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Ilya looks at me through his light eyelashes. “Even when you’re not here?”

“Anytime, prince.”

Ilya

My father is away on another business trip with my brother, which, technically, should be my fucking problem considering I’m the heir, but oh well. I’m certainly not complaining. The fact that he’s been gone this long is the only reason I’ve been able to mess around with Kento.

Though messing around might not even be the right phrase anymore. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. I don’t know what we are. I could call it just sex, except it isn’t. We do other things too. We talk. We spend time together. Sometimes we don’t even touch each other, which feels significantly harder to explain.

I hear Alya before I see her.

She is curled into the corner of the sofa with her best friend beside her, both of them half buried under a throw blanket and a mess of magazines and whatever little desserts the staff brought them earlier.

Her friend looks up and gives me that look.

I’ve seen it a thousand times. Alya’s friend Hana, sweet and terminally susceptible to bad ideas, smiles at me like she wants to drop on my dick. I can’t really blame her.

“Ilya,” she says, “you look tired.”

“A keen observation.” I step farther into the room, flashing them my signature smile and shrugging off my jacket. Alya’s eyes sweep over me, and she relaxes when she decides I haven’t come home bleeding or half feral.

Hana tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and tilts her head at me. “We saved you cake.”

“How generous.”

My spine goes tight before I even turn around, because I know that voice too well now.

Kento is standing in the doorway behind me. His gaze isn’t on me, though. It’s on Hana.

Specifically, it’s on the way she’s looking at me.

“Um,” Alya says brightly, too brightly, already rising from the couch. “We were actually just going to go eat something else… in the kitchen.”

Hana blinks. “We were?”

“Yes.” She grabs Hana’s wrist and hauls her upright. “Come on.”

Hana looks between the three of us, confusion thick on her face. “But there’s already—”

I stare at my traitorous sister. She tiptoes past me with the tiniest apologetic smile, then mouths, sorry, except it looks suspiciously like she’s trying not to laugh.

I mouth back, traitor.

Her smile widens. Then she’s gone, dragging Hana with her before the poor girl can ask a single additional question.

I turn around slowly. Kento is still standing there, one shoulder against the doorframe now, dark eyes fixed on me. “What are you doing here?”

He clicks his tongue once. “Who was that?”

I blink at him. “My sister.”

“Don’t act clueless.”

“Alya is my sister.”

His jaw shifts. “You know who I mean.”

“Oh.” I lean one shoulder against the wall, casual even though every nerve in me is on fire. “Her friend.”