Asteria - In Love with the Prince Read online

  God: what had that been? Why did I feel like I was ready to melt into the floor, just from him touching me?

  I quickly pulled the front of my dress up and fastened it, then walked past him, unable to meet his eyes. The door out into the corridor was open. I stepped towards it.

  I figure, looking back, that if I’d kept going then and not spoken, I never would have seen him again.

  But I stopped on the threshold, wanting, for some unknown reason, to impress him. I turned and said in Asterian, “I thank you for your help, Your Highness and hope I have caused you no embarrassment.”

  He was already watching me, but the instant I started to speak in Asterian, he became alert: I had the image of a beast again, pricking up its ears.

  Hearing prey.

  I finished speaking. He said nothing, and for one long, hotly humiliating second, I wondered if I’d mangled my grammar and said something completely unintelligible. Should it have been Your Royal Highness? No: the Brits liked that, the Asterians didn’t.

  He reached past me and closed the door.

  ***

  There are a lot of stories about Asteria. Some of them aren’t true. Some of them are.

  Asteria is a tiny country in Central Europe, scarcely more than three hundred miles across. It’s surrounded by much larger countries on three sides, with only a small strip of coastline to call its own. It’s said to have beautiful mountains and lakes and some of the most amazing, unspoiled medieval buildings in the world.

  I say “said to”, because no-one outside Asteria really knows. Asteria is known for three things, and the first of those things is that it’s one of the few remaining genuine kingdoms, ruled by an authentic monarchy. The royal family has absolute power: there’s no parliament, there’s no prime minister or president, there are no elected officials. Very few Asterians travel outside their country, save for the royals themselves and a few very high-up families. What we know of modern Asterian culture is mostly gleaned from them, because Asteria is obsessively secretive and isolated, second only to North Korea in how they shield their population from the outside world. Foreign TV, newspapers and the internet are all available – we think – but very little information comes back out. There’s certainly no tourism into Asteria, and no journalists are allowed in.

  The second thing Asteria is known for is its society. In Asteria, women are treated very differently to men. There are a lot of rumors and half-truths floating around, and a lot of head-shaking and finger-wagging from America and Britain in particular, but what it boils down to, when you unpick all the conflicting stories, is that women are essentially owned. Slaves. Some people claim it’s little more than the same sort of lifestyle some BDSM enthusiasts in Greenwich or San Francisco enjoy: others say it’s something far more serious. And that in itself splits people into two groups: some are morally outraged and some want to visit. Thanks to all this, Asteria now has the same sort of forbidden allure that Amsterdam or Pigalle once had.

  All of which would make Asteria nothing more than an interesting little quirk: a micro-nation that would be swallowed up quickly by its neighbors, or converted into something more acceptably modern. The UN would sweep in and demand free elections, and there would be calls from women’s groups worldwide for fair and equal rights for all, if there really were any truth in the slavery stories.

  Except. I said Asteria is known for three things, and here’s the third.

  On a spring morning in the mid-eighties, a farmer plowing his field found lumps of rock with a shiny, crystalline metal running through it, barely below the surface of the ground. It wasn’t iron and it wasn’t tin. It was eventually identified as palladium.

  Palladium is used in the production of electronics, jewelry and most recently hydrogen fuel cells. It sells for around six hundred dollars an ounce.

  Asteria, it turned out, was sitting on a vast reserve of it. Making it one of the richest nations in the world.

  That makes a difference.

  The UN, Britain, America and a host of other nations wooed Asteria: a good relationship with them was now as important as securing oil. Asteria was offered a seat in the UN general assembly (they refused, but attended when they pleased, as “observers”). The US offered to build mines in Asteria (the royal family opened their own, instead, and shipped the refined palladium to the border themselves, even refusing outside truck drivers). The occasional left-wing newspaper still printed angry articles about what was rumored to be going on in Asteria, but governments were quick to stamp on anything that could anger the royals and jeopardize a trade deal.

