47.1
Kev
I feel like I fucked up somehow with Isabel, as if a cloud, a sense of heaviness, has descended over the car ever since I mentioned her father. Isabel has me on edge since I met her in the casino. With her, I feel like I’m perpetually making missteps.
That’s not something I do when it comes to women.
I’m a master at bedding women, leveraging my status and privilege and wealth and looks to get into their panties. Isabel should be no exception.
But I’ve somehow managed to turn things melancholy instead of light.
I’m the fuck-up prince, the irresponsible one, the man who doesn’t want to be king. I don’t do serious, so I have no idea why I’m having a remotely serious conversation with Isabel about our dead parents.
That’s fucking depressing.
It’s like, the exact opposite of what I should be doing to get in her panties.
Nathaniel taps the brakes as we head into the small village, traffic slowing the vehicle to a near crawl. A banner with colored flags stretches across the archway at the beginning of the main road through town, a cobblestone path that is routinely closed to traffic. Today, that stretch of road is crowded with pedestrians, throngs of families who are here for a summer festival.
I tap on the divider, and it goes down. “Turn right down here, Nathaniel.”
“I’ll go down and around town,” Nathaniel disagrees, shaking his head. This isn’t the first time we’ve gone into the village, and Nathaniel knows the back roads and ways to bypass traffic far better than I do.
“Do you come down here a lot?” Isabel asks, finally breaking the silence between us. I don’t know why, but I feel myself exhale with relief.
“Alex and I used to sneak out here all the time in the summer,” I say. “It used to piss off my father.”
“He didn’t want you running around with the commoners?” she asks.
“No,” I say, laughing. “It was more of an issue with security risk than anything else. He’s perpetually convinced I’m going to be assassinated.”
Isabel raises her eyebrows. “Given who you are, that’s probably a legitimate concern.”
I shrug. “He’s too protective,” I say.
She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Says the guy who went to Afghanistan?”
“I flew helicopters,” I say. “And, thanks to my father, I wasn’t able to get close to any real action.”
“There’s something to be said for staying alive – playing it safe,” Isabel says, turning to look at me finally. The corners of her mouth turn up on the edges, just slightly, but the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. Even so, the way she looks at me, her chestnut-colored eyes wide, taking the corner of her lower lip between her teeth uncertainly, sends an almost irresistible desire to kiss her ricocheting through me.
Fuck. I want to do a hell of a lot more than just kiss this girl.
“Playing it safe is boring,” I say, not wanting to take my eyes away from hers. I watch transfixed, as she takes a deep breath, her breasts rising under the thin fabric of her t-shirt, and I swear to God, that single breath makes my cock rigid.
Hell if a girl has ever been able to make my cock hard as a rock with one look, with a single inhale of breath.
Then Nathaniel clears his throat noisily, reminding me that Isabel and I aren’t the only ones in the car. “We’re here, sir,” he says. “Miss Kensington.”
Beside me, Isabel laughs, the sound light. I think it might be the best sound I’ve ever heard. “I’m not Miss Kensington,” she says. “That’s my mother. Everyone calls me Isabel.”
Nathaniel nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, ma’am is totally worse. Please never ever call me that again. I'm not that old,” she says, before turning to me. “Where are we going?”
“It's the start of the summer festival,” I say. “This is the real Venici.”
Nathaniel tails us from a respectable distance as we meander through the festival, among the throngs of families and tourists playing carnival games, listening to music, and eating traditional Venicin food.
Isabel is mostly silent, contemplative, but I watch her take everything in as she walks, pausing occasionally to talk to a vendor or run her fingers along a handmade craft being sold on one of the tables. “This version of Venici is a ton better than the palace one,” she says, turning toward me.
Behind her, someone squeezes past, pushing her into me. Her body presses up against mine, and she doesn't jump away, not immediately. Instead, she lingers a fraction of a moment too long, and when I reach for her elbows to steady her, my hands land on her waist instead. It’s completely inappropriate, touching her like this out here, in the middle of everything, even for a moment.
She looks up at me, eyes framed by dark lashes, and I know she can feel how hard I am, my body’s immediate response to her pressed against me. Rock hard seems to be my default response to anything this girl does. But in that moment, I know she wants me just as much as I want her.
Then Isabel steps away, looking down at the ground and tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously. Her cheeks are flushed, pink lightly dusting her cheekbones, and she tries to put distance between us, but the thickness of the crowd causes her to slow down. Then I'm behind her, my lips close to her ear.
“I know you could feel how hard I am for you,” I say, my voice low.
