Prince Albert(65)

A crimson flush rises to her cheeks, and she opens her mouth but doesn’t speak.

“Don’t leave your mouth hanging open like that, luv,” I say, crossing the bathroom to shut off the water. “It only tempts me.”

I don’t wait for her to respond before I disrobe and step into the tub.

“A bath?” she asks, watching me from the door.

“Get in.”

She pads across the marble floor with light steps, and dips a foot in the water. “You should stop ordering me around.”

I wait until she sinks into the water to respond. “You should stop doing what I tell you to do.”

Belle sits on the other side of the bathtub, like she’s suddenly chaste and trying to keep something from happening between us. “What?” she asks, when she catches me watching her.

“You’re nervous.”

“This is weird.”

“You mean sitting in a tub with your stepbrother?” I ask. “What could be weird about that?”

“Stop calling yourself that.”

“I only do it because you’re so hung up on it.”

“I’m not hung up on it.”

“Sitting in the tub with my wife, then.”

Belle’s eyes widen, but the corners of her mouth curl up and she splashes me playfully with water. “I told you not to call me that, either.”

“I thought we already established you don’t do the telling here, luv.”

She laughs. “You have some major control issues.”

“I’m a prince,” I say. “What do you expect? And I already know you enjoy being told what to do, despite your protests otherwise.”

“Do not.”

“Come here.”

She smiles and arches an eyebrow. “And what if I don’t?"

"Come over here," I tell her.

It's not a question. There's no trace of a question in my tone.

She studies me for a long time before relenting, sliding across the expansive tub until she's face-to-face with me. "And?"

"Turn around."

"Why?" she asks, but she turns before I can answer. Pulling her back tightly, I press my hardness against her.

"Because I want to feel you against me." I slide my hands over her arms, across her breasts, down her stomach. When my lips hover near her neck, she tilts her head to the side, responding to my touch, and I breathe her in deeply.

"Did you just smell me?"

"No."

"You totally just smelled me. I heard you sniff."

"I like the way you smell."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

She finally relaxes in my arms, as I run my palms over her taut stomach. When she leans her head back against my chest, I sit there, holding her for a long time.

The rational part of my brain tells me I should get the hell out of this bathtub.

I should get the hell away from her.

This feels too much like something more than it can be.

I’m not this man, the one sitting in the bathtub holding a girl like this.

I’m not this man, who’s sitting here still, in one place with Belle.

I’m not this man who feels content.

"You love this place,” Belle says abruptly.

I love being here with her.

“What place?”

“This whole thing,” she says. “The summer house.”

“We all used to love it here -- Alex, especially. Now, not so much – all of her friends are in hotter cities, and there’s no club scene here.”

“We had a place on Cape Cod like this,” she says. “I mean, not like this place. It was a small summer home, my father’s first huge purchase after his company became really big. He kept it, even after he was really wealthy and could get a huge place in the Hamptons or whatever.” She pauses for a long moment before speaking again. “He was a good man. It was hard for my mother, after he died.”

“It was sudden,” I say. I looked up the stories about her father’s death, but that doesn’t mean I know how it was for her when it happened.

"It happened on a Friday night when my parents were out at dinner. He was having chest pain all afternoon. My mother had a hard time after that," she says. "She wasn't always so…political…you know. She used to be warmer than she is now."

“I think she makes my father happy,” I tell her honestly. “She seems to care about him, and that’s good for him. He wasn’t the same after my mother died."

"What was your mother like?"

"Joyful," I tell her. "She had a way of making the huge palace feel like a home. She knew everyone by name – all the staff, and the names of their kids. She knew who had an aging parent or sick child. Everyone loved her, my father most of all. The cancer took her joy away slowly. It bled the life from her. I think it did the same to my father. Until your mother came along."