“Your gifts, plump little princess,” he always referred to my weight, “Your wonderful endowments,” His eyes gleamed and his wet tongue flicked around his lips as his fingers wriggled like the legs of trapped spiders. “I would be able to make a very favorable arrangement,” he shifted as the hoods of his eyes slid open and half closed, “If we could reach an understanding.” When he smiled, it was even worse.
“You have everything I want.” His beady eyes glowed, “All that I need.”
He thought that I turned his offers down because he was so much older, and maybe because of his creepy, repulsive leer. But that wasn’t why. I rejected him because I didn’t love him and I knew that I never could. And I told him so. And I was even more sure when he grinned and told me it didn’t matter.
Maybe he wouldn’t take me now. Although I was sure that he would. Only, he would add more conditions. More humiliation. More awfulness I would have to endure while he dangled my father’s debt over my head.
Fucking crown prince. I should have known as soon as I saw him. How could I be such an idiot? If I had taken the slightest interest in what was going on around me, I should at least have recognized him. He’s more than six and a half feet tall, damn it. And he’s the fucking prince! How hard can it be?
But it can be ridiculously hard, apparently. And incredibly long. And terrifyingly thick. And hot. With a pulse to melt my knees and thighs.
So now I would carry that regret, too. I didn’t fuck him because he didn’t love me. Now instead, I would spend the rest of my life wishing that I had fucked him, while I have a life of being used in the most godawful ways by a man whose very breath makes my chest heave and convulse. Whose eyes skewer me like a bug he’s going to pull the wings off. And then, probably, the legs, too.
What would I have done differently if I’d had the sense to recognize him?
Crown Prince Hugo
YOU have to come to the ball. You absolutely must.” I knew that I shouldn’t have answered my cellphone as soon as I saw it was FWillum.
I told him, “When we’re in Uglagistan, ‘FWillum,’ you can try telling me what I have to do and what I absolutely must do. Here in Enormia, as he liked to style himself was a very old friend indeed. One of the few true friends I made at the elite boarding school where my father taught. Father’s teaching position was the only reason I was able to attend. And, as he never tired of telling me, my education was the only reason he taught civics, law, and constitutional history there.
FWillum was, in fact, FitzWilliam. Count FitzWilliam Stachs-Goth Rockhard Longstaffe, Grand Duke of the principality of Uglagistan. FWillum was a modern royal who thought the blue-bloods should follow the rap stars and pop icons and cool kids and give themselves more modern names. FWillum was his.
A great and a lifelong friend. In my book everybody is entitled to a couple of stupid ideas so I didn’t hold the FWillum nonsense against him and I tried not to wince when he and the other kids of the ‘New vogue Rich’ generation introduced themselves.
FWillum was my best buddy since we were kids together in that torture center where royal families warehoused their kids, Irongate Point. Probably the world’s most terrible boarding school. Not that my family was remotely royal. We are now, but that’s kind of a twist. That’s because of my doing, nobody else’s.
My feet hammered the floor as I strode and the echoes banged around the paneled room. All six feet seven of me paced and stomped in heavy boots around my palace apartments. In the tall, wide rooms I felt penned in like I was confined in a prison cell as my mood darkened.
I shouted into the phone, “Another endless, boring night with the crowned teenagers of all the countries in Enormia and their buddies the tech billionaire brats? Really, FWillum?” I had to move the phone to my other hand. I was gripping it so tight it had cut off the circulation in my fingers.
“No, FWillum. Not even for you, my closest friend.” FWillum’s company was always good for me. Especially when I was in black moods or one of my red rages, like now. And it was true that we hadn’t seen each other in way too long a time. Still, I told him,
“The Flixen-Starboro Debutante’s Ball is my idea of a migraine, brought to life like Frankenstein’s monster, dressed in expensive designer clothes, draped in rattling jewelry and howling like Royal deer in rutting season.” My voice was getting loud. I didn’t care. “Rich kids and children of celebrities, all outdoing each other for how outrageous and debauched they can be?”
I loved FWillum like a brother. I knew that he really wanted me to go. Almost as much as I didn’t want to.
He pressed on. “You never know, Hugo,” He never called me ‘Crown Prince,’ or ‘your Highness,’ and I wouldn’t allow it if he tried. “You might meet the girl of your dreams tonight. Your princess. Your future queen. The lady to reign beside you. The woman to bear and mother your children.” He chuckled and lowered his voice, “The fox who will take the massive length and girth of that legendary royal sword of yours, night and day. From palatial morning to monarchical dusk and all reigning night long.”
“Nope.” I didn’t say so to FWillum, but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen. I knew it for certain. I wouldn’t meet the perfect woman to be my princess bride tonight, because I already met her. Met her, held her, let her go and lost her.
