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* * *
Mason was surprised. She’d not really looked at it like that before.
‘Is that when you learnt to cook?’
‘I had to! My dad could burn water.’
She could see that he wanted to ask more, about her mum, about her childhood, but she didn’t want that. Not now. Not tonight. Instead, seeing that he’d finished with his plate of food, she went to her coat and retrieved the small gift.
‘For you.’ She presented it to him with a shrug, hated that it gave away her insecurity. To her surprise, his entire face lit up and stole her breath.
‘A present? For me?’ he asked, seemingly incredulous, and his reaction was completely at odds with the little package wrapped in cheap paper.
‘I wasn’t really sure what to get the Prince who has everything, but it’s just a small thing.’
He eyed it with a reverence completely unnecessary for the small gift she’d chosen, but instead of opening it he simply held it in his hands, looking not at it, but at her. The smile he wore was the kind of smile that couldn’t be faked. Not because it wasn’t bright enough, or didn’t reach his eyes, which it did. But because of how it made her feel. Something tight in her chest unfurled for the first time since she’d seen the present she was going to buy him. Something oddly like excitement. And she couldn’t help but allow it to pull at the edges of her own smile.
* * *
Danyl brought it up between them and studied the shape with a rather surprising amount of concentration, given that his mind was very much on unwrapping Mason, rather than the present. His fingers traced the sides of the small rectangle-shaped box and frowned. He shook it, and her hand reached out to gentle his movements. ‘Not too hard,’ she said, laughing.
He was trying to decide whether the situation required careful release of the tape holding the colourful paper together, or if he could give in to the urge to tear it all away to reveal what she had brought him. He looked up and found her smiling as if she’d read his mind.
‘Have at it, Your Highness.’
Impatience and a slightly childish glee filled him, and for possibly the first time in his life he did exactly what he was told. He tore away the paper, and pried open the thin card box, producing an object surrounded by bubble wrap.
This time he gently peeled back the last of the tape to reveal something that stole his breath.
It was a chess piece. A black-painted, hand-carved wooden Knight.
‘I know it doesn’t match the exquisite set you have...’ she started apologetically.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said, cutting in. And it was. It wasn’t just the piece, or the fact that now he could finally play a game of chess after nearly four years... There was a thought drifting somewhere in his mind, deeply layered between incredulity and denial...it whispered to him, suggesting that this was what his father had meant to teach him. That it was Mason, not the Knight, that he couldn’t rule his country without.
‘I’m speechless,’ he said honestly.
‘Perfect,’ she replied, the delight shining in her eyes as clear as the North Star.
‘Now that we have a complete set, perhaps I can teach you how to play. But I have to warn you—it might take a really, really long time,’ Danyl said, unable to stop the smile pulling at the edges of his mouth.
‘How long?’ she asked as if they were both sharing the same joke, the same thought.
‘Hours. Days even. Maybe more. Are you okay with that?’
‘I think I’m okay with that.’
Big brown eyes looked up at him, unfathomable rich coffee that made him want to lick his lips. He could see the battle warring in them, the way he could feel it himself.
‘We could start now...’ he said, everything in him screaming no as the suggestion took him further away from what he really wanted. He got up from the couch and went over to the chess board, placing the Knight in its new place. He needed something to do with his hands to prevent himself from reaching for her.
‘What if I thought there was something else we could be doing instead?’ she asked. She was the devil, tempting him with the very thing he wanted, so, so much. ‘And if there was...’ she said continuing with short little sentences that spoke volumes, ‘if there was...then I should
say that...’ she was avoiding his gaze, a blush that rose beneath his skin, still sun-kissed after months in wintry New York, ‘that I’ve never done this before.’
* * *
There. She’d said it. She’d had to force the words out through embarrassment and an odd mixture of shame, because she had never felt ashamed of being a virgin before. It wasn’t really shame, she thought, struggling for the right word. It was more regret, because surely this would be the moment that the Prince finally woke up and realised that he shouldn’t be playing with a girl that was effectively nothing more than a glorified stable hand. This was the moment that he would laugh, tell her that she shouldn’t be playing dress up as an adult, that he didn’t like silly virgins.
