Chapter 104

Grabbing my pants, I stomped back into the bedroom so he’d know I didn’t like being a prop without warning. Charles followed along, snatching me around the waist and kissing the back of my neck.

“Sorry,” He murmured. “The plan to test if they were listening in was kind of an impulse.”

He rubbed himself along my mostly naked body and then stopped with a sigh. “You were right about being tired. As much as I would love to have additional impulses…” He pressed his hips to mine, soft and warm. “As you can see, it looks like I need a good night’s sleep to recuperate.”

“There’s no shame in that,” I said. “Because I certainly don’t have the energy for more sex tonight. So even if you were ready to go… Well, I probably wouldn’t pass,” I admitted. “But I would make you let me sleep in.”

“I’m fully planning on doing that anyway,” Charles said, taking my hand and pulling me into the bedroom with him.

He guided me to the bed, took off my shirt, tossed his own clothes on the floor, and snuggled us both under the covers. Charles curled around my back and breathed in deeply, drawing in my fresh scent.

“There’s nothing so soothing at bedtime as the smell of you,” he whispered.

Moments later, he was lightly snuffling in his sleep. I inhaled a deep breath of his vetiver scent, closed my eyes, and didn’t even remember falling asleep. The next thing I knew, the smell of something delicious woke me, wafting in from the kitchen.

I could hear low voices out in the living room. David and Theo must be out there, cooking breakfast and chatting.

Charles woke and snuggled fully back in against my back once again, sliding a hand over my hip and down the front of my stomach inside my panties. He pressed his fingers between my lower lips to circle my clit.

“Fancy a breakfast of our own?” he asked. “I know something we could snack on.”

“But they can hear,” I protested. “I’m tired of having people listen.”

“I doubt they can hear,” he said. “They’re too busy having a conversation. They aren’t like the last guards. You never knew where they were lurking because they were always completely silent. But I can hear well enough to know that these two are all the way across the main room in the kitchen. And having a conversation on top of being far off, all while clattering pots and pans.”

Charles took a nip at my ear lobe. “I still have the picture of you, bent over the kitchen table, in my mind from last night.”

He pressed his hardness against my back. “They don’t know we’re up. We can go sneak into the shower together.”

I sighed. “I’m tired of sneaking around.” I turned and kissed him deeply.” I’ll tell you what,” I promised. “Since they’re already making breakfast and eggs don’t take very long to cook, we’ll go out and we’ll have breakfast with them. And then we’ll kick them out into their own space. Then you and I can do whatever you want, wherever you want.”

He sat up with a bright expression in his eyes. “Whatever and wherever I want?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, realizing that I had opened a door that maybe I shouldn’t have. “Within reason,” I said, trying to backpedal since I might have made an offer that I didn’t want to keep.

“Within reason,” he agreed.

He ran his thumb in circles around the outside rim of my nipple, nuzzling the back of my neck. “And I know exactly what we’re going to do.”

He leaned in, pressing his lips to my ear, and murmured out an entire set of activities that had me turning redder with each one. As soon as he finished the list, he bounded out of bed.

“I’m going to take a shower, so I don’t greet them with a full salute.” He looked down at his boxers sticking straight out, held aloft by the tip of his erection.

I giggled. “That might not be the best way to greet our new guards.”

A moment later someone knocked on the door, and Theo called through the wood. “We have about five minutes till breakfast.”

“Be right there,” I called back.

Charles hurried into the shower, and I threw on a pretty sundress that was both cute and easy. Then, I went out and joined our guards in the kitchen.

“Did you know we were up?” I asked, like Charles, trying to get a feel for how much they knew.

“Nope,” Theo replied while plating eggs. “But I figured 5 minutes of notice was enough time that if you were still asleep, you’d be able to get up for breakfast.”

He nodded at the clock. “It’s already almost nine. I didn’t figure you’d get too mad at me for waking you up this late. Besides, we have a meeting a little bit later.”

“We do?” I asked.

Part of me was dreading what this meeting might be, and the other part was a little bit grateful. If we had a meeting, we couldn’t make it all the way through Charles’s list. And some of what he wanted to do was rather inappropriate.

“Yes, you have a post-lunch meeting with our Packhaven governor, Governor Allen, and one of the palace administrators, a man named Dale Grey. I figured I’d get you breakfast early enough so that you would be hungry for lunch. I have no idea how long your meeting with the governor is going to take. But you don’t want to be too full to eat before you go and then have to sit there with a rumbling stomach if it takes more than an hour or two.”

“I guess that’s pretty good sense,” I admitted. “Thank you for making sure that we stay on schedule today. When did this meeting get scheduled, anyway?”

“Just this morning. Governor Allen’s secretary called us and asked if you were jet-lagged, and we said yes, so they left the message with us.”

I shook my head, trying to wrap it around all of this unusual consideration. It’s the way we would have treated somebody at Rafe Media back in Lustrum, but certainly not the way we had been treated by any of the other guards or the governor up to this point. The swing was still setting me off-balance.

Theo smiled and handed me a plate covered in a golden omelet topped with melted white cheese. It smelled heavenly. Beside it, in the shape of a rose, sat a tomato in impossibly thin slices.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” I asked him.

“My mother is the head chef at one of the top hotel restaurants in the city. She takes great pride in her work. And she taught me how to cook when I was small. I think she would have been happy if I’d followed in her footsteps. But Dad thinks being a bodyguard is a respectable job and a little more manly than making roses out of tomatoes.”

David took his plate and sat across from me. “Personally, I don’t think food is about men or women.

I sniffed my plate, my fork poised over it. “Agreed. Since it’s all about pleasing the palate in the stomach, I think anyone who can cook belongs in the kitchen. And those of us with less talent should feel grateful when you feed us.”

Theo laughed and brought out a glass of juice, setting it beside my plate at the table. “Here, I made the juice this morning, as well. It’s all local fruit and a few power greens if you don’t mind my hiding those in there.”

“I guess I shouldn’t complain if you’re just looking out for my health and well-being. As long as it tastes as good as it smells.” I took a sniff of the juice glass. Like the omelet, it smelled absolutely delicious.

I forked to bite into my mouth and nearly melted into my seat. “This is so unbelievably good. Hurry up and give me Charles’s before he gets out of the shower.”

Theo laughed again. “I have plenty of ingredients if you need another one. When you finish that, I can make a second. But I think you’ll find that between that and the juice, there’s a lot more food there than you think there is.”

“Eat up,” David urged. “You’ll want to be at your best when you meet with the governor.”