Page 13 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“Now,” I said, ignoring him, “you add in the posture and the vertical motion. We are going to rise and fall as we move and also” —God, I don’t know why I did it, except it had to be the gin— “tuck our hips in as our shoulders lean out.” And I yanked his hips into mine.
His breath left him and his hand tightened in mine. “This is how we’re supposed to dance?” he asked. There was something in his voice, something shaky.
Shaky, uncertain Colchester felt like a victory to me, and I seized my ground like a victor. “This is how we hold each other. Now we move. One, two, three…slow, quick, quick. Yes, that’s right.”
“This is hard.”
I almost made a joke, but I stopped myself when I saw his face. He looked puzzled, a little fretful, confusion and concentration marring that perfect forehead. He wasn’t used to being bad at things.
So instead of joking, I took pity on him. “Forget the steps for a moment,” I said. “It’s about space. About presence and void. I’m taking my space and you’re yielding, my presence filling your void. It’s a chase, but it’s also a balance. Think of it like a chessboard, like boxing, even. I move into the openings you leave, even as you move away. The chase begins again. Taking, moving, taking, moving.”
“But it’s not like chess,” Colchester said. His feet were moving a little better then, his upper body less stiff. “There’s no real winner.”
“The dance is the winner,” I said.
He gave me a skeptical look.
“That sounds like a stale answer, but it’s true,” I insisted. “No matter how hard we worked or how elegantly we danced, we’d merely be spinning demented circles if we did it without a partner. But together, we create something worth watching.”
The music faded, but Colchester’s hand didn’t move away from mine. He kept stepping, his lip between his teeth and his eyes on our feet. He wanted to get it perfect, exactly right, which was so like him.
The band started into a waltz cover of Etta James’s “At Last,” and I resumed leading him again, trying to poke down the part of me that thrilled at having another three minutes of his body close to mine.
We’d danced for about thirty seconds without talking when he said, “You know when I saw you tonight, I thought of Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited.”
It was my turn to frown. “Because you’re fucking my sister?”
He laughed. “Well, I suppose that comparison is inevitable, but no. Because you look so wealthy and princely in these clothes. Because you switch between brooding and charming so fast I can’t keep track of which version of you I’m talking to. Just like Sebastian.”
“Oh. I thought it was the teddy bear I carried everywhere.”
He smiled, and I felt his hips brush against mine. I hardened at the thought of his cock so close to mine, that all it would take was one accidental step to bring our groins all the way together…
He was apparently oblivious to my carnal thoughts, and he kept talking, his voice low in my ear as we step-quick-quick-ed our way around the small room. “But I thought of something else. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Have you read it?”
“Yes.”
“The little prince in the book is so wise but so sad. Has so much to offer this world and yet he can’t stop pining for the one he loves.”
Colchester looked right into my eyes and I couldn’t look away.
His voice didn’t get quieter but it got deeper. “And it seemed so perfect. You are a little prince, Embry Moore, in every way I can imagine. Rich and spoiled, like Sebastian…and yet dreamy and sad, like the little prince from Saint-Exupery’s book.”
Little prince.
It should sound diminishing, condescending, and yet when h
e said it…I don’t know, it felt like an honor. A compliment. It felt right, like it was my true name and had been my true name all along, simply waiting to be discovered.
“Little prince,” I repeated, tasting the words on my tongue.
“And what a prince you are.”
I looked sharply at him, expecting to see that he was teasing me, but there was no trace of humor in his face. Only seriousness and honesty and—
“I leave for thirty minutes and you two turn into a ballroom dancing how-to video?”
We both stopped moving at the sound of Morgan’s voice, and I could feel my anger at her like a living thing, climbing onto my shoulders and ready to launch itself at her. But before I could speak or move or anything, she was next to us, physically pressing us apart. “I’m ready to go back to the hotel,” she said, very regally for someone who’d just had bad schnitzel. She dropped some euros onto the table before she slipped her arm through Colchester’s. And gallant man that he was, he let her, and did it with a smile, and thus whatever had just unfolded between us was closed back up.
