With a slow exhale, he grips my hip as he pushes himself inside me from the side. He’s bare and thick and long as he sinks in, this slow, decadent thrust.

“So good,” he murmurs, his voice throaty with need. “So beautiful.”

I take in a deep breath and try to focus on every single thing that’s happening, from head to toe, just letting it all sink in.

Like the times we’ve had sex before, I’m hit with the sad, urgent feeling that it might not happen again.

Because it feels right. It feels good, then it feels too much, then I don’t even know what I feel because all I feel is Aksel.

He’s taken over my whole world.

He’s my ruler.

I’m his subject.

I groan, stretching around his thick cock, loving how hard I can clench him. He loves it too. His breath is getting shorter, more labored, which makes me grip him even harder. I love these little sounds he makes; how undone he becomes. He goes from a man in a sharp suit to a wolf in the wild.

“Want me to go faster?’ he asks, groaning as he speaks.

“No,” I say, licking my lips. I look at him. “This is good.”

It’s better than good but other words are escaping me right now.

He nods and watches me intently as he pushes in further. His lips part as he sucks in his breath and his forehead creases in lust and awe, like he can’t believe this is happening, can’t believe how good it feels.

“Oh god,” he moans, his grip tightening on my hips, sliding up to my waist, to my breasts where he pinches my nipples. “Aurora. Fuck me. You’re so fucking perfect. You’re a dream.”

I might feel perfect right now while his cock is sliding deep within me, but I’m not a dream. I’m one hundred per cent real. I’m here. I’m living this, I’m feeling this, I’m loving this.

This is happening.

He’s watching me, watching himself, watching us, where his cock sinks into me, his shaft wet with my desire. He’s entranced by the sight, the slow push in, the slow pull out.

Look at what we do to each other.

Each rock of my hips, each thrust of his, pushes him in deeper, makes us connect like magnets. The way his abs clench as he pushes inside, the tiny beads of sweat that gather over his tanned skin, the dampness on his brow. I reach around and pull his ass toward me, wanting more, and he drives in so deep that the air leaves my lungs.

God, yes.

My head goes back again and I’m surrendering to him. He’s in me, in so deep, and I don’t ever want him to leave. This feels beyond right.

This might be the calm before the storm. This might be the storm, too. He can be both those things for me, the peace and the chaos. He can be my everything if he wants to. Even if he doesn’t.

I don’t want this to ever stop.

Something goes off inside me, a spiral in my core that’s slowly increasing, spreading, heating up. It’s going to take over me, it’s going to pull me under, and I’ve never wanted to come so badly in my life.

“Almost,” I whisper, my voice choked with my sudden hunger for him. “God, Aksel, I’m almost…”

He responds instantly.

With a throaty growl he starts pumping faster, one hand at my back to hold me in place, the other in my hair, making a fist. He’s sliding in deeper than ever, hitting me where my body is dying for release.

He brings my head forward and kisses me, quick and hot, tasting like sweat. My mouth is ravenous against his, messy, the need inside me building and building.

Please, please, please.

I want this forever.

This has always been about more than just sex.

I just can’t deny it anymore.

And then we find our rhythm, our bodies coming together in a dance. I wouldn’t say it’s effortless because he’s pounding and pounding me, working me in fevered intensity, because it is work to fuck like this. And yet there’s a sense of ease with each other, with our bodies, that I can’t describe.

Like my body was his from the start.

The bed slams back against the wall, the sheets are pulled loose, my breasts are jostling, and I hope we’re not waking the palace, but fuck it, I don’t care. Not now. Not when I’m this close.

“I’m coming,” I start to cry out but he’s quick and places the pillow over my face, muffling my ragged voice.

I bite into it, feeling the feathers between my teeth.

Then I’m twisted and crushed as the orgasm washes over me like a rogue wave, tearing me into a million directions of starlight and bliss. An explosion of floating feathers in my chest.

Sir, yes, sir.

“Fuck,” Aksel grunts as the release claims him. His rough, frantic noises, the slap of his sweat-soaked skin against mine, the creak of the bed, all fills my ears.

The pillow slips away from my face.

He lets out a low, barely-restrained moan, shoulders shaking as he comes.

I’ll never get tired of this sight.

This king brought to his knees.

The pumping slows. His grip loosens.

He collapses against the pillow, his hair damp and sticking to his brow. His eyes take me in, his breath heavy and hard.

