His Royal Favorite (28 page)

He said it mostly to get James turned on, but James’s eyes widened as he shook his head. “No. Not without you. Being without you wasn’t freedom. Loving you is what sets me free.”

Was that how it felt, for him? Ben knew he didn’t feel freer now that he was with James. No, he was bound in countless ways that would have horrified him, once upon a time. But he only knew that what he felt for James, what he had with him, outweighed even the sweetness of independence. “I love you too.”

James responded by pulling him down for a kiss.

Let them film. Let them watch
, Ben thought.
It doesn’t matter any longer.

Embracing James without the crushing weight of the crown upon them both: yes, that was what freedom truly meant.

They didn’t stay out terribly late. James could not be coerced into dancing to anything but the slow songs, and he said the only way the meeting with the archbishop could be any worse would be if he had to do it hungover. Besides, the sight of James dressed up like that—the feel of him against Ben’s body as they danced—the martini-flavored kisses—

If Ben couldn’t actually take James against the wall of the club, he needed to get them back home as soon as possible.

“I wonder what the headlines will be tomorrow,” James said blithely during the sedan ride home—as though his hand wasn’t on Ben’s cock, his thumb teasing at the ridge through Ben’s trousers. But he kept his voice smooth and even, lest he alert the driver to what was going on. “I predict no fewer than four uses of the word
queen
to describe me. After tomorrow at least they’ll give that up too.”

“Hmm.” That was as much as Ben could manage. He didn’t trust himself to speak another word without it turning into a helpless moan.

They made it back inside their private suite . . . barely. Ben was still shutting the door when James tackled him. They collapsed onto the floor, laughing, until groans and heavy breathing erased their laughter.

“I liked the club,” James whispered as he licked his way along Ben’s throat. “But it wasn’t as hot as my daydreams.”

“Because I didn’t take you against the wall?” Ben raised his hips, the better for James to tug down his jeans.

“Because I didn’t take you.” James stripped the pants away and tossed them over one shoulder. Now Ben lay splayed on the floor, wearing only his open shirt, cock hard and dark against his belly. “That’s what I was thinking about, all night long. How amazing it feels to be buried deep inside you. Making you beg.”

Ben hadn’t known it was possible to feel dizzy while lying down. “Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg.”

“Just get into the bedroom, so I can ravish you . . . if it just means enthusiastically.”

Ben’s laughter was cut short by James’s slap on his ass.

They fell into their bed, and their giddiness trailed off into softer smiles, into an intensity as gentle as it was powerful. Ben let James live out the role he’d taken on all night—quietly but confidently in control. Every move he made was designed to please James, or to obey him. He worshipped James’s cock with his tongue, splayed his legs wide for James’s hand and mouth, then lay back on the bed, knees folded up to his shoulders, the better for James to fuck him.

He breathed out sharply as James’s cock thrust through the tight ring of his ass, welcoming the slight pain for the greater pleasure. It felt like new, sometimes— like he’d never had another man opening him up this way, making him stretch and burn and groan. No other man but James seemed to count, not really.

“Yes,” James whispered, rocking forward from where he stood beside the bed, the muscles of his lower abdomen working as he began to thrust. “This is what I wanted.”

Ben couldn’t reply. He could only push himself up slightly, the better to see James’s thick cock sliding in and out of him. The sight excited him even more than the touch—and he would have thought that was impossible—but then James’s hand closed around Ben’s own erection, and touch conquered all. They groaned together, moved together, swore and kissed and sweated, holding out as long as they could until Ben finally came.

As he shouted out, exhilarated by the sight of it all over James’s hand and belly, James let go of his cock, planted both hands on either side of Ben’s shoulders and began pumping him, fast and frantic. Ben watched in delirious pleasure as James’s face twisted into a grimace, then into a silent, open-mouthed cry as he climaxed.

“That,” Ben panted as James still trembled atop him, “is what every man in that club tonight really wanted.”

