Royally Mine: 22 All-New Bad Boy Romance Novellas

by Susan Stoker

  I felt the shift as he walked towards me, coming to stand directly behind me, but I was not prepared for what happened next.

  He spanked me! Just like he had that first day at the castle, only harder, and longer. His hand landed hard across the middle of my ass multiple times in succession before I had time to react.

  He was still going when I finally found my pride and whirled on my heel to face him, covering my ass with both hands as I did.

  He was smirking, his face contorted into a smile that was a mixture of emotion—half angry, and also pretty damn pleased with himself.

  I was not so pleased.

  “Mazi, you cannot get your way by spanking me or kissing me every time I say something you don’t like.”

  “You were lying to me.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, and I opened my mouth to deny it. That’s when he pressed a finger over my lips and silenced me.

  “Don’t deny it, Norah. That would be another lie, and you’ve just seen how I feel about liars.”

  I scowled at him, annoyed at how easily he could see through me.

  And then, of course, he spoke the words my soul longed to hear. “Don’t leave me, Norah. I need you.”

  I knew that he knew those were the words that would get me. That somehow he had seen into my soul, and seen how deeply I wanted to be needed. Mazi didn’t play fair.

  “I can’t date a prince, Mazi. I’m not princess material. And I certainly can’t date a king. This thing we’ve been doing—it can’t go anywhere. I need it to stop before it’s too late.” Before I fall in love with you. Except that I already am.

  “You’re scared,” he whispered. “I get it. I am too. This is scary, real, life-changing, straight-out-of-a-fairy-tale stuff. But I need you, Norah. The first time I laid eyes on you, I knew it. I was going to talk to you that night, but when I went backstage—that’s when I got the letter. I forced you out of my mind. I had no choice but to. And then I saw you on the plane, and I knew it was fate, and that no matter what happened with my father, my life was forever changed. We were meant to be together. Our paths were meant to cross that night at the club, however briefly. The events had to line up just so, for me to meet you on the exact night our lives both changed, in a direction that brought us here to Osei. If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.”

  It was a powerful argument. When I thought about my own night, the things he said felt like they had to be true. More so than he knew.

  But the big problem still remained. And despite his earlier joking, it was insurmountable. In a few weeks, he would be a king.

  I should have walked out. I willed my feet to move. And they did. Exactly six steps. The exact amount of steps I needed to take in order to be close enough to kiss him.

  Chapter Nine

  Mazi

  The headlines were sensational. It had taken them exactly twenty-four hours to dig into my past and splatter the advertisement photo from the strip club on the front of every rag in several countries, and pretty much every internet gossip site in existence. They put it right next to the photo of my father placing the crown on my head.

  The crown jewels and the crown jewels. One of the smuttier headlines even said that.

  I had expected as much. My father, however, was livid.

  He summoned Norah and me to his quarters early the next morning and didn’t even bat an eye when we arrived together. If he noticed Norah was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing in the conference room the day before, he didn’t say.

  He had never looked so frail as he paced the floor in front of his bed, still dressed in striped silk pajamas, pain etched on his face behind the anger. I hated them for doing this to him.

  “It’s okay, Father. It’s just today’s news. Tomorrow, some big celebrity will cheat on their wife, and they will be on to the next thing. Just ignore it. Let’s have breakfast.”

  “It’s not okay!” he exclaimed, doubling over in a coughing fit at the exertion yelling caused him. “I trusted every single person in that room yesterday, and someone betrayed me. I shall not rest until I find out who, and I will have their job!”

  I frowned at Jax, hoping for help, but he just stood there watching, with an expression of worry.

  “I’m a stripper turned prince. About to be made king, and they only learned of my existence yesterday. This was bound to happen. Please, Father, let it go.”

  He ignored me, stopping directly in front of Norah. “You must print a retraction!”

  “I…” Norah trailed off, biting her lip as she stared at me helplessly, searching for a response. I was the one who answered.

  “A retraction is what a newspaper prints when they report something that ends up being false,” I explained. “This isn’t false, and Norah can’t retract something she didn’t say.”

  He frowned then, deeply, his brow furrowing. When I looked at him this time, I saw beyond the frail, sick, old man, and saw a man who was, in more ways than one, an older, mirror image of myself.

  “I don’t understand how anybody in that room could have done this to me. I have worked with them all for years, and nothing like this has ever happened.”

  I held back a chuckle at his naiveté. “You’ve probably never dangled a scandal of this magnitude in front of them before,” I countered. I had done my research. Outside of his fling with my mother, the King had led a quiet and unsensational life, the only dirt I had found on him being scathing opinion pieces written when he made an unpopular political decision. “You just confessed to a torrid love affair thirty years ago and told them it had resulted in a secret son, who you had known about but never contacted. This is the age of the internet and social media. Nothing is sacred. All they had to do was a quick Google search of my name, and the fact that I stripped for a living is out there for the world to see. It’s probably the first thing that comes up.”

  “It is,” Norah confirmed with a nod, clapping her hand over her mouth when she realized that she had given herself away.

  I admit I smirked a little when I nodded in her direction. “See? Norah, does anything else interesting come up? Any prison records, or other notable gossip?”

