Asteria In Love with the Prince (7 page)

“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 down 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.

“They could have let him go, but the next morning we found him at the border.” His voice was cold and savage now. “Torn to pieces, like something animals would do. They took his head as a trophy. He was ten.”

I looked at the bodyguards. For a few brief seconds, only one of them was in view, and he was looking the other way. I threw my arms around Jagor’s chest and pulled him tight, and after a second, his massive arms encircled me and pulled me in even tighter. I knew it could only last an instant, so I poured everything I could into that hug, every ounce of love I felt, soaking it into him. Then he was gently pushing me away and we were both trying to look neutral and businesslike.

I hated it, right then – the job, the deception, the secrecy. No one should have to suffer the memories of something like that alone, for the sake of appearances. But as I watched him compose himself, as he stopped being Jagor and became
the Prince
, it hit me that he’d been standing on his own, his feelings screwed down and silenced, since he was a child. I imagined him standing bravely at his brother’s funeral, while a thousand cameras captured his stoic expression. Today, preparing to take the throne, he was even more alone. Except when he was with me.

It was then that I made up my mind. However crazy this was, however frustrating it was to be around him and yet not
with
him, I was going to damn well make it work.

***

An hour later, I had my first test. We were eating lunch out on the terrace – the Prince, his aides, two of the bodyguards and Medenko. There were no other diners within five tables of us: the hotel had cleared one entire end of the restaurant.

It was ridiculously perfect. Over the low wall we had uninterrupted views down to the sea, while an awning kept the worst of the sun off us. The seafood was freshly caught, the cutlery was the finest silver and the tablecloth was snowy white. I was in a dream, but it was broken.

If I’d been there as the Prince’s girlfriend, I would have been sitting next to him, our arms brushing every time he reached for something. If I’d been just another member of the retinue, it would have just been a pleasant meal. But I was both…and neither.

Just a few hours earlier, I’d been…I felt my face go hot at the memory. I’d been spread and moaning on his bed. And yet we had to hide it: my love for him had to be squeezed into a tiny box and only allowed out when the door was shut. I was starting to understand why mistresses grew jealous.

Something else stirred inside me, though, alongside the frustration; something I wasn’t ready for. A part of me found the whole thing a turn on. The little glances he gave me across the table. The occasional word he’d drop into the conversation that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, but snapped me right back to the embassy, or the limo. For the entire meal I sat in a heightened state, like an animal with its ears pricked up, and underneath the table I was unconsciously squeezing my thighs together, my arousal slowly turning to wetness as unspoken messages passed between us. God, would every meal be like this? I may have appreciated a mistress’ jealousy, but I also started to understand why people had affairs, beyond the obvious.

I sipped some wine while I brooded. Our glasses were never empty: I was noticing how much all of the Asterians drank, even during the day. I had to keep reminding myself to hold back: I’ve never been much of a drinker and I knew I’d be in serious trouble if I even attempted to keep up.

“Your meeting with Mr. Foreaux is at nine, Your Highness,” the female aide, told Jagor. I’d learned that her name was Ismelda. I hadn’t dared speak to her since the plane.

“I may need to talk to the English there. I’ll take Lucy.” Ismelda merely nodded. Did he actually need me or was it an excuse; and did she suspect? Jagor looked at me. “You’ll need something appropriate. Go into town this afternoon and pick something out.”

His dresser found me after lunch. “Elegant and classical,” he told me in Asterian. “The skirt should be long. A simple neckline.”

I nodded frantically, trying to remember it all. “Thank you for the new wardrobe – it’s all fantastic.”

He sniffed and regarded me. “It will suffice,” he told me. I wasn’t sure if he was being a perfectionist or if it was me that didn’t measure up. “You’ll need this.” And he pressed a credit card into my hand. White and gold. I drew my breath in sharply as I read the embossed letters.