James managed to smile. Tendrils of his hair were stuck to his face with sweat. “And that is only, always and forever, for you.”

They managed to pull themselves together enough to clean up and get into bed. James spooned around Ben this time, pressing little kisses between his shoulder blades.

“It’s going to be like this from now on,” Ben whispered. “Now that we’re free.”

For a few moments James was quiet. Then he said, “Knowing that it makes you this happy—leaving royal life, I mean—that helps me more than anything else.”

His freedom meant more to James than James’s own. Touched, Ben pressed one of James’s hands on his heart. “I don’t know if I could have done the royal thing forever. Even for very much longer. It’s better now, a lot better, but still. It’s not real life. Not the life we’re going to build together.”

“Together,” James repeated, and in that one word, Ben heard the purpose and strength James would need to go on.

***

The meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury was set for St. James’s Palace, which would have to count as neutral ground. James arranged to be there fairly early, in the hopes of having a few moments to speak to the archbishop alone. It wasn’t that he hoped to change what was about to happen. That seemed impossible. But James hoped the archbishop wouldn’t take his behavior last night as a sign of disrespect.

Unhappily, he realized that his plan had come to nothing when he walked into the designated room—chilly and formal, all china blue and mahogany—and found Richard already waiting there.

“Surprised you managed to get out of bed, with the raging hangover you must have after your wild night out.” Richard gestured toward the tabloid he’d thoughtfully put on the table. The cover featured a blurry, camera-phone shot of Ben and James in the nightclub, arms around each other on the dance floor, with the headline DANCING QUEEN.

“Hardly wild.” James found he felt more amusement than annoyance as he picked up the cover to study it. “My live-in partner and I went out, had a couple of drinks, danced together, and were home before midnight. Not the stuff scandals are made of.”

“This,” Richard said as he flicked his hand dismissively toward the paper, “is not the image people want to have of their sovereign.”

“They seem to want images of us doing absolutely anything.” Last week some papers had printed photos of Nicholas folding a paper airplane.

“Not what I meant, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Richard didn’t stand, which technically he ought to have done the moment James walked into the room. James knew Richard was just waiting to be reminded of it—hoping to turn James into the one who was defensive, the one clinging to royal protocol that would soon no longer apply to him. But James found he could let it go.

Finally, really, he could let it all go.

Richard continued, “I wish to make it clear that in pursuing a clarification from the Church, I feel I have only been doing my duty.”

“Protecting the monarchy from the horrors of homosexuality? Or any other evidence that we in the royal family are, in fact, human beings like anyone else?”

“You’re not merely gay. You’re determined to throw your lifestyle in everyone’s face, without regard for the beliefs and morals of others. You’re even carrying on with a foreigner.”

James gave him a look. “Would it be less bothersome if I were buggering the Duke of Devonshire?”

Richard breathed out in exasperation. “Still, you refuse to take it seriously.”

“That’s right. I do refuse to take your objections seriously, because they don’t deserve serious consideration. Although I will abide by the judgment of the Church, I will continue to hold my own opinion of that judgment, which is that removing me from the succession for my sexuality is bigoted, backward, and ridiculous.”

“I hope you’re going to make a better public statement than that.”

Finally James took a seat opposite Richard. “Actually, once I’m no longer in the succession, I suspect my public statements are going to become a great deal more interesting.”

Richard stared. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out.” When he was asked why he was standing aside, James would be respectful toward the Church. Beyond that, however, it was time to make his new “no limits” motto apply to far more than his relationship with Ben.

“Do you think you can threaten your way out of this?” Richard blustered.

“It’s not a threat. Just the simple fact that soon I will no longer have any reason to keep up the royal façade.” He smiled and held up the paper again. “I’ll have lots of time on my hands and I’ll need a career. Do you know, I was thinking of putting together my own drag review. Which is more my color, fuchsia or magenta?”

