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“I’m fucking fantastic at peanut butter and jelly.” He narrowed his eyes at her, folding his arms across his chest and making his biceps bulge. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’m sure both of us are about to be glad I’m not.” She wandered over to the pantry and opened it up. “Where is the staff?”
The security staff and handful of others were usually there, even if she only rarely spotted them. She wasn’t sure if it was Dom’s orders or just the trappings of royalty that she’d have to get used to, knowing she was being watched even in a room by herself.
“Kitchen staff has the morning off.”
She grabbed a canister of flour and looked through the rest of the staples for what she needed. “And security?”
“They’re about.” He shrugged, seemingly satisfied to watch her as she dug through the pantry.
“And that’s all you have to say about that.” Had she expected more detail because they’d slept together? A small part of her had. Time to squash that expectation, and all expectations about Dom. “You know, all of this controlling-the-information flow is going to get your ass in hot water one of these days.”
There was that grin, the one that made her stomach fall to her knees. “Are you going to lecture me or help us make something to go with my fantastic scrambled eggs?”
“Oh, forgive me, Chef Dom.” She set the flour, salt, and a few other staples on the island. “Pancakes or waffles?”
He crossed to the island and looked through her gathered ingredients. “Are there chocolate chips?”
“Really?” She raised herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed him. It was supposed to be a brief, silly, you-make-me-laugh kind of kiss, but by the time he broke it off and stepped back, she’d forgotten all of that and maybe her name and age, too. “Are there cameras in here?”
He nodded, his gaze locked on her kiss-swollen lips as his palms glided from her waist to the curve of her hips. God, this man had her thinking about saying fuck it and seeing if t
hey could fit in the narrow pantry. A quick glance confirmed that wasn’t going to happen.
“I fucking hate your commitment to security.” She sighed.
“I’m beginning to agree.” He kissed his way down her throat, stopping at that sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder that turned off her brain with the efficiency of flicking a switch. A light nip, and he backed away. “Okay, pancakes first, then back up to my room, where cameras are banned, and then I will deliver on the promise I made.”
“Oh, yeah, which one was that?”
He swept her hair back, exposing her ear, and leaned in close. “To make you scream my name while your toes curl.”
A shiver worked its way from her earlobe to deep in her core, and she clenched her thighs together. “We better cook fast.”
The corner diner near Dylan’s in Harbor City that put fresh pancakes on the table in less than five minutes wasn’t going to have a thing on her. She glanced at the clock as the minute hand ticked forward.
…
Dom demolished most of the eggs and the stack of pancakes with their buttery-crispy edges without tasting a single one. It was hard to when he’d spent the past hour in the same room as Elle, who was dressed in one of his shirts and nothing else. He’d discovered that tidbit when she’d bent over to get the skillet for the pancakes and the shirt had risen high enough to show the bottom curve of her bare ass. It seemed sporting a boner for this long killed his sense of taste.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had breakfast with someone he’d slept with. Shit, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to have breakfast with someone after a night spent twisting the sheets.
She stabbed a piece of pancake and used it to sop up the last of the swirl of maple syrup on her plate. She pointed the fork at him, syrup dripping from the pancake square impaled on its tines. “I’ve never seen someone eat pancakes that fast.”
“You make pancakes for a lot of people?” he asked, only the fact that he already knew the answer keeping him from bending his fork in half in insane and misplaced jealousy at the possibility.
“No.” The light in her big, brown eyes dimmed. “You’re the first.”
Her obvious sadness was a punch in the gut. She’d been abandoned, that’s what she’d said over and over since they’d gotten to the chalet. He knew her file better than his company’s balance sheet—and he could recite that from memory. She’d made the best of a shitty situation, but she’d isolated herself. Ten years of lies, of always looking over her shoulder… It had to have marked her even if she hadn’t really been alone, not one single moment.
Guilt morphed the pancakes in his stomach, turning them from fluffy lightness into cement bricks. Clever, determined, snarky, and sexy as hell, she was going to make one hell of a queen, he had to admit, even if she was the woman who made him wish the monarchy didn’t exist. For almost ten years, he’d been her invisible shadow, celebrating her successes and mourning her losses from the sidelines as he’d watched in awe while she made a place for herself in a strange new world.
In a parallel world where the coup had never happened and his being a commoner didn’t matter, things might have turned out differently. Falling in love with her wasn’t a possibility, but Dom wasn’t sure he had the choice. What he did have a choice about was telling her the truth—or at least as much of it as he could.
“Elle, I need to tell you something.”
She flashed a sassy grin, put her fork on her now-empty plate, and leaned forward, giving him enough of a view of her perfect tits to make his brain short-circuit. “Is it that you’re madly in love with me and you want to run away to a private island where we’ll live out our days naked and happy?”
