by Ella Goode
His fingers stay deep inside me as he finally lets my breast slide out of his mouth. I watched, dazed, as his hand fumbles with the spoon and I realize he’s going to repeat this torture on my other breast.
“Remember to leave some for me,” I manage to slur.
“Not until I eat my fill,” Thom says, his eyes dark with lust. My mouth goes dry at the implications, and my internal muscles tighten and clench in reaction. Thom slowly withdraws his fingers from my slick flesh, and holding my gaze, he sucks my wetness off his hand. He groans and says, “God, you taste so good. I can’t wait to lick honey and cream out of your cunt.”
I’m already completely wrecked, but if this is my last night with him, I never want it to end. “Just you wait,” I purr, licking my lips lasciviously. “Turnabout is fair play.”
My body is sore in places I didn’t know it could be sore and my muscles feel as heavy as lead. I’m actually surprised my dick hasn’t fallen off. I lost count of the orgasms we wrung out of each other, and the ice cream has long since melted, not that there was much left. We pretty much ate all the dessert off of each other and fucked in every position possible, including my favorite, reverse cowgirl.
I should be sleeping like the dead after the night Pen and I have had. And I think I was, which is why I’m not sure what woke me up. I lie still for a moment, wanting to feel Pen’s warm body as she cuddles into me, but after several seconds it doesn’t happen so I move towards her, stretching an arm out. I touch nothing but cold sheets and an empty place next to me. My eyes fly open and I turn my head—there’s nothing but darkness.
Pen is gone.
Chapter Ten
Pen
I don’t remember the walk back to my room, but somehow I find myself sitting on my bed, staring blankly at the paintings on the wall. My suitcase is packed and ready by the door. The faintest hint of dawn is turning the night sky from black to a rosy gray. I swear if I strain hard enough I can hear the wings of the garden birds fluttering as the dawn calls them awake.
I’ll be leaving soon with nothing more than a single suitcase and my memories. I brace myself for the pain, but all I feel is a suffocating numbness. It feels strange, but I welcome it, hoping it will get me through tonight and the days to follow. The days without Thom.
The fairy tale is over, and there is no happy ending for me.
I finger the heavy pendant. Solid gold and quite heavy, the necklace will help fund a new life away from Matlavia. I’m glad now that I didn’t get rid of it like I often thought I should.
Suddenly the door crashes open. Thom appears in the opening, chest heaving as though he’s sprinted the entire way to my room. At the sight of him the numbness is ripped away and I gasp at the agonizing emptiness where my heart should be.
Thom spots the suitcase by the door. His eyes take in the nearly deserted room with a single sweep. “Was last night your goodbye fuck?” he demands angrily. “I told you I wasn’t going to marry Callista.”
I can barely swallow the lump in my throat. “It’s not about Callista. It’s about Matlavia. It’s about your country. It’s about three million people who live beyond the royal grounds and rely on the royal house to enact laws and decrees that will enable everyone to feed their families, get a good education, and retire at a reasonable age. If you default on your loans, you will plunge Matlavia into a depression that could have consequences for generations.”
The look on Thom’s face is so outraged I nearly weep. “You don’t trust me, do you? You don’t think that Playboy Thom can solve this problem on his own.”
The anguish in his voice propels me to my feet. I can’t have him doubting himself. Not now. In this moment, he needs to believe in himself and his ability to lead the country forward.
I walk over until I’m so close I could kiss his chest. I want to lift my hand to his face and tilt it down until his eyes meet mine. I want to smile, but my lips can’t form the curve. I want to gently stroke his face and pretend that it’s not the last time. But I do none of those things.
Instead, I tilt my chin up, place a wall of bricks around my heart, and draw down a mask of anger. “I don’t want to be your queen, Thom. It’s a thankless job and all the orgasms in the world wouldn’t make up for the misery that you’d be subjecting me to. Your mom was beyond unhappy. She died to flee this life. Your father died chasing after other women. That’s not the ending I want.”
I lean down and pick up my suitcase, inwardly surprised that my weak and shaking arm can hold it.
Thom’s trying to figure me out. Am I lying? Am I making up a story so he’ll let me go? Or am I telling the truth?
I have to convince him. “We’re not kids anymore. We can’t play in your rooms, hiding out from everyone.”
“I don’t want to play and I don’t want to hide. I have alternatives. The Suttons aren’t the only family with money who want access to the crown.”
“You don’t want to sell access, Thom. Last night, you wouldn’t even meet with the petitioners who waited for hours to talk with you.”
His pretty mouth thins. “Please, they just wanted a selfie to post on their social media. Besides, they can get access during regular business hours.”
“That’s not how it works and you know it.” He’s being frustratingly obtuse. “When all the scandal rags believed you were out partying, you were making connections, seeding stories so that the public would be inspecting you instead of Stephen. And Stephen was constantly attending events around the world to bring new business to Matlavia. This is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. If it were easier, Stephen wouldn’t have left.”
“So stay and work with me.”
