Protecting Their Princess Page 2

  “That’s why it’s perfect,” I say, spreading my hands in front of me. “It’s completely off the grid. Everything is solar-powered. There’s no phone, no internet, and that side of Mount Diavolo doesn’t even get cell reception.”

  The king glowers, but his mustache stops twitching.

  “She’ll be harder for them to find, and even if they do, they can’t rig traffic cameras or hack a car’s computer system to smash into a building,” I go on. “They’ll have to come for her the old-fashioned way, and either they won’t, or they’ll have to contend with us.”

  “The best they’ll be able to do is give Alka-Seltzer to a squirrel,” Beckett chimes in.

  A few of the serious faces around the table smile, very slightly, and I remember why I brought Beckett. Someone needs to be charming, and for my whole life, it’s never been me. My best friend, on the other hand, has one of those personalities people gravitate toward.

  Queen Madeleine looks at her husband, face serious, head tilted, and he looks back at her. Famously, even though he’s technically the monarch, he’s long said that she’s his best counsel.

  “They have a point,” she says. “Besides, there are advantages to entrusting her to another kingdom.”

  The king frowns.

  “Such as?”

  “No one will be looking for her there,” she says, simply. “Whatever problem they have with Bianca is likely a problem with Voravia, not with the girl herself. Exploding a building in Griskold may be considerably less tempting to them.”

  The king looks back at us, still frowning.

  “We’ve been close allies for several hundred years, Your Highness,” I say quickly. “I spoke with Prince Julian himself about the matter, and he agrees that the risk to the Kingdom of Griskold is both minimal and happily taken on to ensure the princess’ safety.”

  Beckett and I aren’t royalty. Technically, I’m 247th in line for the Griskoldian throne, and he’s 266th, but we’re merely noble, not royal.

  Merely. It’s still a pretty good life, not to mention we served in the elite Royal Griskold Guard with the Prince himself, so we both have a direct line to the palace should we need one.

  “Hmmmm,” the king murmurs, looking at his wife, stroking his mustache with two fingers.

  Queen Madeleine turns to us.

  “We’ll need to discuss this in private with our advisors,” she says, perfectly civil and gracious. “Would you mind giving a few hours to mull over our options and decide how to best alleviate this threat to our daughter’s safety?”

  “Of course,” I say, as Beckett and I both stand, buttoning our suit jackets at the same time. “Please take all the time you need, Your Majesty.”

  The king and queen both stand, extending their hands across the table, and we shake them firmly.

  “Make yourselves at home as well as possible,” she continues. “We’ll send for you shortly.”

  And with that, we’re dismissed.

  “Where do you think she is?” Beckett asks.

  We’re both sitting in some sort of waiting area, on matching chairs, a tasteful coffee table piled with magazines in front of us. It feels more like I’m visiting the dentist than the top-secret bunker of Voravia’s government, and it’s a little strange.

  “Not here,” I say.

  Beckett sighs, putting his hand behind his head. His feet are already on the coffee table, but even if someone came in right now, they wouldn’t mind because it’s Beckett.

  “They wouldn’t put her with the rest of the government right now,” I say. “I’m sure she’s off at a separate secure location, being guarded by—”

  “I heard you two were here,” a female voice says, and my heart leaps in my chest.

  Bianca comes around a corner, smiling at us, and plops down on a third chair. Shadowing her are two big, hulking, serious men, so of course I can’t help but size them up.

  The first one I could take in a fight, easy, even though he might be an inch or two taller than me. He’s got the look of a man who could be surprised easily. The second one might be more of a challenge.

  But then again, I’m damn good at fighting.

  “At your service, Princess,” I say with a grin.

  She blushes, faintly. It’s a very good look on her.

  “We were just discussing whether you were here,” Beckett says, taking his feet off the table.

  She sits at a third chair, her movements sensual and graceful in a way I’ve never seen before: the curve of her neck, the slope of her breasts, the slight movement of her hips.

