is the political-social event of the decade in Protrovia, after all. The retreat to the summerhouse has become less of a retreat than the headquarters for wedding planning central, with Sofia Kensington as the general.

  Alexandra is bitter about it. Today, she and I are sitting outside on teak lounge chairs in the middle of the gardens, a sprawling labyrinth of flowers and fountains that spreads out across the lawn behind the house. Belle is at the hospital, reading stories to the children on the pediatric cancer ward.

  Belle has been going to the hospital every week for the past month, despite the PR team’s opinion that it was “beneath her” as a princess. She should do charity work, they said, just not volunteer work. Belle rolled her eyes and told the PR team that it was up to them to figure out how best to spin her regular volunteer work, because she was going to continue what she was doing. Whether they liked it or not.

  “Albie,” Alexandra says, as she scrolls through social media on her phone. She's slouched in the chair, her feet kicked over the edge. “You know we could just ditch out on the wedding.”

  I give her a look. “I don’t think Sofia is that bad,” I say. “Dad really loves her, and we're not going to skip the wedding. That would be terrible, and would hurt our father, and I don’t think you’re that hateful of a person.”

  Alex rolls her eyes. “Sofia is stuffy,” she says. “And she’s too interested in politics. Mom was never interested in politics.”

  “Don’t you want him to be happy?”

  Alex gives me a scathing look. “You mean instead of disappointed with us?”

  “Maybe he’s not disappointed.” Belle’s voice cuts through the air. She stands behind us, silhouetted by the sun and looking radiant in a light yellow cotton dress. The dress is perfectly appropriate, chaste-looking even, reaching down below her knees.

  And it has the effect of making me totally hard.

  Alex laughs. “Yeah, well, no offense, but you’ve only been around this place for like a minute.”

  Belle shrugs as she sits down on the edge of one of the teak chairs opposite me, crossing her legs at the ankles. I try to look at her casually, like a disinterested, friendly soon-to-be-sibling, but I'm afraid I'm staring. What I really want to do is pick her up and carry her to my bedroom. Or kick Alex out of here and have my way with Belle right here and now. “And that is why I’m saying something,” she says. “As an outsider. Maybe he just worries about you guys.”

  “He hates all of my friends.”

  “You mean, like Finn Asher?” I ask. “No offense, but that guy is an idiot.”

  “Well, maybe I like him,” Alex huffs.

  “We both know that’s not true,” I say, looking at her meaningfully. Her face turns beet red, and she stands up, her expression contorted in anger.

  “Whatever, Albie,” she says, picking up her phone and huffing off, without another word.

  “What was that about?” Belle asks.

  “You haven’t noticed her and Max?” I ask.

  “The bodyguard?”

  “She totally has a crush on him,” I tell her. “I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.”

  “Oh,” Belle says, her eyes going wide. “That’s why he was so upset when she went running off with Finn, the day we came up in the helicopter.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And she likes him?”

  “For a while now.”

  “And she can’t date the bodyguard because…” Belle’s voice trails off, and I give her a look.

  “For obvious reasons.”

  “It’s 2015,” Belle says.

  “Says the girl who’s sneaking around with –“

  She cuts me off, her hand in the air. “I get what you’re saying.”

  A look passes over her face, and something shifts between us, an unspoken truth that hangs heavy in the air.

  This will be over soon, and there’s no changing it. We both know we’re playing with fire. I still haven’t gotten the marriage annulled, afraid that if I do, whatever’s happening between us will suddenly change and that everything will end. This time at the summerhouse is a reprieve, an escape from the reality of the outside world and all of its obligations and expectations.

  What’s happening between us has an expiration date. We have to stop before our parents' wedding. We both know it – it’s a fact that hangs over both of us.

  It’s an unspoken, immutable fact.

  Even if neither one of us want to admit it.

  "I need you." I blurt out the words without thinking. The words sound merely sexual, but I think I mean them in more than a superficial way.

  That fact should terrify me, but for some reason, it doesn't.

  Belle blushes. "Not here," she whispers.

  "Why not?"

  Belle cocks her head to the side and looks at me with a sly smile. "You're getting too bold for your own good.”

  "No one has caught us yet."

  "Yet is the operative word," she says.

  "No one is outside, luv.”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Let me see what you’re wearing under that dress.”

  She rolls her eyes, acting perturbed, but she can’t hide the trace of smile that caresses her lips. She uncrosses her ankles, and looks around furtively before she opens her legs, her fingers pulling the edge of her skirt up on her thigh. She does it casually, like she’s adjusting her dress and not at all like she’s sitting across from me and giving me a show.

  “You’re wearing panties,” I say. “I’m disappointed.”

  “I was at the hospital,” she says, shaking her head.

  “That’s the only reason I’m excusing it.”

  “You’re excusing it?” she asks, laughing. The sound is light, melodic. “How noble of you.”

  “I am a prince.”

  “You’re a prince among men, I’m sure.”

  “I want your pussy on my face,” I say. “I’ve been fucking craving the taste of you.”