Asteria - In Love with the Prince Read online

  Jagor appeared around the edge of the screen, and smiled. He took a step towards me and I collapsed into his arms, a puppet with its strings cut. He held me close as I quivered and shook.

  “You did well,” he told me, his eyes twinkling. Just that hint of lightness amidst so much dark, the spark that let me know it was all okay, no matter how far things went. While the darkness, the way he…I tasted the word on my tongue: dominated me left me weak, that spark was affecting me in a whole different way, making my stomach do back flips.

  “I—” My voice seemed incredibly loud after so long spent silent. I don’t know what I wanted to do: swear at him? Thank him for the orgasm?

  He picked me up, one large hand under the backs of my stockinged legs, the other under my back, and carried me across the room. As we passed the windows, the cooling breeze washed over my heated body and I actually groaned out loud: that’s how good it felt. He laid me tenderly on the bed, and I automatically stretched my aching limbs, reveling at the feeling.

  When I looked up, he was standing at the foot of the bed, gazing down at me. That’s when it really sank in that I was lying on the Prince’s bed. My thighs were spread from stretching my legs, the curls there damp with arousal. My breasts were shining with sweat, the nipples still hard from the orgasm. And I still wore my black hold-ups and shining black and red heels.

  It would be impossible to look less like a librarian, crossed my mind.

  Then he was climbing onto the bed, and I gave a low, half-pant, half-moan of need, reaching up for him. He didn’t take off his clothes; just covered my breasts with his powerful hands, the sweat-wet nipples sliding hard over his palms and making me arch my back in delight. His hands slid under me, down my naked back and ass and around to my hips. He hooked my legs apart and I knew he was about to fuck me.

  He raised himself up just long enough to shove his suit trousers and briefs down. I gasped, unable to help myself. He wasn’t just long, but thick: hard and throbbing. I swallowed hard at the sight of him as he rolled on a condom, my mind lurching with the sudden reality of it. This is really happening: we’re really going to—

  Then he was on me again, his thighs between mine, and I felt him pressing, spreading, sliding up into me, oh GOD straight up into me, one long thrust almost to the hilt. His hands thumped into the bed either side of me and he began to move. He was stretching me deliciously and after a few thrusts he’d filled me, the coarse hair of his groin pressing right up against me on each in stroke, the depth of it making me cry out not in pain but in pleasure.

  I was in the Prince’s bed, dressed like a harlot, writhing under him as he fucked me fully clothed. That should have appalled me, but somehow it made it even better.

  His thrusts increased in pace, his face drawn into a savage mask, anger and lust possessing him. This wasn’t making love: we were both far past that, consumed by our need. His hands found my breasts again, and he squeezed, first gently, then firmly, and finally, as his thrusts reached a crescendo, almost hard enough to make me cry out. Somehow, the roughness seemed to intensify my pleasure, make the liquid friction inside me more exquisite.

  My hands were clinging to his arms, caressing the hard muscles there. His body seemed to cover me, hulking over me like an animal devouring me, and I threw back my head and let him. His let out a deep growl of pleasure as he suddenly thrust all the way into me and held there, his groin grinding right up against my clit, his weight heavy on me as he came. That was enough to send me over the edge, my body quaking as my orgasm rolled through me. I clung onto him, fingers finding his hair and knotting in it, until we both collapsed panting on the bed.

  After many minutes, he rolled onto his side and kissed me. When he broke the kiss, his eyes were full of sadness. “I am sorry,” he said in English, the gentleness in his voice a vivid contrast to his harsh accent. “But you should go. You cannot stay here too long.”

  I nodded and started to look for my clothes. It hit me that this was how it would always be: stolen moments and illicit couplings; hiding and lying. What about in a month? Six months? A year? Did he intend to keep me as his secret, or would he eventually tell the world? And what the hell would it be like when we eventually went to Asteria: where, judging from what the aide had told me on the plane, the slavery stories were very real?

