still, there was probably some kind of protocol that meant Edvin was required to answer, right?
Edvin cleared his throat. “Um,” he said eloquently, his face feeling warm for entirely different reasons all of a sudden. Required or not, the way the prince was holding his gaze made him want to answer. And unlike with some people, Leopold’s teasing didn’t make Edvin feel small. On the contrary, the way the prince was so relaxed, acting like he had all the time in the world and nothing else to do but wait for whatever Edvin had to say, made Edvin feel… tingly.
Wait. No. Tingles were bad. The man was a menace. The tabloids all said so, and right now, Leopold was specifically a menace to Linnea. That was what mattered.
Edvin straightened his spine. “I-I-I-I-I-”
Shitsticks.
Not now.
And fine. Profanity did have its place, even if that place was only in his head.
Edvin snapped his mouth closed, his face flaming even hotter as the words he needed failed to come. Not acceptable. He tried again, determined to tame his tongue for once. “Your H-Highness,” he managed through sheer willpower, steadying his breath, and forcing himself to slow the heck down. The last bit being easier than usual since the prince, oddly, didn’t seem inclined to rush him or like he was about to jump in and try to complete Edvin’s sentence. “I—”
“Eddie?” Linnea interrupted, stepping around him as her eyes—bright and sparkling with excitement—darted between him and the prince. “Are you okay? I’m sure the prince didn’t mean to hit you. He was just asking what had brought me to the library opening, and I said it was you, and oh my God, Eddie, Prince Leopold offered to give me a tour of the royal rose gardens! The private ones.”
Prince Leopold grinned, Linnea squealed, and Edvin’s eyes narrowed, all tingling forgotten. Linnea probably was genuinely excited at the chance to see the private gardens, given that she’d been born with a green thumb and was patriotically infatuated with roses, the official flower of Rosavia, but Edvin hadn’t been born yesterday. A “tour” of the private rose gardens at the palace? No way was he going to let his little sister be seduced by the bad boy prince who was in the spotlight every other week with a different woman on his arm.
“I don’t think so,” he said, straightening to his full and slightly less than impressive height, and barely noticing that his tongue had decided to temporarily obey him. He held the prince’s eyes, ignoring the way they suddenly sparkled with interest when Edvin tucked Linnea behind him to block her from his view. “My sister isn’t available to tour with you, Your Highness. Private or otherwise.”
“Eddie,” Linnea huffed, stomping her foot.
“Protective, are we?” Leopold asked, slipping in the royal “we” and, instead of sounding pompous or irritated, somehow managing to make it feel like he and Edvin were in on a private joke, one that the prince seemed to be enjoying immensely despite the fact that Edvin had just defied him and Linnea was currently trying to burn a hole into the side of Edvin’s head with a patented, disgruntled-little-sister glare.
Edvin ignored the glare. He’d endured plenty of them over the last five years from all three of his younger sisters, and the prince’s eyes were so… brown. Kind of mesmerizing, actually, when they sparkled like that. Edvin had never thought of brown as a particularly sexy color before, but clearly he’d been mistaken. Brown was everything. For the most disorienting few seconds of his life, he almost felt like he was drowning in it, with no interest in coming up for air. But then Leopold’s lips quirked up on one side and Edvin forgot about his new affinity for the color brown because the prince really had very nice lips, didn’t he? Lickable ones.
“Eddie, is it?” those lips said.
Edvin yanked his eyes off Prince Leopold’s mouth with a start. “Y-Y-Yes,” he stuttered, even though—wait… the answer should be no. No one outside his family called him Eddie, and surely he should introduce himself to a member of the royal family with his proper name, shouldn’t he? There was probably some protocol about that, too, but even if there wasn’t, Hans had always sneered at Edvin’s nickname, calling it too common. Of course, Hans had then turned right around and insisted on calling Edvin “Vinnie” instead, which Edvin frankly despised and had always felt was said a bit mockingly, but… but holy Dewey Decimals,