Every time, though, I close the app without typing a single word. I just can’t find a way to reach out to him again without going back on my promises to myself, a way to breach the agreement we had without putting him in control of my emotions.
My breath is shallow by the time I step out onto the sidewalk just after 5:00, the space between my legs aching with need for him. Ridiculous, I tell myself. You’re being ridiculous.
When my phone buzzes in my purse, I stop dead on the sidewalk and rifle through my bag, snatching it up with shaking hands.
It’s not a text.
It’s not an email.
It’s a message in the dating app.
And it’s from him.
Chapter 8
Alec
I spend the rest of the weekend scrolling through the profiles on three different dating apps.
Not one picture stands out.
The only image in my mind is of Jessica, her back arched, her breasts rising and falling as she works herself over my cock, head thrown back, blue eyes closed, as she gets off over and over again.
This is not how I imagined this playing out. I was going to hit it and quit it as many times as possible in the big city.
When she left on Saturday at noon, ten minutes after waking, she gave me a wink and a wave and didn’t look back as she headed toward the building’s elevator. Once she’d stepped inside, she seemed to notice me again, my shoulders and torso out in the hallway, unable to take my eyes off of her.
She pressed the button to go down. “I’m glad you were available,” she called down the hall to me with a smile, a confident smile, on her face.
I wanted to sprint down the hall in nothing but my boxers, block the elevator doors from closing, and sweep her back into my arms. I wanted to kiss her until she melted against me and then carry her back into the apartment, fuck her senseless in the shower, and spend the rest of the day in bed with her.
Instead, I return her smile with a cocky one of my own. “It was a lucky break,” I say.
Did I imagine a flash of longing in her eyes as the doors closed?
Probably.
Saturday and Sunday I search for someone to replace her.
I fill out profiles on two new dating apps and scroll endlessly through the lists of eligible women.
I check in with Nate and, in a fit of loneliness, invite him to spend Saturday evening with me. We make our way through every bar near the apartment I’ve rented. The women there can’t get enough of us. Nate does his best to be a decent wingman, and I return the favor. It’s easy to talk up his darkly handsome looks, and his deep brown eyes draw the ladies in like moths to a flame.
He has better luck than I do, even though he doesn’t cave in completely to the party mood and never touches a drop of alcohol. I don’t push the matter. It’s enough that he came here with me instead of hauling me back to the royal palace in Saintland. After we hit the second bar, he’s garnered a bit of a fan club and allows one girl, a petite blonde with wide gray eyes, to sit at his side for the rest of the evening.
It’s not yet midnight when I signal to him that it’s time to go. The blonde looks disappointed, but Nate charms her with a whispered word in her ear and a kiss on the cheek.
We walk side by side on the sidewalk leading back to the building I’m staying in, and it’s not until we get to the front entrance that I realize Nate never asked for directions.
“Are you staking me out, old buddy?”
He gives me a sidelong look. “Did the international flight sap you of all your intelligence?”
I roll my eyes. Of course he knows where I’m staying, even without me giving him the address. It’s all too easy for me to forget that his experience in intelligence and security far outstrips my idiot royal sensibilities. “No. But a woman might have.”
He raises his eyebrows. “We’ve only been here three nights. You’ve already found the love of your life?”
“She’s not the love of my life, Nate, for God’s sake. She’s just…” What was she? The buzz I got from my drinks has already worn off, and I’m left with a throbbing need to see her again.
Despite the fact that soon—likely in two weeks, if Nate has his way—I’ll be going back to Saintland, never to see her again, and despite her insistence on not exchanging any information beyond first names, there’s something about her that’s sunk its claws deep into my…heart. Yes, that’s it.
“She’s a tigress?”
Back in our school days, Nate and I referred to our hottest dates as tigresses—full of spirit and deadly if you messed with them. Looking back, every other women I’ve been with is a kitten compared to Jessica.
I flash Nate a smile, giving him a nod. “She’s a tigress.”
“Are you seeing her again?”
“You know as well as I do that it would be a fool’s errand.” Nate doesn’t know all the details about what happened between Jessica and me, but he knows as well as I do that whatever there might be between us, it has to stay on this side of the Atlantic.
“Don’t be coy with me, your highness. I can tell you’re thinking about it.”
“Shut your mouth.” I temper the words with a sheepish smile.
Because the bastard is right.