Callous Prince

by Becker Gray

  A painter of money indeed.

  If that had been the worst of it, we would have already been devastated. Gutted and humiliated. But the day they came to arrest my father, he wasn’t at home, he wasn’t at his city office—he was in a hotel in Monte Carlo.

  With a woman who was not our mother. A woman he’d apparently been with many, many times before.

  The paps caught it all. Their embraces on the balcony before, their flushed faces as they were both led out of the hotel in handcuffs after.

  And so our family shame was complete. Our father was not only a deceiver but a cheater; he’d thrown money onto the flames of his greed and thrown the dignity of a princess back in her face. The tabs loved it—the con artistry and the philandering—and so did the more serious news outlets, and within days, both Aurora and I were pulled from our schools for our own safety. Our father had defrauded too many people—too many wealthy people—and we were the targets they could reach, the scapegoats for our father’s sins. Even with the security the Liechtensteiner government gave us being the grandchildren of the Queen, we were still in danger.

  Of course all joint accounts of my parents were seized—our home in England too. Luckily mother had her own royal trust accounts and we had our untouchable trust funds which we were able to access when we’d turned eighteen. But we’d had to move back to Liechtenstein; we’d had to find new and more secure schools to attend.

  We were lucky—I knew that. How many families have princesses for mothers? Queens for grandmothers? The retreat of the Lincoln-Wards was a retreat into shame and humiliation, yes, but it wasn’t a retreat into abject poverty. Aside from the pride and the hole our father had ripped through the world, we would survive. Comfortably, if not happily.

  But I could never forget that everything we lost—and how publicly we lost it—could be laid at the feet of one man alone.

  Nathan Lauder.

  Former FBI agent. Head of the National Central Bureau for INTERPOL in the States. It was Nathan who’d taken the first fraud claims against my father, and it was Nathan who’d spearheaded the entire investigation.

  For that, I would have forgiven him. His job was to stop criminals, and my father was a criminal, after all. A criminal who I knew roundly deserved every day in prison he got. No, it wasn’t the arrest or the conviction that infuriated me, that made me crave revenge.

  It was that Nathan chose not to bring my father in quietly, privately. Nathan chose someplace tawdry and public.

  He’d not only ruined us, but he’d made it a spectacle, made it so garishly and vulgarly visible.

  And I’d hated him for it.

  After the arrest, I had a lot of time in a new home, in a different country, to think about how much I hated Nathan Lauder. I had a lot of time to research him—to cajole, beg, and command my grandmother’s security people to research him too.

  Which was when I first heard the name Sloane.

  Sloane Lauder. His daughter, my age.

  There were no pictures of her online—Nathan was too careful for that—no other information at all actually, save for her name listed in a single obituary. Her mother—his wife—had died when she was young. No siblings, no extended family. They lived in D.C.

  I used to fantasize about growing up and finding her. I’d humiliate her the way Nathan had humiliated us and see how much he liked it then. Having his precious daughter dragged through the tabloid mud, having all of his family’s dirty linens flapping in the very, very public breeze.

  But of course that hadn’t been necessary, had it? Because I’d come to Pembroke, and whom should I find?

  Sloane herself. Here.

  Now.

  Gracefully lethal. Green-eyed and quiet.

  She held herself with a discipline that fascinated and enraged me—actually everything about her fascinated and enraged me.

  And nothing enraged me more than her soft, lush mouth.

  She had a pout that was made for kissing, licking, and sex—not for getting up at 6 a.m. and running five miles, only to turn around and train for hours in the gym the moment classes ended. Not for the careful, expressionlessness she always kept on her face, like she was already training to be a spy. Not for the way she never gave anything away, ever, even when I pushed and pushed and pushed . . .

  Except for the cupboard.

  Fuck me, the cupboard. I’d finally felt that plush mouth for myself, felt it warm and drugging against my lips. And her soft, tight cunt . . .

  “Len,” Aurora said impatiently, “are you going to call Daddy with me or not?”

  I leaned back in my chair, thinking about it for exactly one second. “No.”

  “You’re so eager to hate Sloane, yet you hate Daddy too. Don’t you remember anything from Mass? We’re supposed to forgive people.”

  “Like how you’re forgiving Phineas, for example?”

  She shot upright, glaring at me. “Low blow, Lennox, even for you.”

  I held up my hands. “I don’t even know what he did last summer, Sister Dearest. Only that he seems to be coping with it by shagging half the school, and you’re coping with it by making his life a living hell. And I don’t actually give a shit, I’m just pointing out that it’s rather hypocritical of you to want me to forgive people when you’re constantly planning Phineas’s untimely death.”

  “Fine,” she bit out, standing up and striding to the door. “I’ll call Daddy alone then.”

  “Tatty byes, Aurora.”

  She turned the handle and then paused. “You know he wants to help make things right, Len. He’s trying to be better.”

  I let out a long breath.

  I was a bastard, yes, and a bully definitely, but I did love my sister. It gave me no pleasure to say the words I said next. Not to the girl who’d once chased Daddy through the gardens right alongside me, who’d eaten sweets on his knee next to me while he told us all about Germany or Italy or Japan or wherever else he’d been.

