My Prince by Anna Martin

that’s a long story,” Alex said, sighing as he collapsed back into the comfort of the chair. He raised his hand to get the bartender’s attention, then circled his finger in the air for another round of drinks. George wanted to say something, to tell Alex to go and order his own fucking drink, but he stayed quiet. No need to be purposefully antagonistic.
    “Same again, guys?” Danny said, coming over to pick up their empty glasses.
    “Please,” George said.
    Alex grinned and winked. “Surprise me.”
    “I can do that.”
    “So?” George asked when Danny went back to the bar.
    “Okay. Well, my mother is English. She grew up between London and Bath because my grandfather was a member of the House of Lords. Obviously she moved to the Netherlands when she met and married my father, and then they had me and my brother.”
    “You’re older?” George asked, and Alex nodded.
    “Yes, by eighteen months. I was brought up bilingual—basically my mother spoke English to me and my brother, and my father and most of the rest of the family spoke Dutch. When I was seven, my mum asked if I wanted to stay in school in the Netherlands, which I wasn’t particularly enjoying, or try a school in London. So I moved to Notting Hill to live with my grandfather and Greta, who was my nanny at the time, and went to Harrow.”
    “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around who you actually are. You just seem posh to me, not, you know, royal.”
    Alex laughed. “Thanks, I think. It’s weird, but my brother is much more royal than me. Hendrick stayed in the Netherlands with my mum and dad and went to a private school there instead of coming to London. So he was around all of the family shit a lot more than I ever was.”
    “Why is it weird if he was there and you weren’t?”
    “Because he was never going to be king,” Alex said. “Nor was I, really. My dad is the second brother, so he would have only been king if my uncle died without any kids. Then it would have passed to me.”
    “But he does have kids?”
    “Now he does,” Alex said with a grin. “I have three cousins. They’re all young, though. Uncle Wil didn’t have kids until he was older, but my parents were both young when they had me and Hendrick.”
    “Got it.”
    He watched as Danny slid out from behind the bar with two more glasses on a tray, then set each down on the table between them.
    “Here you go,” he said cheerfully. “Can I get you anything else?”
    “I think we’re good,” George said, smiling at him. “Thank you.”
    “No problem.” He slipped discreetly away.
    “There’s still a possibility, though,” George continued, “that you could be king someday.”
    “Well, not really. Only in the same way that there’s a chance Prince Harry could be king. That would only happen if a lot of other people in his family died first.”
    George pulled a face.
    “Exactly.”
    “Are you out to your family?”
    “Oh God,” Alex laughed. “Yeah. Since forever.”
    “What did they say?”
    “Well, I don’t think it exactly came as a shock, I’ll say that much. I was always an ‘unusual child.’”
    “I bet you were.”
    George picked up his refreshed drink and took a tentative sip. It tasted even better than the last one.
     
     
    E ARLIER IN the evening—sometime around his third cocktail—Alex had decided it was going pretty well. He didn’t normally date people, not like this, and George was fun. He was smart and interesting and funny and hot , and Alex was prepared to break some of his own rules to spend more time with him.
    Alex laughed softly as he pulled away from George’s lips. They had found a dark alcove in the already pretty dark club and had been grinding together and snogging for… longer than they probably should have been. George’s hands gently kneaded Alex’s asscheeks, and he smiled, skimming his lips over the corner of Alex’s mouth, then knocking their noses together.
    “I am…,” Alex said, then sighed.