Read Leopold: Part Five for Free Online

tea with her tomorrow afternoon, after we’ve all had a chance to rest.” He grins. “ If we rest. I’m not so certain I’ll be able to, particularly after you’ve reminded me these past few days of what I’ve been missing, Elle.”
    My cheeks heat up in an instant and my heart pounds in my chest. Energy coils low in my belly, pulling at me again. Making me want him inside me again. Now .
    I don’t want him to leave. But I don’t say it out loud—he needs to make amends with his family, as I’m all too aware. And I don’t want to make things worse for him by making him late to dinner because he was fucking his horny girlfriend.
    His eyes darken, probably in response to mine. “Mm. I do love making you blush, Elle. Nothing gives me greater pleasure. Well, almost nothing…” He closes his eyes and turns back to the door. “I will come to see you after dinner if you’d like.”
    “I would like.”
    He grabs the frame of the door so hard I can see his knuckles turn white. He stands there for a moment before he speaks. “I can’t stay. Even if there was time, I don’t trust myself to…”
    Pull out . It’s like we’re teenagers, for Christ’s sake. Horny, stupid, reckless teenagers.
    I begin to button my blouse, almost glad I had the flash of sense not to call him back to the bed. I have no doubt he would have returned to me—and that I could have convinced him to skip dinner with his family after all. But then someone would have come looking for him, and the likelihood of someone walking in on us… It’s not something I want to deal with tonight.
    He lets out a long breath, almost as though he’s had the same thought. That even if it is what we both want—even if we can’t keep our hands off each other—the timing, at least for the moment, is not right.
    He turns back to face me, and his eyes are still dark with passion. “I will see you later this evening, Elle.” He pauses. “Only if I am invited, of course.”
    I narrow my gaze, staring at him for a long moment. “Consider this your invitation, Your Highness. And you’d better figure out a way to sneak in here without anyone seeing you. I don’t want to have to face the wrath of King Edmund tomorrow for defiling his little boy.”
    He squeezes his eyes shut and he speaks through his tightly clenched jaw. “I will be back after dinner, Elle. I will find a way to come to your room undetected.” He pauses for a moment. “And you have no idea how much it is killing me to leave now.”
    His hands close into fists and he turns on his heel, walking out of the bedroom.
    He doesn’t say another word to me—I only hear the click of the door on his way out.
    Something about his tone tells me our conversation isn’t quite over—that maybe he’ll come back in the room. But he doesn’t.
    After minute or so, I rise from the bed, finally ready to check out my fancy suite. I pull open the door that Leo had mentioned was the closet—and I nearly faint when I glance inside.
    The closet —if you can call it that—is bigger than my bedroom at home. It’s mostly empty, of course, but the gowns Leo had made for me are hanging near the entrance, along with several other casual dresses and outfits I haven’t seen before. The space for hanging clothes extends the length of the room and across the back. On the other side, several pairs of shoes—I recognize the ones I wore last night along with the others I hadn’t chosen—are lined up on the top of several rows of angled shelves. There is enough space here to house a shoe store—it could probably hold more shoes than I and everyone I’ve ever known have owned in our lives.
    But this isn’t my life. It isn’t even a life I’ve ever imagined wanting .
    I stand in the doorway of the closet, staring silently at the empty space—unable to imagine what it would look like full of clothes—when I hear a knock on my door.
    My stomach does the weird fluttering thing it always does and my chest