by Parker Grey
Does this mean I can use the phone now? I wonder, but then Leather Jacket turns toward me. He steps over the crumpled form in the middle of the bar and comes up to me, holding something out in one hand.
I’m not looking at that. I’m looking at his face.
I could only see half of it before, but now I can see all of it.
He’s still handsome, almost cartoonishly handsome, but I’m not staring at that either.
I’m staring at the scar, a thick line that runs from his hairline, over one eye, to his chin. I have no idea how you get a scar like that, but it can’t be good.
“Hey,” he says, his voice gruff.
Fear stabs through my heart one more time, and I look down frantically at his extended hand.
“I thought you wanted to make a phone call,” he says.
Chapter Two
Leo
She exhales, her shoulder slumping in relief, as she reaches out to take my phone in her small, delicate hand.
“Thanks,” she says, her voice quiet and whispery.
She clears her throat and stands up straighter, like she’s trying not to look scared.
“Sorry about all this,” she says, sounding a little stronger. “I didn’t—“
She breaks off, then shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it.
“I didn’t think at all,” she says, dialing a number. “It’s a long story.”
She holds the phone up to her ear, her eyes still on mine, and I turn away because I can’t look at her any more.
Princess Josephine is even more beautiful than she is in her pictures. Even here, in this dark, seedy bar she radiates innocence, vulnerability, and something else.
Something that calls to the darkest part of me. The part I’d hoped to bury.
Something that screams take me.
Ruin me.
Make me yours.
I don’t know what the hell she’s doing here, but thank fucking God she showed up at the dark hole I picked to hide in.
And thank God that she didn’t recognize me, or there’s a good chance she’d have run screaming back into the street.
I scan the dive again while she talks, just to make sure no one else is thinking of trying anything.
The guy with half his teeth is slowly pushing himself off the floor, giving me sulky glares, but he just gets back on his barstool and orders another drink without making a fuss.
Everyone else pretends like nothing happened, like they weren’t all just fucking complicit. Like they didn’t each just watch this girl get denied a simple phone call, for fuck’s sake.
They’re a bunch of worthless goddamn animals, I think. They’re not even fit to be called human.
If these were the old days, and we were in Szegravia, I could do something about it. Toss them all in the mines and never think about it again, but not now. Now we’ve got trials and burden of proof and defense lawyers, and even if those things are usually good, sometimes I want to throw them all out the window and go back to a hand for a hand.
“Okay, thanks,” says behind me. “See you soon.”
I turn, and she hands my phone back. I slide it into my pocket just as her eyes dart to the scar and then away again, still with no glimmer of recognition.
Good. I prefer it that way. She’ll know what I am soon enough.
“Someone’s coming to pick me up,” she says, handing my phone back, her huge blue eyes meeting mine. I can tell she’s trying to sound and act brave, like she’s not scared, but it’s not working.
Every cell in my body is screaming protect her, even though I know the one person she truly needs protecting from is me.
“I’ll walk you out,” I say, sliding my phone back into my pocket.
“You don’t have—“
“I’m going to walk you out.”
Her eyes flash, and her perfect lips just barely part, like she’s about to refuse and fight back. But then she glances at the bartender and at the front door, and she acquiesces.
“Thanks,” she says, and lowers her eyes.
In a split second I’m unbearably hard, my dick aching so bad I think I might blow a blood vessel. I was halfway there already, just looking at her perfect body, the swell of her breasts, imagining her plush lips as she cries out.
But this is it, fucking incredible, the stuff wet dreams are made of. Princess Josephine submitting, even to being walked outside, makes me crave her submission in every other way imaginable.
I want her on her knees, hands tied behind her back, my cock parting her lips.
I want her legs spread while she gasps and I tease her to the edge of orgasm with my tongue, over and over again, refusing to give her satisfaction until I decree it.
I want her trembling as she comes for the fifth time in a row, my cock deep inside her drawing out climax after climax.
In the darkness, I just smile and play the part of rescuing gentleman.
“Ladies first,” I say, and gesture toward the door.
Josephine walks through, and I watch her ass as she does, a perfect bubble swaying from side to side. If I weren’t already rock hard I would be now.
Outside, the streetlights have just come on, but they only make the deserted street look even more abandoned. Far away, a car drives and then turns. The stoplight turns from green to yellow to red, then back to green.
There’s no one out here but us. I’ve got no idea why this shitty bar is here. I just know I found it when I was looking for a place to hide, because darkness is my friend.
“Looks like we’ve got a little time,” I say, hands firmly in my pockets, dick throbbing against my jeans. “What’s a nice girl like you doing down here with no phone and no wallet?”
She sighs again, then pushes a hand through her blond hair, a far away look in her eyes.
“It was dumb,” she admits. “I sort of... spazzed and ran out my front door without thinking, wandered for a while without looking where I was going, and next thing I know I’m down here at night like an idiot.”
“What made you spaz?” I ask.
