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He bent down, furrowing his brow. “Oh, her little talk during the dance about me and you? She planned this.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Just get in,” I said.
He did, and I was blindsided by his potent scent. My alpha reared up against it, the way it always did, in the way that made me partly aroused and partly terrified. I was on high alert around Sinclair, always.
We were both in comfortable clothes for traveling, having changed after the ball, but neither of us had showered or anything. A shower would have blunted his scent at least a little.
He pulled the door closed.
The driver turned around from the front seat. “All right, we’re on our way then.”
“You knew this was the plan?” I said to him.
He didn’t say anything. He turned back around and started the car.
“Jeffers, I’m not going to forget this,” I called to him.
Jeffers, the driver, put up the partition between himself and the backseat, enclosing us together.
I leaned my head back and let out a low groan.
Sinclair fidgeted next to me.
The car took off.
I met Sinclair for the first time when we were kids. It was some big formal function of some kind, members of the peerage all gathered at the palace, but we were only six or seven, and after all the photos, they turned us out into the gardens, telling us to stay on the paths and not to get our clothes dirty.
I hadn’t been attracted to him, then, at least not in an adult way. But I remember watching him, watching the way he shoved his curls out of his face and climbed up on the rim of a fountain, balancing on one leg, showing off.
Of course, he toppled in and got soaked. Everyone laughed at him, but he convinced half of the other kids to go traipsing around in the fountain with him.
I had hung back, watching the other kids splashing around and laughing, feeling like I’d never really be part of whatever world he was in.
He was Princess Emily’s son, so he was always in the tabloids and on TV. He was famous. I remember wanting to find my way into his circle, somehow, trying to convince myself to get into the fountain with him and being too afraid of getting in trouble for getting wet.
He’d always been fearless.
I’d always been envious of that. I followed the rules.
After I presented, that was when I talked to him for the first time. It was after my coronation, the big elaborate brouhaha that had gone by like a whirlwind around me.
I found him out on a balcony at the palace, smoking a cigarette, drinking out of a bottle of imported wine.
You’re following me, he’d said.
I’d shaken my head. I hadn’t known he’d be out here. I’d stepped onto the balcony anyway.
Can I ask you a favor? he’d said.
I’d nodded, wordless.
He’d handed me the bottle of wine and started undoing his pants.
I knotted up for him right then, the first time for him. Not my first knot, because that had been when I’d presented. I’d knotted for an older alpha female, someone who was already mated—but my designation hadn’t cared, it had just scented her and a switch had flipped. This knot, for Sinclair, it was different, and I remember gasping at the sensation of it.
