Dirty Royal: A Bad Boy Royal Romance (4 page)

It’s five minutes to my apartment, and I kiss her so hard and furiously in the cab that by the time we’re in the elevator on the way up to my floor, we’re both panting. Her cheeks are flushed from the drink and the kissing, and I need to be balls deep in her an hour ago.

I can’t get the fucking key to work in the door and she rocks on her heels, her arms wrapped around me from behind. Finally the door swings open and I turn, gathering her into me, sweeping us both inside and slamming the door shut behind us with my foot.

Then we’re tearing at each other’s clothes, leaving a trail of shirts and jeans and shoes all the way to my bedroom. When we reach my bed and the back of her knees meets the mattress, I guide her down so she’s laying on her back on my plush comforter with my full weight on top of her. I drag my tongue across her collarbone, pausing to pay homage to her breasts, and then down toward the flat expanse of her stomach. My tongue dives into her pink, dripping slit, and I devour her as she writhes wildly against the white comforter, urgent gasps escaping from her throat as she clutches at the bedclothes, her frame trembling in violent spasms as she comes in my mouth.

While she’s still quivering, shaking, and crying out incoherently, I push myself up and straddle over her middle, lining myself up between her legs. I’m so possessed by raw lust that I can’t even think straight, so it’s a miracle that I remember to grab and roll on a condom from the bedside table before I’m thrusting into her, burying myself to the hilt in one stroke, and she’s clenching around me, her tight walls massaging my cock.
Fuck
, she feels good.

I drive the pace, faster, harder, and she takes it all, meeting me every time with a rise of her hips, drawing me in, drawing me deep, until at last I explode inside of her, ramming my release into her core.

The strength of my orgasm is so powerful it makes my head spin. For several minutes afterward I lay beside her, my face flush against her neck, breathing in lungfuls of her light, clean scent.

The peaceful moment ends when she rocks her hips against me, inviting me to go another round.

I rise to the occasion. With enthusiasm.

Chapter 7

Jessica

Even a miserable Monday stuck behind my desk at the Colton-Hayes offices can’t quite kill my weekend buzz.

Alec and I didn’t stop after the first time our bodies collided in a blaze of heat and passion, or even the second time. For the first time in my life, I spent the entire night entangled with a man who couldn’t get enough of me. He worshipped every single inch of my skin and every fold between my legs. Everything he did just made me wetter, hotter; made me want him more. The sun was rising before I even entertained the notion of stopping.

At some point in the early morning, as I rode him in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, driving my weight down onto his cock with every thrust, I was overcome by a need to know more about this stranger who was lighting up every nerve in my body with electric pleasure. In that moment, my condition—no last names, no strings—seemed to border on the absurd.

“Tell me your name,” I gasped, leaning down to bite his firm chest just above the nipple.

He pulled my face up to his and kissed me hard and deep while I kept swirling my hips around him, pumping myself up and down his length. When he broke the kiss, he turned his face to whisper in my ear, “It’s Alec.” I could hear the smile in his voice, and I let out a laugh that quickly turned into a moan as he picked up the pace again.

While I make my way to the break room to refill my tea—I hate the aftertaste coffee leaves in my mouth, but damn, after an entire night of no sleep and
serious
physical activity, I need
something—
the logical side of me battles with the memory of the unbelievable connection between us.

And it
is
unbelievable. Alec and I are complete strangers. The fact that just thinking about him sends shivers down my spine doesn’t mean that I should abandon my one-and-done policy.

As I heat up the water in the electric kettle, I let my mind wander, over his muscles, the way his arms flexed as he lifted me effortlessly, the piercing green eyes that lingered on the curves of my breasts, the lips that teased every inch of my skin over and over until I was quaking with desire…

Even so.

I hang a tea bag over the edge of the cup and frown as a memory creeps in unbidden.

