LOGINPrince Ken's POVKen let me stand at the edge for a moment..Let's say, just long enough that I thought maybe he had accepted that I was not getting in — and then I said it before he could try again."No." I held my ground, which was literally the bank of a cove, that I was choosing to remain on. "Princes don't just skinny dip. Like that."I said it clearly, with the tone I used when something was settled.Liam looked at me."Sure you do," he said.And then he reached forward and pulled me in anyway. You know, Liam could be that mischievous.The water came up all at once… cold and immediate which left absolutely no room for the dignified protest I had been preparing — and I went under for a second before coming back up, sputtering, pushing my hair out of my face with both hands.This time, Liam was already laughing.Not the quiet kind. The real kind … the kind that took over his whole face and made him look younger than he usually did, and I had never seen him laugh like that, and I w
Prince Ken's POVThe jacket came off first.He shrugged it off his shoulders and let it drop without looking where it landed, the casual movement of someone who had done this at this exact spot before and knew the ground well enough not to care about placement.Then the shirt … buttons undone from the top, pulled free from the waistband, dropped on top of the jacket.Then the singlet.And that was where my ability to look away with any kind of casual pretense ended.Liam Carson without a shirt was not something I had been prepared for, which was strange in retrospect given the number of situations we had already been in together that should have prepared me for most things. But this was different from corridors and classrooms and garden encounters. This was a waterfront in the afternoon light, and he was standing there completely unbothered by any of it.The build was lean … the kind that came from actual use, from years on a bike and on the ground and in situations that required his
Prince Ken's POVHe turned the box over all over again, still looking at it the way he had looked at the first gift I had sent to him that day which had turned out to be a dog collar… with that specific, careful suspicion of someone who had learned not to trust things that arrived in nice packaging. And funny, I wouldn't have to blame him because I understood how broken that must have made him feel that very day."A gift?" He looked at it again. Then at me. "For me?"I huffed out a short breath and smiled. "It's for you. Open it."He took his time about it. More time than the situation required, if I was being honest, turning it in his hands like he was still running the calculation of whether something was going to jump out at him. Which, given our history with gifts, was not entirely unreasonable.Eventually, he worked the gold ribbon loose and lifted the lid.The moment he took out what was inside, his face did something I had not seen before …in the specific expression of someone
Prince Ken's POVLiam parked the bike at the edge of a small path that led down toward where I could sight a sea from a distance, and we walked the rest of the way on foot.The truth was that I had not known this place existed until now.That was the part that settled in me quietly as we came down to the waterfront … the specific feeling of encountering something beautiful that had been there all along without your knowledge. The sea was calm here, the kind of calm that didn't feel like absence of movement but like movement that had found its pace and was no longer in a hurry about anything. The sound of it was constant and unhurried. The light came across the water at the angle that afternoon light found when it was running out of day.I looked at it for a moment without saying anything.‘How had I never been here before?’We walked along the edge of the water without a particular direction, and the conversation found its own pace the way conversations did when the setting made it ea
Liam's POV.“Come with me.” I said to him, the moment he caught up with the helmet.After then, he went on still turning the helmet over in his hands … rotating it slowly, looking at it the way people looked at things when they were using the object as a reason to think rather than actually examining it.I watched him for a moment.Then I said, "Just us."He looked up from the helmet and found my eyes, and something in his expression was doing the quiet calculation I had come to recognise … the version where he was weighing something against something else and hadn't landed yet."I can't," he said. "My schedule is full. Today."The way he said ‘today’ instead of ‘for the evening’ told me he was leaving himself a small door, which was enough for me to work with."Just an hour," I said at that moment.He looked at me."One hour," I said again, and I kept my voice easy because pressure would close the door and easy would leave it open. "That's all."The doubt was still there on his face
Liam's POVThe school entrance cleared out in the usual post-day rush and then students were already moving in every direction, bags over shoulders, the particular energy of people who had been inside a building all day and were now making their way back to wherever else they needed to be.I had gotten out early enough to find a spot near the entrance where I could wait without being in the middle of all of it. My bike was parked at the edge, and I leaned against it with the helmet resting in the crook of my right arm, watching the main doors.The entourage came out first just the way it always did, the advance of people whose job it was to be ahead of him. And then the main door opened properly and Ken walked out.I straightened from the bike as he came through.He hadn't seen me yet as his eyes were doing the thing they did in public spaces; which was scanning without landing in the managed awareness of someone who had been trained to be present everywhere at once. And then his gaze
Liam's POVAt this point, it felt like I was losing control of myself and couldn't even help the thoughts going through my head.Ken wasn't helping matters either. He even brought his lips closer to mine. ‘What's with this vibe? Is he going to kiss me?’Because the way Ken had his eyes fixed on my
Author's POVKen stood under the shower with his head slightly tilted back, water kept running from the top of his head and trailing down every line of his body like it had somewhere important to be. His dark hair was soaked through and curling slightly at the ends from the heat, dripping in thin s
Steph's POVI was not going to pretend that tonight was just another event.I had put in the work as I ‘dressed to kill’ in a short black fitted dress that hit just above the knee, heels that added three inches and made every step count, hair down and styled the way I knew looked best under event l
Liam's POV"Tell me if it hurts." I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the wound.I had grabbed the first aid box from the clinic shelf and set it open on the bed beside Ken. I used the antiseptic solution, cotton wool, then a small pair of tweezers to clear the edges if I needed them and a proper wo







