The Princess Promise

Make Way For the King

"Who...what...when...how?" I stuttered, unable to come up with a full coherent sentence. The boy underneath me raised an eyebrow at me. He sat up and I squeaked as I was almost flung backward. He wrapped an arm around my waist pressing my body to his hard one, sitting up completely.

"Hey," he chuckled. "I would be Ethan."

If he was Ethan, that meant...

"I ran into you?" I questioned him, glancing down nervously at his arm.

Confession time: I wasn't used to the male touch. Yeah, I had my dad and brothers who made it their life mission to keep me away from the real world. And the real world included boys who were not related to me. Ivory was in on it too, straying me away from any potential "threats."

Ethan followed my line of sight to his arm and testingly pinched my hip. I jumped up, moving back to Ivory's side. He watched my movements, still sitting on the floor. Ivory yanked me behind her protectively.

"She didn't mean to King," she said. King? I eyed him searching for the indication that he was King. His ink black hair had the messy yet sexy, I-just-got-out-of-bed look. The greenness of his eyes held me captive.  Me, being an artist noticed the swirls of lighter shades of blue surrounding the pupil.

Yet they seemed so dull looking at Ivory and Clover who was leaning forward, giving him a disturbing view down her dress.

In simple terms, he was probably the sexiest man I had seen in all my 17 years of life.

Seeing me, he smirked, telling me silently that he saw me checking him out. When he looked at me, I saw something spark in his eyes. I didn't know what it was but I found it strangely satisfying. He held up his wrist to me. Black and gold ink peeked out from the top of his cliche leather jacket.

"What's that?" I asked, stepping out from behind Ivory.

"No, don't touch him, Nikki!" Ivory instructed. Ignoring her warning, I squatted down next to him and held out my hand to him. He placed his wrist in my palm, observing the top of my head as I peeled the cloth away from his wrist. The word "King" was tattooed on his wrist, the ink loopy and bolded with hints of gold.

"Hey, I drew that!" I exclaimed, proudly but confused. It was one of my favorite projects. The only one I had shown that design to was Ivory. I twisted my head to look back at the aforementioned girl and she bit her lip guiltily.

I wasn't mad at her just embarrassed that the whole school had probably seen the design and thought it was weird on Ethan.

"Well this has been a touching moment," a new voice intervened. Glancing past the twins, I took note of the brown haired boy leaning against the wall. His rust-colored eyes showed that he was clearly amused, he sluggish posture and lazy drawl stating otherwise.

I'm surrounded by beautiful people. This gene pool game is totally unfair.

"Ethan, we've really got to go. Some of the girls want us to judge some stupid competition," he told Ethan. The King held up a finger to his loyal subject and the boy sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall behind him.

"You drew this?" Ethan asked me, gesturing with his free hand to the hand in my grasps. Releasing him, I nodded, worrying that he was going to blame me for making something so peculiar.

He might say:

"Why would you do something like this?"

"Who told you, you could draw?"

"You should drop art."

"You're a good artist."

I blinked, knocked out of my own thoughts by his words. "Really?" I interrogated him, leaning forward to eye the tattoo again.

"Duh!" The twins answered for him. The one on the left continued, "We wanted one but Ethan said that it was only for him."

The right one shook his head as if he was disappointed. "Not cool man. Have you forgotten everything we taught you about sharing?"

"Shut up," Ethan brushed them off. "You're really good."

"We have to go," the brown haired boy reminded them from his spot, his eyes not opening. The twins hopped to him, pouting.

"But we haven't introduced ourselves to her yet!" They whined in unison. He peeked on eye open, looking down at the watch on his wrist.

"Do it quickly. We have 5 minutes," the boy informed them. Bounding back to me, the twins picked me up between them.

"My name's Ryan and he's Rayn," one of them introduced. "Mister Quickie over there is Xavier." Getting the sexual innuendo behind their words, I giggled. Ethan's gaze lowered to my lips quickly and I flushed red, biting down on my bottom lip.

"What's yours?" Xavier spoke up. I glanced over at him, startled. Seeing the confusion on my face, he explained further, "Your name?"

A hand gripped my arm and pulled me back. I twisted my head, expecting to see a familiar pair of sea glass eyes but instead, I was met with silver orbs that looked overfriendly but at the same time, deadly. "She's Nikola," Clover introduced briefly, flipping her eye-catching hair over her shoulder and into my face. Her long black stiletto nails pierced my skin. "And my name's Clover McMartin."

The McMartin's were an esteem rich family who owned multiple fast food joints around town. Clover flaunted her parents' money as if it was her own, making sure people knew exactly where and who she came from. Her champagne blonde hair was held out of her face by a diamond encrusted headband, a floral Err Night mini dress hugged her perfect figure, a little shorter than necessary and then, there were the shoes.

"I'm Ivory Taylor," sounding ashamed, Ivory's voice became lower, her hair framing her face. Tilting my head to the side, I noticed that standing next to each other, Ivory and Clover looked almost identical, like Ryan and Rayn. The thought made my heart hurt, so I looked off in the other direction, crossing my arms across my chest and pouting like a little kid.

"What's wrong?" A voice really close to my ear accompanied by a hot breath on my neck, caused me to shiver and jump backward, away from a smirking Ethan. Grabbing me by the waist, he pulled me into his warmth, my head colliding with his collarbone. Unconsciously, I snuggled my head into the crook of his neck, embracing his heat and his smell of burning wood and something masculine; something completely his own. He chuckled, small ripples running through his body as an effect.

"Are you sniffing me?" He asked through chuckles.

Mortified by my actions, I shoved him away from me, stepping out of his personal space. "I wasn't....I didn't mean to...." I stuttered, my face flaming. His laughter died down but he still smiled down at me.

"It's alright," grabbing my arm, gently enough so that he didn't hurt me, Ethan yanked me back towards him, burying his nose in my hair. "You smell nice. Like cherries and," he trailed off, taking a deeper whiff. "Axe deodorant?"

I cursed my brothers out silently, rushing to explain myself, "It's not mine! My brother didn't buy me any deodorant today so I had to use his! I don't like his though cause it smells weird, in an icky sort of way. Not saying that all guys that wear Axe smell icky! It's just my brothers. They don't really smell good wearing anything but that's because..."

I stopped rambling as he shook his head at me, grinning wildly. "So goddamn cute," he whispered.

My face probably resembled a tomato at the point and I lowered my head, trying to hide my red face with my ironically red hair.

"King Ethan!" Clover shrieked, furious. I squawked, leaping away from him. Evidently, I forgot we had an audience; an audience consisting of 3 entertained boys and 2 unamused girls.

"We should get-" Xavier started but Clover cut him off, wrenching Ethan away from me and "discreetly" forcing his muscular bicep into her bosom.

"Why are you playing this tramp? She isn't even that pretty!" Clover spat, towards me. With Ethan a safe distant away from me, I regained my composure, my breathing going back to normal and my face cooling down.

"Hey Clover," I smiled sinisterly, making sure her attention was locked on me. "You should get to class. We wouldn't want you to get any shallower, now would we?" With those harsh parting words, I flipped her to bird and scuttled off to my first-period class, leaving school royalty behind.