  For many years Asterian had been dead as a language, outside of the country itself. Then the palladium boom happened, and suddenly everyone was desperate to speak it. Then it became clear that the royals were going to handle things their own way and that there’d be no rush of foreign investment, and interest in the language diminished save for the few diplomats that needed to speak it.

  And me.

  I’ve always had a thing for languages. Learning a new one for me is easy, but it’s more than that: it’s exciting – stop looking at me like that, okay? - like learning a dance, with its own rhythm and style. All I have to do is immerse myself in it for a few months, and I know it for life. I’m fluent in French – which is how I got the UN job – and near-fluent in Russian, Italian, German and Serbo-Croatian. Asterian was a lot harder. Firstly, it doesn’t have the same roots as most European languages, sounding more like Russian but having an entirely different vocabulary. Secondly, there are no books on it: I had to rely on recordings of the royal’s visits and others at the UN who’d learned it first-hand. I’d learned it mainly as a novelty and partly—I cut off that train of thought. I was ashamed of the other reason.

  The only Asterians the rest of the world really saw were the royal family. There was a serving king; Tibor, and his queen; Larissa. Finally, there was a prince, who was widely expected to take over the rule of his country within the next few years: Jagor.

  And now he was standing six feet from me.

  We stood there for a second, just looking at each other. I had time to notice things now, like how strong his hands looked. Or the way his pecs curved under his tailored white shirt. Or how the dark shadow of his stubble shone black in the warm light from the bedside lamps: again, I found myself thinking of an animal. If I kissed him, it would brush against me: would it be scratchy? It looked almost soft.

  Why was I thinking about kissing him?

  It occurred to me that we were both in a very dangerous situation here. Alone in a room with a closed door and the lights romantically low. If anyone should come in, it was going to take a lot of explaining to convince them it was innocent.

  Is it innocent? I asked myself. What the hell is going on here?

  I was very aware of the closed door, and his possible reasons for closing it.

  “I should go,” I said.

  He just stared at me, the way a cat will stare at a mouse. My heart was thumping so hard in my chest, I was sure he must be able to hear it.

  “I really think I should go.” I tried to say it firmly, but my voice quavered. It wasn’t fear: or if it was fear, it wasn’t him I was scared of.

  He gave me another one of those looks. Then he took a step towards me.

  All I had to do was walk to the door and leave. Why was that so hard? But my legs felt like concrete, even my arms hanging limply by my sides. He took another step towards me, and now he was close enough that I could smell his aftershave. It was like nothing else I’d ever smelled: not like one of the scents you buy at a store, all alcohol and chemical scent. This was like open spaces and cold, hard rock and the wind: if the outdoors had a smell, this was it.

  “I really think….” I trailed off.

  He put one huge hand beneath my chin and used the edge of it, very gently, to tilt my face up to his.

  “Don’t think,” he said softly. I didn’t realize until afterwards that he’d said it in Asterian, because as soon as h
e’d said it, he was kissing me.

  His lips were warm on mine, sending a jolt of heat rocketing down through my chest, blossoming in the very core of me. His chin was brushing mine, and his stubble grazed me. It was rough, but it felt good. He was bending down slightly to reach me, and I suddenly became aware that I was stretching up to meet him, my lips flowering open. I was kissing him back.

  His breath was hot against me as he parted his lips, his tongue greedily seeking mine. It was the first time I’d been kissed in months. His hands were in my hair, stroking through the soft strands, his palms warm against my temples. Little shocks of pleasure were darting down through my body from everywhere he touched me, seeking my groin. He was starting something inside me, something primal and out of control, so strong it scared me.

  He broke the kiss and leaned back from me. The loss of his touch was like a physical pain.

  “Tell me you want me to stop,” he told me: and he said it in English, not in Asterian, so there was no danger of me misunderstanding.

