A Nordic King

Bloody hell, this again?

Gently, I tease, “Are you jealous?”

“Jealous? Of some other man taking you away from me? Fearful is more like it,” he says. “But jealous works too. I’m not above admitting it. I love you and I can’t share you with anyone else. I won’t.” His voice cracks just a little which makes me think this is a little more than just plain old jealousy or insecurity. “You belong to me. I belong to you.”

It makes me wonder about Helena. About some of the things Henrik alluded to, that perhaps she had someone else, that she wasn’t faithful.

Shit, if that was the case, Aksel really got handed the shit end of the stick.

“Aksel,” I tell him, running my hands around to the small of his back. “If your heart has a home, mine does too. We can make a home together.”

He seems appeased by that, the creases in his brow smoothing.

“You really are a goddess,” he murmurs, kissing me again.

“And yet, I’m at your beck and call,” I say against his mouth. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

That got his attention, like I knew it would.

He cranes his neck back to get a better look at me, dubious. “There you go again.”

“Tell me what you want,” I say again, teasing him. I take a step back out of his grasp, biting my lip coquettishly. “Perhaps you think I need another spanking.”

“Where on earth did you come from?” he says breathlessly.

“Australia.” I grin at him and start to undo the drawstring to his pajama pants. “So what will it be, sir?”

Now I have him.

A sly, hungry smile graces his lips.

“Get on your knees and call me Your Majesty.”

That I can do.





Chapter 19





Aksel





April





“I think I’m going to be sick.”

I look over at Aurora who is holding onto the railing and leaning over, looking positively green.

“Hang in there,” I tell her. “If you keep going below like that, you’ll only make it worse. Stay up on deck with me.”

“But it’s cold and wet up here,” she says. “And it’s warm and dry downstairs.”

Her words are punctuated by a slap of water to her face as the hull dips against a whitecap.

It’s the first sailing trip of the year, which means it’s late April and the waters around the ?resund Strait are rough thanks to the winds and the endless traffic of schooners, ferries and cruise ships that ply the waters nonstop.

We’re heading down away from the city and toward the Baltic Sea where we’re going to find anchorage for the night.

My sailboat is the same one that I race, locally made and sixty-feet long and recognizable to most of the Danish public, yet everyone gives me wide berth as I tack the boat back and forth down the strait. Of course, I’m also closely followed by a motorboat that contains my royal attendants and I also have my driver, Johan, on board with us, just in case.

Johan actually loves sailing, so he doesn’t mind taking over the wheel from time to time. Right now he’s down below with Clara and Freja who are on their iPads playing games. They’re used to sailing too.

But for Aurora, it’s her first time on a sailboat and I don’t think she’s handling it all that well. I felt a little wary to begin with when I invited her to come, but the girls were insistent that she do the trip.

I’m glad she’s here, even if it means we get no privacy together for the next twenty-four hours. We’ve come into a habit with each other that we at least spend half the night in each other’s beds, even if it means we have to do a secret walk of shame at four in the morning back to our own room.

I really wish it wasn’t this way. She seems okay with the sneaking around, but it gets under my skin like nothing else. I don’t want to have to hide her. I’m proud of her. I want the world to see what I see in her, what everyone else sees in her. She’s charming and genuine, kind and smart, unfiltered and compassionate, part book nerd, part goddess, and all mine. She’s a goofball with big eyes and a big heart and every single morning I get up wondering how I can make her happy, over and over again.

Suffice to say, I’m failing at the moment.

“Come over here,” I tell her, holding out my arm.

“I might chunder on you,” she says.

“I don’t know what chunder means, and therefore, I don’t care. Now, come here. That’s a royal order.”

That manages to get a weak smirk out of her. I’ll take what I can get.

“Remember when you said you would never abuse your power.” She unwraps her hands from around the railing and stumbles toward me, leaning on the ropes and winches until she’s at the wheel.

I put my arms around her, hugging her from behind. “Put your hands on the wheel.”

She does so, and I put my hands on top of hers.

This is the most intimate we’ve been in public.

To Johan or the girls below or the royal attendants on the other boat, it looks like I’m giving her a sailing lesson.

They don’t know that I’m kissing the top of her head, salt spray on my lips.

They don’t know that I’m pressing an erection into the curves of her ass.

They don’t know that I’m whispering in her ear.

“Jeg elsker dig.”

I love you.

Though I can’t see her face, I can feel her smile. She hooks her thumb onto the side of my hand and squeezes.

“Jeg elsker dig,” she whispers back, but I barely hear it, her words caught by the wind.

I’ve never felt so much in my element before, I’ve never felt so alive. Here, on the boat with her protected between me and the wheel, I feel pure happiness rise out of me, like a phoenix from the ashes of the person I once was.

Nothing can take this moment away from me, I think. Not even death will erase this from my mind.

I’m not sure if Aurora is picking up on how I’m feeling or if she’s just doing better, but she doesn’t go back inside. She stays at the wheel, even as I’m pulling ropes and letting out sails.

She’s made of hardy stock, that’s for sure. When she first took the job, I thought that her “roughness” would be a detriment to the position. After all, it was all about poise and grace and raising two princesses. But instead of poise and grace, she brought grit and guts. She rose to every challenge that the girls and I threw her way, and more than that, she rose up against me. She did it for the things she believed in and if it didn’t go her way, she’d argue her way out.

In other words, she’s the perfect woman to take sailing, because even with feeling seasick, she’s still toughing it out, because that’s what she does.

She’s the perfect woman period.

And now I’m tasked with figuring out how to make her stay.

Forever.

With me.

Naturally the biggest issue so far is that I haven’t been entirely honest with her and I know that day of reckoning is coming. I just pray that what we have is strong enough to survive it.

“Hey!” she says excitedly, pointing in the distance where the strait opens up and the Baltic Sea spreads before us. “A rainbow!”

I’m currently bringing in the main sail to adapt to the changing wind and look around it to see a defined rainbow in the distance where the clouds are parting and the sun is coming in.

“The wind should be dropping soon as it comes around Sweden,” I tell her. “The seas should calm.”

She gives me her happy grin. Her mouth has always been wide for her face, her smile so beguiling, but when she’s really, really happy, that’s when you see her incisors. I call them her glade t?nder or “happy teeth.” She becomes a sexy adorable vampire.

“It’s smooth sailing from here on out,” she starts singing a Queens of the Stone Age song, doing a goofy little dance at the wheel.

I laugh, wanting to join in but don’t.

“Oh, you’re too cool to dance with me,” she says with a scoff.

“I’m not the best dancer,” I admit, quickly tucking the ropes away and coming over to her.