At midnight the bodyguard stopped being a bodyguard. That was the deal, and I’d been counting down to it for six hours.
My name’s Cael. For three nights a week I’m Prince Cael of nowhere, in a gold-trimmed coat and a pair of tall black boots that cost more than my car, playing royalty at an immersive adult masquerade where rich people pay to flirt with fake nobility and get ignored by fake nobility on purpose. Rowan’s the other half of the act. He plays my sworn bodyguard. He’s six-two, stands behind my shoulder all night in gloves and a long dark coat and looks at the guests like he’s deciding which one to remove. I’m supposed to be bored, arrogant, untouchable.
The contract ends at midnight. It’s printed on the run-of-show card taped inside the dressing room door, and Rowan had underlined the last line in pen, twice, sometime that afternoon.
After that we’re two guys in the hotel room next door to the ballroom, still in costume because the boots take twenty minutes to unlace and we’re both too tired to fight them.
At 12:03 Rowan shut the door behind us, leaned on it, and said, “Your Highness,” out of pure habit.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Off duty.”
“Right.” He took one glove off, finger by finger, slow, and I couldn’t stop watching. Everybody who comes to the masquerade wants a piece of the prince. Nobody ever wanted a piece of the guy who spends all night standing behind me with his hand near my back, and I’ll tell you what, I’ve wanted that guy for four months.
We’d talked about this a few weeks ago, drunk, in the car. Fantasy only, I said. When the night is over I want it flipped. I’m tired of being in charge. I want you to tell me what to do.
He remembered. Of course he remembered.
“Say it,” he said now.
My face got hot. “I want you to tell me what to do.”
“Good.”
He still had one glove on. He crossed the room in three steps, put that gloved hand under my chin, and tipped my face up. Leather, warm from his skin. My knees nearly went.
“Hands behind your back.”
I put them there. Something in my chest let go, a knot I’d been carrying since I was old enough to be responsible for things.
“Good,” he said. His thumb dragged over my lower lip. “Look at me.”
I looked. No guests. No ballroom. The coat was still on, heavy gold trim and brass buttons, and the boots, and the stupid little ceremonial sash, and he was looking at me like he could eat the entire costume off me.
“Kneel.”
I got down on the carpet. The coat spread out around me and the boots creaked and my cock was already getting hard inside the tight white breeches, and I knew exactly how it looked because he made a sound in his throat.
“You like this,” I said, grinning up at him.
“Very much.”
“Your Highness?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not unless you ask me to.”
“Don’t. That one belongs to work.”
“Good.” He cupped my cheek with the bare hand. “What do you want?”
I looked at his belt. I looked up. “Your cock.”
“Say it properly.”
I laughed under my breath. “You’re really enjoying retirement.”
“Answer me.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “I want to suck your cock, Rowan.”
His whole face changed. “Good boy.”
I had it out of his trousers before he finished the word. He was thick, hard already, flushed dark, and when I wrapped my hand around him the gloved hand slid into my hair and gripped. Light. Just enough that I felt it all the way down my spine.
“Slow,” he said, in the exact calm voice he’d used all night to tell guests to step back. Except now every word was for me. “Slower.”
I slowed down. I licked the head, tasted salt, closed my mouth around it and took him in inch by inch while he watched. The leather in my hair tightened.
“Eyes up.”
I looked up with my mouth full of him.
“Pretty prince.”
I pulled off with a wet sound. “That one’s allowed.”
“Noted.” He was smiling and breathing hard at the same time. “Back on it.”
I did. I took him deeper, sloppy, spit running down my chin onto the gold braid of the coat, and he swore softly and the glove pulled harder. Every roll of my head he steered. Every time I tried to speed up he held me back, slow and deep, till my eyes watered and my own cock was throbbing so badly against the breeches that I had to squeeze it through the fabric, and he caught that too.
“Hands behind your back.”
I put them back. I whined around his cock.
“That’s it.” His voice was ragged now, the command slipping at the edges. “Fuck, look at you. Boots, coat, all of it.”
He fucked my mouth, careful then less careful, and I took it, gagging a little, drooling, deliriously happy. The carpet burned my knees through the breeches. I didn’t care. For six hours I’d been a person who said no to everyone and now I got to be a person who just said yes.
Then he pulled out of my mouth and hauled me up by the collar of the coat. “Bed.”
He walked me back and pushed me face down on the mattress, boots hanging off the edge. My coat got shoved up and my breeches got yanked down and I heard him get something from the nightstand. Cold, slick, his fingers rubbing against me, and then pushing in, one, two, patient and thorough, until I was pushing back on them and begging with my face in the sheets.
“Please.”
“Please what?”
“Fuck me. Please fuck me, Rowan.”
He lined up and pushed in slow. Stretch and burn, then fullness, and I made a noise I’m glad no guests heard. He held still until I stopped shaking, one hand flat between my shoulder blades, the other gloved hand around my wrist pinning it to my back.
Then he started to move.
It was hard and deep. The boots drummed against the bed frame, the coat crumpled under my chest, every thrust punching a sound out of me. He kept talking the whole time, low and steady. Good. Take it. That’s it. You’ve been so good all night. Pretty prince, taking it for me. I came apart under every word. I could feel myself leaking onto the sheets.
“Touch yourself,” he said.
I got a hand under me and wrapped it around my cock. Three strokes and I was gone, coming in pulses into my own fist with his name in my mouth and my whole body clenching down on him. He swore. His rhythm broke. He drove in deep two, three, four times and held there, groaning into the back of my neck, right on the edge, while the glove tightened on my wrist.
He pulled out before he finished and flipped me over while I was still shaking, and for a second I thought he’d lost his nerve. Then he pushed my knees up to my chest, coat still on, boots hooked over his shoulders, and slid back inside, and I saw his face as he did it, flushed and wrecked and not a bodyguard at all. I clawed at the gold buttons on his coat. He fucked me slow, looking down at where we were joined, and said, “Four months. Four months of standing behind you with my hands behind my back.”
“You could’ve said something.”
“I’m saying something.”
I came again, dry and aching, just from his mouth on my neck and the long slow grind of him, and he followed with a ragged sound, buried to the hilt, coming hot and pulsing inside me, my name instead of my title the whole way through.
We collapsed together on the bed in a heap of gold braid and sweat. His weight was heavy and perfect on my back.
After a minute he rolled off and we lay there staring at the ceiling.
“We’re going to have to get the boots off,” I said.
“Mm.”
“This is going to take an hour.”
He started laughing, helpless, wheezing, and I started laughing too, and then he sat up and took my left boot in both hands and started working the laces loose, one slow eyelet at a time. I let him. He drank a glass of water and handed it to me and didn’t say anything. No command voice. No title. Just Rowan, hair a mess, one glove still on his right hand, because we’d both forgotten it was there.
In the morning there was a breakfast event. We were back in costume at nine. The guests stood in the hallway making polite noises and I walked past with my chin up like a prince who’d never been on his knees in his life.
Rowan stood behind my shoulder and bowed, formal, perfect.
“Your Highness.”
I kept a straight face. Almost.
Only Rowan saw the corner of my mouth go.
