by Madison Faye
Her long pause made my heart sink.
“Uh, no, hon. More like a few months.”
A few months. MONTHS. I’d almost dropped the freaking phone. And now here I was, twenty calls and twenty of the same answers later staring at my wrist as my spirits dropped.
Okay, I could hide this for a little while, but for freaking months? What was I going to do, start wearing very long sleeves for the entirety of the spring and summer? I could imagine that would maybe start to raise some suspicions. I glared at the rose, scowling at it as I traced my finger over the ink, the glimpses of that night coming back to me in flashes.
I remembered the tequila, and then the God-knows-how-many more after that. I remembered staggering out into the night with him, and somehow there being champagne. I remembered the coins we’d tossed into that fountain we’d found in that quiet little park, and I remembered that when I’d insisted on going to get my coin back because I’d messed up my wish, I’d fallen right in.
He’d come after. He’d picked me up, hauled me against him, and suddenly, all the tension and all the heat and power I’d been trying to pretend I didn’t see was too much to ignore. Suddenly, pressed against him, with my white dress soaked and see-through with my body molded to his, the last of my ability to tell myself this was a bad idea went crashing away.
…And I’d kissed him.
And then I think I’d just kept on kissing him, my body pressing tightly to his and his powerful hands sending shivers of ecstasy through me as they held me so possessively, like no one had ever touched or held me before.
I remembered feeling more complete in that moment, standing knee-deep in a freaking fountain kissing the most notoriously bad boy prince on earth, than I ever had before.
Life is weird.
I shook my head, clearing it as I jerked my hand away from the tattoo. The long-sleeves bit wasn’t the only bad news of the day. I’d also dug as deep as I could about getting the whole stupid thing annulled, but I’d hit another roadblock: you can’t exactly annul a marriage — a real, legally binding marriage — without both party’s signatures. I mean, I probably could have pulled some strings and used the authority of, well, being a princess and heiress to a throne to get it taken care of. But that would get attention. That would get lots of attention, and that was the last freaking thing I needed.
Fuck.
So there I was, stuck with the legally binding marriage to Prince Cole McCabe — tabloid favorite and all around bad boy — and stuck with the damn tattoo to remember it by.
…At least I hadn’t, well, you know. At least we hadn’t done…that.
A hot shiver teased down my spine, and I found myself squeezing my legs shut, heat blooming between them at the thought. I tried to fight it — tried to imagine how awful it would have been to lose it to the muscled, gorgeous, tattooed Prince Cole in that huge elegant bed in that giant hotel room in Paris looking out over the Eiffel Tower, but…
But yeah, that went about as well as you might think.
I bit my lip, fighting back against the wave of filthy, dirty thoughts blazing through my head — my imagination running buck wild with every possible thing that could have happened with him in that big bed.
Ugh, stop it!
I took a deep breath, shaking my head clear of the lurid fantasies as I grabbed up my laptop instead and curled my feet under me. I googled his name, and the screen instantly flashed with hundreds of pictures and articles involving Cole and some manner of scandal or impropriety. I scowled, feeling the fury rise up inside at the pictures of him smiling for selfies with scantily clad girls on a beach, or in a club. And I made it another three seconds before I slammed the laptop shut and pushed it away.
Jealous much?
…I immediately wanted to slap the voice inside for even suggesting it. But then, that dumb voice inside wasn’t exactly wrong, and I knew it, even if I didn’t like it one bit.
Cole McCabe was a bad boy to the tenth degree. He was crude, and tattooed, and had a horrible reputation of bucking authority. I mean God, he’d actually been in a freaking punk rock band when he was younger — the very one I’d met him at that night. And here I was, what, mooning over him? Daydreaming and fantasizing about my night with him?
I mean the man was gorgeous, but this wasn’t just some wild night I could forget about now. I’d married him. For real. For very very real.