“You can’t be serious even now.” Richard’s face betrayed how irritated he felt—and, James thought, a hint that he wasn’t exactly proud of what he was doing here. Honestly, Richard had never struck him as the homophobic sort, more reactionary on general principles. But apparently there was no level he wouldn’t stoop to for the crown. “You’ve never understood how much hard work goes into creating a monarchy worthy of this nation.”

“I do as many royal events as anyone, far more than most.”

“It’s more than that. There’s more going on behind the scenes than you’ve ever appreciated, after a lifetime of having people clean up for you.”

This was ironic coming from Richard, who had never so much as picked up a piece of clothing from the floor in his life. But even as James prepared to say as much, the other meanings of what Richard had just said appeared in his mind, unbidden, and within the blink of an eye he knew, beyond any doubt, something he’d never once suspected before.

“You were the one who had Niall Edgerton followed,” James said. “The one who alerted MI5.”

Richard looked surprised, as well he might, but not shocked. “Well. When did you put that together?”

“Fairly recently,” James replied, hoping that his voice didn’t shake. “Why did you do it?”

“Why? A former staff member starts blackmailing a member of the royal family, and you wonder why I took action?”

“How did you know he was blackmailing me?”

The look Richard gave James then was contemptuous. “I audit our household expenses myself, from time to time. Keeps the staff on their toes. Enormous chunks of money begin vanishing from your funds? To that fly-by-night Edgerton? It was obvious what was going on, and equally obvious that you lacked the spine to take action yourself.”

James felt as though he might slide out of his chair onto the floor. Had Niall known he was being watched? Had his speed that night been less about his daredevil side, more about his attempt to get away from the mysterious figures following him? No way to know. Probably even the MI5 agents there that night couldn’t have told him. Only Niall had ever understood that, and the answer had died with him. “I thought—” James had to catch his breath. “I thought you didn’t know I was gay.”

“I didn’t. I assumed he’d covered up some other indiscretion for you while he was still in service. My own experience of the man told me he was a bounder. He couldn’t be trusted even if you had him on your secret payroll. So I alerted MI5. I protected this family, when you could not.”

The worst part of it all, James realized, was that Richard had been protecting
him
.

“What would you have done?” James said. “When Niall didn’t stop?”

“Persons from MI5 were on the verge of paying him a visit—entirely legal, mind you—and suggesting that he turn over any and all damaging materials. These would have been destroyed sight unseen.”

“How would they have convinced him?” James’s mind was now full of nightmarish visions of interrogations.

But Richard merely shrugged. “Most blackmailers are cowards, really. They back down faster than you’d think.”

Had Richard ever been blackmailed? James realized—again, immediately and instinctively—that he hadn’t been. Someone else in the royal family had fallen prey, though, maybe many someones, and Richard had seen to it without ever being found out.

If this weren’t the twenty-first century,
James thought,
if the monarchy were still cut from the Tudor mold, where ruthlessness and pride and manipulations were all that mattered, Richard would have been the man to be king. He would have been a great one.

But this was the twenty-first century, and there was no saving any of them from the coming disaster of Richard’s kingship.

Before James could say another word, the doors swung open to reveal the Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Morrison looked understandably startled, as it was his place to wait on royalty, not the other way around. But he recovered quickly. “Your Royal Highnesses.”

Pleasantries and formalities followed, until they were all seated again at the broad table, with work to be done. The archbishop began: “As you know, Your Royal Highness, His Royal Highness Prince Richard has raised concerns about your future role as Supreme Governor of the Church. Those same concerns have been echoed by many of our parishioners throughout Great Britain.”

“I understand that,” James said as calmly as he could. While he could not comprehend a just God that would reject people for who they loved, apparently many of the British people could. All illusions about the monarchy aside. their beliefs were what counted.

Richard remained silent, watching them as impassively as a sphinx.

The archbishop continued, “The canon law of the Church of England forbids marriage between same-sex partners, Your Royal Highnesses.”

“Yes.” James wondered if he was supposed to say he agreed. Not bloody likely.