Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,100

for me?” he whispered, looking adorably flustered.

“It is,” Leo whispered back with a wink before raising his voice for the formal part of the presentation. Or at least, for Leo’s slightly modified version of it. “This coronet, and the van Rosavia roses adorning it, symbolizes both the honor and the responsibility that my family has been entrusted with as monarchs of the Rosavian people. And it is my greatest pleasure—truly, my privilege and a joy, Eddie—to welcome you into that family, and to know that you’ll be by my side for all the days of our lives.”

He set the coronet on Eddie’s head, centering it and securing it with the ease and efficiency of long practice, and then leaned down to kiss him, gently wiping away the moisture on Eddie’s cheeks as he did.

And the smile he got for that? It was exactly what happily ever afters were made of… a dream that Leo had quite honestly never had for himself before, but that now, with Eddie, he was very much looking forward to making come true.

Each and every day, for as many of those as they got together.

Chapter Twenty-One

Leo

Waking up with Eddie in his arms was something that Leo was very much looking forward to getting used to. Waking up with Eddie in his arms and Treble kneading his chest with her micro-talons of steel, however, was less than ideal.

“Menace,” he muttered, wincing as he lifted her off. Still, given that once they’d made it back to his suite after the ball the night before he’d convinced Eddie that it was basically their duty to the crown to always sleep naked, he could at least count it as a win that the fluffy little terror had chosen his chest to attack, rather than Eddie’s.

“Meow,” Treble complained when he offered a decorative pillow as a substitute for her morning bout of claw sharpening.

“You will not wake Eddie,” Leo whispered back firmly, enjoying the feel of all that smooth, temptingly warm, and currently unpincushioned skin draped all over him far too much to allow the little pest near his fiancé.

Leo grinned, pulling Eddie even closer as he pressed a kiss against the top of his head. Fiancé. The only thing that made Leo happier than being able to use that word now was the fact that, at some point, it would become “husband.”

Eddie’s warm breath fluttered across Leo’s chest, and okay, maybe that wasn’t the only thing that made him happier. Having an armful of adorable, sleeping man attempt to burrow even closer to him was a definite contender for that title, and the hard evidence that Eddie would be waking up happy, too—evidence that was currently poking into Leo’s hip and giving his cock some ideas of its own—was also in the running.

Leo ran his hand down the subtle curve of Eddie’s spine, bringing it to rest on his delectable little ass and adding in a squeeze because, quite frankly, it was physically impossible not to.

Eddie sighed happily in his sleep, rocking his hips forward so that his morning wood slid along the juncture where Leo’s hip met his thigh, and Leo groaned softly as his own shaft pulsed in response… then made himself stop. He couldn’t very well tell Treble to let his little librarian sleep and then go and wake him up himself, now could he? Besides, he could tell by the silvery light filtering through the drapes that it wasn’t even properly dawn yet. Too early after their late night, no matter how tempting Eddie was.

But then—

“More, please,” Eddie mumbled sleepily, rolling his hips again in an adorably uninhibited bit of seduction that Leo was absolutely going to succumb to. Because true, it was too early, but if Eddie insisted, Leo certainly wasn’t going to be the one to deny him… ever, for anything.

He squeezed Eddie’s ass again, getting another deliciously inarticulate response.

“Meow,” sniped Treble, batting a pillow at Leo’s head in a clear reminder that no, they were not allowed to wake Eddie right now, thank you very much.

“Shush, little beast,” Leo said, knocking the pillow away. “He’s mine. I am allowed.”

And Leo truly would have let Eddie sleep… probably. But now, since Eddie had asked him not to, Leo basically had a duty to ensure that Eddie’s morning got off to a suitably satisfying start. In fact, as far as Leo was concerned, now that they were engaged it was most definitely his duty to spoil Eddie by giving him each and every thing he