  Bianca’s beautiful and innocent and wicked and wide-eyed all at once, and the combination’s fucking intoxicating. I know she’s a virtually untouched virgin — she’s the princess of Voravia, of course she is — but something about her gives me the notion that if someone could get her into bed, she’d be fucking incredible.

  The raw, rough part of me wants to see her on her back, hands clutching the sheets as she moans my name, wants to see her perfect red lips stretched around my cock as her blue eyes water, looking up at me.

  The deepest, roughest part of me wonders what it would be like to fuck her on her hands and knees, grabbing a handful of her hair, Beckett in front of her pumping himself into her—

  “What did you decide?” she teases gently, her eyes dancing as she looks from one of us to the other, shaking me out of my stupid daydream.

  Stop it, I tell myself sternly. You can’t share Bianca.

  She’s not the kind of girl you could share, the kind of girl who would let you.

  “Does it matter what we decided?” Beckett asks, grinning.

  She smirks, her eyes flicking to me.

  “Sounds like you decided I wasn’t,” she says.

  “That’s what Kieran thought,” Beckett volunteers.

  “I just thought it was unlikely,” I say, tearing my eyes away from her perfect form.

  Even though she’s just wearing gray slacks and a sweater, it doesn’t stop me from imagining every perfect curve of her body underneath, and it’s been a few weeks since I saw her last. I’m hard as fuck and trying desperately to hide it.

  “Well, surprise,” she says, eyes dancing. “Does one of you win a bet or anything?”

  As she says it, her tongue flicks along the underside of her top lip, and I’m frozen for a split second.

  “Too bad we hadn’t gotten that far,” Beckett says, still grinning. “What should we bet on next time, huh? Loser has to wear a bright pink top hat for a week?”

  I scowl. Most of the time I’m more amused than anyone by Beckett, but not now. Not when Bianca’s life is in danger, not to mention he’s currently charming her half to death while I sit here like a black cloud.

  “You want to make bets about Princess Bianca’s safety?” I ask, leveling a glare at him.

  Bianca turns faintly pink, her cheeks flushing slightly.

  “I’m not making bets on her safety,” he says, leaning forward. “I’m just trying to make things—”

  A door opens, cutting him off, and a young woman wearing a neat suit steps through it, bowing slightly to the princess, then nodding at both of us.

  “The King and Queen will see you again,” she says, and my stomach tightens.

  Chapter Four

  Bianca

  I shift the handle of the suitcase in my hand, shoulder aching as Kieran opens the huge wooden door with an ancient brass key.

  Cabin. They said this place was a cabin, and while it’s definitely not a mansion or a palace, it’s considerably fancier and larger than any other cabin I’ve ever seen.

  “Lock rusts sometimes,” Kieran mutters. “I’ve gotta just give it a little—”

  With a heavy thunk, the key finally turns. Moments later, he’s pushing the door open.

  “There we go,” he says, mostly to himself.

  To my left, Beckett makes a sweeping gesture with one hand, and I step over the threshold, heavy suitcase still in hand. Beckett follows.


  The moment the door shuts behind me, Kieran takes my suitcase, lifting it like it’s nothing.

  “Sorry about that,” he says, his voice still low, all silk and whiskey. “You couldn’t look like you were getting special treatment.”

  I take a deep breath, then let it out, circling my shoulder around as I wonder what the hell I put in there.

  “Does that mean we’re done with these?” I ask, pointing at the blonde wig on my head.

  “God yes,” Beckett says, and pulls a black wig from his own head, tossing it on a sheet-covered couch. “Jesus, it looked like I had some sort of skunk on my head, I don’t even know where we got—”

  “We should have checked the windows first, you know,” Kieran says, blue eyes looking skyward as he rubs one hand against his stubble. “Make sure there are no listening devices, none of them are open, that sort of thing.”