I was groaning into my hands when my phone buzzed to life. I glanced at it and frowned at the blocked number. I didn’t exactly have an easily findable number. I mean that was just standard security protocol with being royal and heir to a throne. I almost ignored it before I remembered my friend Riley’s habit of constantly losing her cell phone and rolled my eyes.
Yeah, it had to be her. And seeing as our friend Callie was being married off in a week to a crappy King to settle some debt, we had a lot to talk about.
“Hey,” I answered cheerfully, pushing my own problems aside. I mean, mine weren’t small problems, but they could wait. One of my best friends was about to married off like it was the middle ages in a few days, and right now, that had to come first.
“Lose your phone again, you ditz?”
“See I liked prick better than ditz.”
The color went out of my face, and I almost dropped the phone.
“How the hell did you get my number?” I hissed, my face turning red as I heard Cole chuckling into the phone.
“Magic.”
I scowled, staring at my tattoo as that deep, growly voice of his purred through the phone.
“Which means?”
“Which means I’m a Prince and I’ve got money to spend on getting someone to get me your number.”
“Yeah because that’s not creepy at all.”
“Some might call it charming.”
“No one would ever call you charming.”
Cole laughed. Loudly. And damned if it didn’t make my heart jump and make me want to smile and laugh right along with him. But I quickly forced those thoughts away and scowled instead.
“You know, now that I think about it,” his deep voice uttered into the phone.”You called me quite a few other things the other night.”
My face went bright red.
“Quite a few very naughty things if I remember cor—”
I hung up and tossed the phone away.
My pulse raced, and I could feel a tingle teasing it’s way through every single part of my body, despite my efforts to stop it. No, this was terrible. I’d fucking MARRIED Cole McCabe. Tabloid king. Notorious playboy. Prick extraordinaire. I’d spent a night getting drunk with him, getting tattooed with him, and then getting legally freaking married to him before apparently taking all of my clothes off and jumping into bed with him. Which was all terrible.
…Right?
I yanked the blankets up over me, chewing on my lip as the heat bloomed through me. One of the tabloid headlines I’d just read came flitting back into my head, something about the “Irresistible Bad Boy, Prince Cole of Luthane.”
Irresistible, huh? I frowned. As soon as I could, I’d march over there to Luthane, grab him by the ear, and drag him to the nearest lawyer’s office.
Irresistible. I blew air through my lips.
Please. I’d show them just how easily I could resist him.
…Somehow, the heat pooling between my thighs and the pulse racing through my veins at the thought of him didn’t exactly inspire much confidence in that statement.
Chapter 5
Cole
It was cute the first time she hung up on me. It was humorous the second time, when I used a different phone. But the third time, it just pissed me off.
I wasn’t mad at her, per se, but I was ticked the fuck off that she’d decided to throw up those walls and keep me out. That and not being near her, and not kissing her, or touching her, or breathing in the scent of her was driving me fucking crazy. Like I said, this wasn’t “some girl,” this was her.
My wife.
&n
bsp; I didn’t care that probably neither of us fully remembered the wedding. I didn’t care that we’d been drunk enough to go out and get fucking tattoos instead of rings, for whatever tequila-soaked reasons we had at the time. And I certainly didn’t care that after she’d torn her wet clothes off in the hotel room, crawled into bed, and given me those fucking eyes that got my cock hard as a steel bar, she’d fallen right asleep.
No, I hadn’t “tried” anything, because fuck that — that wasn’t me by a fucking mile. Wife or not, I wasn’t about to try a damn thing with a passed out girl. I did crawl into bed after her though, pulling her sweet, supple body against mine as I drifted off myself.
But here we were days later, and not having that body against mine, and not tasting those lips, and not feeling her legs wrap around my hips was driving me out of my mind. I craved her, like I’d never craved anything, or any woman ever. I knew she was more than a little freaked about the whole getting married thing. Plus, she knew who the hell I was, and the reputation that followed me around, and that had to be at least one of the reasons for her avoiding me.
