him across the face. But I don’t. Instead, I mentally congratulate myself on my incredible self-restraint.
Then he steps away, turning around and walking toward the end of the alley, ambling like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Come on, luv,” he says. “Noah’s bound to be sending a search party out for us. I wouldn’t want you to get caught with your pants down.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Albie
Belle is ignoring me, sitting in the helicopter with her headset on, her arms crossed over her chest. She’s practically pouting.
I hate pouting. Hate it more than anything in the world. I hate whining and sighing, the passive-aggressive crap I get from women when I don’t want to see them again. Which is, obviously, every time.
I should hate the way Belle sits there, silent, acting as if I don’t exist.
I should hate the way her lower lip protrudes slightly, displaying her displeasure.
I should hate the way she was excessively friendly the rest of the afternoon, formal to the point of ridiculous, all “Prince Albert this” and “Prince Albert that.”
The problem is, I don’t hate any of it. I don’t hate it at all.
I fucking love it.
I love the fact that her lower lip is still swollen from my mouth on hers, even hours after I kissed her.
I love that she’s on edge.
And I love the fact that I know why she’s so irritable, so on edge.
I love that it’s because of me.
I'm doing my last-minute pre-flight checklist, when Noah interrupts. "Max has your sister, sir," he says. "We'll need to wait a few minutes."
Max brought my sister back from her jaunt off to wherever with Finn Asher? Okay, so the thought makes me laugh. I can't help myself. Alex is going to be pissed as hell when she comes back. I can't imagine the earful the bodyguard is getting right about now.
When the dark-colored SUV pulls up in the driveway, Max gets out, opening the back door and obviously arguing with my sister for a minute, before throwing her over his shoulder and walking toward us. Alex unleashes a litany of expletives as she punches him on the back.
"Your bodyguards have an interesting method of doing their jobs," Belle says, half-under her breath, into the headset.
"If we came back without Alexandra, my father would fire him," I tell her.
Max deposits Alex firmly on the seat beside Belle, and Alexandra gives him the dirtiest of dirty looks. "When we get back to the palace, I'm getting a new bodyguard," she say, her voice getting louder as she speaks. "One who isn't a fucking caveman!"
"Be my guest, Princess," Max says, sliding into his seat. He ignores her when she calls him a "cocksucker," and looks up at me. "Ready when you are, sir."
Alexandra looks over at Belle. "Maybe you should go back to America," she says. "It's better than being kept prisoner in your own house!" She sighs dramatically for effect, sinking into her seat with her arms crossed over her chest.
***
"What's with you lately?" Price asks, slapping me on the back. We're sitting in the upstairs VIP room of a club we frequent. The walls are made entirely of glass, and overlook the crowd below. Well, a club we used to frequent. It's been weeks since I've been out, which in royal terms is practically a lifetime. "You haven't been out since you came back from the States."
"Nothing's up with me." I sip a glass of scotch from a bottle that costs over a grand, sitting on a cushioned sofa in one of the most exclusive clubs in the capital of Protrovia. I should be happy with this.
Instead, Belle has me wrapped around the axle, so blinded by lust I can't see straight. Now I'm two glasses of scotch in, trying to clear my head.
"You just turned down the Lara twins," Price says, nodding toward the two women walking away. Noah stands by the door to the room, nodding at us to see if we want him to let another set of women inside to replace the girls who just left. Price holds his hand up to motion the girls inside, but I stop him.
"What the hell?" he asks. "When did you become a monk?"
I shrug, attempting to exude a nonchalance I don't feel. "Sorry if I don't want to stick my dick where a thousand other guys have been."
"Twins, Albie," he says, rolling his eyes as he leans back against the upholstered sofa. He swallows several fingers of vodka in a single gulp. "Since when have you ever given a shit about who you put your dick in?"
"Shut up." I can't think of a single time, other than the crazy ex, when I'd even bothered to get a girl's name. Well, maybe a few times, when I screwed women I already knew socially – countesses, duchesses, people like that. But they were forgettable.
They've all been forgettable.
Until now. Until Belle. And I'm not even screwing her.
Apparently, now I can't get her out of my mind, even when I try.
***
"You're ignoring me." Standing behind her in the tearoom, I whisper the words into her ear. I speak softly, mindful of the room full of people, an event for whatever the hell we're hosting today that my presence is mandated for. At this point, the events are a blur, and I just show up wherever my presence is requested, like a dutiful robot prince.
