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“They got you,” Oscar says, shrugging. “It happens. Give it time. Try again.”
Alex laughs, but still, he reaches in and plucks up something deep down in his chest. Something shaped not like Claremont but Diaz—no better, no worse, just different.
Henry gets his own room in the White House while he’s in. The crown spared him for two nights before he returns to England for his own damage control tour. Once again, they’re lucky to have Catherine back in the game; Alex doubts the queen would have been so generous.
This particularly is what makes it a little funny that Henry’s room—the customary quarters for royal guests—is called the Queen’s Bedroom.
“It’s quite… aggressively pink, innit?” Henry mutters sleepily.
The room is, really, aggressively pink, done up in the Federal style with pink walls and rose-covered rugs and bedding, pink upholstery on everything from the chairs and settee in the sitting area to the canopy on the four-poster bed.
Henry’s agreed to sleep in the room rather than Alex’s “because I respect your mother,” as if every person who had a hand in raising Alex has not read in graphic detail the things they get up to when they share a bed. Alex has no such hang-ups and enjoys Henry’s half-hearted grumblings when he sneaks in from the East Bedroom right down the hall.
They’ve woken up half-naked and warm, tucked in tight while the first autumn chill creeps in under the lacy curtains. Humming low in his chest, Alex presses the length of his bodyagainst Henry’s under the blankets, his back to Henry’s chest, the swell of his ass against—
“Argh, hello,” Henry mumbles, his hips hitching at the contact. Henry can’t see his face, but Alex smiles anyway.
“Morning,” Alex says. He gives his ass a little wiggle.
“Time’s it?”
“Seven thirty-two.”
“Plane in two hours.”
Alex makes a small sound in the back of his throat and turns over, finding Henry’s face soft and close, eyes only half-open. “You sure you don’t need me to come with you?”
Henry shakes his head without picking it up from the pillow, so his cheek squishes against it. It’s cute. “You’re not the one who slagged off the crown and your own family in the emails that everybody in the world has read. I’ve got to handle that on my own before you come back over.”
“That’s fair,” Alex says. “But soon?”
Henry’s mouth tugs into a smile. “Absolutely. You’ve got the royal suitor photos to take, the Christmas cards to sign… Oh, I wonder if they’ll have you do a line of skincare products like Martha—”
“Stop,” Alex groans, poking him in the ribs. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I’m enjoying it the perfect amount,” Henry says. “But, in all seriousness, it’s… frightening but a bit nice. To do this on my own. I’ve not gotten to do that much, well, ever.”
“Yeah,” Alex says. “I’m proud of you.”
“Ew,” Henry says in a flat American accent, and he laughs and Alex throws an elbow.
Henry’s pulling him and kissing him, sandy hair on a pink bedspread, long lashes and long legs and blue eyes, eleganthands pinning his wrists to the mattress. It’s like everything he’s ever loved about Henry in a moment, in a laugh, in the way he shivers, in the confident roll of his spine, in happy, unfettered sex in the well-furnished eye of a storm.
Today, Henry goes back to London. Today, Alex goes back to the campaign trail. They have to figure out how to do this for real now, how to love each other in plain sight. Alex thinks they’re up for it.
FIFTEEN
nearly four weeks later
“Let me just get this hair, love.”
“Mum.”
“Soz, am I embarrassing you?” Catherine says, her glasses on the tip of her nose as she rearranges Henry’s thick hair. “You’ll thank me when you’ve not got a great cowlick in your official portrait.”
Alex has to admit, the royal photographer is being exceedingly patient about the whole thing, especially considering they waffled through three different locations—Kensington Gardens, a stuffy Buckingham Palace library, the courtyard of Hampton Court Palace—before they decided to screw it all for a bench in a locked-down Hyde Park.
(“Like a common vagrant?” Queen Mary asked.
