Asteria - In Love with the Prince Page 3

  “Miss Snow! Thank you for coming so promptly. Tea?”

  I hate my name. But right now, I was more concerned with his mood: why did he sound so happy? Did he get a sadistic kick out of firing people? I nodded: it seemed polite.

  “Have you met Ms. Sato, from the State Department?” he was beaming at someone over my shoulder. I turned, flustered, and saw an Asian woman in a tailored suit sitting in the corner. She was watching me with an expression I didn’t like: hunger.

  This was bad. I wasn’t just going to get fired: if the State Department was involved, I was in serious trouble. What had the Prince said to them? My blood turned to ice water as I realized he could have made up anything, and they’d take his word over mine.

  Foster-Thomas seemed to be unwilling to start the conversation until he’d served everyone, and it wasn’t a quick process. He stirred, tapped spoons on the side of cups, and for some reason turned the teapot around and around until I wanted to scream at him, just get it over with, already! Sato said nothing, just sat there and let me stew.

  Finally, I was handed a bone-china cup. Foster-Thomas sat down behind his desk and regarded me through steepled fingers. “So. Do you know why we’re here?”

  I hesitated, then shook my head. I figured I had nothing to lose.

  “We’re here because this morning, the Prince of Asteria made us aware of what transpired between you last night.”

  The bottom fell out of my world. I’d thought I’d been prepared for it, braced and ready, but now it was here, it was a hundred times worse. Everything just changed in an instant, like being in a car that hits a lamppost. I closed my eyes.

  “He told me that you’d had a long conversation about the Asterian language: and that you were the finest non-native speaker he’d come across.”

  It took a while for the words to sink in. I slowly opened my eyes: was there hope?

  “Miss Snow…the Prince has requested that you be released from your duties and join him as his personal translator and UN aide.”

  That car I was in spun upside down and plunged into a lake. What the hell was going on? Had Jagor just derailed – re-railed? – my entire career with one phone call?

  Now Sato spoke up. “Obviously we’re very excited. Asteria’s pretty much a closed box to us: we have no embassy there, no diplomatic visits, not even any US workers. Like every other country, we’re desperate for a better relationship.” She leaned forward. “This could be our in.”

  I’d been right. She had looked hungry: just not for the reason I’d thought. They both looked at me expectantly.

  “If I take the job,” I said uncertainly.

  They both stared at me, astonished. “Well, yes,” Foster-Thomas said. “But…I’m sure the Prince will pay you substantially more than the UN can offer you. And the opportunity is…well, unprecedented.”

  “Is there something that would stop you taking it?” asked a worried Sato.

  To them it was a no-brainer. I’d be crazy to say no.

  In my head, I was trying to work out if I’d be crazy to say yes. What was this, really? Because it sure as hell wasn’t a genuine position: he wasn’t hiring me for my language skills. My mind reeled as I took in the implications. I’d be his employee, at his beck and call. And if the rumors of how the Asterians saw women were true….

  But my mind kept going back to the party, to that closed door, the way his body had felt against mine, the animal heat of him pressing into me…it was what I wanted, even though it was dangerous. Maybe because it was dangerous.

  I stared at my wavering reflection in my tea. There’d been a decision point, the night before, when I’d hesitated in the doorway before speaking to him in Asterian. Now I was at another one: was I going to be sensible little Lucy, the person I’d been my whole life, or…something else?

  I took a breath, then put down my cup with a little chink of finality.

  “I’ll do it,” I told them.

  ***

  That afternoon, things moved very fast.

  I had to tie up the work I was doing and make it ready to pass on to the other translators. I had to clear my desk: I didn’t know when or if I’d be back. There were hurried goodbyes and promises to meet up for a proper send-off party as soon as I was back in New York. It was terrifying that I didn’t know whether that would be next week or next year.

  A strange sense of unreality crept in: I’d be packing a box or emailing a list to a colleague, and suddenly it would hit home for a second: that image of Jagor, just staring at me across the room, before he’d kissed me for the first time. I’d freeze up and have to shake myself out of it to carry on.

