Asteria In Love with the Prince (2 page)

I stumbled back to the hallway, trying to smile at people and look casual. Rivulets of red wine were coursing down my chest and running underneath the dress, which was itself sporting a nice starburst-effect stain. I tried frantically to remember what I knew about red wine stains. Was it salt? White wine? Would champagne do? I grabbed someone’s abandoned glass from a side table and took it with me. There was nothing that looked like a doorway to a bathroom. I figured they’d be upstairs and hurried up them, the ancient oak treads squeaking and complaining.

Upstairs, it didn’t get any better. I pushed open a door to discover a bedroom. Oh great: I was in the private area of the embassy: I
really
shouldn’t have been there. Still, it looked like being my only shot at a bathroom, so I snuck inside.

One look in the mirror revealed the extent of the damage. My neck and chest looked like I was in a low-budget slasher movie, sprayed with red, sticky drops. The stain on the dress had soaked well into the fabric, and had that horrible look of permanence. Still, I’d do what I could.

I yanked the dress down to my waist: not difficult, being strapless. I ran some water in the basin and started to wash the worst of the wine off me. Christ: I’d been in too much of a hurry to wait for the water to warm up, and it was freezing, especially against my warm skin. The water threatened to soak my black, strapless bra, so I pulled that off too. A few seconds later, I was clean, and turned around to look for a towel.

That was when I saw him, standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

Taller than me, with a broad frame. Wide shoulders that almost brushed the doorposts and a heavy, solid chest, his muscles filling out his snow-white shirt in a way that made me catch my breath. His waist looked taut and trim, shown off by the elegant, no doubt tailored dress pants he wore. He had his hands braced on the doorframe above his head, leaning through it into the bathroom like a human who’s too big to climb inside the dollhouse.

His hair was dark, almost black: artfully tousled in a way that made me want to slide my fingers through it and enjoy its softness. Dark green eyes, as hypnotic as a cat’s, accentuated by heavy brows. A full, wide mouth with a thoughtful, almost pouting lower lip that made it look as though he was always on the verge of joking with you. A mouth you wanted to see smile, or say your name.

There was something about him, but it was weird: I couldn’t seem to process the thought. It just refused to go through my head: it got caught and snagged and wouldn’t happen. I think that’s probably why I didn’t scream. I just stood there, topless and dripping, while my brain tried to catch up.

I was having problems because I was trying to process the equivalent of
the sky has turned green
. It’s a simple enough concept, but because it’s impossible, it’s very hard to deal with.

The thing my brain was trying to tell me was:
it’s the Prince of Asteria.

Of course it isn’t,
my sensible brain responded.
Don’t be stupid.

His eyes were staring straight into mine. He wasn’t looking at my breasts. Not yet, anyway. How long had he been standing there?

He just stared at me, unblinking, as if unwilling to break the spell that had fallen over us.

It’s the Prince.

No it isn’t.

Alongside the argument of who it was or wasn’t, I was trying to deal with just how good looking the stranger was. I should have been outraged, or scared, or at least covered myself, but all I could think was how much I wanted to keep looking at him. Part of me, on some level, wanted to run. A bigger part of me just wanted him to scoop me up in those huge, strong arms.

At that point, I saw his eyes finally drop to my naked breasts. I looked down at myself, and was suddenly very aware of my nipples, standing stiff and hard from the freezing water. That broke the spell.

I grabbed the front of my dress and pulled it up to cover me. Without the bra, it didn’t really work: my breasts bulged provocatively over the top. I swallowed and tried to speak, but he got there first.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He spoke in a heavily accented, slightly halting speech that was utterly bewitching: it seemed to sing along all my nerves, shocking me right down to the core. And it was so deep! It reminded me of the low growl of an animal, powerful and final: a voice you couldn’t argue with.

I managed to squeak out a single syllable. “I—” And then couldn’t work out what to say next.

He didn’t help: he just stood there and waited. This infuriated me: there were protocols for this sort of situation, dammit! The man was meant to be apologetic, to cover his eyes and look the other way, and let the woman get dressed, and then apologize again afterwards, and promise to knock in future. He just stood there.

The
it’s the Prince
thing was still going around and around in my head, which wasn’t helping. I was angry and intimidated and hovering on the edge of losing myself in those deep green eyes, all at the same time.

“Are you the Prince of Asteria?” I blurted stupidly.

He gave me a long look, and I wasn’t sure if he thought I was crazy or was mortally offended. Then he gave a solemn nod.

Oh, shit.
Partially because I was standing there semi-dressed in front of a Prince. Partially because it was Asteria. The name of the place hung in the air: a word with power. The mood in the room completely changed: everything took on new meaning. Him. Me. Him being alone with me.

I swallowed. “I’d like to get dressed properly, now,” and then, the first time I’d ever had cause to use the words, “Your Highness.” The air was suddenly like treacle: my words seemed to just sink in and stop, like speaking into thick snow. Everything was warm and heavy: dreamlike.
Asteria.

He held something out. A towel. I took it, holding the top of my dress up with my other hand.

He made no move to leave.

I unfolded the towel and used it to dab the parts of me that I could reach without pushing my dress down again. When he didn’t take the hint, I pointedly turned my back to him, quickly pushed the front of my dress down and dabbed my breasts dry. My nipples were hard: achingly so. My breasts felt full and ripe, as if stroked by a lover.

I glanced in the mirror and met his eyes. He was watching my reflection.

I felt my face flush red. I quickly looked away and fumbled with my bra, pulled it around me with shaking hands. I could feel
his eyes on me as I tried, again and again, to hook the damn bra strap—

Strong hands gently but firmly took hold of the strap and hooked it for me. His fingers slid underneath the elastic, smoothing it out, the backs of his fingers against my skin, and I felt my legs go weak. When I finally looked in the mirror again, he’d stepped into the bedroom and was holding the door open for me.

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.