Michael, screaming at me, face purple with rage, fists clenched at his sides, because I’d dared to go home to visit my parents for the weekend without telling him first. Facing his fury, my stomach had grown cold and my legs tensed, getting ready to run.

It wasn’t the only time he made me fear for my life.

When I finally ended that two-year relationship, which had swallowed my senior year of college and the year after it whole, I swore to myself that I would never allow a man to hold such power over me again. Any partnership I entered would have to be one with built on equal footing.

Alec could be that man
. The thought bubbles up from somewhere deep in my mind, but I push it away. I need to consider all of this very carefully.

The mug of tea is steaming, the heat a pleasant contrast to the bitter temperature of the air conditioning in the office as I slowly retrace my steps to my cubicle.

I can’t dive headfirst into anything with Alec, and not just because of what happened with Michael. The terms we agreed to on Friday night were that there would be no last names and no strings. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, and that was it.

It won’t exactly put me on equal footing with him if I send him a message asking to see him again. He’ll know he has some kind of hold on me if I do that.

On top of
that
, who’s to say he feels the same way about me? Even if we hadn’t spent the entire night feasting on each other, licking each other, slamming our bodies together, the boundary I’d set at the bar prevented us from exchanging the kind of information we’d need to in order to start a relationship. I remember his reaction when I suggested we keep it simple and only about sex—he didn’t hesitate. He wanted that privacy as much as I did.
 

So, as much as I want to open the app and send him another message, I can’t. My cheeks flush pink at the thought of him and the intensity of what we shared together Friday night, the way my body spiked with adrenaline for the rest of the weekend, wanting desperately to be back in his bed as I went to brunch and did my shopping and cleaned my apartment, the clean masculine scent of him filling my mind and overwhelming my senses the entire time.

That doesn’t stop me from taking my phone out of my purse twenty times over the course of the day and opening up a new message window, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Every time, though, I close the app without typing a single word. I just can’t find a way to reach out to him again without going back on my promises to myself, a way to breach the agreement we had without putting him in control of my emotions.

My breath is shallow by the time I step out onto the sidewalk just after 5:00, the space between my legs aching with need for him.
Ridiculous
, I tell myself.
You’re being ridiculous.
 

When my phone buzzes in my purse, I stop dead on the sidewalk and rifle through my bag, snatching it up with shaking hands.

It’s not a text.

It’s not an email.

It’s a message in the dating app.

And it’s from
him
.

Chapter 8

Alec

I spend the rest of the weekend scrolling through the profiles on three different dating apps.

Not one picture stands out.

The only image in my mind is of Jessica, her back arched, her breasts rising and falling as she works herself over my cock, head thrown back, blue eyes closed, as she gets off over and over again.

This is not how I imagined this playing out. I was going to hit it and quit it as many times as possible in the big city.

When she left on Saturday at noon, ten minutes after waking, she gave me a wink and a wave and didn’t look back as she headed toward the building’s elevator. Once she’d stepped inside, she seemed to notice me again, my shoulders and torso out in the hallway, unable to take my eyes off of her.

She pressed the button to go down. “I’m glad you were available,” she called down the hall to me with a smile, a confident smile, on her face.

I wanted to sprint down the hall in nothing but my boxers, block the elevator doors from closing, and sweep her back into my arms. I wanted to kiss her until she melted against me and then carry her back into the apartment, fuck her senseless in the shower, and spend the rest of the day in bed with her.

Instead, I return her smile with a cocky one of my own. “It was a lucky break,” I say.

Did I imagine a flash of longing in her eyes as the doors closed?

Probably.

Saturday and Sunday I search for someone to replace her.

I fill out profiles on two new dating apps and scroll endlessly through the lists of eligible women.

I check in with Nate and, in a fit of loneliness, invite him to spend Saturday evening with me. We make our way through every bar near the apartment I’ve rented. The women there can’t get enough of us. Nate does his best to be a decent wingman, and I return the favor. It’s easy to talk up his darkly handsome looks, and his deep brown eyes draw the ladies in like moths to a flame.

