Royal Rock:A Bad Boy Royal Romance(12)

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Come on. Let me show you."

We climbed out of the car and began to walk down a narrow alley.







"Wait," she called. "Hold on. We should wait for the security detail to find us."

I waved her off and kept moving. I heard her run to catch up, and she walked close behind me.

The alleyway ended in a large, dusty courtyard. It was closed in on most  sides by buildings all around it. In the center of the courtyard was a  large, round fountain.

I walked up to the fountain and sat down on the rim. Bryce walked toward me cautiously.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"West Stehen," I said. "Well, on the fringes. This is one of my favorite spots in the city."

"Why did we have to lose the security to come here?"

I gestured for her to sit. "Come on, sit down. I'm not going to hurt you."

She sighed and sat down. "Now, tell me."

"When you live in the public eye, there are very few truly private  spaces left. Even my apartment feels public sometimes. But this is one  of the last places in the whole city I can go to that nobody knows  about. If I brought them, they would ruin it."

She nodded and put her fingers in the water. "Why this place?" she asked.

"I used to live near here. Back before I was king, I'd come here sometimes just to get away from the shit. I like it here."

She nodded. "It's nice. Quiet."

"Quiet, sure, but not nice." The fountain was crumbling and hardly  working anymore, and there was trash littering the edges of the  courtyard.

"Okay, fine. Not nice. But I can see why you'd like it."

"It's one of the last real places left for me," I said softly. "Maybe that sounds stupid, but I wanted to bring you here."

She shifted her weight toward me. "Got any change?"

I grinned. "Sure. Need me to buy you something?"

"No. Come on, hand it over."

I fished a few coins from my pocket. She took them and tossed them into the fountain.

"What did you wish for?" I asked.

"Can't say. Otherwise it won't come true."

I tossed a few coins in and then stroked my chin. "I don't know what to wish for."

"Better hurry. The magic doesn't last."

"I wish that you'd finally let me spread your legs and taste that pussy."

She blushed and looked away. "How'd I know you'd say that?"

"Because you know what's on my mind." I reached out toward her and  pulled her chin toward me. "We both know what I want. And we both know  what you need."

"What do I need?"

"You need to taste me. Ever since I whispered in your ear, you've been  thinking about what it would feel like to have me against your lips."

"Not true," she whispered, but her body said differently.

"Liar," I said softly. "You know it's a crime to lie to the king?"

"You're not my king."

I moved closer to her, still holding her chin. She didn't move, her eyes locked on mine. "Maybe not yet."

"And how do you think you'll become my king?" she asked.

"First, I'm going to kiss you, and then I'm going to make you come so  hard you forget where you're from. I'll worry about the details later."

She smiled. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." I pulled her against me and kissed her hard.

She didn't fight. She wrapped her arms around me and I pulled her  against me, our lips pressed together. Her taste flooded my mind and my  mouth, every inch of her like flames against my skin.

It was exactly what I wanted. Her lips were soft and starving against  mine, and she let out a soft moan as my hands spread her legs open. She  didn't fight me, and I knew she was mine to do with whatever I wanted.

I needed to taste her, to feel her. I wanted to press myself deep inside  her tight pussy and bite her lip. I wanted to fuck her in the shadow of  the crumbling fountain, the last place I felt at home.

Instead, as I continued to kiss her, our tongues touching, my phone began to ring.

It rang and rang and then stopped. We kept kissing. It began to ring again.

Finally, she pulled back. "Get it," she said. "It could be a national emergency."

"It's always a fucking emergency," I said. "And right now, I'm too fucking hard to do anything but feel you."

She bit her lip and shook her head. "Answer it."

I sighed, pulled my phone from my pocket, and answered it.

"Yes?" I said.

It was Al, and he sounded serious.

"Your Highness, there was an attack at the east Stehen rail station.  Reports say two dead, many wounded. We need to bring you home."







My jaw went tight. "Very well. Meet me at first and Hohle." I hung the phone up.

"What's wrong?" Bryce asked.

"We have to go."

"National emergency?"

I stood up, sighing. "For once, yes."

She stood, worried. "Is everything okay?"

"It will be. I promise." We headed back to the car and got in. I started  the engine and drove to the intersection. My security detail was  already there and waiting.

We headed back to the castle in tense silence. I hated that we were  interrupted, but I hated even more that those bastard rebels would start  killing civilians in Stehen.

It had only been a matter of time. Their brutal tactics could work only  so well so far from the capital city. They were butchers and thieves,  and they would pay dearly for this.

I was going to kill every last rebel I could get my hands on. Those bastards were going to feel my retribution.





13





BRYCE





I couldn't believe I kissed the king.

I looked at myself in my bathroom mirror, my mind reeling. We got back  to the castle not too long ago, and although I could tell something had  happened, nobody was telling me what was going on. It was probably some  obscure Starklandian crisis I wouldn't care about, but still.

I couldn't believe I kissed Trip. I kept telling myself over and over  that I wasn't going to fall for his shit, but the second he actually  pulled me against him, I couldn't resist. I should have known better  than to put myself in that position at all, but I couldn't help myself.

I was beginning to see more in Trip than just a bad boy king. He wasn't  just a player and a partier. He seemed to genuinely care about his  subjects, and I was impressed with their social welfare programs. We  didn't care that much about people back in America.

Then there was that fountain. Of everything Trip had shown me so far,  that was the most real. Not just because it was rundown, but that  helped. No, it was because of how small it was and how out of the way it  was. I believed him when he said that he used to spend a lot of time  there.

I couldn't begin to fully understand Trip. His experience of the world  was so different than mine. Everything he said and did held a weight I  couldn't exactly fathom, completely unlike everything I did.

But he was also a regular guy, too. He was a normal person who liked  fountains and had simple taste for his personal life. Sure, he was a  king, an asshole, but I was beginning to see past that.

And those lips. My god, the way he kissed me sent chills down my spine  just thinking about it. I'd been ready to strip my clothes off right  there and let him take me. I'd been out of my mind.

I quickly left the bathroom and got into bed, pulling my laptop onto my stomach.

I did a quick news search for Stehen, and the first result surprised me.  Apparently there had been a big attack on the main rail station in the  city, and the body count was up to five people, with many more wounded.

And it had happened recently. The attack must have been the reason why  Trip had had to get back to the castle, and why he'd seemed so serious.  For a brief moment, I wondered if we were safe.

But of course we were. We were inside a giant castle with hundreds of  guards all over the place. I should have been more worried about the  people out in the city who didn't have the king's immediate protection.  Nothing bad was going to happen to me, not while Trip was around. I  didn't know why I believed that, but I did.

I continued reading more about the war with the rebels in the south.  There were a lot of articles in Starklandian and very few in English,  but what I could find was surprising.

The fighting had been going on since the old King had died, which I'd  known about. The rebels wanted democracy, and the Royal Army was  fighting back.

But I didn't know about the reports of abuses on both sides. I knew the  rebels were brutal, but so was the Royal Army. Apparently hundreds of  civilians had died already, with thousands more injured or displaced.  Many of them reported horrible things done by the Royal Army.

I sat back, biting my lip. That only made me so much more confused. On  the one hand, I was convinced that Trip genuinely cared about his people  and went out of his way to provide much-needed services to them. But on  the other, Starkland was a lot more complicated than I had realized.  There were ministers all with their own power bases and land holdings,  and they all were fighting with each other all the time. The king had to  try to keep the peace between them, but that was a pretty impossible  task.