The thing is though, most of the tabloid shit people read and wrote about me was all complete bullshit. And then there was all the current stuff that’d been kept out of the tabloids so far by some well-placed gag orders from my lawyer. Yeah, Faith didn’t know about that shit. She didn’t know her father was one of the three guys trying to bring charges against me and strip me of my crown. If she’d knew that, well, I’m pretty sure we’d have never made it past hello.
But again, it was all bullshit.
This current cesspool of lies was a conspiracy, plain and simple. It’d started with a misunderstanding — one of those “wrong place at the wrong time” type of things that seemed to follow me all over the place. King Rodney, of Urun, had a summer place on Lake Lizet, where I was about to buy a place of my own. We’d gotten acquainted with me being a prospective new neighbor of his, and the man was nice enough to let me stay at his lakefront manor while I was hashing out the deal of my own purchase.
I had the whole damn place to myself, and King Rodney had one kick-ass pool — one of those wild ones with glass walls built on the edge of a cliff. And like I said, the place was empty except for me, so I did what anyone would have done — stripped down and went swimming in the buff.
I didn’t even know she was there until I felt hands slide around my waist, which scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I’d whirled to find Queen Jemma — Rodney’s wife — grinning at me without a stitch of clothing on.
Yeah, no. Fuck that. Despite what the tabloids liked to blab about, I had zero interest in getting involved with married women. Nope, no thanks. For one, who needs that drama, and for two, I just wasn’t the kind of man to pull that kind of shit with another man’s wife — even if that other man’s wife was Queen Jemma looking for a little strange because her and Rodney was “out of touch,” as she’d put it.
Oh, and she’d put it much more plainly than that when she’d tried to reach for my cock. I’d pushed her away of course, but then as fate would fucking have it, that’s when Rodney himself waltzed in. About thirty seconds later, I was running from that house dripping wet, holding my clothes, and trying not to get my fucking head blown off by King Rodney and his hunting rifle.
The whole thing was a misunderstanding that could’ve been cleared up in seconds by Jemma, but the Queen was nuts, and also convinced Rodney was having his own affair. So she went and fucking told him that she and I had been having one, like a complete psychopath.
It was a few days later when I got the lawsuit, alleging that I’d forced myself on the Queen of Urun. The International Royal Council was involved the day after that — quietly of course, given the “sensitivity of the allegations.” But two days after that is when the real shit hit the fan. See, Rodney had some buddies who’d decided that this was the perfect opportunity to go for the headshot. They saw that power was shifting in my kingdom — that my mother was retiring her crown soon, and that I would eventually be taking up rule of the land. They saw their chance to destabilize, probably because they wanted to carve up a weakened Luthane for themselves, and they took it.
King Homer of Glis, and Faith’s very own Father, King Alfonse suddenly had stories of their own. Homer claimed I’d gone after his daughter, a Princess Kelly I’d literally never met. Alphonse’s claim was even wilder — his bullshit story was that I’d forced myself on his mistress, who I’d also never met.
Yeah, his mistress. He was going to go after me for allegedly assaulting not his wife, but his fucking mistress. The fucking balls on that guy, right?
So that’s what I had hanging over my head. Three charges. Bullshit ones, but ones that would be examined by the International Council nevertheless, with my crown being on the line if they decided to side with the lies.
And right in the middle of all this, I’d gone and married Faith, Alphonse’s daughter. And even if she didn’t know about that whole thing, by then she’d definitely looked me up. She’d definitely been reading all sorts of shit about me online, and I was sure that was souring her more than a little.
But fuck if I was going to let those tabloid jackals keep my angel away from me.
Three days after that third hang up, I grinned to myself as clicked the mouse button on my computer and sat back triumphantly. Yeah, that would be the thirtieth bouquet of flowers I’d sent to her at the royal palace of Devoney in three days. I could claim it was all this big romantic gesture. But, yeah, I wasn’t really that kind of mushy guy. Mostly, I was sending all those flowers to make her flustered.