  I glanced over my shoulder. He was still lying on the bed, watching me dress, and that smile of his, that dark and dangerous smile, made my insides light up all over again, even in my post-orgasmic haze.

  I decided those questions could wait.

  Chapter Four

  I stood under the shower with the spray cranked to cold. I shivered, but the freezing water didn’t cool the deeper heat inside me.

  I’d crept from Jagor’s room as soon as I’d dressed. Legs weak, I’d managed to stumble back to my own room only to immediately strip off again. The rooms were air-conditioned but I couldn’t seem to cool down: hence the shower. As the surface chill gradually started to sink in. my mind began to process what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I tried to start with the small stuff.

  I was in Europe. OK, I was a long way from home, but not for the first time.

  I’d just kissed my old life and job goodbye: I didn’t even know when I’d see my apartment in New York again. A bigger jerk at that one. I’d liked my old job, however mundane it was. But I couldn’t complain about the money: Medenko had quietly slipped me a contract on the plane and I’d had to do a double-take at the numbers. And with accommodation and meals – even my clothes - paid for, all that money was just piling up in my bank account.

  I’d accepted a job with a guy I barely knew with the understanding that on the side, we’d be conducting some sort of clandestine, torrid romance. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t me: this wasn’t the same woman who made excuses to avoid even the tamest, most reasonable date that Gwen set up for me.

  I knew exactly what had come over me, what had pushed nice, sensible, “librarian” Lucy into the back seat and put the new me behind the wheel. The towering, broad-chested colossus down the corridor, with those eyes; those hands; that accent. When around him, I actually felt drugged: like everything was moving in slow motion yet at the same time breathlessly fast.

  And what about the other side of it – the side beyond normal sex? I fingered the loose ring he’d given me, my thumb and pinky spinning it round and round. Did I want the sort of relationship where I needed a safeword? A few days earlier I would have laughed – and probably blushed – at the idea. Now…I still didn’t understand what was going on inside me, but I knew I wanted more. It disturbed me, how much I wanted more.

  And all of this – Jagor, the job, our relationship, the kinky sex – it was all tied to Asteria itself. I’d be one of only a handful of outsiders in the super-secretive kingdom and if the stories were true, as the aide on the plane suggested…. I tried to wrap my head around women as slaves. What exactly would my status be, when we got there?

  My legs had already been shaky: now I let them fold and sat down heavily on the floor of the shower booth, head down, freezing water plastering my hair into a wet sheet that hid my face. I was mortified by some of what I’d done. But I wasn’t scared. Somewhere down in the pit of my stomach, where the fear should have been, I felt a warmth: a reassuring chunk of solidity like when you hug someone and they make everything okay. I trusted him: didn’t know why, had no good reason to. But I did.

  Something else, too: the biggest mental shock of all, the one that made me close my eyes and take deep, heaving breaths of air that was gloriously chilled by the spray. I was in love: poor Lucy couldn’t-land-a-boyfriend, home-alone-on-a-Friday-night-again Snow. I had a nasty, cliff-edge feeling that this was The Real Thing. I could feel all those previous times I thought I’d known love changing; the memories fading and turning pale.

  What now? Both in a relationship sense and in a right now sense? When I’d finally cooled down and drunk a long glass of iced water, I dressed. Then, wit
hout any instructions from Jagor, I did what any girl would do. I phoned my BFF.

  “Whoizit?” Gwen’s voice was sleepy. Wait; what time was it in New York? I did some mental math. Six a.m. Oops.

  “It’s Lucy.”

  I heard her repeat it excitedly to someone. “Who have you got there?” I immediately wanted to know.

  “Louis.”

  My mind reeled. She’d finally managed to coax Louis into bed, after maybe a year of chasing him. That was huge.

  “Where are you?” Gwen asked.

  I smiled before I said it. “Monaco.”

  There was a delighted intake of breath. “Tell me everything!”