He has better luck than I do, even though he doesn’t cave in completely to the party mood and never touches a drop of alcohol. I don’t push the matter. It’s enough that he came here with me instead of hauling me back to the royal palace in Saintland. After we hit the second bar, he’s garnered a bit of a fan club and allows one girl, a petite blonde with wide gray eyes, to sit at his side for the rest of the evening.

It’s not yet midnight when I signal to him that it’s time to go. The blonde looks disappointed, but Nate charms her with a whispered word in her ear and a kiss on the cheek.

We walk side by side on the sidewalk leading back to the building I’m staying in, and it’s not until we get to the front entrance that I realize Nate never asked for directions.

“Are you staking me out, old buddy?”

He gives me a sidelong look. “Did the international flight sap you of all your intelligence?”

I roll my eyes. Of course he knows where I’m staying, even without me giving him the address. It’s all too easy for me to forget that his experience in intelligence and security far outstrips my idiot royal sensibilities. “No. But a woman might have.”

He raises his eyebrows. “We’ve only been here three nights. You’ve already found the love of your life?”

“She’s not the love of my
life
, Nate, for God’s sake. She’s just…” What
was
she? The buzz I got from my drinks has already worn off, and I’m left with a throbbing need to see her again.

Despite the fact that soon—likely in two weeks, if Nate has his way—I’ll be going back to Saintland, never to see her again, and despite her insistence on not exchanging any information beyond first names, there’s something about her that’s sunk its claws deep into my…heart. Yes, that’s it.

“She’s a tigress?”

Back in our school days, Nate and I referred to our hottest dates as tigresses—full of spirit and deadly if you messed with them. Looking back, every other women I’ve been with is a kitten compared to Jessica.

I flash Nate a smile, giving him a nod. “She’s a tigress.”

“Are you seeing her again?”

“You know as well as I do that it would be a fool’s errand.” Nate doesn’t know all the details about what happened between Jessica and me, but he knows as well as I do that whatever there might be between us, it has to stay on this side of the Atlantic.

“Don’t be coy with me, your highness. I can tell you’re thinking about it.”

“Shut your mouth.” I temper the words with a sheepish smile.

Because the bastard is right.

After he walks away, back toward his hotel, I pull out my phone, open the app, and type a message to Jessica asking her to meet me again.
Friday was too much fun, I write
.
 

Who doesn’t like to tempt fate?

To my immense shock, Jessica agrees to meet me the next night, and it doesn’t take me long to realize that my first impression of her last Friday night wasn’t a fluke. When I turn from where I’ve been waiting by the bar and see her walk through the door, heading straight for me, a shock wave jolts through me, wiping all the smooth opening lines I had come up with out of my mind.

Jessica doesn’t waste a single second. As soon as she reaches me, she’s pulling me down to her and kissing me with such heat that the bartender whistles. “Hey, lovebirds, get a room!” he shouts over the blaring music. Without breaking the kiss, I show him my middle finger and the man bursts out laughing. “At least buy some drinks, man.”

That’s where we start.

Once again, we end up in my apartment, all over each other, ravenous, insatiable, the pile of condom wrappers by the bed growing higher as the night passes by.

Just before she leaves, we fuck one more time, Jessica on top, gyrating her hips so skillfully it’s all I can do not to come within the first thirty seconds. I reach up to tweak her nipples, causing her to cry out and dig her fingernails into my chest, rocking her hips even faster, harder against my cock.

As I explode my release deep inside her, my vision blurring with its intensity, I try to burn the memory of Jessica, her rhythmic movement, her luscious curves, her intoxicating beauty into my mind, just in case this is the last chance I get to be with her.
 

I’m so screwed.

Chapter 9

Jessica

I’m in
way
over my head.

Wednesday and Thursday at work are exercises in torture. I spent Tuesday night with Alec because I just can’t resist a situation that’s sure to backfire.

You don’t even know him
, my rational half says.