Since that awful night nothing seemed like it was ever going to be any fun again. And nothing seemed worse than being in huge crowds of people who were having fun while I just became more and more miserable.
“Man, really? It won’t be the same without you. The evening will be a total bust without the regal attendance of Crown Prince Hugo Kingston Stanford Broadsword Cleeve-Swathe.”
“And Crown Prince Hugo Kingston Stanford Broadsword Cleeve-Swathe is telling you he would rather swallow his father’s crown. Or yours. Or a crown of fucking antlers, come to that, FWillum.”
FWillum hadn’t given up. I liked that about him, though right now I was determined that I wouldn’t give in. “Hugo, you don’t even have to leave the palace. It’s not like you have to so much as climb aboard a helicopter or a yacht. It’s in your palace. All you have to do is to swan down the sweep of your ever-so-regal grand staircase. And we’ll all be there. Dimitri and Jas are coming.”
There was a pause. Before I could say anything, though, FWillum started up again. “Dimitri’s forgiven you for socking him in that club. He knows he was being an asshole. Please, man. Don’t tell me you can actually stay up in your apartments playing X-Box or whatever you do up there, while we’re all just half a dozen floors beneath you.”
I had wandered into one of the rear bathrooms and peered at my face in a mirror. I did look gray and my eyes were droopy with black sacks underneath them. A frosted window was swung halfway open and I looked out. This side of my apartments looked out over the grounds and the parkland. But the bathroom was over the stables.
The caterers for the ball were hauling great cases and trolleys out of vans and trucks.
I wouldn’t be playing any games. My plan for the evening centered around re-reading and revising details of the peace treaty between my newly-formed country and our neighbors. Figuring out a way to deal with Draken, the one person standing in the way of the treaty.
I told FWillum, “Father wants me to go, naturally.”
“We all do.” FWillum said, “I’m sad that you won’t give in and come, but if I know anything I know that that when your mind is made up, nothing in the kingdom, or any other come to that, nothing on Earth will induce you to change your mind.”
There was noise from the activity downstairs. I wished they would all go away. Even FWillum at that moment.
As he pleaded with me, I opened the window a little wider and looked down at where the noise was coming from.
“You know the triplet princesses from Snowravia will be there. Everybody wants to know who they’ll be doing their trick with tonight. Could be you, you know.”
What I saw from the window almost made me drop
the phone. “Got to go,” was all I said as I hung up. I leaned out further. It was six stories to the ground or I might have scrambled out and down the ancient ivy.
I only saw her from above. I wouldn’t have recognized her from the top of her head.
But I’d know her ass anywhere.
Serena
WORKING THAT CATERING job with the Terrible Trio at least meant that I’d have some safety in numbers, some company and support. My closest friends I guess, Clodagh, Rachelle, and Collette were all going to be front of house. the uniforms were sharp. Black heels, white cotton shirts, short, tight black skirts, hair held up with black velveteen grips.
Fortunately, I managed to arrange it that I’d be working in the kitchen. While they were outside mingling and probably being mauled by the champagne-soaked guests, I would be in the heat, noise, and bustle making pastries, canapes, and cupcakes.
“At least I’ll be safe in the kitchen,” I told Clodagh. “If I’d had to go out with trays, I don’t think I could have done it.”
While I was putting on my chef’s whites, the others were changing into their serving uniforms.
Green eyed Clodagh gave my arm a playful shove before she pulled back her flaming red hair. “We’ve done dozens of these things, Serena. Not in the Royal Palace, I know, but we’ve catered for celebrities, the super-rich, and visiting royalty. This will be no different.”
“But he wasn’t at any of those functions.”
“He?” Rachelle’s gray eyes peered at me over her shoulder and she studied my face. “You can only mean our royal prince prong. The crown cock.” In the uniform, her pale skin and raven black mane gave her a severe look that was very sexy, in a smoky kind of a way.
“Yes.” I blushed, “Him.” His reputation was well-known. People everywhere talked about how he was all over every female within his reach. And he had a long, long reach.
“No woman is safe in his presence,” Collette said in a dreamy voice, playing her blonde bimbo looks for devastating effect as only she could. Her eyes rolled back, “and no woman ever recovers.”
“I know why you wouldn’t feel safe around. him,” the laugh in Clodagh’s voice fizzed and sparkled. “No woman can.”
“I know you wouldn’t expect him to even look at a girl like me,” I told her.
The faraway look in Clodagh’s eyes hinted that she was playing over highlights in her mind from some scandals. Stories that were either about his impossibly huge cock, or about his debauched and dastardly amorous exploits. I was certain the second kinds of stories were all absolutely true, from start to finish.