  So I did. Before I’d left, I’d only had time to give her a brief version of the party and the job offer. She was the one other person in the world who knew about the Prince and me: unloading everything that had happened was a blessed relief.

  “You were…while I was outside knocking on the door?” Her voice was disbelieving…and just a little jealous. I told her about the limo, the flight, and what had just happened in his room.

  “My God. Lucy Snow.” I could imagine her shaking her head. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” I needed some reassurance – to feel like I wasn’t going completely off the rails.

  “Certifiable. But no more than usual. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Not I think so. That spoke volumes on its own.

  “Then enjoy it.”

  “Even the….” I didn’t know what to call it.

  “Even the kinky stuff? Hell yeah. As long as you’re enjoying it. Where you’re going, you’d better be into it.”

  Asteria. I flushed. “I’m sure half the stories aren’t true,” I told her.

  “Don’t blame me if you end up sold to a sheikh or something. Stay in touch. Gotta go.”

  “Wait—” But she’d hung up. Sold? They didn’t do that, even in Asteria…right?

  ***

  A half hour later, one of the business aides – the male one, whose name I’d discovered was Villik – dropped round some papers for me to read. He’d been one of the people on the other side of the screen while I’d stood naked in Jagor’s room. I found it very hard to look at him, blushing every time he spoke. I swore I also caught him glancing down at my body a few times, the blouse doing a very good job of outlining the swell of my breasts. I’d never been desired like this – not by a colleague. I couldn’t decide if it unsettled me or turned me on. Possibly both.

  The papers were treaties, between Asteria and France. Easy enough to translate, but as I worked the importance of it began to sink in. Back at the UN I’d known my work was useful, in some vague, worthy sort of way. But here…these treaties would be read by the Prince and his advisors and would eventually go to the King. If he chose to sign them, they could have massive impact. Trade. Food. War. Peace.

  I translated very, very carefully.

  ***

  By lunchtime, I was getting an aching back from poring over the treaties, as well as going stir crazy. I took a walk around the hotel to un-kink and, purely by chance, I found him.

  He was on the phone, standing on a terrace with three of his bodyguards. He didn’t see me at first; he was staring out over the sparkling waters of the bay. It gave me a chance to look at him: okay, to feast my eyes on him. His broad, muscled back was evident even under his suit: he was leaning casually on the balcony, braced on one arm, and immediately I wanted to slip in front of him so that I was cradled against his chest, that thick forearm protectively around me. He was squinting into the sun, which made his heavy brows even more prominent. A strong face, I thought: a royal face. He could give looks that could command armies…or reduce me to warm putty. I could imagine the same intensity being terrifying when he turned it on his enemies; but when he was with me there was an inner note of warmth; a hint of softness in his eyes that let me know everything was going to be okay.

  As I studied him, he turned and saw me and the smile he gave – the way his face lit up – made my heart swell to triple its size. He waved me closer and I hesitantly approached, aware that he was probably on the phone to the French president, or the British prime minister or something. As I drew closer, I heard he was talking in Asterian, and I heard him call the other person ‘Father.’ Oh, okay. He was only calling his folks.

  Then it hit home. His folks, the King and Queen of Asteria. It seemed weird, hearing him address them so casually: right then he was talking about his mother’s birthday party.

  ‘The normal retinue,’ he told his father. ‘With one extra. I have a translator now.’

  Wait, was he talking about bringing me to Asteria? I thought back to Gwen’s words and my stomach lurched. I’d known we’d go there eventually, of course, but this made it seem suddenly real.

