Bloody fucking hell.
I’d noticed this guy across the bar, sparkling blue eyes and curly dark locks that crept out from under his backward Pokémon cap. It was hard to miss Hot Ash Ketchum, with the navy-blue button-down open in the front, revealing the definition in his abs and the slightest of happy trails.
He was disarming as fuck.
I’d already thought about him too much after seeing him at the bar with his friends.
Even as I danced with other people—some strangers I was looking to have a good time with—I kept glancing around, searching for him.
When I’d noticed my Robin mask coming loose, I snuck away to fix it really quickly. Sure enough, that was when I encountered Hot Ash Ketchum again.
He’d caught me…unmasked.
Disarmed me all over again, in the worst possible way.
Now I was really threatened.
Me, the fucking crown prince of Parlaisa, threatened by this fucking kid.
He looked like he was maybe fifteen centimeters shorter than me and barely in his twenties, if he was even that old, but he was potentially a danger to the good time I was having.
He knew I was the prince—I could tell by the way he looked at me and smiled, like he was so fucking proud of himself for catching me in disguise.
“I think this guy noticed me,” I told Frederick when I found him on the dance floor.
“What? How?”
He wore his own dark-green mask with his Peter Pan outfit, not because it was particularly befitting, but because if the paps saw my advisor, they’d know he was likely hanging with a thinly disguised prince.
“I was fixing my mask and—”
“You took it off?”
“I was in a corner, and then I saw him in my periphery and looked…”
I left out that I’d looked because of what he’d done to me earlier—how he’d fucking managed to transfix me for some reason I was still trying to wrap my thoughts around.
“Ash Ketchum,” I told him, and he searched around, noticing him on the dance floor.
“He’s by himself. I saw him earlier with that crew, Sailor Moon and Indiana Jones.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
He searched around the bar some more. “Well, they haven’t looked over here, so he must not have said anything yet.”
“Maybe I’ll make sure to keep it that way,” I muttered before slipping away.
“What are you… Oh, God.”
He knew damn well what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to have that kid out me to everyone in Parlaisa. It wasn’t like I could go make a quick costume change and head back out.
This was one of my only chances to get out of the palace and have a good time like any other damn person in the nation.
And I wasn’t about to let this kid fuck that up for me.
I navigated around a few couples dancing to the disco music playing overhead.
Ash Ketchum caught my gaze again, continuing to dance on his own.
