Her Royal Daddy

by Maren Smith

  I should have been grateful for the king’s unintentional chaperone of an assistant. Jax was like a robot. He sat prim and straight on the seat across from Mazi and me, a living, breathing Siri, just waiting for a voice activation cue before he’d offer up a sliver of succinct conversation.

  “Jax, what time is it here?”

  “Three-oh-three,” he said, consulting his pocket watch.

  “I thought Africa was hot. Jax, why is it so cold?”

  “Because it’s winter.”

  “Look how quiet it is. Where is everybody?”

  “In bed,” Jax said, drumming his fingers once upon his knee. “Where sensible people can usually be found at three in the morning.”

  Yeah, okay. No need to rub it in. And, obviously, he’d never spent much time in New York before either. There was a reason it was called the City That Never Sleeps. For me, I had never spent any real time outside the city before. Where were the car alarms, the hordes of people, the constant hum of traffic and movement—the footprint of life that eight million people made just by existing within the same city limits as me? The unexpected quiet of Osei’s unnaturally empty streets was anything but peaceful. It unnerved me all the way to the palace. I have no idea what Mazi thought of it. He kept his face glued to the window, as if trying to see everything all at once as we drove by. Or maybe he was just trying to catch that first glimpse of the palace where we would be staying, me for the length of my employment and him for as long as he was on vacation.

  “Holy shit,” he said, when he saw it. It wasn’t hard to make out either. It was the only building so far that I had seen with any lights on, much less as brightly lit as this was.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, from it or the village we drove through. Grass huts, maybe. Dirt roads with livestock running loose. I probably needed to check my privilege, because in actuality the village leading up to the palace was made up of nicely maintained houses, shops, and businesses, all spaced out with plenty of trees, parks, and beautifully manicured yards. The architecture had a Dutch Colonial look to it and the main building material seemed to be stone and clay, but I could have been visiting any turn of the century seaside town back in the States for all the ‘foreign’ that this felt. And the palace reflected that, although at first it really didn’t seem all that grand.

  We came up to a gatehouse first, and once the guard granted us access to the grounds, all I saw for almost half a mile was nothing but a shadow jungle of trees that gave way to palms and flowering plants, that gave way to lawn, and finally, there it was. A massive three-story structure with huge arching doorways, brightly lit windows, turrets and balconies, and towers with bulging dome rooftops. This was the Taj Mahal and Buckingham Palace’s illegitimate lovechild in building form, dropped on an island off the coast of Africa and all lit up in garden lights. And there wasn’t a single elephant or giraffe anywhere on the front lawn. I felt a little disappointed about that.

  “Home, sweet home,” Mazi said, almost under his breath.

  Startled, Jax came as close to a smile as I’d yet seen from that prim, unsmiling man. “Yes,” he said.

  “For a while, anyway,” I added, almost not noticing the way Mazi startled, as if he’d forgotten where he was, or the censuring frown Jax gave me.

  The limo brought us right to the front steps, where a small army of butlers waited to open the car door for us and take our luggage.

  “Breakfast,” Jax said, “shall be served promptly at eight o’clock. His Majesty will be in attendance. Would you like a wake-up call?”

  “Sure,” I chirped. Having slept on the plane, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight, but who knew what would happen over the next several hours. I might get lost in writing for a while. I wouldn’t mind a shower. I’d need to unpack. Who knew, after all that, I might take a nap. A call to breakfast, much less an escort to help find it, might be nice.

  It was only when Jax gave me another look did I realize he was actually talking to Mazi.

  “Sure,” Mazi said, but he didn’t sound anywhere near as enthused as I had. In fact, although his expression was closed, he almost seemed angry.

  Jax issued a kind of bow, something more than a nod, but not quite obsequious, and then he walked away, leaving us in the capable hands of the butlers who beckoned us to follow as they carted our luggage inside. I had two suitcases, both of which had rollers, but they were carried. Mazi carried his own bag, the only one he’d brought with him, but as things were being unpacked from the truck, almost as if without thinking, he also grabbed my duffel bag. The one with Ms. Beatrix once more carefully hidden inside. I would have carried it myself, but he’d shouldered it so smoothly and naturally that, by the time I realized what was happening, he was already climbing the palace steps and I was afraid of causing a scene.

  Compared to the rather understated exterior of the palace, the interior was every inch of it the home of royalty. The floor was a mosaic of Osei history done in a rainbow array of colorful tiles. The rest of the place was like a museum filled with both the modern and the ancient. Old tribal antiquities, weapons and shields, artwork, paintings, sculptures, and pot after pot after potful of green, leafy plants were everywhere—at the base of every pillar that lined the grand foyer, on tables and window ledges, and dotting every landing on the circular stairway that led up to the equally opulent second floor balcony.

  “Wow,” I breathed, turning in a full circle and drinking it all in.

  Mazi said nothing, nor did he look impressed. He just followed the butlers up the stairs; awestruck by the luxury around me, I had to hurry to catch up with them. Led through a minor maze of lavish corridors, we finally ended up in what we were told in broken English was a residential wing. Although given rooms that were side by side, our entry doors were at least sixty feet apart. That was where they gave us each a key and Mazi and I parted, escorted into our separate rooms.