  He looks back down, piercing me with those ice-blue eyes, and an involuntary shudder runs through my core. Kieran is all dark hair, blue eyes, sharp cheekbones, and thick ropy muscles that look like they’ve been cut from marble. I’ve only seen him smile a handful of times — unlike Beckett, who never stops smiling — but the way he gives me these long, heated, smoldering looks...

  ...well, it does something to me. Something deep down inside that I can’t exactly explain, but right now, under his gaze, I can already feel my cheeks reddening.

  “Relax, no one knows we’re even here,” Beckett says. “There are no listening devices, there are no drones hovering over the skylights, there’s no robot squirrels waiting to blow us all up. It’s just the three of us in the middle of the woods.”

  Kieran glowers even as he slowly takes off his ugly orange wig, and I follow suit with my long blonde one, glad to have the hot, itchy thing off my head.

  “I never said there were robotic squirrels,” he says, icy eyes still looking around the cabin. “I’m simply saying we’ve been entrusted with Princess Bianca, and we should be doing our absolute best to keep her safe from the threats to her life, threats that you and I don’t even fully understand, if we’re being fucking honest.”

  “Just because I’ve injected a little levity into the situation doesn’t mean I’m not taking it seriously,” Beckett says. “Look, we’ve spent all day traveling on crowded trains and in those horrible wigs, we’re exhausted and cranky, how about we all—”

  A loud creeeeak echoes through the hall, and we freeze. Beckett and Kieran exchange a glance, both suddenly standing up straight and nodding at each other.

  Kieran strides to the massive fireplace and grabs two pokers. He tosses one to Beckett like it’s nothing, then moves silently into the hallway the creak came from, melting into the shadows.

  “Breathe,” Beckett murmurs to me, over his shoulder.

  I take in a deep, shuddering breath, but I’m suddenly terrified. I can’t stop playing that video over and over in my head: me, in a pool of blood, dead in my own bedroom. Car crashes and train crashes and then a hyper-realistic picture of me, dead, right in front of me.

  It’s hard to shake the feeling that whoever made that video is already a couple steps ahead of us. After all, they somehow knew I was going to be watching Gentleman’s Choice that night, and they hacked into the airwaves without anyone knowing.

  And they still haven’t been caught. Voravian intelligence still has no idea how they did it, or why they did it, or what they even want — even the who did it is still purely theoretical.

  “At worst, it’s probably a mouse,” Beckett goes on, his voice low and genial. “It doesn’t matter how tightly you seal up a place. They’re bound to get into a house this old, and when we came in we probably freaked them out pretty bad.”

  I clear my throat, taking another deep breath. Trying not to sound scared.

  “Right,” I murmur. “That was mice.”

  “You’re not afraid of those, are you?”

  I can’t help but notice that even though his voice is light and teasing, his thick knuckles are white on the fireplace poker, his shoulders tight.

  He’s trying to calm me down, I think.

  “Mice? Of course not,” I say. “I mean, I don’t really like them, and I’d prefer they not live in my house, but...”

  I trail off to the sound of a door shutting, then another opening. Then shutting.

  “Kieran’s checking all the rooms,” Beckett explains. “Standard procedure. Means he didn’t find anything.”

  His knuckles are still white, though, and for a moment we just listen to doors opening and shutting, both of us silent.

  Finally, there are loud, echoing footsteps, and Kieran appears again.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Probably just the wind, or a tree branch. This place is a few hundred years old, we’re never gonna know the truth.”

  Beckett’s hand gripping the poker relaxes too.

  “All right,” he says, looking from Kieran to me and back. “Welcome to our new, temporary home sweet home.”

  A few hours later, I’m soaking in the bathtub while the two men make dinner. The provisions are a bit scarce — we’ll mostly have to go into the village ourselves to stock up, so we don’t arouse suspicion by having things brought to us — but I’ve been promised something delicious, and since they told me to go relax, I’m just following orders.

  Even though this ‘cabin’ was built a few hundred years ago, it’s been in fairly regular use. That means it’s got electricity and hot water — solar panels on the roof, since Griskold is very eco-conscious — plus all modern appliances, furnishings, etc.