  “Not really. An angry ex venting on an old Yahoo forum, but that’s about it.”

  I nodded. I knew about the forum. “So they took the first thing they found and made it front-page news. That’s kind of their job. And we don’t know that anyone here yesterday was the one to do it. All they had to do was print the story they were given, and anyone could have Googled it, found out I was a stripper, and run with it.”

  The king settled as he pondered this information, pausing his pacing and stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true.” He turned sharply, addressing Norah once more. “You will write a better story. Interview Mazi—get to know who he really is. Make him more sympathetic. Dig up everything good you can. You have the advantage. You can get it straight from the horse’s mouth. An insider’s viewpoint. A real intimate piece.”

  Norah was holding back a giggle as she eyeballed me, nearly losing it when he said intimate. I wiggled my eyebrows at her suggestively. I had never been interviewed before, and I suddenly found myself excited at the prospect. Only because of who was going to be doing the interviewing, of course.

  “I will make him the most appealing soon-to-be king the people of Osei could hope for. You have my word,” Norah promised solemnly, taking my father’s hand and leading him back to the bed. I could have kissed her right then, as she sat him down, helped him swing his legs onto the bed, and tucked the covers around him, even going so far as to fluff his pillows before he lay down. “We will take care of everything. Mazi and I will get to work right away. You rest, and in a few hours we’ll all have lunch, and we will show you what we have come up with.”

  With everything safely in our hands, he seemed at peace with the situation, finally, as he leaned into the pillow and his eyes began to close. Either that, or his little tirade had just exhausted him that much, and
he was now too worn out to care. Maybe a little bit of both, I thought, leaning over to kiss the weathered skin on his cheek. It was the first time I had done that, and he smiled, his eyes still closed. I smiled too. He just seemed so run down and vulnerable—it had just felt right in the moment.

  Norah was smiling at me tenderly, and I forgot about Jax’s watchful gaze as I took her hand and led her from the room. We had an article to write.

  ***

  “So, an intimate piece, huh?” I teased her, taking off my shoes, and laying back on the massive king-sized bed, a smile playing on my lips. My day had started way too early, and with way too much drama.

  It wasn’t how I had envisioned my morning starting last night when Norah had fallen asleep naked, in my bed, wrapped in my arms, after a very thorough make-up lovemaking session. There were hours to go before we would be expected at lunch, and I knew exactly how I wanted to spend my time.

  Norah, however, had other plans. She took a seat at the small desk at the opposite side of the room, and I frowned. When did that get there? I had never even noticed it before. She ignored me completely, going into full reporter mode as she pulled things from her bag and began to set up a workspace. Since we had come straight here after the meeting yesterday, she had everything she needed, unfortunately.

  I pouted as her laptop buzzed to life and the pages of her notebook flipped open. She had one pen in her hand and one tucked behind her ear. She was so cute with small framed cat-eye reading glasses perched atop her nose that my cock twitched, coming to life as it bulged and strained against the fabric of my slacks. I reached down and undid my zipper, letting the sucker breathe.

  Norah didn’t notice, as she pulled out yet another notebook, one of those pocket-sized ones, and held it in her hand, pen poised in the air above it.

  “Okay, so this needs to be really good. We need to dig deep and basically cover any good things you have ever done. What were you like in high school? Did you make the honor roll? Student council? Debate team?”

  I stared at her blankly, and she blushed. “Right, um, okay. Sports?”

  I had been on several teams, but I didn’t see how that fact would suddenly endear me to a public who had already made up their minds about me. And at the moment, I didn’t care. It was kind of ironic that Norah wanted to talk about my teenage self. I felt a bit like a teenage boy at the moment. I had one thing on my mind, and I would do anything to get it.

  I clamped my lips shut as she peered at me expectantly, and I pointed to my bulging package. “You know, this is kind of boring. Maybe we should make it a little more interesting. Like, how about you write down the questions you have, and I’ll read them out, and answer them while you blow me?”

  Her eyebrows raised and her mouth curled into a pout. She probably didn’t mean it to be sultry, but it was. “Mazi! Can you be serious and not think with your dick for just a minute?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Can’t. I was having the most amazing dream earlier, and I couldn’t wait to wake up and make it a reality. But as soon as I opened my eyes, my phone went off, and we were summoned. So you see, I’ve already been extremely patient.”

  She rolled her eyes, but she set down the notebook, and began to walk over to me, shaking her hips as she walked. Then she sat on the bed, and zipped up my pants.

  I glared up at her, unamused. “You know, you’re no fun.”

  “I know.” She smiled then, shaking her head in exasperation as she gazed down at me. “Mazi, this is important. It will make your father happy.”

  “If I hurry up and give you the abridged version of my life story, then can we play?”

  “If you do a good job, and give me the kind of stuff I can actually use, I will see what I can do.”

  I pulled myself into a sitting position, fluffing the pillows behind me as I waited for her to grab her notebook, pen, and voice recorder.