Belle doesn't turn around. She doesn't move or turn or acknowledge that she heard me, standing motionless with her teacup and saucer in her hand. From where I am behind her, I catch a whiff of the perfume she wears, something light with just a hint of something floral – jasmine maybe, or gardenia. She smells like summer.
Her dark hair is down, tumbling over her shoulders in waves to the middle of her back, over the pale blue tailored suit jacket she wears that matches her fitted pencil skirt. The outfit is made for a forty-year-old woman. It's conservative, respectful, and appropriate.
And I don't even need to look at the front of it to know that it's the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen. The way the skirt skims over her curves, caressing her ass like it was made for her, makes me crazy.
My cock stirs.
I'm at an afternoon tea, in a room filled with people I should care about impressing -- and I'm getting a boner looking at Belle's ass.
The problem is that Belle has been avoiding me for the past few days. I swear she's doing it on purpose, making sure we're never in the same room together for more than a few minutes. Last night at the club, I could have gone home with the Lara twins. I should have gone home with them, fucked my brains out until they erased every thought of Belle from my head.
That would be the smart thing to do. Instead, I jerked off, thinking about Belle.
And now, seeing her here, all I can think about is yanking that far-too-appropriate skirt up around her waist and coming all over that perfect ass of hers.
Belle finally half-turns toward me, her eyebrows raised. "Oh?" she asks, holding a teacup to her perfectly glossed lips. "I wasn't aware you needed my attention."
The way she speaks is laden with meaning, her words practically dripping with innuendo.
"I think you're mistaken," I say softly, my words barely audible. "It's the other way around. You need my attention."
Belle brings the tea cup to her lips, slowly taking a sip, her eyes trained on mine as she swallows, then licks her lips. The gesture is subtle, yet somehow the most sexual thing I've ever seen.
She glances down toward my cock, where my growing hardness is evident, and then back up at me. "You're lying, Your Highness," she whispers, then straightens. Her expression changes to a professional one as an older man in military regalia walks toward us with his wife on his arm.
“Miss Kensington,” I say, my voice excessively formal, while I’m willing my hard-on to deflate, “May I introduce the Count and Countess of Etier?”
Belle smiles – primly and properly. She laughs at one of the Count’s jokes, and talks with the Countess about gardening or something.
I’m not paying a damn bit of attention to what we’re talking about, because the only thing I can think about is Belle’s ass.
“I don’t need your attention,”
she whispers, as soon as they leave. “Or your fingers. My fingers have been working just fine.”
I nearly spit out my tea. The image of Belle in bed, with her perfect legs spread, her fingers inside her wet pussy flashes into my head. When I glance at her, she smiles smugly.
I notice someone else important walking toward us, so I whisper in her ear quickly, before they arrive. “You should touch yourself in front of me,” I say, my voice barely audible. “Since we both know you’re thinking about me when you do.”
Belle’s face flushes, but she looks straight ahead, smiling appropriately as another dignitary approaches us. “Oh, I think that might be arranged, Your Highness,” she says, her voice sweet. “But only if you beg.”
From the corner of my eye, I glance at her as I greet yet another person of interest to my father. When Belle catches my eye, she smiles.
Little Miss Do Gooder has more of a backbone than I thought she did.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Belle
I wipe a towel across my forehead – navy blue monogrammed with the royal crest in gold stitching. Even the towels in the gym are excessively formal, perfectly placed in a little pyramid on an antique table against the wall.
Five miles on the treadmill.
That’s what it took to run off the frustration caused by seeing Albie today at tea. Five miles a day for the past few days, since we got back from the summer estate. If I keep this up, if I keep running until I’m nearly exhausted in order to run off the overpowering attraction and sexual tension between us, I’m going to be a damn marathoner.
I could go back to the States, I think as I walk back toward my room. I could return to the States and put all of this behind me.
“Isabella,” my mother calls, her voice echoing down the hallway. I turn around to see her walking toward me in a tailored silk suit and a matching pillbox hat. “I texted you, but you didn’t respond.”
“My phone is in my room,” I say. “I was in the gym.”
“There’s a foundation,” Sofia says, handing me a packet of paperwork. “I’d thought you might like to be involved with it.”