  He sent a limo for me in the middle of the afternoon. As it pulled up, diplomatic plates gleaming in the sunlight, I had no idea if he’d be in it, or if I’d be meeting him later, or even what country we’d be in that evening. My life was about to change.

  The driver got out and opened the rear door, and it wasn’t until I reached it that I saw Jagor, sitting on the rear-facing bench seat, a drink cradled in one hand. He seemed to fill the limo, big as it was. It was dim inside, the light just glinting off shiny surfaces. His silver cufflinks, the gleam of his black leather shoes, his eyes. Especially his eyes.

  I slid myself in, trying to remember the etiquette of skirts and cars. I was in my normal office wear, a suit with a skirt just on the knee, and felt horribly underdressed for meeting anyone important – least of all him.

  “You look glorious,” he said with a smile. It was almost a rumble, his voice was so low. His accent gave the words an exquisite character, like rough-hewn foreign stone, dark and cold. It sent a little thrill through me, even though I knew I didn’t look anything like glorious.

  I went to speak as we pulled away from the curb, but then my eyes fell upon the driver, in his peaked cap, beyond the glass partition. Jagor followed my eyes, then laughed, a big, booming laugh, and rapped on the glass with his knuckles. “Soundproof, Lucy. We are private.”

  He sounded so different when he spoke in English, the words so thick and coarse on his tongue: still just as sexy, but in a different way, all brutal and hard. When he spoke in Asterian, it was like silk being drawn across my skin.

  “What – what’s going to happen?” I asked weakly.

  He just stared at me for a second, as if he was trying to read me. Then, in Asterian, he said, “You’re going to be my aide, Miss Snow. You’ll help me with the English, with the Americans: with anyone who doesn’t speak our language. You’ll accompany me when I travel, and be with me when we’re home in Asteria.”

  Our language. When we’re home in Asteria. As if I was one of his people – an Asterian woman. The thought sent a shudder down my spine…yet it seemed to transform into a wave of dark, unbidden heat. I thought about my original reason for learning Asterian, and flushed.

  “Will we—” I started. He just stared at me. Damn, but he could be maddening when he did that. “Will it be—” I waited for him to take the hint, but he refused to. He was going to make me say it.

  “Will we be…having sex?” I managed at last, blushing down to my toes.

  He pulled back, and suddenly his eyes were wide and blinking. “I—Miss Snow! Of course not!” He seemed half-angry, half appalled. Oh shit! “I’m employing you as my aide: this is a supremely important position in the royal household! For you to even suggest that—”

  He broke off and went silent, eyes burning into me.

  “But—But—What about the party?” I was babbling, pleading. “I’m sorry, I thought— Didn’t we— I thought we—” I broke off because he was laughing. Big, helpless, heaves of laughter that bent him over. He’d manage to stop and then look at me and be off again.

  “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he managed at last. “That was wrong of me. I couldn’t help it. You just look so— You have a word for it. Library owner. No: librarian.” He said the word in English, and that made him start laughing again.

  I sat there and stared coldly at him, but inside I
was awash with emotions: anger, at first, but then relief that I hadn’t been wrong. Then anger at myself: was I really relieved that this was all about sex? I still wasn’t sure where I stood.

  Weirdly, though, the laughter didn’t embarrass me. It didn’t feel like he was laughing at me: just the situation. I actually started smiling myself: there was just something so simple and open about him, when he laughed, the counterpoint to all that dark brooding and those long, intense looks. It made him fell…real. Like this could be about more than just sex.

  When he eventually stopped laughing and spoke, it was in Asterian. He looked me straight in the eye, and I knew, somehow, that he was telling the truth. “There is a job, of course. You will be my aide, and you’ll be very good at it, I’m sure. And if you want, then that is all there ever need be between us. You will never do anything you don’t want to.” Not I will never make you do anything you don’t want to. He phrased it as if every decision would be mine. That was reassuring, yet somehow even scarier: was he implying I was strong-minded enough to resist doing anything I didn’t like? Or that I was so kinky I’d do anything and everything he wanted without being pressured?

