“Sounds exhausting,” Eddie breathed.
“Exactly,” I admitted.
“Enough,” Chris cut in, wagging a finger.“Bryce came here to forget.You are not allowed to talk about work.”
Before I could reply, Eddie’s phone buzzed against the table.He glanced at it and let out a squeal that startled the nearest booth.“Oh my God, Chris!My manager just texted—I’ve got the cover of Esquire!”
Chris gasped, eyes wide.“UK Esquire or American?”
“The bloody American Esquire!”Eddie cried, throwing his arms around him.
They hugged, already off into delighted speculation—photographers, stylists, what to wear when you were the one everyone else would be dressing.
In the middle of their whirl, Arthur’s hand slipped gently over mine on the table.I froze, caught between instinct and desire.Then I looked straight into his eyes.The weight of his hand on mine seemed both feather-light and impossibly heavy.I could have sworn my pulse had relocated from my wrist to the exact place our skin touched.
This was absurd.I was Bryce Lewis—career diplomat, survivor of more late-night negotiations than I cared to count, a man who’d dined with monarchs and presidents and made it through all of them without flinching.I’d stared down political adversaries with the entire world watching, and I’d won more often than not.Yet here, in a narrow London bar beneath the painted gaze of David Bowie and a flickering disco ball, one prince had me trembling like a schoolboy who’d just been noticed for the very first time.
I forced myself to breathe slowly, though the effort felt like trying to tame a wild animal.My eyes met his—clear, unblinking, impossibly steady—and in that gaze was the memory of Strathmore, of the kiss that never happened.The air between us still buzzed with that unfinished moment, and now more than ever I wanted to taste him.
Then I noticed it.The faint flush just above the opening of his shirt collar, warmth spreading across his skin.My heart stuttered.Was it the heat of the bar?Or had I unravelled his composure the way he unravelled mine?
He ran his tongue across his lower lip—soft, full, unbearably inviting—and my body answered with a sharp tug low in my belly.My knee locked against his under the table, as if my body had decided it was done waiting for my permission.
His voice came low, a whisper meant only for me.“I wish we could be alone.”
The words hit like voltage, rattling through me, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.Then, more fragile, his tone cracking despite his poise: “I rarely meet a man who intrigues me as much as you do.”
My breath caught altogether.A frozen beat, then a gasp of air, as though I’d been underwater and only now broken the surface.I inhaled, then exhaled, the sound too loud in my ears.And just when I might have leaned in, lips meeting his in reckless abandon, Chris’s voice cut through the moment.
“There’s a marvellous underground club with no name over by the Savoy,” he announced grandly to Eddie, as though unveiling a hidden treasure.
Eddie laughed, then tossed his phone into his pocket.“Then let’s go.God forbid we miss a night like this.”
He rose in one graceful motion, Chris bounding after him, both of them practically humming with conspiratorial glee.Their goodbyes were casual on the surface, but their eyes flicked knowingly between Arthur and me.They weren’t just leaving—they were gifting us privacy.
And then, in a flurry of laughter, they were gone.
The room seemed to change temperature in their absence, the edges of sound dimming until only the music and my heartbeat remained.Arthur turned back to me slowly, his expression unreadable—until his hand lifted and brushed along my jawline.
My whole body quaked at the touch.The ambassador, the diplomat, the man of practised restraint—he vanished.What remained was someone stripped down to desire, trembling with it.
Every hesitation dissolved.I wanted this.Wanted him.It had been so long since I’d let myself want any man at all, let alone so fiercely.Arthur wasn’t just a prince.In that moment, he was a man—stunning, magnetic, and achingly close.
His thumb traced my cheekbone, and I nearly leaned into it like a supplicant.My breath hitched.Arthur must have felt it, because his smile curved with the tiniest edge of triumph.
The clink of glass pulled me back: the server, suddenly at our side, his tray balanced like nothing in the world was at stake.
“Shall we have the check?”Arthur asked smoothly, his hand retreating as though nothing had happened.
“Yes, sir,” the server replied, vanishing again.
The loss of his touch left me reeling, but the echo remained, as though his fingers had branded my skin.
When we were alone once more, he leaned in, his voice calm, certain.“You’re coming home with me.”
I should have resisted.I should have thought of the cables I’d be expected to read before dawn, the security protocols I was meant to uphold, the fine line between personal and professional I’d sworn to walk.
But the pull of him was stronger than all of it.Inevitability wrapped around me like a current, dragging me where I already longed to go.
