How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,79

him.”

“I guess it worked out in the end,” Shanti said, lowering the heat and placing a cover on the pot now that the stew had started to boil. “This is actually not a quick meal. I hope you’re not hungry because it needs to simmer for an hour or so.”

Sanyu cleared his throat. “I’m sure we can keep ourselves entertained. Perhaps with more of your dating practice stories.”

She moved to the couch and he sat beside her, not to crowd her as he had at one of their first meetings, but because it was where he always sat now.

“What was your first kiss like?” she asked suddenly. “If you don’t mind talking about it. Mine was a boy on my bo staff team. He asked me while we were at a traveling tournament and I thought it would make good practice. It wasn’t bad, though in the stairwell at a gymnasium wasn’t the most romantic set-up.”

“Mine was with Anzam’s sister,” Sanyu said. “I went to Druk the summer after high school, and the three of us went for a hike but Anzam had to head back and . . . it just happened while we were watching the beauty of the sun setting on the mountain.”

Shanti felt a strange flash of heat, almost like anger. Why would she be angry? Except that this first kiss sounded sweet, while theirs had been angry and ended up with mutual masturbation against a possibly cursed relic. It had been fantastic mutual masturbation, but he was right about the tip of the short stick.

“That’s lovely,” she said diplomatically. It was, even if she was jealous.

“It was just the one kiss, and I don’t think we even liked each other in that way, but it was nice.”

Shanti truly regretted bringing this topic up.

“Wait, you said you weren’t a virgin,” Sanyu said. “This is none of my business, and not that there’s anything wrong with it, but you never dated. Your tutors—”

“While I did have lessons in sexual pleasure, it wasn’t a practical lab,” she said. “You can lose your virginity without dating someone. I wanted it over with so I wouldn’t be at a disadvantage on my wedding night, so I went to a club and found an attractive partner and then it was done.”

“You didn’t love the first person you slept with?” he asked.

“Love isn’t even a requirement of marriage, there’s no reason it should be one for sex,” she replied. “Why? Did you?”

It was strange to think of Sanyu loving someone, and jealousy flared in her again, though she willed it down.

“No.” He laughed and leaned into her so that their shoulders touched. “I didn’t think these were things I’d be able to talk to my wife about. Then again, I didn’t think I’d talk to my wife at all, given how my father’s marriages worked. Wait, that’s Njazan politics, sorry. A bit hard to avoid the topic since almost everything about me is also supposed to be Njaza.”

She understood something now, that she hadn’t thought of when she’d been listing the ways she could show Sanyu that she was useful enough to keep around. He wasn’t just a vague idea of a brooding king who she needed to rely on her so she could achieve her goals. He was a real person with problems and a history and memories that had nothing and everything to do with the crown. He needed someone to share those problems and memories with, and that was something she could do not to ingratiate herself to him, but because she wanted to.

“It’s okay if you want to talk about that,” she said. “My lowest scores in my dating lessons were maintaining sufficient interest in my date. But I like learning about you. Talk if you want. I’m listening.”

Sanyu shifted closer to her and looked down at her with playful mischief in his eyes as he slipped an arm behind her back. “What if I don’t want to talk at all?”

His voice was low, but still infused with humor, and it thrummed through Shanti’s body as he pulled her against his side.

“What do you want to do instead?” she asked, her smile widening.

“Interpretive dance,” he said with a completely straight face. “It’s a passion of mine, and since we’re sharing things . . .”

Shanti’s eyes widened. “You dance? I took dance lessons, too, but interpretive dance was the worst because—”

“This dance is called, ‘Your husband is at the door,’” he said, deftly scooping and flipping her so that