“I don’t know anything about how to be a queen, Thom. You need someone by your side who understands how that part of the world works. I know that a vinegar and water solution cleans glass better than any commercial product and that baking soda on the carpets and couches will get rid of bad odors. I know that toothpaste helps to get your sneakers back to their just-out-of-the-box whiteness. I don’t know the titles to all the heads of state in the world. I don’t know which way to bow and how deep. I don’t know how to even do one dance.”
He wants to stop me from leaving, but doesn’t know how to do it without force. And he’d never hurt me. It’s hard to force my legs to move across the plush carpet that has laid in these chambers for generations. At the door, I turn back. “They don’t end up together.”
“Who?” he asks.
“Henry and Clare. I wanted you to know because we wouldn’t be finishing their book, but they don’t end up together. It’s not a happy ever after ending.”
“I’m glad we didn’t finish it then,” he replies.
“Me too.” And I take a deep breath and walk out.
It’s easy enough to get into the Duke of Frederick’s rooms. Maids truly can go everywhere, especially if they have a tray in their hand. No one turns away food.
“Put that on the table,” the trim man orders without looking up from his newspaper.
I set the tray of egg whites, avocado toast, and blended smoothie on a small glass table next to his striped wingback chair.
The Suttons were given a set of spectacular rooms overlooking the lake to the east of the palace. It’s early yet, but according to Zoya, the Duke rose with the sun. Callista is nowhere to be seen, and the breakfast tray ordered was for a single serving.
I rub my now empty hands together and take a deep breath. I had every intention of walking out of the palace and down the long service road to the side gates where all the staff enters and exits. My suitcase still sits just outside the staff entrance doorway.
But I couldn’t leave. Not without doing one last thing for Thom. I wanted him to have the best shot at being the King of Matlavia, which meant not being shackled to the wrist of Callista or living under the thumb of the Duke of Frederick. I know I’m not the suitable bride, but neither is Callista. She’s mean-spirited, self-absorbed, and occasionally cruel, and h
er father is of the same bolt of cloth. Those two would eventually destroy Matlavia so I am going to get rid of them. Not for me, but for my country and my love.
I clear my throat.
“What is it?” he snaps, folding a corner of his paper down to direct an annoyed glare in my direction.
I tug on the chain under my shirt and pull out the pendant. “My mother told me who my father was when I was ten. She felt I was old enough to know and old enough to keep a secret.”
The Duke’s eyes widen for a moment—long enough to confirm what my mother had shared so long ago and that I had semi-doubted all of my life. I stand with a smidgen more confidence.
“What does that have to do with me?” my sperm donor scoffs.
“It means that I’m your illegitimate daughter you fathered with a maid from the Royal House of Matlavia. You didn’t care for her. You didn’t educate her. You didn’t take on any of the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood.”
“Who cares?” he says, but he’s sweating around his hairline. This type of information would hurt him. It wouldn’t ruin him, but it would tarnish his reputation and standing amongst the Matlavian people.
“Many people would. There would be stories in local papers and international ones. There would be side-by-side pictures of Callista and me growing up, with her at her special schools or on your private jets and me following behind my mother carrying a bucket of cleaning water. The headlines will be creative and endless. People will whisper behind their hands. You will never know when you enter a room who is talking about you and what they’re saying. Your family would be the subject of embarrassing gossip for years.”
Frederick pales and the paper in his hand begins to rattle, causing him to slap the entire mess onto his lap. “You will be humiliated as well.”
“Not really. I’ll be the poor Cinderella who was mistreated by the evil stepfather and stepsister. People will feel sorry for me.”
“This story will be a seven-day wonder. As soon as the wedding takes place, no one will remember you.”
“They will because I will be calling the press all the time, reminding them of my story. I’ll tell them I was forced to eat gruel—”I have no idea what gruel is, but it sounds terrible—“and clothes made out of cleaning rags”—the palace supplied all my clothes. I was a very well-dressed little maid—“and slept on a pile of hay.” That might be a little too out there, but the Duke of Frederick is so caught up in the awful pictures I’m drawing with my words that he doesn’t even object.
He snaps his paper in half and gets to his feet. He stalks over to me, but I don’t back down an inch even though I’m quaking inside.
“You think that you’re entitled to the throne instead? That if I had taken you in, it would be you at the altar and not Callista? Is that it?”
He leans forward and a wave of terrible morning breath nearly knocks me over. I lock my knees and shake my head. “No. I don’t care about the throne. I want Thom to have a choice, not to be railroaded into something because he has no options.”
“How noble of you,” he sneers, trying to snatch for my pendant.
I twist away, barely avoiding his hand. I scamper to the door and have it half open before I say, “You wouldn’t recognize it because you’ve got the emotional wherewithal of a stone, but it’s love.”
I let the door slam behind me, in the face of the man who has haunted my life for so long. But no more.
Chapter Eleven
Thom
Louis knocks softly on my study door.
“What?” I growl, not in any mood to deal with any more petitioners. Pen has left the palace, damn her, and unless Louis has located her he should be out there still trying to find her.