  “But I do like you, Lucy. I like you…very much.” We sat there in silence for a few seconds, while I absorbed that. Well, I’d wanted to know where I stood. Now I did. “Do you like me?” He asked unexpectedly. And I caught, just for a second, beyond all the arrogance and swagger, beyond the polished limo and the expectation, just a hint, just a tiny glimpse of vulnerability: that question was burning white-hot inside him. Did I like him?

  My mouth moved, but no words came out. He just sat there, doing a good impression of patience, even though I could almost taste his anticipation. “Yes,” I managed eventually.

  He nodded to himself. “I’d like to see your breasts again.”

  The words wafted over me like the wind. It took a couple of replays in my mind before I was sure that was what he’d said.

  Not I order you to show me your breasts. Not even, show me your breasts. He was suggesting it, and letting me respond. It was a test.

  Was it a test I wanted to pass?

  His eyes were locked on mine and I could feel the heat starting to radiate through me, pulsing down my body, through my breasts, down to my groin. I pressed my thighs tightly together at the feeling. My eyes flicked to the window.

  “One way glass,” he said, tapping it with his finger, his eyes not leaving mine. He tapped the glass partition separating us from the driver. “This, too.”

  I stared into his eyes. What did he see in me? What did he want from me? Was I really going to go through with this: go off to God-knows-where with him?

  I felt something under my fingers: a smooth hardness, pushing against awkward, tight cloth. I worried at it until it behaved and slipped though, and it was only then that I realized I’d undone a button on my blouse.

  Lucy, what the hell are you doing?

  “Where are we going?” I asked, my hands on the second button. Talking seemed to distract me, give me confidence to keep going.

  “To the airport,” His eyes were on my face: not looking at my chest. Yet.

  The second button popped through its hole. If I looked down, now, I’d see my bra: but I didn’t, couldn’t: I kept my eyes on Jagor’s. “But I need to go home first….”

  He cocked his head and looked at me. “Why?”

  My hands stopped moving. “I need to pack….”

  “We’ll buy you some suitable clothes.”

  What did suitable mean?

  “Please – don’t stop,” he said, as lightly as if I was giving a PowerPoint presentation. I undid another button. My bra was on show now, simple white cups with a hint of lace around the edges. A work bra, not a seduction bra. Somehow that made it even more intimate, that he was making me peel off my work clothes.

  Making me?

  I tried to imagine how I must look from his viewpoint: then I realized I didn’t need to imagine. I caught sight of my reflection in the darkened glass partition behind Jagor’s head and the sight made me gasp. A hot flash of shame flooded my body from my face down to my groin: once there, it became a different kind of heat. Watching my reflection distanced me, made it seem like it was happening to someone else. My hands continued to move. Third button, bra fully on show now. Fourth button.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again. The air in the limo seemed to have become thicker, just as it had in the bathroom,

  “Monaco,” he said simply. He sat back a little, tilting his head to examine me. I freed the next button. Another. Another. It was open down to my navel, now, that small circle of shadow suddenly very personal. The buttons below had no purpose: they wouldn’t expose any more. And yet I found I didn’t want to open them: because I knew what would surely follow next: he’d want me to open my blouse wide, or take it off. Those last few buttons seemed to protect me, somehow.

  He looked me in the eye and then glanced down at the bottom of my blouse. Then back into my eyes.

  I slowly undid the final buttons, my fingers clumsy.

  He sat there in silence for a long moment, staring at me. I felt my heart beat faster and faster, just being watched like that. I was reminded of an animal again, of how a deer must feel when it sees a lion watching it from the long grass. Every second that passed raised the tension in the car, until every quiet breath was like thunder, every word that wasn’t said was like the tick of a giant clock, making me want to scream at him to say something, anything. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

  “Why are you doing this, Lucy?” he asked.