  Jagor hung up. He indicated I should follow him, and we started walking down the length of the terrace. It wound around the whole hotel giving some stunning views, but if you asked me now what I saw, I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t looking anywhere but into eyes the color of lush, verdant forest. I wanted to grab him and rub my cheek against his, feel his stubble, feel his lips…

  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. There should be something about not touching making the – ahem – juices flow. Being forced to pretend I was just his aide, being forced to walk so close to him that I could smell his distinctive aftershave but not being able to throw myself into his arms…. It was both tortuous and enough to make me light-headed with excitement. We took every possible opportunity to touch. A brush of my arm against him, as I gesticulated to make a point about a treaty. A touch on my shoulder, as he tapped me to interrupt. Once, he reached across me to point to something and his arm grazed my breast through my blouse. I felt my nipples immediately stiffen; felt myself going mushy between my legs. And all I could do was nod and smile and talk about export restrictions.

  Not long after that, I fell.

  The terrace should have run right round the hotel in one long, uninterrupted balcony, but some parts of the landscape didn’t play ball. So there were little drops and rises with steep stone staircases as you went round. With my eyes on Jagor, mind foggy and the ridiculous five inch heels, it was probably inevitable.

  I think I screamed a little bit, as my heel missed the step and I sort of slithered down the staircase. Jagor grabbed my wrist and I dangled for a second, but as I flailed, he had to take an awkward step forward to keep from overbalancing. His ankle grated down the edge of a step in a way that made me wince in sympathy.

  Then it was all over: I regained my footing and he took another step down so that we were level. ‘Are you alright?’ we asked in unison, and both laughed an adrenaline-shaky laugh. His bodyguards ran forward, but he waved them back. It was all light-hearted and fun, until I took a look down at his leg and saw that there was blood soaking through the torn fabric.

  He saw me looking and shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. A scrape.’ He lifted the cuff and he was right: there was a jagged graze, but nothing that would need stitches. Something else was next to the wound, though, just in the fleshy part of his calf. A circular scar the size of a dime, something I’d only ever seen in movies.

  He glanced up and saw me looking at it and his expression changed. Guilt. Not directed at me, though: something much deeper. He dropped the cuff back over his leg.

  “You don’t want to talk about it,” I offered. Meanwhile my mind was racing. Of course, as a royal he’d probably done military service, like the British royals. I had an image of him sprinting heroically across some battlefield.

  He bit his lip and looked out to sea for a few seconds, drawing in a big breath and then letting it out. “No,” he said at last, “No, I don’t. But I should.” He looked sideways at me. “There are some parts of our history the rest of the world doesn’t know about.”

  We stopped where we were, at the bottom of the little flight of stairs. The sun was beating d
own on us, the ocean air doing nothing to stop the waves of heat that soaked into the ancient stonework. It should have been uncomfortably warm, standing there in our suits, but a creeping cold seemed to wind around me. This wasn’t going to be a war story.

  “Back when the kingdom was much poorer, a group wanted to unseat my family. Local communists and a few outsiders, we think. I was eight. We were at the summer residence; they came in the night with guns, and they tried to kill us. My father and the bodyguards managed to fight most of them off, but a few got through. One of them got into my room, and he—”

  He broke off abruptly. He took a big gulp of air and looked up at the sun, letting it bake down on his face for a few seconds. The concept was so utterly at odds to everything I’d seen of him that it took a while for me to grasp it.

  He’s trying not to cry.

  “One of them shot me – I was running out of the room and he was a bad shot, so he only got me in the leg. But then I was down on the floor and the next one would have got me. Except for Vinko.” He looked down at me. “My older brother, Lucy.”

  I’d never heard of him: and I knew what that meant.

  “Vinko ran at the man; managed to tackle him.” Jagor shook his head. “He was bigger than me; braver, too. They struggled, while I cried like a baby on the floor. The fight started to go our way – one of our bodyguards managed to get in: it was all going to be okay—”

  He swallowed, and this time I could see his eyes were glistening. I put my hand on his arm to stop him, but he went on. “But they knew they’d never get out alive without a hostage. So the bastards took him. They dragged Vinko away with them, so my father’s men couldn’t chase them.”

  I was shaking now, and I had to wipe my eyes, furious with myself for crying while he was managing to hold it together.