  Well, relatively modern. I’m pretty sure that my bathroom is from no later than the 1960s, judging by the hunting-themed wallpaper that shows a panorama of bears, elk, trees, and assorted other wildlife. Everything in here seems a bit dated, though it’s all in perfect condition.

  And I’m not complaining. Not in a million years. I’m safe and sound, soaking in a cast-iron tub with lavender-scented bubble bath while two strong, strapping, sexy men make me dinner.

  It’s almost enough to make a girl forget the threats to her life.

  I sigh at myself, sinking further into the hot, bubbly water.

  There are no exploding robot squirrels, I remind myself. Just Kieran and Beckett, arguing over how to defrost filet mignon the best way.

  I imagine the two of them, both in the large kitchen. Probably talking about something or other, who knows — laughing at some story from the past, maybe figuring out what we’re going to do tomorrow.

  Maybe arguing over how to make sauce.

  The two of them share everything. They grew up together, and then they were in the Royal Griskold Guard together. Since the Griskold guard is world-renowned for being an elite military unit, they were sent off to some of the most dangerous places in the world together, and they fought together.

  And now they’re back, working together on behalf of the Kingdom of Griskold, and the two soldiers are notorious playboys. I once read Beckett brag that he’s had over a hundred women, and that’s just the ones he can remember.

  I’ve also heard that they do that together. I don’t think they know that I know that rumor — both Beckett and Kieran treat me like I’m a totally sweet, innocent virgin who’d blush at the first mention that sex exists.

  I may be a virgin, but I know all about those rumors, even if I’m not supposed to. Hell, I looked up those rumors out of sheer curiosity, and honestly? I was surprised at the number of women who were willing to confess to sleeping with both of them at once — and those were just the ones who wanted their names in the tabloids.

  Go deeper into the internet, and that’s where the real dirt is. That’s where I found anonymous account after anonymous account of threesomes, going into full detail.

  I should have stopped reading. I shouldn’t have ever started, because Kieran and Beckett quickly became friends of mine after we met, and it feels wrong to know such dirty stuff about them. Especially now, when they’ve both volunteered their lives to
keep me safe, I feel a little guilty knowing these deeply personal, intimate accounts of their sex lives.

  I shift slightly in the warm water, one hand skimming down my body, the rush of water past my nipples making them stiffen slightly.

  I read those accounts over and over. I think I memorized parts of the really dirty ones, even though I felt guilty for reading them and — honestly — a little jealous. I know I could never do any of the things those women described, but... I can think about them, can’t I?

  I rest one hand on the inside of my thigh, pussy already pulsing with desire even as I wish I weren’t, legs already spread apart, mind already drifting back to the anonymous account I read the most... and imagined myself in the most, despite everything.

  And I can’t help but imagine myself in there again, in Beckett’s bed as he kisses my throat, my legs already wrapped around him, seated. Behind me Kieran is pinching one nipple, his other hand moving down my body to rub my clit, his fingers playing with my pussy lips

  In the bath, I hold my breath. I can hear them clanking around in the kitchen, and I feel a little bad about what I’m doing yet again.

  Gently, underwater, I start rubbing myself, my finger circling my clit slowly, letting the feeling build as I bite my lip, leaning back onto the cool edge of the tub.

  I think about the fantasy, about them getting a little rougher. Now Beckett’s rubbing my clit as Kieran grinds his thick, rock-hard erection against my back, his fingers moving down the cleft between my buttocks, skimming past my tight back hole.

  I gasp out loud. It’s just a little, but the sound echoes off the patterned tile of the bathroom, and I clench my teeth together harder, because I need to be quiet, but it’s hard.

  Fantasy-Kieran’s fingers are inside me now, hard, thick, and calloused, his other hand pinching my nipple hard as I moan into Beckett’s mouth. He adds a second and a third, filling me more, and I can feel myself stretch to accommodate him as Beckett’s finger work my clit, driving me to higher and higher points of ecstasy.