She clears her throat and looks uncertain, running the tip of her tongue along her top lip, like she’s thinking.
“My parents... gave me some bad news,” she says. “And I really, really needed to leave and clear my head.”
Something clenches in my stomach.
Bad news.
“What kind of bad news?” I press.
A car pulls up to the stoplight on the cross street, and waits. We both crane our necks to see it.
Our light goes red. The car makes a left turn and starts gliding down the street toward us, a black Town Car.
It’s obviously Princess Josephine’s ride, and she blushes. She still doesn’t realize I know who she is.
“Just... bad news, I don’t really want to go into it,” she says, forcing herself to sound cheerful. “That’s my ride. Thanks so much for letting me use your phone and waiting with me.”
“I’m happy to help,” I say, the manners my mother drilled into me coming out. “Try not to wander bad neighborhoods at night any more.”
The car pulls up and stops. She waves to the driver, and I walk forward, opening the back door for her.
“I’ll try,” she says, then pauses. “Listen, is there anything I can do for you? I’m so sorry, I didn’t think to ask—“
I just chuckle.
“Not a single thing,” I say.
She frowns, but sits in the car. I close the door after her, and she waves to me once before the car pulls away.
Bad news, I think.
I’m pretty sure I know what the bad news her parents gave her was.
And I’m pretty sure it’s me.
Chapter Three
Josephine
“Hold still,” Katarina admonishes me.
“It tickles.”
“Then stop being ticklish,” she says.
I clench my teeth together, and she keeps lightly brushing powder onto my face.
“I�
��m almost done,” she says, giving my cheekbones a few more swipes as her enormous belly brushes against me.
Katarina steps back and admires her handiwork.
“There,” she says. “You look almost human.”
“Maybe we’re going the wrong direction with this,” I say, giving myself a once-over in the mirror. “Maybe I should look like a swamp monster so Prince Leo takes one look and runs right back to Szegravia.”
Katarina just rolls her eyes.
“You’re overreacting,” she says. “Give the poor guy a chance. He’s been cooped up in that castle for years, the least you can do is be nice, Jo.”
“There’s a reason he’s been in the castle for years,” I mutter.
“No, there’s a rumor,” Katarina says firmly. “Remember when you were allegedly snorting a combination of cocaine and industrial cleaner off a stripper’s ass in Moscow last year?”
I wasn’t, obviously, but it didn’t stop the tabloids from reporting it.
“That was different.”
“That was also a rumor.”
“I think it’s romantic,” sighs Florentina, from her chair behind us.
She’s been quiet most of this time, half listening to us and half staring off into space, day dreaming. It’s kind of her thing.
Katarina and I both just look at her and wait.
“You know, the prince locked away in the tower, some kind of tortured soul, and he can only truly be understood by his one love?”
She sighs dramatically. Katarina and I look at her, then at each other.
“Or, he’s a perfectly nice guy with a very shitty public relations team, and he picked the wrong way to deal with infamy at a young age,” Katarina says.
“I hope you’re right,” I say.
She grabs a sapphire blue gown on a hangar, unzips it, and bunches it all together so it’s just fabric around a hole.
“Arms up,” she orders. “Florrie, come make sure the dress doesn’t screw up her hair, will you?”
Between the two of them, they maneuver the gown over my hair and makeup, and Florentina zips it up my back as I check myself out in the mirror.
I’ve gotta give it to them, because I look good. You can’t even tell that I spent an hour crying this morning.
“You sure do clean up nice,” Katarina says, and pats my butt.
I make a face at her, but for an instant I think of the guy who saved my ass at the bar last night. Despite everything that’s about to happen, I keep thinking about him.
His eyes, deep brown and almost feral. The way he barely smiled at me.
His muscles. Good Lord, his muscles.
And I didn’t even get his name. Of all the dumb things I did yesterday, that was probably the dumbest.
“Go get ‘em tiger,” Katarina says, and the three of us leave my dressing room.
In the throne room, I feel like I’m having an out of body experience. Like I’m actually somewhere else, just watching Princess Josephine of Tomassia sit behind her parents, smiling prettily, greeting foreign dignitaries one by one.
Every time the massive door to the throne room opens again, my heart leaps into my throat, pins and needles prickling along my skin as I think, is that him? Is that him?
I’m supposed to marry the man, and I don’t even know what he looks like. No one does, except his family and servants.
There are no pictures of Prince Leo. Rumor has it that he hasn’t left his castle in almost fifteen years, not since the incident. That’s how the tabloids and the newspapers always talk about it.
The incident.
But there are rumors that he’s an enormous, brutish beast of a man, and that he’s so ugly that mirrors crack when he walks by. I’ve heard that he only speaks in grunts and growls, and that once when he got angry, he threw a table out a window.
And I’m supposed to marry him.
My parents just rolled their eyes at the rumors, of course, because according to them he’s perfectly nice, just shy.