  “I grew up in Harlem. My mom worked for a wealthy family, so I spent a lot of time on the Upper East Side. I was a solid B student, except when it came to math. Algebra, calculus, economics, you name it. I’m good with numbers. I did well on my SAT. At sixteen I got a job at the gym I played basketball at after school as an assistant youth coach. I held that job through high school and saved enough money to pay for my first year at NYU. I was working towards my bachelor’s in economics, and considering going for my master’s, when my mom got sick. I couldn’t go to school, work, and take care of her, so I quit my job and applied for student loans. Her prognosis was good. The treatments were aggressive and expensive, but they were working. She ended up with sepsis. An infection due to her weakened immune system. Her body shut down rapidly and with no warning. When she died, I was ten credits away from my bachelor’s degree, and I had a mountain of bills that amassed to more than my four years of college. And no mother. Her death, it was so sudden like that, I didn’t… cope well. I took incompletes my last semester and quit school. I couldn’t focus. When the hospital came knocking, wanting their money, Azid got me a job at the club. The money was good, and Ezra runs a tight ship, so I had to get my act together really fast. To be perfectly honest, I know it doesn’t come off all that great on a resume, but that job is probably what saved my life. I don’t know where I would have ended up if Azid and Ezra hadn’t stepped in when they did.”

  Norah was nodding, scribbling furiously as she listened. “This is good, Mazi, I can work with this, for sure. It’s a perfect complement to the stripper angle they are pushing.”

  “Good enough that we can be done now?” I asked hopefully. I really hated talking about myself, especially about that time in my life.

  “Almost.” She promised, not even looking up from the notes she was still taking.

  I sighed, pushing myself off the bed, and stalked towards the coffee maker. I could read the room, and now she was engrossed in creating her story. We were going to be here awhile.

  Chapter Ten

  Norah

  King Ona-Mazi loved my story, and it brought me joy to know I could help the sweet, dying old man. The mainstream press, however, was unaffected by the truth. They didn’t want a human-interest, feel-good story about a young man who did the best he could with the cards he had been dealt. They weren’t interested in the fact that stripping had actually been Mazi’s redemption. They didn’t even take note of the fact that his field of study had been economics, a fact that more than qualified him to care for a struggling country in need of economic stimulation and growth.

  Their minds had been made up by a two minute Google search, and Mazi had been forever dubbed Mazi of Osei, the Dancing King. At least they had gone with Dancing King, and not titled him the Stripper King or something equally horrendous. Thank God for small miracles.

  King Ona-Mazi was still trying to run damage control. It meant, aside from learning the culture and history of Osei and spending quality time getting to know his dying father, Mazi now had to make time for publicity appearances in an attempt to show a side of him other than a bastard son who happened to be a stripper.

  He was visiting hospitals, reading to the young and elderly, visiting small businesses, and getting to know the local ranchers. He even went to the re-opening of the library that had burnt up in a fire years ago, and visited an animal shelter for adoption day.

  The only upside to the outings was that, as the official reporter for the kingdom of Osei and the royal family, I was required to go with him. It was the only way I was getting any time at all with him these days.

  Today we had snuck away after the weekly hospital appearance and were walking on the beach. The sand in Osei was a rich golden color, the likes of which I had never seen anywhere else. The sun was just setting, and it was a perfect romantic backdrop, but Mazi was anything but romantic.

  The boy had a one-track mind.

  Where I saw a beautiful romantic setting for us to walk the beach, talk, and grow as a couple, he saw a new place to fuck. I won this time, but only because it was a perfect summer night, and everybody
and their dog had the same idea as us. The beach was crowded, and I was thankful.

  Mazi, however, was pouting.

  I tried to cheer him up with a kiss, but that only served to remind him what he wanted to be doing.

  “Mazi, I’ve had zero time alone with you all week. Cheer up, let’s talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk. As you pointed out, we haven’t been alone all week. Talking is the last thing I want to be doing.”

  I sighed and kicked the sand with the toe of my sneaker. Mazi wasn’t a big talker, but I had a lot on my mind, and talking to him was the only way I was going to get any of it solved. Besides, we’d make it back to the palace eventually, and if this talk went the same way as most of our other talks, we’d barely make it through the door of his bedroom before he got his way.

  “You’ll be the king soon, Mazi.” King Ona had a few weeks left at best. At the moment, I wasn’t sure which thought was more sobering.

  Mazi stayed silent. Undoubtedly he knew where this was going. I had never been the type of girl to instigate those dreaded, where-is-this-relationship going talks, but this time I didn’t have a choice.

  “I’m still not the princess type,” I offered dumbly. It wasn’t like he had offered to make me one, or anything, but I couldn’t seem to get over the fact that in a few weeks he would be the king of Osei. Did kings even date? Were they allowed to? There was a flurry of doubts niggling in my brain, and I couldn’t stop the feeling of unease that settled in my stomach every time I thought about the future.

  I had known Mazi six weeks, and that was only if you counted the week between the strip club and the airplane. At this point in a relationship, I wouldn’t even be keeping a toothbrush at a guy’s place yet. My relationship with Mazi defied all the rules I had previously stood by. And I was head over heels in love with him. Why had I let myself fall this hard, this fast, for a relationship I had known was doomed from the start?