Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance, #2)

by Sara Raasch

So why did I keep ahold of the prince and princess, happy ever after dream, when nothing else in my life was a fantasy? Because marrying her would’ve made you useful, and you have nothing else to offer.

And I didn’t realize until the very moment of telling Iris I love you that I only loved the idea of a happy ending, not her.

“Fuck me,” I groan to my plate. Loch doesn’t hesitate. “Only if you say please.”

He curves down, breaking the height difference in a graceful arc, and rubs his lips across mine. It’s barely a kiss. It’s a question. It’s the start of something, one of those endless lines of possibilities that ripple out from me, only this one gleams and pulses and shows me the way until I get to that realization I’ve been fighting and I stand face to face with it. I want him. God, do I want him.

I shove onto my toes and kiss him back.

I know that his kiss tasted like all the dreams I waxed on about in the writing I don’t do anymore, the words I wove while trying to imagine Iris but all I imagined was a fantasy, an ending. He tasted like those fantasies. He felt like those endings. It’s him.

“I canna handle another mess right now and I should na have opened the door to take on you.” From the moment we met, we’ve been picking at each other. Insults, jabs, even some too-direct accidental hits where I’ve noticed us both immediately backing off in unspoken agreement. This is decidedly not that. He thinks I’m a mess?

I gape at him, feeling the blood drain from my face, fingertips numb. Loch must realize his own words in seeing my reaction. His eyelids pulse. “Shite. Kris—”

“You aren’t an awakening,” I whisper. “You’re the whole dawn. And I can’t believe I ever thought I’d seen the sun before you.”

There is no fantasy, no alternate dimension, no manufactured fictional world where I do not fall for this guy. I mean, our version of post-sex talk is about the structure of art, for Christ’s sake.