But there’s shy, and then there’s beastly.
The Duke and Duchess of Canterview bow once more, then move off to the side, sitting in the gallery. Every head turns toward the huge doors at the end of the hall, and yet again, my stomach clenches.
They open, and then, for a long moment, nothing happens. The darkness beyond them yawns, the space deep and empty, and my heart seizes in my chest.
It’s him. It has to be him.
Anyone else would just walk in like a normal person.
Suddenly, a man strides into the room. Even from the other side of the room I can tell that he’s huge, tall and wide and built, and there’s something wild and untamed about him, despite the perfectly tailored suit he’s wearing.
And he’s powerful, walking in like he owns this room and this castle and this whole country, an aura of pure domination surrounding him.
No one has to tell me who he is. Just from the reaction he gets, all the nobles and royals in the room going silent at once, I know.
It’s Prince Leo. The man my parents want me to marry. Anxiety stabs through my chest, and I feel dizzy, like I can’t breathe.
Not him, I think. Anyone but him, please.
At the dais, the man kneels, head bent, in front of my parents, the King and Queen.
“Your majesties,” he says.
Something about his voice suddenly jars my breath loose, and I exhale in a rush because I recognize his voice from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. He’s familiar but he can’t be familiar, he’s a weirdo who hasn’t left his castle in years and year.
I feel like the world is tilting and I’m trying to grab onto something familiar.
Think, Josephine, I order myself, but my brain freezes.
“Prince Leopold of Szegravia, please rise,” my father says, his voice perfectly formal.
The man stands, lifting his head.
The second I see his face, I gasp out loud. This terrifying, feral, beast of a man has a scar running the length of his face, from his hairline to his jaw.
Prince Leo was my rescuer last night, and now he’s staring right at me.
Chapter Four
Leo
I can’t take my eyes off of her. I know I’m talking, saying all the correct, polite things that a well-bred prince ought to say in a foreign court, but I don’t have the first fucking clue what any of it is.
All I can see is her, sitting a few paces behind her parents, the sapphire blue gown hugging her perfect curves. She’s breathing quickly, like she’s nervous, and with every breath her chest swells in exactly the right way to make me achingly hard.
But that’s not all. It’s also the look in her eyes, the way her lips parted just a little when she realized who I was.
Princess Josephine is frightened of me. That’s no surprise. I’ve got a reputation that precedes me by miles, and even if the vicious rumors aren’t true, she probably should be frightened of me.
After all, I’m not gentle. I’m not kind. I’m sure I’m not the prince charming she’s always dreamed of.
But I know that look. Behind the fear and the nervousness, there’s something deep and wild in her eyes, in the way her lips part when she looks at me. Something that makes me crave her the way a drowning man craves air.
I knew it the second I saw her picture, the second I watched her on the television, a bridesmaid in her sister’s unconventional wedding. It’s why I’m here right now.
I sit in the throne room for a fucking eternity. I absolutely hate this shit, and I refuse to do it in my own court. The only reason I’m doing it now is because of her.
When the reception is finally over, the King, Queen, and Princesses all proceed out, Josephine giving me one last glance before she leaves.
Before I can even rise in my own seat, there’s an attendant at my side, waiting to be noticed. He clears his throat politely.
“What do you—“
I force myself to stop, take a breath, and start over.
“Yes
?” I ask.
His face is perfectly blank, like I didn’t just growl at him.
“The royal family has requested your presence in their private sitting room,” he says. “If Your Highness would follow me...”
I stand, remembering to smooth down my suit. I fucking hate wearing this thing, even if it makes me look civilized and maybe even good. But when I’ve got it on, I feel like a fake, because I’m not civilized unless I have to be.
We walk out of the throne room, through a few doorways and another hall, and then he pushes another door open and nods me through.
Inside are the King, the Queen, and Princess Josephine.
After a second I remember my manners and bow.
“Prince Leopold,” the King says, strict and jovial all at once. “Many thanks for making the long journey to Tomassia.”
He’s just being polite. It was a plane flight.
I nod slightly.
“It was nothing,” I say.
Princess Josephine doesn’t say anything, but she’s standing tall, shoulders squared and back straight, the same way she stood at the bar. The way she stands when she’s trying not to look afraid.
“The Princess has offered to show you to your chambers,” he goes on. “I hope you’ll find them adequate.”
“I’m sure I will,” I say.
Josephine looks at her parents. They look back, and then after a moment, she steps forward.
“Shall we?” she asks, her voice soft but steely as she walks toward me.
She stops a few feet away, her eyes burning into mine. It’s all I can do not to take her by the waist right there and devour her perfect, beautiful mouth with mine.
“It would be my pleasure,” I say.
The halls are filled with servants, courtiers, nobles, and dozens of other people rushing around to prepare for the banquet dinner tonight. Josephine and I talk stiffly, as she points out the portraits of this or that ancestor, architectural details, historical notes on the castle.