“What is it?”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Reading?” she asks, absently, pulling out her phone and scrolling over the screen. “Or refugees? I’m really not sure. There’s a packet of information. Charity is your thing. You should organize a dinner, fundraising or something. You can use your time at the summer estate to plan something for the fall, when we return to the palace. Nothing that takes attention away from the wedding, of course.”
“Fundraising isn’t really my thing, mother,” I say, but she’s looking at her phone, her brow furrowed. And you're assuming I'm going to stay until Fall.
“I have to run, I’m afraid,” she says. “There’s a crisis with the event tonight.”
“What event?” I ask, as she draws me in, kissing my cheek.
“Read the packet, darling,” she says. “I’m late.” I roll my eyes as she starts to walk away. Then she pauses, turning back to me. “Oh, I almost forgot to ask. How are you adjusting to everything?”
“Fine,” I lie. Thinking about returning home is what I deliberately leave out. Except the problem is that I’ve been living overseas the past two years, so I'm not exactly sure where home is anymore.
“Protrovia will grow on you,” she says. “Albert is taking care of you?”
My face flushes and I cover my reaction with a fake cough.
Albie is not taking care of me, I think. I’ve been taking care of myself. Every night. While thinking about how I’d like Albie to take care of me.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, my voice faltering.
She walks toward me, and speaks, her voice quiet. “Alexandra has…problems,” she says. “Albert can show you around. He was in Afghanistan, you know. He’s more serious now. Responsible.”
I choke back a laugh as my mother whirls around without waiting for a response from me. She walks down the hallway, every step of hers purposeful.
When I reach my bedroom, I pull open the door and toss the packet of paperwork on the desk. I know my mother wants me to be part of a foundation, to take some kind of administrative or public relations role -- whatever it is that a princess does.
But that’s just not me.
I’m hands-on, which is why I went to Africa in the first place. She totally doesn’t understand that.
I’ll read the paperwork later.
I turn, my eyes resting on the box in the middle of the bed – bright pink paper embossed with a subtle floral pattern and tied with an ornate gold fabric ribbon. There’s no card attached to the outside, so I sit on the edge of the bed, pulling the ribbon to open the box lid.
It’s probably a gift from my mother, a bribe to follow the not-so-subtle order to get involved with the foundation. The thought makes me immediately annoyed. If my mother thinks I can be bribed with some stupid gift, she’s mistaken.
I pull off the lid of the box, expecting to see a purse or new pair of shoes, something my mother thinks someone my age would like.
It’s definitely not a new purse or a pair of shoes.
I stare at the inside of the box, blinking several times to make sure I’m actually seeing what I’m seeing.
That prick did not do this.
I look at the contents of the box, unsure whether to be appalled or amused. A notecard is perched on top of a small pile of sex toys, and I set it on the bed beside the box. It’s no mystery who left me this ridiculously inappropriate gift.
I reach inside the box, pulling out the first thing I touch.
It’s a fucking gold dildo. Or gold-plated or something. It’s so shiny it’s nearly blinding, the end opposite the tip crusted in jewels, red and blue and green. I run my hand down the shaft, my fingertips sliding easily over the smooth cool surface. I should be appalled, I think. Instead, heat pools between my legs as I touch the toy.
The golden cock comes to life in my hands, vibrating when I accidentally trigger something on it, and I yelp, dropping it onto the bed, where it bounces around in a circle on the mattress. Scrambling to shut it off, a giggle builds up in my throat, escaping my lips despite my best efforts to not be amused by Albie’s antics.
He sent me a golden cock.
I peek into the box again, stifling my laughter as I take out the contents one by one and lay them on the bed:
Another vibrator of some kind, egg-shaped with a remote control
A glass dildo that looks more like a piece of art than a dick, purple and blue swirls of color through it.
And…
I pull out the last piece, unsure what the hell it is, turning it over in my hand for a moment, a long pink piece of hair attached to a glass object that looks like a small dildo.
Then I realize what it is.
Oh my God.
It’s a butt plug. With a fake, bright pink horse’s tail attached.
I toss it on the bed like it's radioactive, shaking my head as I open the card that came with this way-too-far-over-the-line inappropriate set of gifts.
Thought you might need a little help with your obvious frustration. If you’d only just ask, you could get more personal assistance.
I slide open the screen on my cell phone and text the royal