Asteria In Love with the Prince (3 page)

“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 he’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 minutes, 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.

“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.