“Give me five minutes,” he says, gasping. “And then we’ll do that again.”

Chapter 18

Aurora

March

Amelie is coming today.

I’ve been so wrapped up in Aksel over the last two weeks—literally and figuratively—that I’d completely forgotten. It wasn’t until she called me and told me her flight details a few days before that I remembered what she’d promised.

One was to come here and check on me.

Two was to get me laid.

I can’t possibly tell her that she doesn’t need to worry about that last one anymore because I’ve been having sex with Aksel as often as I can. It’s literally the best part of my day (or night, as it is), sneaking around the palace and trying to find alone time with each other. Some days it just doesn’t work out, but most days it does. We make it work, no matter how little sleep we get, no matter if it’s just a quickie in the shower or a hidden corner of the palace.

“She’s here,” Maja says from the open doorway to my bedroom. “I’ll show her to your room.”

We had Henrik go and pick her up from the airport. I probably should have gone with a sign that said Amelie on it, but the fact is, the public knows who I am now. I’m certainly not harassed when I’m out and about—Danes are far more polite than that. But they do love their royal family and I guess I’ve been accepted as one of them.

More or less.

I mean, I have seen some tabloids about me. Usually I’m just in a picture with the kids and get a one-liner about being the nanny. The more Danish that I know, the more I understand what they’re talking about and I’m not really that interesting to anyone.

But then, sometimes, there’s a strange expose on me. That’s more from the British tabloids and those Royal Rags, as they call them, media that’s completely devoted to reporting on all the juicy gossip and public events of royal families around the world.

They can be pretty merciless. I’ve seen them basically crucify Prince Viktor of Sweden and his American fiancée, and they love to hate on Prince Magnus of Norway and his old partying ways, even though he’s now married.

They have tried to go after me, just a little. They talk about the other families I’ve been a nanny for in France, they talk about how pretty I am (thank you very much), but they also talk about my slutty uniform (urgh) and how it must be hard for King Aksel to work around me. That shit bugs me the most of all. They go on to say how if Queen Helena was alive, she would have never allowed me to be hired.

That’s probably true, the more I hear about her, the real her. Aksel is still very careful when he talks about her and goes out of his way to not blame her for anything, as if her ghost is going to appear at any moment and hit him upside the head, but as I first suspected when I met him, Henrik spills the beans. Since he was her driver, he knew her pretty well and that public persona rarely matched her private one.

But it’s the public one that counts when it comes to royalty and the public still thinks she’s an angel. And since she did do a lot of good, some of it even for altruistic purposes, there’s no tarnishing her reputation.

So it’s Aksel who gets shit on and speculated on and sometimes I’m thrown into the mix. Mind you, it’s not the Danish media who is unfair to him in that way, but still.

I’m just really lucky that they haven’t been able to dig up any dirt on my end of things.

If they found out the truth about me.

If they discovered who Rory Jameson is, all of this would be over.

I really should come clean to Aksel. I should at least come clean to Amelie and start from there. But revisiting my past and the terrible horrors of who I was doesn’t seem worth it.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

Everyone deserves a fresh start.

Otherwise we’re forever shackled to the people we used to be.

Amelie herself snaps me out of my torrid thoughts.

“Bonjour!” she cries out from the door, shuffling toward me with her arms out.

“Bonjour!” I exclaim, getting out of my seat and going over to her. We embrace, bisous on each cheek.

“You look fantastic,” she says to me, motioning to my plaid skirt. “I like this whole schoolgirl thing. Very, how do you say, kinky?”

I laugh. “That’s probably not a good thing when you’re visiting a client.”

“Ah, but he is a king and you are doing so very well. You should have no trouble getting laid at all.”

I roll my eyes, stifling a guffaw. “Is that seriously why you came here?”

“No,” she says bluntly with a mild shrug. “I also came to spy. This is my first time in a royal palace, I could not pass it up.” She reaches down and tugs at my skirt in the same way that Aksel does. I raise my brow. “Now, tell me you’ll wear this out tonight.”

“If you insist.”

But, of course, before we go anywhere, I give her the informal palace tour, starting with the girl’s and Snarf Snarf, with Maja entertaining them as I enjoy a legitimate day off, then the rest of the rooms in the palace. We even pass by Nicklas in the hall, who gives me a cold nod.