  I didn’t know about Mazi, but my room was more than just a bed. It was an apartment, open and spacious but with luxury furniture that clearly designated a living room, dining room, fully decked out kitchen with a wrapped snack basket on the counter, a balcony that overlooked the garden, an office, a bedroom with massive four-poster bed, and a bathroom that came complete with a whirlpool tub, a glass shower, a mosaic tile floor that depicted the ocean floor, and two toilets.

  Two.

  I’d never been anyplace that had two toilets before. I hardly knew what to do with myself.

  “Would you require anything else?” my escort asked, his soft voice polite and his accent so heavy I had a hard time understanding him.

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you.” I came toward him, digging through my purse for a tip, but he immediately declined it, bowed, and backed out of my apartment, closing the double doors behind him. “Holy cow,” I whispered to myself, turning in a full circle to let the opulence of the place sink in. Like every other part of the palace I had seen, my rooms were a mix of modern things and decorations from the cultural past. Osei pride was in every picture and painting on the walls, the oceanic mosaic on the bathroom floor, and in the jungle’s worth of plants both inside and out on the balcony.

  I stepped outside. Dark as it was, I leaned up against the rail and did my best to see everything possible. The lights of the palace cast a glow across the lawn, but this was a time for shadows and the darkness didn’t let the light go very far. Still, I could see enough to know the lawn was spacious and surrounded by a curtain of trees, the dark forms of which rustled and swayed in the chilly breeze. Beyond the trees, I could hear ocean waves, gently rolling up onto some distant beach somewhere. Ocean waves weren’t the same as car alarms, beeping trucks, and traffic at all hours of the night, but it was background noise and it did help keep my nerves at the unnatural quiet of it all at bay.

  Looking up at the night sky, even with the lights of the palace on, I could even see stars. It was magnificent. I hadn’t seen stars like this since the blackout in 2003. “Wow.�
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  “Yeah, it’s something, isn’t it?”

  I startled. I hadn’t heard Mazi come out. For all I knew, he might have been standing on his balcony first and I just never saw him. But I saw him now. He was leaning against the rail, his broad hands resting on the smooth stone as he gazed at the night sky.

  “Quiet, too,” Mazi commented.

  “That’s going to be hard to get used to,” I agreed, crossing the length of my balcony to close as much distance between us as possible. There were still twenty feet between his rail and mine, but quiet as it was out here, we hardly had to raise our voices to hear one another. I didn’t know if anyone else was living in our ‘residential wing,’ but with any luck we wouldn’t wake them up just by talking.

  “I could get used to this,” Mazi said, although he didn’t sound particularly happy about that.

  The journalist in me took note of that, although the rest of me was already making up rational excuses.

  “First time out of New York?” I asked.

  He tipped his head in a nod.

  “Homesick?”

  For the first time, he looked at me. “My home isn’t anywhere near as nice as this.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t miss it,” I countered.

  His eyes narrowed, but a corner of his mouth twitched, and then he changed the subject. “How are you and Ms. Beatrix settling in?”

  And just like that, I was snapped straight back to the jet bathroom, my head swimming, hugging my bunny to my chest while I watched one of the most handsome men on Earth picking my crayons up off the floor. Every inch of his hard body exuded easy sexuality, and every soothing word out of his mouth hit every fantasy Daddy dom chord inside me. Blame it on the alcohol, because at one point in time, I’d thought the same thing about Brian and look how that had turned out.

  I’d done really well at keeping myself in check, right up until he wrapped his arm around me and took me off to take a nap. After that, things didn’t get anywhere near as fuzzy and hard to recall as I wished they would. I remembered everything. Falling on the floor, check. Calling him Daddy and propositioning him while lying on the floor, double check.

  My face flamed, but I’ll be damned if my nipples didn’t peak, instantly tightening into buds that all but begged to be kissed.

  I cleared my suddenly too tight throat. “Thank you for not taking advantage of things.”

  Not that I was at all sure I’d have regretted it if he had.

  “No thanks needed,” he assured, a slow smile curling his mouth. “That said, if you want to come over here and call me Daddy again, things just might turn out a little differently.”

  And just like that, my body found every pulse of eroticism my nap on the plane had killed. Slow blossoms of heat unfurled in my womb, their bloom encouraged by his smile and the leonine ease with which he pushed back off the rail to move in as close to me as our parted balconies would allow.

  “The last time I said that, you threatened to spank me,” I replied, hardly believing the words falling out of my mouth. It was like someone else teasing, flirting with him. I wasn’t that girl. I didn’t have casual encounters with men I barely knew, not on private jets and certainly not in foreign palaces in the wee small hours of the morning.

  “It wasn’t a threat,” he replied, hooking his thumbs in the pockets in the way that pulled my gaze to his belt and refused to let me look away.

  “You won’t kiss a girl if she’s not sober, but you’ll spank her?”

  “If you’d continued to push for one, you bet I would. It’s all part of the Daddy service.” His smile grew, and so did that low throb of arousal between my legs. “It’s also not too late, if you’re curious.”