A clearing of the throat, and then, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, I know you asked not to be disturbed but—”
The door suddenly bangs open and Frederick stomps in, pushing rudely past a protesting Louis. “Thomas, you and I need to talk!”
Oh really? I raise an eyebrow. The only thing we have to talk about is him giving up his delusions about me marrying Callista. “About what, pray?”
“If you think that sending that maid to me claiming she’s my daughter will get you out of your marriage you better think again!”
What the hell? “Frankly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Frederick has the gall to shake a finger at me. “Don’t think you can pull one over on me, you little shit. Just because I fucked her mother doesn’t mean she’s my daughter, and if she’s been hiding in your palace all these years I’m sure she’s spread her lies all over—”
I interrupt, trying to understand what he’s saying. “You’re claiming that a palace maid is your daughter?”
He shakes that fucking finger again. “I claim no such thing—there’s no proof!”
The signet ring on his wagging finger is right in my face, and my eyes narrow as I squint at the crest. A familiar-looking crest—a crest I saw just last night on a pendant as it bounced on Pen’s tits when she rode me to paradise…
“What did the maid look like?” I say, cutting through Frederick’s cursing.
Frederick scowls. “As if you don’t know—she has long blonde hair, big blue eyes, looks a lot like her mother.”
Pen. My hands clench. It had to have been her. Wait, Pen is the Duke of Frederick’s illegitimate daughter? Why didn’t she ever tell me?
“So if you think you can blackmail me into dropping the wedding plans, you are out of your mind!” Frederick blusters, but I can see the hint of fear in his eyes. He doesn’t want the scandal, I can tell—even royal connections won’t save him from being blacklisted if the scandal is big enough. My phone calls to Princess Caroline of Sensensia have told me that his newfound standing is on tenuous ground.
Well, if Frederick thinks I give a shit about scandal, he’s about to find out differently.
“I’m rather sorry that Pen is your daughter,” I say conversationally. “Because it means that we’re still going to be related when I marry her.”
Frederick turns an interesting shade of magenta at my words. “Why, you pissant bastard, if you think I won’t ruin you and call in the loans—”
“Go right ahead, call in the loans. I’m still not going to marry Callista.”
“You’ll bankrupt Matlavia!” Frederick is sweating heavily now. “You would ruin your country for a piece of ass?”
Rage courses through me and my hands curl into fists. I’m dying to punch him in the face, but I know I can’t—I have to play this through. I try to appeal to his rational side. “I have a solution and one where we will all make a lot of money. Part of the money you lent is being applied to refining the raw materials we are mining so we can supply more finished lithium to the rest of the world. There’s a huge demand for it and we’re missing out on real opportunities for wealth by merely handing our biggest asset raw.”
“I can develop those industries myself,” Frederick scoffs.
“Not without a royal mining permit.”
“Callista will grant it for me.”
“She’s not the queen. She will never be the queen.”
He stares at me belligerently. Fine. He wants to play hardball. Let’s fucking go. “If you bankrupt Matlavia, you will bankrupt yourself. Plus, when the people of Matlavia find out that you tried to blackmail me into marriage, your entire family will be ostracized. All those new connections you’ve made courtesy of your relationship with the crown?” I snap my fingers. “Poof. All gone.”
Realization dawns in Frederick’s eyes, but he’s still spitting mad enough to fight. What I’ve told him is true, though—I’ve had enough time to think this through, coldly and logically. He bankrupts himself if he calls in the loans, and without money and those royal connections, Frederick and the rest of the Suttons will find out very quickly what it feels like to be shunned by their former friends. His place at many tables will simply disappear.
An ugly scowl appears on Frederick’s fa
ce, so I know it’s not over yet. “We’ll be ruined together.”
The sound of a throat clearing discreetly has both our heads swiveling. Louis is standing with a carefully bland face by the open door. Fuck, I didn’t realize that the door had been open the entire time, and by the look of horror on his face, neither did Frederick. “Mr. Anson Hou and Ms. Nicole Hou would like to talk to you both.”
Father and daughter sweep into the room, and it’s clear from their expressions that they’ve both heard more than enough of our conversation. This time Louis closes the door behind them, the little stinker.
Anson Hou is a distinguished-looking man who is usually very reserved in his demeanor, so it’s rather shocking to see him nearly purple with rage. “Your Grace, I know what I heard, but please tell me you weren’t trying to blackmail our new king into marrying your daughter!”
Facing this unexpected attack Frederick of course goes on the attack himself. “Hell, I’m the one being blackmailed! I’m just trying to make sure the king doesn’t try to weasel out of the marriage agreement!” He turns to me and shakes that fucking finger again. He just wants it broken off. “He tried to get his lover to claim that she’s my daughter to break up the marriage plans!”
Nicole gasps and I know she knows he’s talking about Pen. But her father is having none of it. He shakes his head. “I don’t know anything about that, all I know is that you have behaved most dishonorably, and if you do cancel the loans it would not be in the best interests of the banks. As a member of the board of directors of Sutton banks it would be my duty to call for a vote of no confidence and replace you on the board.”