  I swallowed. ‘Because you asked me to.’

  He smiled. “But what makes you obey me?”

  I took a long, shuddering breath. “I—I don’t know.” My heart was hammering now, harder than it ever had at the gym.

  “Yes you do.”

  I felt the white-hot heat twisting deep inside, sending the feelings shooting through me. Every order he gave me seemed to grasp and pull my center, as if he was playing with me like a marionette, or plucking the strings of an instrument. Every time he spoke, my whole body responded to him, whether my mind wanted it to or not: his voice turned my insides to liquid.

  “You know, but you don’t understand, do you?” he asked.

  I slowly shook my head.

  “I will help you learn. You must always tell me, if you don’t want to do something.” He reached into his suit, and drew out a small jeweler’s box, like you’d keep a ring in.

  OH MY GOD!

  He saw my expression. “I am not asking you to marry me, Lucy.” I blushed and he smiled. He opened the box, and inside there was a ring, carved with symbols. He gestured for my right hand and I laid my small palm in his much larger one. He slid the ring onto my ring finger. I don’t wear any rings: it seemed shockingly heavy on my slim finger, the metal warm from his touch. It was too big for me, and slid easily on my finger.

  He looked up into my eyes, still holding my hand. “If you ever want something to stop,” he told me, “You only have to take the ring off.”

  It seemed so strange at the time: why couldn’t I just say “No,” or “Stop”? I didn’t understand, then.

  He gently released my hand. “I still can’t see your breasts.”

  My heart was pounding, almost thrumming in my chest. I swallowed thickly and started to take off my jacket.

  “No,” he said. “Lift your bra.”

  I blinked, but dropped my hands to the bottom of my bra, and slowly lifted it and flipped it over. I could feel my nipples stiffening, his gaze like a caress.

  “How long will this last?” I said suddenly. I hadn’t been aware I was going to say it, before it came out.

  “How long do you want it to?” He answered. And I had no reply to that.

  “What do I call you?”

  “When we’re in public: ‘Your Highness’”

  “And when we’re alone?”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “‘Y
our Highness.’”

  I felt the heat rushing to my groin, hot blood engorging my most sensitive flesh. And it was as if he knew.

  “Raise your skirt,” he told me. “And open your legs.”

  I lifted my ass an inch off the seat and tugged the tight fabric up my thighs. The tops of my hold-ups came into view, then the soft skin above them. I stopped when my skirt was bunched up around my hips. Then I slowly opened my thighs

  “Wider.”

  I moved my feet, stepping my knees until they were shoulder-width apart. I was wearing simple white cotton briefs and I could feel the fabric pulling tight across my groin.

  I watched his gaze rake down my body. I sat there for long minutes as he studied me.

  “I chose well,” he told me at last.

  At the time, I thought he was talking about my body.

  “Get dressed,” he told me. “We’re almost at the airport.”

  Chapter Three

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting: I’d had some vague presumption that we’d be in first class.

  He had his own airliner. Not a private jet. His own 747.

  We’d swept down some sort of VIP corridor, stopping only briefly for a token passport check, and we were aboard: no queues, no calls to the gate. A smiling stewardess with an Asterian accent greeted us, and Jagor led me down a corridor lined in polished wood. He opened a door, and we were in a bedroom, with double bed, wardrobes and desk: it even had its own bathroom. I was completely thrown: if it hadn’t been for the view of the wing out of the window, we could have been in a luxury hotel.

  “My room,” he said simply. “You can use the one next door.” And he nodded to the right.

  My room turned out to be similar, if a little smaller. And there were several more of these doors spaced out along the corridor.

  Jagor led me further along the aircraft and into a room that at least hinted it was on an aircraft. It was a passenger cabin, but much more spacious than even first class would be. It was more like the lounge area of an expensive resort: plush leather seats in dark, dark red, spaced in twos and threes. There was soft carpet underfoot and dim mood lighting overhead.