The Crown Prince Chose the Size 18 Commoner, and the Palace Can't Stop Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Flour

After midnight Lucan comes down to the kitchen and shows her exactly how much he wants her.

They let me go back to the kitchen because nobody knew what else to do with me.

Pip met me at the door with her red plaits half out of their pins and her mouth hanging open.

"What did he say to you?" she whispered. "I saw his mouth move. Nobody heard."

I told her it was nothing, and my face told her it wasn't.

By midnight the ovens were banked and the kitchen was empty.

I stayed because I couldn't sleep, and because kneading is the only thing that makes my head go quiet.

I was alone at the long marble table with my sleeves shoved to the elbow.

A bowl of brioche dough sat under my fists when the back door opened.

I knew who it was before I turned.

The air changed.

Lucan had taken off the sash and the braid.

He stood in the doorway in a plain white shirt, open at the throat, sleeves rolled up.

His forearms were corded and dark with hair.

He looked a lot more dangerous without the uniform.

"You can't be down here," I said.

"It's my kitchen."

He shut the door behind him and turned the key.

He walked toward me with that slow stride.

He stopped on the other side of the table.

"You told me no in front of a thousand people," he said.

"You told me it wasn't accepted."

"I'm not used to it being a question."

"That's the problem with you," I said. "Nobody has ever said no, so you think it's a game."

"I don't think it's a game." His voice dropped. "I've been thinking about your forearms for a year."

I blinked.

"My what?"

"You carry the Friday tray yourself, through the south corridor, with your sleeves up."

"I stand at the window on Fridays."

He looked straight at me.

"I thought you were the most beautiful thing in this palace, and I didn't know your name."

My face went hot.

He came around the end of the table.

"I want you, Tilda. I'm not going to pretend otherwise."

"I want your mouth and your hips and that stubborn chin."

"I want to hear you say my name with flour on your hands."

I should have told him to leave.

Instead I said, "Then ask."

He stopped with his chest an inch from mine.

"Ask?"

"You said you're not used to it being a question," I said. "Make it one."

Something hot and amused flickered in his gray eyes.

"May I touch you?" he said.

"Where?"

"Everywhere. Starting here."

His hands closed on my hips.

They were so big that his fingers sank into my softness and kept going.

He groaned low in his throat.

"God," he said. "Look at you."

He lifted me.

He just picked me up, all of me, a size 18 woman in a flour-dusted apron.

He set me on the cold marble.

I gasped.

He pushed the apron over my head and tossed it aside, and kissed me.

It was a hard kiss, slow and deep, with the scar in his lip rough against mine.

I grabbed his shirt in both fists and kissed him back with everything I had.

His tongue stroked mine.

His hands slid over my ribs, my waist, the heavy weight of my breasts.

He squeezed them through my dress, and I whimpered into his mouth.

"These," he muttered against my jaw. "I thought about these every Friday."

"Lucan."

He pushed my skirt up my thighs, slowly, and spread my knees apart with his palms.

I was wearing plain cotton underwear.

He looked at it for a second, eyes dark, breathing rough.

Then he cupped me through it and dragged his thumb along the seam.

I was already soaked.

"Fuck," he said softly. "You're so wet."

"You've been staring at me for a year."

"I'm going to stare a lot longer."

He rubbed me through the cotton in slow, firm circles.

His thumb found my clit and pressed down, and my head fell back against the shelf of copper pans.

He pulled the cotton aside and slid two thick fingers inside me.

My whole body arched.

He curled them, found the spot, and pressed it in a slow rhythm while his thumb kept circling.

I clapped a floury hand over my own mouth so I wouldn't scream.

"No," he said, and pulled my hand away. "Let me hear you."

"Somebody will hear."

"Let them. I want them to know who you belong to."

That did it.

The word hit me low in the belly.

I came hard around his fingers, clenching, shaking, saying his name three times into the empty kitchen.

There was flour on my fingers and all down his shirt.

He held me through it.

He kissed my temple while I came down, panting, and I felt how hard he was against my knee.

"Your turn," I said, breathless.

"Not tonight."

He pulled his fingers out and licked them clean, watching me.

"Tonight is yours. I have a feeling you'll make me wait again."

I laughed in his shoulder, shaky and wrecked.

"The court is going to eat me alive," I said.

"They won't touch you."

"You can't promise that."

"Watch me."

He lifted me down, straightened my skirt with his big careful hands, and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"I've been lonely in this place for thirty years," he said into my hair. "I didn't know it until you said no to me."

I held onto him for a long moment.

Then someone knocked at the back door, sharp and official.

"The prince is occupied," Lucan called.

"My lord prince," said a dry voice. "I bring a notice from the Lord Chancellor for the girl."

Lucan went still.

"What notice?"

"That Miss Valera is dismissed from the palace's service," said the clerk, "and has until dawn to leave it."

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