I figured thirty fucking bunches of roses sent a message. Especially when those roses came with cards that said way over-the-top shit like “to my beautiful wife. Missing you, my angel” or “a bunch of roses for my bunch of love. Kisses, sweetie. Xoxo, hubby.”
They were actually getting mushier and more hilarious the more I sent, and I imagined a red-faced Faith trying to hide thirty dozen roses from her parents while scrambling to throw those cards away.
That gave me a chuckle. But then, my mind drifted. Teasing Faith like this was fun and all, but really, it was a symptom of something bigger. Because I didn’t want to tease her with stupid childish pranks like this.
Nah, I wanted to tease her in a very different way.
I wanted to tease her with my fingertips sliding down the small of her back. I wanted to tease her with my tongue swirling lightly around her nipples before I kissed my way down her tummy, spread her legs, and let my tongue tease her sweet little pussy from clit to asshole, until she was begging me for more.
That’s how I wanted to tease her. And being away from her not having her there sinking down on my lap with my cock buried to the hilt in what I knew was perfect, tight, virgin cunt was pissing me off.
The thought of claiming her, and taking her, and making her scream in pleasure as I showed her how a real man could make her come made me hard in seconds. My cock throbbed inside my pants, tenting my jeans and making me groan as my balls tingled. My hand dropped to my lap, and when I squeezed my thick shaft through the denim, I growled under my breath.
I reached for my desk drawer and yanked it open, reaching inside to pull out my other little reminder of our one night.
…Her panties.
Nothing overtly sexy either. When we’d tumbled into my hotel room, me tearing my shirt off and her yanking her wet dress up over her head and tossing it away, it wasn’t some wildly sexy lace and see-through lingerie that my innocent little princess had coyly slipped down her thighs. No, it’d been some pretty basic, low-cut, white cotton panties, with a little pink bow printed on the front of them.
They were without question the sexiest piece of underwear I’d ever even imagined, and it was because they were hers. There was something so fucking innocent about them — something so her about having regular panties on under that little dress and not some crazy string thong or a racy crotchless number.
If I had a repu
tation as a bad seed and a troublemaker, Princess Faith was known for the exact opposite reasons. She was famous for her good girl ways — the fact that she’d never even dated had actually been written up in some of the same tabloids that’d slandered me across their pages. Her charity work, those commercials she’d shot for Devoney public schools about staying away from drugs. “Good girl” didn’t even cover it. I mean the Princess was a freaking girl scout.
For a second, a filthy thought of Faith stepping into my office in a too-small girl scout uniform flashed through my head, making my cock jump. I imagined her stripping away her innocence as she sauntered over to me, peeling away her uniform to show me that sweet, tempting body.
My jeans and boxers were down in seconds, and when I wrapped my hand around my thick cock, I groaned lowly. My hand shuttled up and down my trembling shaft, coaxing thick, white precum from the tip. It trickled down my shaft, making me slick and glistening as I stroked, thinking of her.
I imagined splaying her out across my desk, pushing that naughty girl skirt up and feasting on what was mine to taste.
Oh, I’d eat her cookie alright.
My balls tingled, filling with cum as I stroked my cock up and down, my muscles rippling. I took her little cotton panties and wrapped them around my shaft, groaning at the soft feel of them as I started to jerk faster.
Soft, silky, filthy, and with just the faintest scent of her sweet little pussy still on them — just enough to drive me out of my goddamn mind.
I imagined taking her, right there on my desk. I imagined how fucking tight and slick and perfect her gorgeous cunt would look sliding down every inch of my cock — opening up for me and me only as I claimed what was mine.
…As I claimed my wife.
I roared as I felt the cum pump from my heavy balls, my shaft swelling up thick and throbbing as the white sticky jizz erupted from my swollen head. I groaned, imagining that I was pumping her tight little cunt full of my seed until it ran down her thighs as I just kept stroking, until my abs and hand and her panties were covered in cum.