Page 40 of Royal Crush

CAMILLO

I could feelAleric’s eyes on me as I navigated the streets heading to the little apartment above a café that almost no one knew I owned. I hadn’t been there in months. The place was occasionally rented out to tourists and was kept clean, and the kitchen was used for overstock for the café, which meant we’d at least have something to eat and drink while we talked.

Not that my stomach was going to tolerate food.

But it was a safe place. The safest I knew. It was my little getaway from my family, or from the press, or from hookups that liked to call themselves exes when the tabloids asked. There was a private parking space around back and an elevator that fit my chair and one standing person if we squeezed together very closely.

In short, it was ideal for the story I wanted to tell Aleric.

It was too late to go back now. My only other option was to come up with a lie that sounded close enough to the truth. But I didn’t want to lie about him. About…Hugo. Shit, I hadn’t let myself say his name in so, so long.

I didn’t want to think about him at all. I hadn’t considered that the show was going to use his character because I’d done my best to keep his role so minuscule in my book that mostpeople wouldn’t think of him twice by the time they got to the last page.

But I’d forgotten the way scriptwriters could twist things to their benefit, and the monster who took my disabled virginity was going to end up a character in the show. And because I hadn’t given details about him at all—not even a fake name—it was a blank slate.

So now there was Raul: an attractive, charming man whose chemistry with Aleric was off the fucking charts. I found myself rooting for them to kiss by the time the director yelled cut, and it took me some time to remember that this was supposed to be the man who had almost ruined me.

Hugo would see this too. I had no doubt. He had no access to me anymore, but I still heard about him trying to reach me from time to time. Maybe he’d spent his hush money and wanted more—though he knew at that point I had all the legal recourse to destroy him, and there was not a hope in the world he’d be able to fight back.

But I didn’t want him thinking I had anything to do with this character. And I didn’t want the scenes to go well. I didn’t want to root for this man, even if he wasn’t really Hugo.

“Was that hard to learn?”

I blinked back to the present and noticed we were very close to the café. At the red light, I glanced over at Aleric, who was staring at me from behind his oversized faux-designer shades.

“Was what hard to learn?”

He gestured at the steering wheel. “Driving like that.”

“I never learned to drive with my legs,” I reminded him. So many of my firsts came after my accident that most of my adaptive equipment was just…normal. “My brother tried to drive my car once and almost ran it into a stone wall, so it probably isn’t as easy as I make it look.” I smiled a little at thememory, and when I glanced over at Aleric, he was blushing. “Do you want to give it a try?”

“I can barely manage my own car. I’d rather not have a totaled BMW on my conscience.”

As I took the corner toward the café, my laugh turned into a snort, and for the first time, it didn’t embarrass me. “Fair enough. We’re here, by the way. This is yet another thing you have to keep in your vault of secrets.”

“It’s less of a vault and more of a water-stained manilla folder, but I will do my best,” he promised as I pulled into the back parking lot. It was hidden by a tall, vine-covered fence, and the moment I pulled into my parking space, it triggered the sensor that shut the gate.

“If you weren’t a prince, I’d think you were some kind of super-rich serial killer. Like Hannibal,” he said as I turned the car off.

I grinned. “Why can’t I be both?”

“Fair enough. Make sure someone wipes my phone browser history. I’d rather die without the world knowing I really like tentacles when I get off.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue, and it took until I saw tears rolling down his face to realize he was joking. “Dickhead,” I managed to get out.

He shrugged. “Listen, I have looked at tentacle porn. Some of it is ridiculously hot. It’s not my thing, but I see why it is for other people.”

He was so…unexpected. Every time I swore I had him figured out, he metaphorically clobbered me over the head with something new. And I was becoming increasingly obsessed with just how non-deferential he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t acknowledge my royal status. It was that he didn’t care.

He followed most of the protocols when we were together on set, but in private, I was just some guy. Some random, annoyingman he didn’t like very much. A person he’d kissed and touched and—well. Everything that we’d done in that short time.

I was no different than others he’d been with.

Somehow, that mattered more than anything else.

“I know you can get your chair on your own, but would you like help?” he asked, dragging me out of my thoughts. I hadn’t realized I was still sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at the wall.

I snapped into action, shaking my head as I grabbed my wheels and my seat. Putting it together took less time than the transfer, and soon enough, I was leading the way to the small elevator.

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