Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,19

oops. The glass kept going down. Where was the table?

“Careful,” Leo said, saving it from hitting the floor because he was amazing.

“You’re amazing,” Edvin told him, intensely glad he’d been born Rosavian instead of… of Grechzen or… or Thedian.

Those poor other people.

Those poor other countries.

Those poor, deprived citizens who had no princes.

Well, Thedes had a very attractive prince, actually, but they had no Leo, which was suddenly the worst form of deprivation Edvin could imagine.

“D-D-Do we send aid to Grechzen?” he asked, his heartstrings twanging for the Grechzen people’s suffering.

“No,” lovely, lickable Leo answered with a sexy sparkle in his eye that made it look like he wanted to laugh. “I should be good and cut you off, shouldn’t I?”

He set Edvin’s glass back on the table and then reached over to brush Edvin’s hair off his forehead, just like he had in front of the library, because he truly was Rosavia’s crown jewel. A genuinely noble and selfless prince who looked out for the junior librarians of his country and made them feel… feel special.

Feel cared for.

Feel slightly horny, if Edvin was being honest.

No. Bad Edvin. That was probably too honest. Best to save those thoughts for later.

“Or,” Leo said, winking at him and making it really hard not to have more of those thoughts right exactly now. “I could just feed you some more, to soak up all the alcohol…?”

“Y-Y-You decide,” Edvin said, pretty sure that strategy had worked out well so far… but, if he wanted to keep on being completely honest with himself, hoping that the answer would be more wine.

Because he wanted to contribute to the Rosavian economy.

Although it would technically be Leo’s contribution, actually. Leo had insisted that he was paying for dinner, just as if this had been a real date. Which… which it was not. Which was super, super important for Edvin remember for some reason, even though the way Leo kept smiling at him and… and doing things, things like brushing Edvin’s hair back or straightening his glasses for him, made it hard to care what that reason might be.

But hard or not, it was still important, because Leo was important, so Edvin would try to care. Well, he’d try to remember, first of all.

Oh, right.

The reason it wasn’t a real date was that Leo was about to marry someone.

Someone else.

Someone who wasn’t Edvin.

Edvin sighed, pushing his glasses back up when they started to slip and not liking that answer at all. Leo marrying someone else was to be expected, of course, but it was also tragic and horrible and totally unfair.

But sometimes tragic and horrible and totally unfair was just the way life worked out, wasn’t it? Edvin knew that first hand, just like he also knew that it wasn’t an excuse to wallow. People counted on him, and life went on, and he always, always, did what he had to do to keep on keeping on, too.

But he could still help his prince, because that was the reason Leo had asked him to dinner in the first place.

Edvin straightened up in his seat, attempting to look helpful, sober, and like someone who wasn’t already halfway in love with a man who would never be his.

He cleared his throat, willing his tongue to stay untangled. “W-What did you… did you want to talk to me about tonight, Leo?”

Leo cocked his head to the side, looking slightly confused for a moment. Then—

“Everything,” he said as he smiled, a slow, sexy one that made it feel like the whole world fell away around them. A smile that felt like it was just for Edvin.

Edvin’s breath hitched, a fizzy, fluttery feeling spreading outward from his stomach to fill him completely, warming him in ways that no wine ever could. For one single forever-after-to-be-cherished moment, Edvin let himself sink into the feeling, drown in it, imagine what it would be like if Leo’s chivalrous, surely-just-polite answer was actually true…

And then that moment was over, because this was reality, not a fairy tale, so he tucked the feeling away like the precious gift it was and came up for air.

“N-N-No, really,” he said to the far too charming prince who made him wish for impossible things. “T-T-Tell me what I can do to help.”

Chapter Five

Leo

Eddie looked adorably sincere as he slow-blinked those pretty hazel eyes behind his perpetually crooked glasses. He kept them trained on Leo with the intense focus of the deeply inebriated, but there was something else in his gaze, too. Something not