  “He’s lying, Aurora,” I said, studying her face. “You know that, right? He’s trying to charm you. Swindle you back into loving him.”

  She smiled sadly, as if she knew that just as well as I did.

  “Better than trying to swindle us out of our trust funds at least,” she said, and then she cracked open the door and left.

  The trust funds. The two protected assets the government didn’t seize, because our father had made our grandparents the trustees, and therefore he couldn’t touch them. He’d been clever enough to do that at least, although he hadn’t been clever enough not to get caught.

  But because he couldn’t touch them, because they’d been preserved, I had no doubt he had his eye on them. Especially if he won his latest round of appeals and had his sentence reduced. Wouldn’t he love to be released and immediately have access to millions of pounds sterling?

  I don’t think so.

  I turned back to my laptop and clicked open the email I’d been about to read before Aurora barged in. It was from the lawyer who managed our trust funds—a lawyer I could trust. A lawyer who was conveniently—at least for me—intimidated by my mother’s family and the crown which came with it.

  I scanned the email before opening up a fresh word processor file, writing a letter I’d been drafting in my head for over a year. I rubbed at my chest as I wrote it, feeling something strange. It certainly wasn’t happiness, but maybe it was something close.

  Satisfaction. Gratification, maybe.

  Well, why wouldn’t I be gratified? Together, the lawyer and I had devised a very clever path through the warren of trust stipulations. We had figured out a way to move substantial chunks of money through various systems until it was allocated where I saw fit.

  Investments into my own future, as it were.

  Never let it be said that a prince would be a pauper, I thought as I closed out the email and then shut the laptop. Father, you taught me better than you can ever know.

  6

  Sloane

  Lennox, it turned out, wa
s a lot less freewheeling with his laptop than I thought he’d be. Or perhaps he was just more interested in me since I’d shamelessly come all over his fingers a few days before. Because now there was no leaving his things unattended in the library, there was no milling around the classroom during free time and leaving his laptop at his desk. Now he was right next to me, always sticking close, always sliding in with little verbal jabs and slices, cutting me into pieces with his cold smiles. Wherever I was, Lennox somehow found a reason to be also, and so there was no way to do what Dad had asked and search out what he wanted.

  And then Thursday morning came, and just like every other morning, Lennox was on the outdoor track with me, following me through the early morning fog as I started my laps. I could hear his footfalls behind me—soft and graceful, like a cat’s—I could hear his breathing, steady and even. No huffing and puffing for this prince, no way. He was all cool and arrogant control all the time. When he played, when he worked out. Even when he tormented me.

  I’d only ever seen him lose control when he—

  My cheeks flushed as I remembered the closet. He’d been wild to kiss me. Wild to touch me between my legs.

  Wild to keep me.

  At that thought, I sped up—not sure if I was running faster because I was angry or creeped out or turned on . . . or some fucked up combination of all three.

  Predictably, he sped up behind me, as if reluctant to let any more space between us.

  Rhys doesn’t get to touch you.

  You’ve belonged to me since the day I saw you.

  To toy with. To break.

  Fuck it, I was angry. He’d treated me like trash since day one, and now when another boy was taking notice of me for the first time ever, he suddenly had a problem?

  He got to be first in line to treat me like trash, was that it?

  It had been infuriating before, when it only affected me. But now his abrupt possessiveness was keeping me from helping my father, which by extension was keeping me from my dream of following in my father’s footsteps. It had to stop.

  I wouldn’t be his plaything. I couldn’t. There was too much at stake.

  Anger flooded me, and determination too, and I spun around to face him, my hands coming up automatically in a guard position, as if I were about to spar.

  Lennox’s reflexes were irritatingly sharp, because he was already stopped by the time I’d turned, his mouth in a flat line and one eyebrow raised. Only the quick thrum of his pulse above the collar of his too-expensive workout shirt betrayed that he’d been exerting himself. “My god, Lauder, are we about to start a fracas right here on the track? Am I going to regret forcing my poor security fellow to stay at the track entrance?”

  I lowered my fists, finally realizing they were raised. Too much karate or too much time with Dad, I guess, because I knew Lennox wouldn’t try to hurt me, not like this. Punches and strikes weren’t his way. He preferred to hurt me more . . . creatively.

  “What do you want?” I asked him, tense and coiled all over with fury and frustration. “Why do you come out here every morning? Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  Fog drifted around him as he took a step closer. “You already know what I want.”

  “No! I don’t! And you know what? I don’t think you know what you want either!”

  His golden eyes flashed. “I know exactly what I want. For you to stay away from Rhys.”

  “It’s none of your business, Prince Lennox. Just like my morning run is none of your business.”

  His expression sharpened and so did his voice. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, my sweet nothing? You belong to me, and I’m not in the habit of letting my things go unattended. Especially when they are so . . .” His eyes dropped to where my fists were still balled at my sides. “. . . willful.”

  “The closet changes nothing,” I said.

  “About that and nothing else, you are right, darling.” He stepped closer again, and this time, we were close enough to touch. Close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look into his sharp, sculpted face, close enough that I could see how the gold and amber spun together in his eerie eyes. “The closet didn’t change anything, because you were already mine. Before I tasted you. Before I felt your cunt against my hand. You were mine before all of that.”

