MasukPrince Ken's POVWe had been running long enough that my lungs had developed some pains already because as much as I could remember that I haven't ran this distance all my life.Liam moved through this terrain the way he moved through everything — like it had been built specifically for him, like he had a mental map of every turn and dip and shortcut and was simply executing it. He pulled me around a bend I would never have found on my own, down a narrow path between two lines of tall grass that opened into a lower section of the cove that was completely invisible from the route we had come from.We stopped.Both of us. Against the tall grass, breathing so hard.At this point, I could not hear footsteps anymore.Liam's chest was rising and falling fast, his eyes tracking the direction we had come from, listening. I was doing the same, pressed against the grass beside him, and for about thirty seconds neither of us said anything because both of us were too busy determining whether the
Prince Ken's POVWe had not noticed anyone until the voice landed.One second it was just us … the water behind us, the clothes half-sorted, the afternoon still holding the warmth of everything that had been in it — and then the voice cut through all of that and the afternoon became something else entirely.We separated immediately and turned.There were three of them. Standing at the edge of the path that led down to this spot, in school uniforms, which meant they had come from the same building we had. But then, I did not recognise two of them. But the third one … the one whose voice had been the first sound — had a quality to him that I had seen before or better still, his face seemed kinda familiar. Although not in a classroom or a corridor. That face seemed to have appeared in the footage I had watched from the day Liam dealt with a group of guys outside the lower buildings after I had a glimpse of that ... the first day at school that I saw them from a distance . The same energy
Prince Ken's POVWe stayed close after the kiss … closer than the water required, which was to say the water had nothing to do with it.His forehead came to rest against mine, our noses almost touching, and we stayed there in that position for a moment with the water moving quietly around us and neither of us saying anything, because there was nothing that needed to be said and saying something would have disturbed the specific quality of the quiet."That's a handful," he said finally, and his voice was the low and easy version it went to when he wasn't performing anything.I smiled.And then, he smiled back.The kind of smiling that happened when two people had arrived somewhere together and were both aware of it without needing to name it … the helpless kind or better still, the kind that didn't ask permission before showing up.Then he leaned in and his lips found my earlobe … slowly, with the patient certainty of someone who had decided they were in no particular hurry — and whate
Prince 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
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
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
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







