The Noble Desire (Peterick)

.•°Nineteen.•°

She had no say in what was wrong or right in this situation. It was difficult to believe even then that they had succeeded in coming this far in her mission. Meagan hadn't expected the royals of Monaco to accept the bribe her masters had offered them to pass her off as the prince's eldest illegitimate daughter, but her masters fabricated her story. They had said she was simply a commoner who had dreamed of marrying well, and the royals sympathized with her, pitied this poor girl who only wanted a chance to prove her worth, so they switched out their daughter for her. Perhaps now they were praising themselves for having done a good deed, but how foolish they had been to have trusted the word of her masters.

The entirety of these months had been woven with noble knowledge of Monaco's customs, traditions, and history. She wasted the time prior to arriving at the palace learning to be a princess, learning to eventually charm a boy she had yet to meet. Her masters couldn't have planned for the convenience of an arranged marriage. They had initially wanted to send her to murder the family once she was of age to travel on her own, but the opportunity to go about it much more discretely fell into their laps, and what an opportunity it had been. Meagan was trapped and couldn't break free.

The group had lessened in size during her upbringing, and those who remained were the few who had directly trained her, which weren't many. They were relying on only her, their golden assassin, to finish their life's work, and Meagan was to do so or else they'd have her head and attempt it themselves. It was a predicament she found herself thinking of through the night in a cold bed all alone. She had no other choice but to speed up the process. Her masters were threatening far more often than she liked to go through with what she feared, so when she woke the next day she searched on the internet for the one thing that could drive both the prince and his bodyguard home. It was only then could they continue the wedding plans that were currently at a pause during Pete's absence.

The tabloids were ecstatic to receive the tip of his location from the "anonymous" source and had said they were thankful for the information. She expected them to arrive in Rio within the next day, and though she felt sick to her stomach, she had to remind herself that there was no other option. It was kill or be killed, and Meagan was too much of a coward to choose the latter.

***

He was lying close enough for Pete to bask in his honeyed scent. His arm slipped around his naked back, and in one gentle pull their skin touched. Pete's fingers carded through the blond mess of hair, watching it tumble as he released it. Patrick shivered from the coolness of the tips traveling from his strands to his cheekbones and finally landing upon his lips, and he pouted slightly, provoking the prince's urge to bite them, to kiss them, to wrap them both up in the duvet and listen to their gentle breathing, watching the cotton ripple like skipping stones and sharing crooked smiles.

Those lips felt slightly chapped under Pete's feather-like touches, but he couldn't bring himself to give much of a damn about that as he gazed intently at each divot as if it could map out ancient seas or tell him everything he didn't know. He looked up at the pair of eyes that held a question of what he was doing. Pete's own lips couldn't seem to form an answer when he was so focused on the ones he still touched. The slight tickle of Patrick's sweet breath expelling from his mouth pulled Pete further into the embrace until they were kissing, half their brains flicking off and allowing for instinct and hormones to take the wheel. Though it had only been a few hours since they'd engaged in such an act, their bodies were more than willing to participate in another round. Pete rolled over so that Patrick was laid below him and dropped his kisses lower and lower with each pucker, down the slick skin of his chest and a freckled stomach.

"Pete?"
"Hm?"
"I love you."
The prince stopped right above his belly button and looked up at the other. The three-worded phrase still sparked goosebumps and static across his arms and raised the hair on the back of his neck.

He could never tire of hearing it, and he reckoned he wouldn't wish to stop saying it either, so he crawled back up and joined their lips and recited the phrase as if it were his dying words.

"Love you too, Rickster."

He was about to continue where he left off, but a knock on the door took both of their minds off the intimate activity.

They weren't expecting visitors on their vacation, so the sudden arrival of someone made the situation all that more alarming. They exchanged a look before Pete agreed to be the one to answer it. He threw on a change of clothes and descended the stairs to the front door of the penthouse, where a cacophony of noise alerted him of there being some cause for concern. His fingers drew back the curtains so that he could peer outside, but as soon as he had done so a wave of flashes blinded him along with a herd of demanding voices that flooded his ears. A panic shook through the young prince as he realized that he was both figuratively and literally trapped.

He'd been caught in his own lie fed to the press, and now he'd be shamed as a selfish prick. Patrick came down a second later to see him leaned against a wall contemplating how he was going to get out of such a mess.

"Hey. What's going on?"
"The paparazzi caught wind of where I was, and now they're right outside that door," he answered.

"Shit...I'll-I'll get rid of them."
"No way. They'll devour you. Trust me. The tabloids are staying put until they get some insight as to why I'm not in South Africa helping the orphans and instead am sitting on my ass in Rio without my fiancee. What boggles me is how they found out. I didn't even tell Gerard about the switch."
"Maybe our pilot talked."

"Maybe. It's too late now. I need my assistant here ASAP to handle damage control. Can you get Gerard on the phone for me? I need to stay here to keep an eye on these bastards."

A few minutes later Patrick returned with his cellphone already having been dialed to Gerard's contact. The prince glanced at the shapes behind the curtains and mentally groaned at the pain of having to deal with the invasion of his privacy. Since his first day of life he had been introduced to the lenses of a dozen cameras and raised within the focus of the public.

Yet the pests were still able to get on his nerves, and the idea that he could only adapt to their behavior and never rid his life of them bothered him beyond belief. The only way to truly become irrelevant was to abdicate the throne for a distant cousin to take his place and disappear to a small village in some foreign country, but Pete wasn't sure he could manage a secluded life like that.

"I heard the news, Peter. You don't need to explain," Gerard sighed on the other end, "I'm guessing, you need me there, correct?"

"Desperately. Do you have an idea on how to get the press off my back?"
"Most definitely, and I can have you home intact too, but you're not in the clear with me. I expect a reason for this chaos when I get there."
"Oh, come on. Lay off. You're not my dad."
"But I work for him too, and that means everything you do is my responsibility to monitor. I'm headed to the airport as we speak, so I'll be there soon. Try not to cause anymore of a spectacle."

Pete hung up the device and threw himself onto the couch next to where Patrick was patiently sitting.

"I'm screwed. How am I going to elucidate whatever we've been doing here? How is Gerard going to?"

Patrick took his left hand and pressed a soft kiss to the back of it. The prince received the gesture as a sign that he needed to relax and wait it out until his assistant was on Brazilian soil, but he was far from being able to remain stable when there was the high probability of their relationship being leaked and ruining both of their lives in the process. He could only pray that Gerard's solution was witty enough to fool the media.