  Jesus, he wasn’t a prince, he was a pirate. He’d spotted me on the horizon and decided to wreck me before I’d ever even known his name.

  “Get some therapy, your highness. I’m not anyone’s.”

  Another flash of those eyes and he reached for me, like he was going to pull me close, and I dodged him easily. He reached again, this time half lunging at me, and he was quick, so fucking quick, that he nearly had his arms around me.

  But I don’t spend every free second training for nothing. I let him get close—let his arms start to circle me—and then with a hook of my foot around the back of his and with my shoulder pushed into his chest, I had him flat on his back. I went down with him, and by the time he’d stopped falling, I was straddling his hips with my forearm to his throat. We’d gone down in the practice field in the middle of the track, and I could feel the cool, wet grass through my knees.

  The fog around us was thick enough that we couldn’t be seen, but I still checked around us with quick flicks of my eyes. I trusted that Lennox really had made his security guy stay off the track, but still. The last thing I needed was an angry Liechtensteiner guard shouting at me in German and turning this into an international incident.

  Convinced we were alone and out of sight—thank you, fog—I turned my attention back to the beautiful, heartless boy underneath me.

  “Leave. Me. Alone,” I said between clenched teeth.

  “No,” he replied, as coolly as if he were sitting bored on a throne somewhere. “I won’t.”

  I pressed harder with my forearm. Not enough to choke him, but enough so that he knew that I could if I wanted to. “I mean it, Lennox. No more following me. No more shitty remarks. No more lube in my bag or caring about who I kiss. Keep my name out of your mouth and my face out of your thoughts. Got it?”

  Lennox almost seemed amused. “I’ve gotten to you rather terribly, haven’t I?” Satisfaction curled through his voice.

  I leaned forward. “No. You haven’t.”

  But leaning forward was a mistake, because now I could see, in utter and perfect detail, the tempting lines of his mouth. The sharply masculine peaks of his upper lip, the firm but plush bow of the lower. And below me, where I straddled his hips, I could feel the effect this position was having on him. The silky material of his athletic shorts hid nothing of his desire, and my running pants were no better. They’d be damp soon, if they weren’t already.

  Unconsciously, without meaning to, I rocked forward over him, rubbing my sex against his erection like a needy kitten. The corner of his mouth sharpened—an almost smirk—even as his hips lifted to give me more.

  “See?” he said.

  “You’re not—I don’t—you haven’t gotten to me.” But the lie was in my body, in how I tried to fuck him through our clothes, even as my forearm kept him pinned to the ground underneath me. The lie was in my voice, which was breathy and husky and transparently aroused.

  “Oh, but I have,” he said, his mouth still in that bitter smile. I felt his hands curl over my hips—something that would have been a threat if we’d been truly fighting, but of course, this wasn’t a fight, not really. I . . . I didn’t know what this was, exactly, but I did know that whatever it was meant he could touch my hips like he was now.

  And slide his hand across the flat plane of my stomach and find the hem of my tank top.

  And tug down the waistband of my pants and push his fingers into my panties and between my legs.

  My eyes fluttered closed as he found me, stroked me. There was no hiding that he got to me now, there was no hiding how much my body reacted to his presence. I was wet enough to be slippery, wet enough that even he seemed surprised—although that surprise faded quickly
into a dark satisfaction.

  “Good,” he whispered. “I refuse to be the only one.”

  I kept my forearm on his throat as he slid up to my clit. He knew just how to touch, just how to rub. Fast then slow. Circles then up and down. I hated thinking about all the practice he’d had, I hated knowing scores and scores of girls had come before me . . . but I didn’t hate it so much I’d make him stop. Not at all.

  I was a simple girl, after all. A direct girl. A good spy would use any means at her disposal to meet her goal, after all, and if my goal was to have a toe-curling orgasm on the practice field inside the school track while straddling the school’s resident bully . . .

  Except that a good spy would also not be fooling around with her mark.

  Outside.

  When his security detail could be anywhere.

  “When you come, my sweet nothing, consider this: if you aren’t mine, then why is it that I find this pretty pussy wet for me every time I touch it?”

  “Shut up,” I told him, riding his touch, feeling everything between my knees and my navel grow taut and trembling. “You’re ruining it.”

  “Oh,” he said softly, smiling again. “I don’t think I am. And if you come for me like this, just imagine all the other ways I could do it . . .”

  I didn’t have to imagine much. His mouth, cruel and soft all at once, the kind of mouth that promised vicious and punishing pleasure. And that thick erection was underneath me again, huge and hard . . .

  My orgasm came at me like a freight train, running me over, laying me flat. I cried out and bucked against Lennox’s hand, coming and coming and unable to stop, unable to think, unable to do anything but feel. That powerful but elegant hand in my panties, the firm bulge of him beneath me. The cold grass wet against my knees and the fog clinging to my throat and chest as I arched against the feeling.

  And then it faded—the tight waves in my sex and my belly slowly growing looser, more languid—until I was just a girl slumped over a boy in the grass, with his hand in her pants and her forearm on his throat.