“You’re staring,” I stammer.
“Yes.”
No denial. No embarrassment. Just a simple acknowledgment, as if being caught staring at his wife while she puts on earrings is a perfectly reasonable use of a prince’s time.
“Don’t you have a multinational preter corporation to run?”
“It can wait.”
I try to fight the smile. I lose. It spreads across my face like sunrise, and I watch it happen in the mirror, and I barely recognize the woman looking back at me because she looks...happy. Not performing-happy. Not convincing-herself-happy. Just happy, in the quiet, unshowy way that doesn’t need an audience.
A week ago I couldn’t find my toothbrush on the first morning and nearly had a meltdown in the bathroom because I didn’t know which drawers were mine and I was afraid to open the wrong one in case it contained irreplaceable personal items andI accidentally disrespected an Atlantean heirloom. I stood there in his shirt, hair a disaster, mouth tasting like sleep, and when I finally opened a drawer at random, there was a toothbrush. New. Still in the packaging. My brand.
He’d bought it before the wedding.
He’d thought about my teeth before I’d thought about my teeth, and that’s the detail that would sound absurd if I told anyone but is actually the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me.
From the kitchen, I can hear Mariano hissing.
Mariano is the fortress espresso machine. Chrome-and-steel, Italian, personally temperamental. I discovered him on our second morning and a relationship formed immediately, because apparently I can’t coexist with a coffee machine without naming it and developing an emotional bond. Back at Beans 4 U it was Barbara, the espresso machine I used to plead with every morning. “Come on, Barbara, I know you can do better than this. I believe in you.” And when she finally cooperated, I’d thank her, genuinely, like she’d done me a personal favor.
Mariano is the same, except louder and more dramatic, because he’s Italian.
Every morning I stand in the kitchen in bare feet and one of Alexei’s shirts and have a conversation with Mariano that involves a lot of gentle encouragement and occasional begging. “Please, Mariano. I pressed the button. I did everything right. Why are you doing this to me?” And when he finally produces coffee, I thank him profusely and tell him I never doubted him, which is a lie, but he doesn’t need to know that.
Alexei watches this every morning. He leans against the doorframe and watches me negotiate with the espresso machine with a look on his face that I can’t quite read but that makes my stomach flip.
I finish with the earrings and stand up, and Alexei sets his tablet down and gets out of bed, and the sight of him, barefoot, in sleep pants, his hair still messy, his chest bare, makes my brain short-circuit for a second because some part of me still can’t process that this is real. That I get to see this. The private Alexei. The one without the suit and the composure and the layers of aristocratic armor. The one who reads airport thrillers at 2 a.m. because he can see in the dark and has a weakness for plot twists.
He crosses the room and stops in front of me, and his fingers find my collar. He adjusts it. A small movement, straightening the fabric, smoothing a fold I didn’t even notice, and it’s such a domestic, husbandly thing to do that my chest aches.
“There,” he says quietly.
I rise on my toes and kiss the corner of his jaw, because I can. Because I’m his wife and I’m allowed to kiss him whenever I want, and that privilege, the intoxicating, still-surreal privilege of being able to touch the Prince of Atlantis like he’s just a man, is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.
He catches me before I can pull away. His hand curves around the back of my neck, and he kisses me properly, slow, thorough, a morning kiss that tastes like coffee and intention, and when he lets go, I’m breathless and my earrings were definitely a waste of time because my hair is now a lost cause.
“We’re going to be late,” I say against his mouth.
“I own the building.”
“That’s not...you can’t just...”
He kisses me again. This time I stop protesting.
We’re late.
Ruby says nothing when we arrive. Her silence is eloquent.
The car ride to work is something I never expected to love, but I do. It’s twenty minutes of contained, private space where the world outside the tinted windows doesn’t exist and the man driving has his hand on my knee. Just resting there. Warm and possessive, making me feel claimed and cherished in equal measure.
This morning he’s driving. He does this sometimes, dismissing Gerry with a nod and taking the wheel himself, and there’s something about watching him drive, the casual competence, how his hands look on the steering wheel, the focused ease of it, that makes me understand on a visceral level why the internet has an entire subgenre of content dedicated to men driving with one hand.
His phone buzzes in the cupholder. He glances at it. “Ruby moved the three o’clock.”
My phone buzzes too.
I glance at it. Unknown number.
