Semua Bab Puck Me, One More Time: Bab 121 - Bab 130

Prince Ken's POV."Who is the dog now?" I snapped it right at his face, pulling myself upright. "Fuck off."He pushed me back against the bed before I had finished the movement.Not hard though. Just enough to make the point that the momentum of the situation had not shifted the way I thought it had."Stop pretending." He looked down at me with that expression … the one that had been reading me correctly all day and was not going to stop now. "We both know that you want me…." Then, there was a pause before he added, "...badly."He stretched the last word out in a way that was entirely unnecessary and completely effective."Don't flatter yourself." I said it immediately, the way I said things when I needed them to land before I had time to second-guess them. "I am a prince. And you are just…" I looked at him. "You are nothing. A nobody." I held his gaze. "So why would I ever want you?"He didn't flinch at all of that.That was the thing about Liam that I had been cataloguing without me

Liam's POVThe underside of my grandmother's car was not complicated. As it never was with older models … everything was accessible, nothing was buried under three layers of plastic casing the way newer cars were. Just metal and wire and the specific smell of engine oil that I had known since I was small enough to hand tools to my grandfather while he worked and feel useful doing it.I had the mechanic's creeper positioned at the right angle, my back flat against the padded board while the wheels were steady smoothly on the garage floor as I worked. The screwdriver was doing most of the job … a loose throttle wire, which was the kind of thing that made a car feel unreliable without actually being dangerous, and which took about 20 minutes to sort if you knew what you were looking for.And then, I knew what I was looking for.The work was the quiet kind. The kind that didn't require a lot of thought and gave the parts of your brain that had been running too fast a chance to slow down.

Prince Ken's POVThe palace entrance had been arranged for exactly this and so, it was the kind of arrival that said something before a single word was spoken. The lighting was warm and deliberate in a way that it made everything look like it belonged in a painting. The staff were already positioned.The press were contained to their designated area, which was close enough to capture but far enough to be managed. The music coming from inside was exactly the right volume — present but not intrusive, the background to something rather than the thing itself.I stood at the receiving point in my royal regalia and shook hands.One after the other, the guests came through … classmates, mostly, which was a sentence I had not expected to be able to say when the semester began. They arrived in clusters, some of them clearly more comfortable in a palace setting than others, all of them looking at the space around them with the particular expression people wore when they were trying not to look

Author's POVPrince Ken stood exactly where Liam had left him … his hand taken, position reversed, the moment having moved in a direction that nobody in the room had fully seen coming, including him.The conversations that were more like side talks started immediately."Oh my God." Someone said from somewhere at the left…specifically from a cluster of guests who had stopped pretending not to watch. "His Highness actually asked Liam to dance?""For real? I thought he was going to ask Steph.""Well," Ken said, loud enough for those closest to hear, the specific tone of someone who needed to correct the record before it settled into something he couldn't undo, "I was asking Steph to dance, so…""I know, you can't wait." Liam cut in smoothly, and before Ken had finished the sentence, he was already moving … pulling Ken with him by the hand toward the dance floor in an unhurried manner, like this was exactly where the evening had always been going and the only question was the route. "So le

Author's POVThey stayed in that position for a moment longer than was strictly necessary as Ken bent back, while Liam bent over him, the music was still playing quietly and the room was still watching … and then Liam pulled Ken upright in one smooth movement and they were standing again.Normal. Vertical. Separate.The room exhaled at this point.Both of them looked at the space around them which includes the guests, the cameras that had not gone anywhere, the particular quality of two hundred people pretending they had not just been watching very closely … and then, almost simultaneously, they straightened their shirts and cleared their throats with the specific energy of two people who had decided that composure was available to them if they reached for it firmly enough."Nice, ummm…" Liam started."Nice dance," Ken finished up, right away.Liam nodded. "Yeah."They looked at each other for exactly one second … the specific second after something has happened that neither person is