Read For King and Country for Free Online

could get of me. And knowing who he was? It wasn’t going to get me back in his arms. My stomach dropped as the full implications of this mistake hit me, and I choked back the bile that rose in my throat.
    “How on Earth did you not realize it was him?” Belle asked.
    I paused to consider this, trying to ignore the tongue-lashing that my overly critical, rational side was giving my subconscious. Like most girls my age, I’d grown up on a diet of the royal family, particularly the two handsome princes that weren’t much older than myself. They’d even graced the cover of a few popular teen magazines in the States when I was younger. But they’d all but vanished from public life. At least Alexander had, not long before my family had moved from California to the UK, and then I’d gone off to university. A crush on the crown prince hadn’t exactly been my top priority for the last few years.
    “He seemed familiar,” I admitted. “I thought I knew him from Oxford. I haven’t even seen a photo of him for years. Are you sure that’s him?”
    “Have you been living under a rock?”
    “I have been studying and going for jobs,” I reminded her, pacing through the kitchen as though I could walk off the embarrassment. Lack of a social life was a foreign concept to Belle, who thrived on being at the center of a group as often as possible. I hadn’t even been to see a movie in months.
    “He’s back from Iraq,” she told me, her fingers tracing the photo longingly. “He got a medal of some sort and has been celebrating by shacking up with every vagina in the greater London area.”
    I winced at this revelation, feeling surprisingly hurt. Not only was the guy I’d been fantasizing about for the last few days completely unattainable, but I was just another girl in a long line. “Should I be flattered or horrified that I’m counted in the throngs of his conquests?” I tossed the tabloid I was holding in the rubbish bin. Then immediately pulled it back out to stare at the photo more. “Why is this even news?”
    “Because the press thinks you’re different.”
    I snorted at this, shaking my head in disgust. “I guess I didn’t actually let him fuck me. Does that make me different?”
    I didn’t add that I would have let him or that I’d been fantasizing about him for days. It was foolish of me to even think about him after that day. I’d known he was trouble the moment we’d met, so why had I toyed with the idea of seeing him again?
    “It’s not that.” Belle wrinkled her nose in frustration. I couldn’t exactly see why she was the one getting annoyed when it was my face on the bloody magazine cover. “It’s the circumstances. He’s been photographed at clubs with plenty of women.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “You already mentioned the throng.”
    She continued, ignoring my color commentary. “He’s only been seen in public places. No one’s caught him doing anything or anyone.”
    I groaned, starting to feel frustrated myself. “You said he’d shagged half of London.”
    “That’s what I’ve heard—”
    “That’s what you’ve read,” I corrected.
    “Look at him!” She thrust a paper at me to make her point. “Tell me you don’t want to get your knee-pads out for that!”
    Even with the slight blur from a photo clearly snapped on a camera phone, he was stunning. But then I could fill in the details lost in the fuzzy picture—the curve of his jaw, the twist of his mouth, the perfect darkness of his ink-black hair. Forget the knee-pads, I’d kneel on hard stone.
    “He has a total god complex,” I told her, ignoring that my body agreed with Belle. “What that photo doesn’t tell you is that he just grabbed me and kissed me.”
    Belle collapsed against the counter, folding her arms over her head. “I…can’t…take…the…hotness.”
    “Only you would find that hot,” I shot back, but I was glad she couldn’t read my mind.
    “Only you could kiss Prince Alexander and not know