be walked on, like it had been for his whole life.
“I have got to relax,” he muttered.
Of course, that would be easier if he didn’t have the biggest set of blue balls this side of a hot air balloon convention. Fuuuuuuuuuck. And he thought his bad ankle was making him walk with a limp? Every step he took, he felt like someone had tied kettlebells to his groin.
Looking around the staircase, he eyed the door to the males’ guest bathroom. He could go in there, unbutton his fly and palm things up. At the rate he was going, it would take him two strokes and he would come all over the place.
But he still couldn’t shake the idea that he was being somehow disrespectful to Helania. She was so much more than YouPorn. Than some random female body to jerk off to. Than a two-dimensional fantasy tailor-made to his tastes just so he could rub one out.
She was a living, breathing, incredibly beautiful and smart young female who—
He had not kissed goodbye.
God, he had wanted to. On the dance floor. Back at their table. When they were walking out through the Remington’s courtyard and then after they’d snuck around to the shadows next to the hotel’s tall side so they could ghost out.
The feel of her body moving against his own as they’d danced close and slow had flipped all of his levers to the Hell-Yeah position. The Right-Fucking-NOW. The OMG-I-Will-Beg. He wanted her to distraction, his blood running hot and thick with a lust that he’d never come close to feeling before. And she had been right there with him. He had scented her arousal and stared down into her glowing eyes and known that she wanted him, too.
What had stopped him? Two things. He wasn’t going to stop things with just a single kiss . . . and neither was she. Unless he was grossly misreading her—and he did not think he was—lip-to-lip would be but a beginning for them, a precursor to bare skin and a whole lot more, and he wanted the space and time to take the “yes” on both sides to its natural conclusion.
And what do you know, Oh, hey, sorry, I’ve got to go Fade my father was a total buzzkill.
The other set of brakes on the situation had been the fact that he didn’t want her to think it was just sex on his end. It had been a relief to find they had so much in common other than grief, and he wanted the chance to be around her again as much as he wanted all the horizontal stuff. But he knew his aristocratic station spoke for itself: Males of his class had a tendency to use civilian females for casual sex, taking them to bed and tossing them aside. The last thing he ever wanted was for Helania to think he was disrespecting her like that. And though they had never outright discussed his lineage, he hadn’t exactly tried to hide his accent or his background.
So he had gentlemale’d it in that alley: Hugging her. Kissing her chastely on the cheek. Making sure she dematerialized out safely first.
And now he was here. In this damn house. Waiting for people he didn’t really care about to arrive for a ceremony that felt like a lie so he could close the door on a death that had rocked him and yet didn’t matter much at all.
On that note, he should probably go check on preparations.
At least duking it out with Marquist would allow him to channel some of this going-nowhere frustration.
As Boone strode down to the dining room, and then pushed his way through the flap door that the staff used, the idea he was behaving as his father would have rankled. God, Altamere and Marquist had been consumed by proper preparations and accommodations for guests of the house, whether they were people coming for a cocktail party, a dinner party, an event, or an overday.
Those two would spend hours in Marquist’s office, poring over seating charts, menus, wine and liquor orders.
Crazy.
On the far side of that flap door, there was the staging area for meal service, the silver polishing room, and then the enormous pantry. Also the closed door to Marquist’s office and private accommodations—which, as it turned out, did not have an I-quit letter taped to its jamb. Or U-Haul moving boxes stacked beside it. Or a gun target with Boone’s photograph in the center and bullet holes in a