《Puck Me, One More Time》全部章節：第 171 章 - 第 180 章

Liam's POVHis shirt was already loose by the time my hands found the last of the buttons, and neither of us was paying much attention to time anymore … 60 minutes had become a number that existed somewhere far outside this room.We both knew what we wanted. I could see it in the way he looked at me, and I was fairly certain my own face was giving away just as much.Our lips met, and the kiss was unhurried despite the urgency underneath it … the kind of kiss that arrived after a few days of circling each other, after gardens and lakesides and stolen moments that had always ended too soon. I kissed him deeply, both hands finding the sides of his face, and for a while there was nothing else in the room except the two of us and the morning light moving slowly across the floor.I lost my breath first.I moved to his neck in a slow and deliberate manner, kissing along the line of it in a way that I had learned worked on him days ago at that lakeside and had never forgotten. He made a small

Uncle Jones's POVThe knock on the door was quiet but in the careful, hesitant knock of someone who was not entirely sure they were doing the right thing and had decided to do it anyway."Come in," I said.The maid who entered was young … younger than I had expected when Eric had described her. She moved with the specific nervousness of someone who had stepped outside the boundaries of what they were supposed to do and was very aware of it. She was dressed in the palace uniform, her Samsung phone held in both hands in front of her like she was carrying something fragile.She stopped a few feet inside the door."Lord Jones," she said, keeping her voice low. "My name is Rhoda. I work on the east wing, near the Prince's chambers." She glanced down at the phone and then back up at me. "I got what you asked for."I did not say anything. I simply waited.She held the phone out toward me, the screen already unlocked as the video already pulled up and ready. "I recorded it this morning," she

Prince Ken's POVThe hall had gone from celebration to chaos in under 60 seconds, and I was standing in the middle of it unable to find a single word.The screen was still playing and the crowd was still reacting. Every second that passed without anyone doing anything made the damage worse, and I knew it, yet I still could not move because the specific, paralyzing feeling of watching your entire life collapse in a public space had taken everything available to me and was using it all just to keep me upright.Then Jenny moved.She crossed the hall fast, cutting through the frozen stillness of the room with the decisiveness that had always made her indispensable — reached the wall behind the technical setup and pulled the socket from the wall in one clean motion.The screen went dark at that moment.And the silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds.Then Uncle Jones filled it.He was already moving toward the stage … not necessarily rushing though. Rather, he was walking with the

Prince Ken's POVThe hall was still divided as voices were pulling in every direction, while Uncle Jones stood at the front with the satisfied expression of someone who believed the moment was his — when the entrance gates opened.Not quietly. Fully, both sides swinging wide, the kind of entrance that drew every eye in the room before anyone had processed what was happening.A group came through in single file, moving with the specific energy of people who had somewhere to be and were not going to be stopped from getting there. Each of them was carrying a Bahamas flag … the national colours filling the entrance of the coronation hall in a way that nobody had planned for and nobody could ignore.They arranged themselves as they came in, finding their formation naturally, the way people moved when they had agreed on something before they arrived.And at the front of them was Steph.She walked in like someone who had made a decision and was finished second-guessing it … the same Steph wh

Prince Ken's POVThe answer had landed between us the way honest things landed when they had no decoration around them — clean, certain and with nothing left to argue with.Not even one regret.I had meant it completely, and Liam had known I meant it, and for the space of that morning it had been enough. We had eaten breakfast together in the room … Jenny had arranged for it to be brought up rather than us going to the formal dining room, which I appreciated because the formal dining room required a version of me that I was not ready to perform before eight in the morning — and the conversation had been easy in the way conversations were easy between two people who had stopped needing to manage what they said to each other.Then Jenny knocked again.The second knock of the morning had a different quality from the first. The first had been informational. This one was the knock she used when something required action rather than awareness."Come in," I said.She entered and closed the d