  My chest was heaving: I was panting like I’d been sprinting, my eyes huge and wild, my face flushed. Between my legs, I could feel heat building, turning to wetness. I hadn’t been this turned on in…I wasn’t sure I’d ever been this turned on.

  “Tell me you want me to stop,” he said again, and this time I actually took it in. Not “Do you want me to stop?” Not a question. A challenge.

  I focused on him, looked into his eyes, so he would know I understood and, with a lurch of my stomach, a flash of what the hell are you doing, Lucy? I kept absolutely quiet.

  And then he was kissing me again.

  This time his whole body pressed against me. I could feel the hard outlines of his muscles through my dress: his broad, strong chest, his hard leg pressing against my own soft thigh. He was so much bigger than me, towering over me, one arm slipping under my back to support me and – oh God – he was bending me backwards; my back arched, my breasts mashing against his chest. His lips lifted from mine, laying kisses along my neck and a shudder went through me. I felt like I was melting, dissolving into him. I felt like, if he let me go right at that instant, I wouldn’t fall: I’d just float four feet off the floor.

  His other hand was on my hip, and the warmth of it, so close to my groin, was making it impossible to think. I was gasping, moaning, my eyes fluttering closed, giving myself up to his touch.

  We were spinning slowly around, as if dancing, and then the hard wood of the door pressed against my back. One of his hands thumped into the door next to my face, loud and aggressive, making me jump. He started nibbling and sucking on my upper lip and I groaned at the feeling, my breath coming in hot little gasps.

  He slipped one hand under my dress and smoothed over my leg, just above the knee. His tongue was in my mouth again, my head pressed back against the door.

  The hand slid up my thigh, higher and higher. He wasn’t exploring, wasn’t hesitant. He was moving very deliberately, and I sensed the only reason he didn’t go straight there was to make me wait.

  The heat was building inside me, a dark, twisting power focused right between my thighs. As he kissed me, his chest was rubbing against my breasts through the dress, my nipples throbbing, almost painfully hard. His hand reached my hip and I panted in urgency. Then he started to slide it, very slowly, around to the front—

  “Lucy?” Gwen’s voice, not three feet away.

  My eyes flew open, my whole body spasming against the door, held tight between it and Jagor’s body. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.

  “Luce?”

  She was in the corridor, right outside. Jagor was kissing me, preventing any attempt at speech. I didn’t want to speak: I just wanted him to pause for a ‘sec, wait until she’d gone. If she caught us—

  And then Jagor’s hand slid all the way around to the front. He cupped my mons through the thin silk of my panties, the warmth of his palm going straight through them, and a quick, high cry escaped me.

  A second’s silence from outside. Then, suspiciously, “Luce?”

  He stopped kissing me for a moment, but only long enough to smile. Then his lips were on mine again, and suddenly I had to dig my nails hard into my palms to stop myself from crying out, because his hand was slipping under the thin triangle of fabric and sliding down to rest against my moist lips.

  He stopped kissing me again, and moved his head back a little. He wants to see my expression! I realized.

  Two fingers were rubbing against the softness of my lips and I flushed red, knowing that he could feel how wet I was.

  “Lucy?” Gwen’s voice was right outside the door. “Are you in there?”

  His fingers pushed inside me, stretching me deliciously around them, and my head lolled back against the door as my back arched. I forced myself to make no sound, even though I wanted to yell, to scream, to bang my fists against the door.

  “Lucy?”

  And then his thumb found my clit and circled and I was lost, both hands coming down to clasp his arm: whether to stop him or urge him on, I don’t know. His fingers were moving inside me, his thumb stroking and rubbing and God I was bucking against him, suddenly over the edge, the orgasm ripping through me. Hot explosions were going off in my mind, destroying me, leaving no thought or sensation except what he was doing to me. Gwen was forgotten; the embassy was forgotten; my job was forgotten. All that mattered was him and me.

  I could feel myself spasming around his fingers, my thighs clamping hard around his hand. I folded silently at the waist, my head on his chest. He held me under the arm with his free hand, easily supporting my weight: I would have collapsed if he hadn’t.

