CHAPTER 191: CHAPTER 191: KISS

The café went silent for a single stunned heartbeat.

Then the world erupted.

Phones snapped upward like a shimmering metallic tide, camera shutters firing in frantic bursts as if the entire capital had collectively decided to become paparazzi at the exact same moment. Someone yelped. Someone dropped their drink. Someone whispered, "Oh my god, he kissed the King," with the kind of awe usually reserved for religious apparitions.

Dax froze only long enough to process the fact that Chris had initiated a kiss in public, and then it was like something inside him simply broke in the most catastrophic, delighted way. His hands came up hard, sliding to Chris’s waist before one moved instinctively lower, splaying broad across the small of his back as he pulled him in, lifting him just enough that their bodies aligned in a way that left no one questioning who belonged to whom.

Chris’s breath caught, his fingers curling into the front of Dax’s shirt as he leaned in further, deepening the kiss until whatever composure Dax had been pretending to hold onto simply dissolved beneath the press of Chris’s mouth.

Gasps rippled outward like heatwaves across the patio.

A chair scraped. A child squeaked.

Someone in the back whispered, "This is going to be on national TV," with the reverence of prophecy.

Dax kissed him back like he’d been waiting for this exact moment from the second they stepped out of the palace. slow enough to savor, hungry enough to ruin, one hand sliding higher along Chris’s spine, the other anchoring his hip with a possessiveness that was equal parts king, mate, and man pushed past the point of restraint.

Chris broke the kiss first, barely, their mouths still brushing like the air between them couldn’t quite decide to exist.

His voice was a whisper of heat against Dax’s lips.

"Are you insane?"

Dax’s answer was a low, pleased rumble that vibrated through both of them.

"Yes."

Chris was already regretting asking.

"And now," Dax murmured, lips grazing the corner of his mouth like he was one second away from pulling him back in front of half the city, "we’re going back to the car."

Chris blinked, breath catching, sunglasses slipping down his nose with the indignation of a man who absolutely knew what that tone meant and absolutely should not respond to it in public.

"In the car?" he hissed, trying and failing to pull back when Dax’s hand tightened subtly at his hip.

Dax tilted his head, his expression maddeningly calm for someone who had just lifted his consort off the ground in broad daylight. "Yes," he said, quiet enough that the watching crowd couldn’t hear, "before I forget we’re outside."

Chris stared.

Dax’s hand slid just a fraction lower.

The crowd. bless their nosy, overeager Sahan souls, they started cheering.

Chris inhaled through his teeth. "...You’re unbelievable."

"And you started it," Dax murmured, brushing their foreheads together for the briefest, most intimate second before releasing him just enough to let him stand again.

The city had not stopped filming.

Chris stepped back only far enough to straighten his shirt, jaw tight, cheeks warmer than the summer heat would justify. "Fine," he said, his voice sharper than the sunlight reflecting off the café windows. "Then get me out of here before someone sells postcards of this."

Dax offered his hand again, looking altogether too satisfied for a man being dragged away from an audience.

Chris took it.

Chris tried to walk normally.

He really did.

But the problem with doing anything "normally" while holding hands with a seven-foot, white-blonde, purple-eyed monarch who had just kissed you senseless in the middle of a café was that nothing felt normal anymore. The air buzzed. The pavement vibrated with whispered scandal. Every person within a two-block radius was recording them like they were witnessing the Second Coming in tailored suits.

Rowan, who had been stationed at the corner like a loyal brick wall in black, took one look at their joined hands and the dazed, shell-shocked crowd behind them and muttered, "I’m not paid enough for this," before tapping rapidly into his comm.

The other guards surged forward, forming a subtle but very necessary buffer as Chris and Dax walked toward the car.

Chris kept his chin up, sunglasses on, and posture straight.

Inside his head he was screaming.

Dax, on the other hand, looked like a man who had been personally blessed by all fourteen Sahan gods. He didn’t even try to hide it; his thumb brushed over Chris’s knuckles like he was memorizing the shape of them, his stride loose and predatory, absolutely unapologetic.

Someone shouted, "Long live the King!"

Someone else shouted, "Long live the consort!"

Someone else shouted, "I SAW THE HIP GRAB!"

Chris inhaled sharply. "I swear if they..."

"They will," Dax said, perfectly serene. "They already are."

"Fantastic. Wonderful. I’m never leaving the house again."

Dax leaned down slightly, voice slipping into that low, dangerous register meant for private spaces and terrible ideas. "You say that like it would upset me."

Chris nearly tripped.

Rowan coughed loudly enough to be heard over the crowd. "Majesty, High Consort... the car is literally three meters away. Please behave."

Dax ignored him entirely.

They reached the armored sedan, a sleek, obsidian-black vehicle that looked like it had been built specifically to make dramatic exits. Rowan opened the back door with the solemnity of a man preparing for public catastrophe.

Chris slid in first, intending to sit like a civilized human being and breathe for five blessed seconds.

Dax followed him in immediately.

Not "after a courteous pause."

Not "following protocol."

Immediately.

The door shut behind them, sealing out the cheering, the cameras, and the chaos.

And the world went quiet.

Chris had barely registered the click of the locks before he felt Dax’s hand on his thigh, large and warm, fingers curling with that clear intention.

Chris pointed a warning finger at him. "No. Do not start something. We’re in public transport with windows."

"They’re tinted," Dax said, leaning in, voice low and molten. "And you kissed me first."

"That was different."

"Was it?"

Dax’s nose brushed his cheek, slow, melting every nerve in its path. His thumb stroked along Chris’s inner thigh.

Chris swallowed. Hard.

"Dax," he warned.

"Yes," Dax murmured, lips ghosting over his jaw, "say my name like that."

Chris’s breath stuttered.

Rowan’s voice crackled over the intercom, sounding like a man on the brink.

"We can hear you. There are cameras. You have a meeting in seventeen minutes. Please... please... just wait until we get to the palace."

Chris choked on nothing.

"Rowan, do you have a death wish?" Dax asked his hand, climbing higher on Chris’s thigh.

Rowan’s answer was the verbal equivalent of throwing himself into oncoming traffic.

"I’d rather die than explain to Sahir or Killian why you two walked into the East Wing looking like you committed a felony in the motorcade."

Chris covered his face with one hand.

Dax did not move his hand at all; in fact, he moved it higher.

Chris sucked in a breath that absolutely counted as a warning shot. "Dax..."

Dax smiled the kind of slow, predatory smile that had no business existing outside of locked rooms and soundproof walls. "Seventeen minutes is plenty of time."

"Plenty...?!" Chris’s voice cracked. Cracked. He wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. Preferably before he died of mortification.

Rowan’s sigh came through the speaker like a man who had aged ten years in the last three minutes. "Majesty, High Consort, I am formally requesting mercy."

Dax ignored him completely.

He turned Chris’s face toward him with the lightest touch of his fingers, eyes darkening in that unmistakable way that meant Chris’s future was about to involve questionable decisions and an entire staff pretending to see nothing.

"You kissed me in public," Dax murmured. "You lit a fuse. This is the consequence."

Chris glared, which would’ve been more effective if his pulse weren’t doing catastrophic things under his skin. "The consequence can wait until we’re not in a moving diplomatic coffin with cameras."

Dax leaned in, lips brushing the corner of his mouth. "I disagree."

Chris’s heart tried to flee his body. "Dax."

"Yes?"

"Stop."

"Fine. You are no fun."