Read My Prince for Free Online

giant T. rex skeleton guarded the entrance.
    George sighed and checked his watch again. It was only 9:30 p.m.—they’d be here for hours more yet.
    Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and George whirled around, thinking one of his senior managers had caught him looking bored.
    Then he almost, almost , lost his cool.
    “Hello, George.”
    Alex was definitely not wearing a tux from Asda.
    He looked good, better than George remembered, and he remembered plenty from that night back in September. Alex’s hair was shorter now, not quite as curled as before, and he had a soft, fuzzy beard. His blue eyes sparkled, and a dimple puckered in his cheek as he smiled at George’s obvious bewilderment.
    George nodded. “Your Highness,” he said, and Alex’s smile faded.
    “Well, this is awkward,” Alex said with a self-effacing laugh.
    “Sorry. That was a shitty thing to say.”
    “What, using my official title? I’d say I’m used to it, but I’m not, really.”
    Silence fell between them, growing more awkward by the nanosecond.
    “Should I have not come over?” Alex asked. He too held a slim champagne flute, and rolled it between his fingers back and forth, back and forth, making the contents fizz up.
    “No. I mean, yes. I….” George knew he was flustered, was sure there was a flush on his cheeks. Stupid fucking cheap suit was making him hot. “I’ve kind of spent most of this year regretting not taking your number.”
    “I didn’t offer it,” Alex said mildly.
    “I didn’t ask.”
    “No. You didn’t.”
    Another awkward silence fell, then Alex reached into the inside pocket of his impeccably tailored jacket and pulled out a light gray business card.
    “This is my number,” he said, the soft smile and dimple returning. “I’d like you to call me.”
    George nodded, took the card, and slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers. “Thanks.”
    “I hope you do,” Alex said, then started to move away.
    “Alex,” George said. His hand shot out and gripped Alex’s arm, probably too tightly, too intimately, for this setting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Tell you what?”
    “Who….” George felt stupid then. “Who you are.”
    Alex laughed. “It was a one-night stand, George. I’m not a massive dick. I don’t use my family as a pickup line.”
    “Oh.”
    He smiled again, his eyes a little sad now. Then he reached up and touched George’s cheek with his knuckles, very briefly. And walked away.
     
     
    F OR THE rest of the evening, George fought an ongoing battle with his erection, which was happily threatening to chub up, and the temptation to search the cavernous room for Alex. For the event, the different features that usually stood in the museum’s main hall were pushed to the sides or moved away altogether, leaving plenty of space for several hundred guests.
    George caught sight of him a few times, always at a distance, never close enough for Alex to notice his creepy, stalkerish staring, thank God. The guy had been George’s main spank bank material for the first part of the fucking year, and now he was sauntering around, looking far sexier than he had any right to, smiling and laughing and being an altogether great guy.
    Fuck him.
    By the end of the evening, George was tipsy, not drunk; he’d made sure to stay out of that territory while his boss was around. The last thing he wanted to do was be that guy , the guy who got drunk at charity galas for children.
    People started filing out of the museum at eleven, and for some reason it took forever for George to collect his coat from the concierge and join the enormous queue outside for a taxi.
    The humidity had broken and the rain had thundered down earlier in the evening. Now there was a light drizzle falling, enough to make George decide against walking home. He didn’t want to get soaked through.
    “Are you following me?”
    George whirled around, frowning at Alex and his enormous golf umbrella that he held over George so he