Page 81 of Tabloid Princess

“Yes.” It didn’t sound right though so I quickly shut the door and went to my own room. Pulling off the stupid blouse with its stupid buttons I threw it into the corner. My skin still tingled where his lips had touched.

It’s just my imagination.

It’s just my imagination.

Kisses didn’t dance on skin for hours. They were gone as soon as the moment ended.

I pulled on my pyjamas, the fluffy ones I should have put on earlier instead of going where I shouldn’t.

The ache of unsatisfied desire burned within me, so deep and so dark that even though it was just my emotions it physically hurt. The pain in my chest, the one that he created the day I met him and he’d confused all my preconceived ideas, flickered to life. It scorched around the edges like a cigarette against skin, smouldering with a sting I’d never not be able to feel.

Still able to taste his kiss on my tongue, I gave into wild tears, desperate to wash them all away.

I tightened my arms around Daisy and pulled her in tight, clinging onto everything that I knew, lest I got swept away and never found my way back to where I should be.

Seventeen

Dear Leia,

After you left, I considered your words.

They aren’t acceptable to me. Not in any form.

If I asked you to reconsider, would you?

Oliver.

I stared at the unfolded paper.

I’d put it on the desk, my trembling fingers shaking too much to keep a firm grip.

Nothing had a firm grip anymore—definitely not my sanity. I left my sanity at a black door four streets away when I ran from the future King of England after he had kissed me: my cheek, my lips, his nose skimming my cheekbone, his breath fanning a cool rush of exploding senses across my skin.

I couldn't see him again.

I knew that.

But that wild pounding in my chest determined to show me otherwise.

What did I think? That me, a girl who grew up in Hackney with no food on the table and dirty socks on her feet, could date the one-day King? Could be anything more than a fleeting moment of fun for him?

That’s all it would be.

To him I’m something new, different.

To him it would be fun, but to me… the pounding in my chest told me it would hurt. It would hurt unlike anything else.

It already did.

“Leia! Do you plan to answer the phone today?” Molly lobbed a scrunched-up piece of paper at my head and I swiftly folded the note and hid it under my keyboard.

“I’m the marketing manager, not the receptionist.” I turned and smiled, but my face didn’t feel like my own.

“What is up with you? You’ve been in a daydream since you got here.”

I shook my head and tried to shake off my dreamlike fogginess. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

“I’m glad we’ve got the office back to ourselves.”