The stories about the size of his royal weapon could have been exaggerated. But not by much. I’d been near enough to know. Close enough to feel the stiffness, in fact. the heat and the insistent pulse. And the size.
And I never wanted to be that close to him again. But I had to remind myself again that this job was not optional. Between my massive student loans and all the monthly payments that I shoveled into the bottomless hole that my poor father had been swindled into, I was going to have to win a lottery to ever get out of debt. Meanwhile, I had to run fast and non-stop just to stop myself from slipping backward.
Rachell’s hand touched my shoulder, “You’re wrong to think about yourself negatively.”
Collette nodded hard. “You’re beautiful, Serena.”
And Clodagh looked in my eyes seriously as she added, “And don’t let anyone tell you different.”
That was the word that he’d used. My eyes clouded over and I turned away before Rachelle saw it. She would misunderstand. All of them would. But I didn’t want the Terrible Trio or anyone to know about that evening.
That was going to stay as my secret. Nobody else ever needed to know. He was the man who cost me my job and ruined my life. But at least I wasn’t going to be a tidbit of public entertainment over it. I wouldn’t feed the gossip mills.
The job at the royal palace ball was not optional. When Clogagh and Rachelle introduced me to the boss of the catering firm, he said that he would offer me a whole string of high end catering gigs, all of them pretty well-paid as far as catering went. But he made it absolutely clear. Anyone who didn’t work at the ball would be at the very bottom of the list for jobs from then on.
The ball was in the royal palace. That was why I didn’t want to go. He would be bound to be there, I was sure. To get myself to be able to face it, I just kept on repeating to myself that I wouldn’t see him. Even more important, he wouldn’t see me.
The ball was a huge operation. There were more than a hundred and twenty waitresses, forty kitchen staff as well as auxiliaries. The chances of me being within a hundred feet of him once through the whole night were almost exactly nil.
But I didn’t ever really have much of a choice about whether I took the job. I couldn’t afford to lose these gigs. Before I even thought about it, the boss made it crystal clear that nobody was to get sick, nobody was taking the night off. Not that night. Nobody who wanted to stay active on the books.
And the Crown Prince had already cost me one job that I couldn’t afford to lose.
My student loans weren’t going to pay themselves off. And Daddy’s debts, well, I’d had to come to a different arrangement to straighten those out.
Crown Prince Hugo
SHOULD HAVE slung her over my shoulder that evening in the club and carried her away when I had the chance. Shouldn’t I.
Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda. I can’t stand to think like that. But I can’t stand to lose. The picture of her running away stayed in the back of my mind from that moment to this. I thought about it as I ran out of my apartments, stomped down the hallway and bolted down the sweep of the grand staircase, three steps at a time.
The Royal Palace has more than four hundred and fifty rooms and three and a half miles of corridors. but I knew that the ball was going to be over the staterooms and grand reception, the banqueting hall and the Grand Gallery. The kitchens and cellars for state occasions like this were in the basements immediately below.
I did all of the princely, royal things when I first lost her, of course. I sent out the Royal Guard. They were useless. Great fellows and all. Fearless and unbeatable warriors who would lay down their lives in a heartbeat in defense of the realm or the crown or whatever. Not, truth be told, super-bright, though. Captain of the guard asked me what she looked like. Idiot.
I smiled indulgently and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s wonderful She’s the most beautiful woman in the land,” I told him. Looked at me like I’d just landed from outer space, poor fool.
After they came back with no results I dispatched envoys, courtiers, emissaries and spies to search the land. As you do. Didn’t work. That never works for some reason.
A much more sensible thing occurred to me, and it seemed way more practical, I had the owner of the club brought to me, and all of his staff. He said he knew nothing about her. Didn’t even know her real name.
Turned out all of the waitresses were on no-contract contracts to avoid having to pay them benefits. Most of the girls were students, struggling to pay off college loans.
The manager told me he couldn’t speak to me without the owner’s permission. So, I bought the club. Then the manager told me he didn’t know any more than the owner had already told me and I yearned for the days when I could have just slung him into a dank dungeon and left him there to be eaten by rats.
We still have dank dungeons, way down in the bowels of the palace. They don’t get any use these days, though. Human rights and all of that modern nonsense. Tell that to the poor starving rats.
So, I went to the university and the community college and every seat of learning in the land. But without a name or a picture I wasn’t going to get anywhere. The secretaries of all of the educational institutions told me very stiffly and in their very boring ways that they couldn’t release information about students, past or present, because of data protection laws. Even if they had any. Which they all swore they had
n’t.
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