  When the shudders started to subside, I pressed myself back to standing, leaning heavily on his arm. My legs still felt like they could give way at any second. Reality started to slowly creep back, like awakening from a dream.

  As if he knew what I was about to do, he gently removed his hands and stepped back.

  I grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open, and then I was running down the stairs, heels loud on the polished wood, my heart thundering in my chest.

  Chapter Two

  The next day, I had a hangover. Not a drunk-too-much hangover. An emotional hangover. It was there as soon as I woke up: those four perfect seconds of Oh, what a weird but horny dream followed by the ten ton crushing realization that it wasn’t.

  The night before, I’d run straight out of the door and into the street. Gwen had already left, so I hailed the first cab I saw and sat in the back, thighs pressed together, feeling the moisture between them, as real and undeniable as the sticky, drying wine stain down my front. I didn’t talk, didn’t think. I just sat there, numb, until I got home; then took off my make-up and climbed into bed on autopilot.

  I rushed to work, as if I could outrun the memories if only I moved fast enough. Shower, coffee, subway, sidewalk, all at breakneck speed, pushing past people, anything to keep moving, keep from thinking.

  Then I was at my desk and the pace slowed cruelly to zero; I couldn’t run from it any longer. Why had he picked me? Me, instead of one of the many gorgeous girls at the party? Why not Gwen, for one?

  I should have been working: I had about five thousand hours of speeches to transcribe. But instead, I sat there, huge, ear-encasing headphones on my head with nothing playing, staring at my screen but not seeing it. My fingers tapped the same keys over and over again, sliding across them like Rosary beads.

  What had I been thinking last night? Who had I been: because I certainly hadn’t been me. I wasn’t that sort of girl: I wouldn’t let some guy…I felt my face flush at the memory, a wave of heat going through me. I wouldn’t do…that at a party with my boyfriend, if I had a boyfriend. Certainly not with a stranger. Sure as hell not with a foreign dignitary!

  I finally gave up any pretence at working and sat back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. What was this to him? I flushed again, remembering how I’d been, how I’d given myself up to him in the space of a few minu
tes, without even token resistance. How much further would it have gone, if Gwen hadn’t arrived outside, if I hadn’t got scared and run?

  I was an opportunity he’d seen and taken, I guessed. I wondered how often he’d done this, how quickly he forgot the woman’s name. Did he even know my name? I didn’t remember telling him. By now, he was probably in a different country, and I was another in what was no doubt a long list of conquests, or near conquests. On the plus side, at least I’d never see him again: that meant I could bury the whole thing in my mind; deny it ever happened. It had been a mistake: an awful, embarrassing mistake I’d never repeat. Except….

  Except I’d never reacted that way to a man: not even close.

  Except sometime in the early hours of that morning, half-awake, I’d coaxed myself to another climax reliving it.

  Except I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  My phone rang.

  ***

  Robert Foster-Thomas is my boss’ boss’ boss. I’d glimpsed him a few times at big UN events, but we’d never spoken. Now he wanted to see me. It didn’t take a genius to work out what about.

  Someone must have seen us. Or someone saw me run out of the party, saw him come downstairs a moment later and put two and two together. Or had he boasted to his bodyguards about the American translator he’d nearly fucked, and word had got around?

  Foster-Thomas had a large office with an actual window, over on the other side of the building. As I walked I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, could hear them all suddenly go quiet as I passed. What was I now known as? Naive? Unprofessional? A slut?

  I knocked on the huge, oak-paneled door, and got an immediate cheery ‘Come in,’ in an English accent that would have been more comfortable delivering lectures at a 1920s boys’ school. I took a deep breath and prepared to watch my career go up in smoke.

  Foster-Thomas was behind a desk that looked like Lincoln had used it. He seemed to be making tea, which involved far more silverware, china and steam that I would have thought possible.