  “For which, the spanking or the kiss?” I thought I was being so clever. I was completely unprepared for what his grin and wink did to the pulse already thumping its heady beat in my lady bits.

  “Either,” he shot back. “You know where my door is.”

  He knew exactly what he was doing to me when he went back into his room, leaving me standing outside, every bit as achy as I had been on the plane only now without the alcohol to blame it on. Only now my bottom was tingling, too, as if that aspect of me wouldn’t at all mind getting spanked by him. Which was crazy.

  I was crazy.

  I went back inside, not just because it was cold and dark and far too quiet when I was by myself, but because if he came back out and saw me standing frozen where he’d left me, then he’d know exactly what he’d just done to me, and I didn’t think I could bear to live that down.

  All of which was Old Norah thinking. Old Norah, who had stayed with Brian long after the magic had died and the verbal abuse settled in, because having that Daddy figure in her life—even one as horrible as he was and who used her fantasy needs against her—was better than no one at all. Old Norah, who had stayed in a job that marginalized her, writing bullshit articles that she wasn’t at all proud of in the hopes that someday someone would recognize that she was worth better than that.

  Standing in the middle of my palace apartment, in a country so remote than they didn’t even teach its existence in geography class, I suddenly got mad. Fuck Old Norah. Who cared what Old Norah thought; what would New Norah do?

  New Norah, who was just waiting for me to rewrite her any way I wanted to. New Norah who within a week of my concocting her had already got me out of the United States in a new job working for royalty, for God’s sake. This was an adventure, and why the hell shouldn’t I take it to the next level and create a memory I could pull out and enjoy later on in life? I was a grown woman, who was attracted to a man, who was also attracted to me, and why shouldn’t I go ahead and blow it up into a full-fledged vacation one-night stand?

  So what if I’d never done anything like this before? So what if I could count my sexual partners on one hand and, when this was all over, I’d still be able to. Daddy had beckoned; I desperately wanted to respond. So, on watery legs already trembling with excitement, I went to the bathroom to freshen up and then quickly made my way next door.

  I was standing in front of it, wondering if I should knock or just walk in, when Mazi took the choice out of my hands and simply opened the door. He stepped out, looking up and down the corridor as if we were naughty teenagers and he expected Jax to pop out of the shadows with a censuring frown and a ready lecture. I don’t know if he shared my mental image, but we both laughed when he hustled me inside and quickly shut the door.

  Both our laughter faltered and then died, and for a moment we both looked at each other. The silence grew awkward. My heart was beating so hard and fast. The thundering pound of it battered inside my chest. The echoes of it were deafening in my ears, but more than that was the strength of the pulses I could feel down deep inside me. In the tips of my nipples, as I backed up slowly until I bumped up against the door he’d just closed. In the furling, fluid heat moving molten down from womb to pussy until I could feel the liquid proof of my arousal tickling through the folds of my sex and soaking into the crotch of my panties, especially when he followed me, reaching out to brace his strong hands against the door to either side of my head. He was careful to keep plenty of room between us; I could have got away at any time if I’d wanted to.

  I just didn’t want to.

  “I’d offer you a drink,” he said, breaking the silence. “But that’s kind of what got us into trouble on the plane.”

  I rolled my lips, but not fast enough to stop the snort of laughter he’d won from me.

  “I was gifted a fruit basket,” he continued, grinning now himself. “I could offer you a piece of fruit.”

  Shaking my head, I laughed. “I didn’t come over here for a piece of fruit.”

  No, I came for him. For nookie. Because I was helpless not to.

  “I’ll put some music on,” he offered, already pushing away from the door.

  New Norah was a daring woman with a scarily brilliant sense of humor.

  “If that’s what you ne
ed to get comfortable taking your clothes off,” New Norah called after him, stopping us both in our tracks, because that was my mouth she was using!

  He turned back around and I flattened back up against his door, my eyes wide, my heart fairly dancing, a hot gush of wetness flooding my pussy as he braced his hands against the wood to either side of my head and leaned into me once more. His smile was intoxicating. His eyes were laughing. His voice could have dropped panties at a devout virgins’ convention, certainly it could have dropped mine if only he hadn’t leaned in so close now that I couldn’t get away. Not even if I’d wanted to.

  “I see you’ve got your heart set on that spanking after all,” he mused, making himself comfortable against both the door and me. When I breathed, the tips of my breasts brushed against his chest. He could have kissed me if he’d wanted to. The sexual tension was unbearable, and his commanding yet playful tone sent shivers down my spine when he asked, “Does Daddy’s little girl want him to strip for her?”

  My knees almost buckled, sagging me against the door before I caught myself. My breath caught too. I couldn’t stop looking at his smiling lips.

  “Does Daddy’s little girl need a hard cock to play with?”

  I loved it when he called himself Daddy. I loved even more than he called me little, and implied that he was mine. My nipples swelled at the thought, aching for him to touch me with more than just his voice.

  “Be a good girl,” he coaxed me, making my heart pound and my thighs quiver. “Ask Daddy for what you want. Use your words, baby, if you want to play.”