started inexplicably pounding as he dropped to one knee, “I am sure.”
Eddie’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open into a perfect “O” of surprise.
Leo took Eddie’s hand, using his other to pull the ring box he’d been carrying around all week out of his pocket.
“Are you… Leo, are you actually…” Eddie’s whispered question faded away half-formed as Leo popped the box open to reveal the ring he should have given Eddie far earlier.
“Yes,” Leo said. “I’m asking you to marry me, Eddie. To be my husband. To share our lives and be by my side for all the days of our lives, darling.”
Eddie swallowed, his eyes welling up with tears. “But… but I’m naked.”
“Not yet,” Leo said with a wicked grin as he eyed Eddie’s boxers. He’d meant what he’d said earlier to Hugo. They were definitely going to be late for the ball. “But that can be arranged if it will get me my yes.”
Eddie turned bright pink. “Oh Lord, I mean, yes, Leo, of course I’ll marry you. I already am? I mean, we’re… we’re announcing it today.”
“We are,” Leo said. “But as you reminded me the other night, I hadn’t actually asked you yet.”
Eddie’s hand tightened in his, an achingly sweet smile spreading across his face. “You didn’t need to ask me. You already know I’m yours.”
“But you deserve to be asked,” Leo said, slipping the ring onto Eddie’s finger with a soul-deep feeling of satisfaction. “Just like you deserve to be loved.”
The ring was engraved with a twining circlet of roses. The same roses that had been used for the boutonniere’s that both Leo and Eddie would be wearing to the ball. The unique variety that, in Rosavian tradition, represented Leo himself as a member of the royal family.
And later, when they married, when a species of rose was chosen just for Eddie, Leo wanted that one engraved on the ring he would eventually wear himself, turning each ring into both a promise and a claim.
He was Eddie’s, and Eddie was his. They would belong to each other.
No… they already did.
Leo stood, gathering his little librarian, his love, his fiancé close. Eddie was still looking at the ring, his eyes spilling over with the kind of happy tears that Leo planned on spending a lifetime earning more of.
Later, he would explain the roses, but for now the only words his lips wanted to form were the ones that, just a short time ago, had felt like more than Leo would ever be able to promise. Now, though, they were the truest ones he could speak.
“I love you, Eddie Blom,” he said, getting an adorable squeak as he hoisted Eddie up, so that Eddie had to wrap his arms and legs around him to hold on. “And you deserve to know that I’m choosing you, not because I have a duty to marry, but because—” Leo’s heart was suddenly in his throat, but yes, he was going there again, because it was true, “—because you complete me, darling.”
Something that he spent the next couple of hours proving to Eddie… repeatedly, enthusiastically, and with the assistance of copious amounts of blueberry-flavored lube.
Chapter Nineteen
Edvin
As grand and luxurious as Leo’s suite was, Edvin felt a certain degree of comfort and ease there because… well, because it was Leo’s. And that comfort and ease, helped along by a fair dose of sexual afterglow, carried him all the way through the family wing of the palace and right up to the top of the majestic, curving staircase that led down to the ballroom. But then…
Oh Lord. There were gorgeous murals painted on the ceiling above him, chandeliers bigger than he was lining the hallway leading to the ballroom, and gold accents along the pristine white walls that, based on the way they sparkled and glittered as the light bounced off them, Edvin suspected might actually be gold. In other words, even if the liveried footmen lining the hall hadn’t been wearing the royal crest, there was simply no denying that he was in the Royal Palace, about to attend an event of international significance on the arm of the crown prince of the entire country.
Edvin’s lungs suddenly decided to reconsider working, and he instinctively tightened his grip on Leo’s hand, his steps slowing to a crawl as panic threatened to set in.
Leo immediately stopped walking, turning to Edvin and brushing the hair back from Edvin’s forehead as he looked down at him like… like despite the bustle of activity around them,