“Not at all. I’d love to watch you lick my cone.” And he wagged his eyebrows at her.
She snorted. “Perv.” But she reached for his hand and dragged his cone toward her mouth, and then gave it a tentative lick. Then, she moaned. “Oh, my God. That’s incredible. Why is everything so good here?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth, the small pink tongue darting out to lick at his cone again, and then retreating back between those pretty, perfect lips.
And now he had a rather uncomfortable erection forming. He closed his eyes and started counting back from a hundred, even as she made little pleased noises in her throat as she ate her gelato.
“You want to taste mine, Griff?”
God, she was really going to drive him to distraction today, wasn’t she? Forget the counting. He opened his eyes and looked over at her, just as she was giving the top of her cone an open-mouthed kiss, her tongue flicking out against it. Chocolate coated her pink lips.
He leaned forward and took her lower lip in his mouth, sucking on it. “Delicious,” he murmured, and then nibbled on her upper lip while she made soft mewing sounds that drove him wild. “I think I like yours better.”
She stared at him, dazed, as he pulled away. Her lips were slightly parted, her mouth wet from his kisses. “You . . . you want to taste it again?” Her voice was breathless.
“More than anything,” he admitted. “But if I do, they’ll cite me for public indecency.”
Her gaze flicked to his lap, where his arm was carefully maneuvered over his cock. And she laughed. “I’m sorry. I’ll behave.”
“Let’s discuss something that will rid me of my problem, shall we? And save the tastings for later.”
“All right,” she said cheerfully, and took a big crunching bite of her cone. After a moment, she said, “Tell me about your childhood.”
That’d do it. Talk of his family always made any sexual thoughts disappear. “Must I?”
“Well, no, I guess you don’t have to.”
Griffin regarded the fountain nearby. “I’m afraid it’s one of those revolting ‘poor little rich boy’ stories. Except when I was growing up, my branch of the family wasn’t all that wealthy. We had several estates but other than the crown’s money, we were essentially bankrupt. My mother, Her Royal Highness Sybilla-Louise, married my father because his branch of the family had an acceptable title and enough wealth to keep the family estates afloat. It was not a love match. Not even close. You’ll notice that with the exception of my cousin Alexandra, not many in the royal family marry for love.”
“It sounds kind of backward,” Maylee observed, giving her cone a furtive lick.
“It is. We like to pretend that the royal family is as enlightened as the current times, but they’re still stuck in old protocol more than any other group I have ever imagined. My family was not a warm one. I rarely saw my parents except for state functions, and my brother and I were shuffled off to live with various nannies at my parents’ country estates. When we were old enough, we went to boarding schools.” He shrugged. “I went to Eton in Great Britain.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Eton? It wasn’t so bad.”
“No, your family. Didn’t you love and care for one another?”
He gave her a wintry smile. “I care more for my cousin Alexandra than I do for anyone else in my family.”
“That’s so sad.” Her round face looked unhappy. “Weren’t you lonely?”
“I suppose. I had my books and my studies. I didn’t need much more than that.”
Her hand reached out and touched his.
Griffin grew uncomfortable with her sympathy. “At any rate, my father died when I was fifteen, and my brother, George, became the duke, which made him even more insufferable than he already was. When I was finished with my studies at Eton, I was called home for a time, but it was rather . . . miserable.” He paused, thinking of George’s angry rages about money, his new wife who cried because he never came home, his mother’s icy demeanor that cared more for the hem of his coat than if Griffin was happy. The constant royal functions and scrutiny. “I asked to go to college in the States. My mother was appalled at the thought, but I would not be budged. At the time, I wanted to get as far away from my family and Bellissime as possible, and I thought the States would be the perfect place to do it.”
“They must have finally let you go,” Maylee commented.
“Mmm. Eventually. I did, however, have to forfeit all claim to the throne in order to leave, though. My mother was convinced that Bellissime wouldn’t approve of a States-bred king, never mind that I was ninth in line and would never see the throne unless a plague descended upon the royal house.” His mouth twitched and he looked over at Maylee. “I’d say the joke is on her, considering that Luke Houston will be the next king of Bellissime.”
Maylee wasn’t laughing, though. Her face wore an expression of sympathy.
“So I forfeited any claim on the throne, abdicated all my titles. My mother had the queen dissolve my original title and my inheritance returned to George’s hands, which made him far more amenable to sending me off to the States once that happened. I was given the title of Viscount Montagne Verdi since it wouldn’t do for Mother to have a mere ‘mister’ for a son.” He smiled thinly. “And so I moved to the States and never went back.”
“And you made truckloads of money,” Maylee said. “And rubbed their noses in it.”
He laughed. “I made truckloads of money,” he agreed. “And then I paid off all of Mother and George’s debts.”
Her brows drew together. “Why?”
“Family loyalty, I suppose.” Though sometimes, he wondered why he did so. It certainly hadn’t improved things with Mother or George. If anything, they resented him more for carving his own path and ending up incredibly wealthy.
“Your family sounds like a bunch of jerks, Griff.”
“They’re titled. They can’t be jerks. Snobs and ass**les, yes. Jerks, no.”
She laughed and tossed a piece of her cone to the ground. Immediately, birds flocked to it and she began to tear off another piece. “It sounds very sad and lonely, if you ask me. Do you have family in the States, then?”
He thought of the Brotherhood, his friends who had been at his side and helped him more than any family member possibly could have. “I have friends. It’s enough for me.”