Royal Desire (Maid for the Billionaire Prince Vol 4) (2 page)

She says, “I do hope we’ll be able to get to
know each other better. My mother told me that Alex has asked you
to marry him.”

I cringe inwardly, waiting for another
barrage of ‘Leave my brother alone, you lowly gold-digger’. But she
continues, “I think that’s a splendid idea.”

Huh? I must have heard wrongly.

“Beg pardon?” I say. My surprise must have
shown on my face because Marie throws back her head and laughs.

Several people around us turn to look. They
give us severe glances. It is a funeral after all.

“I suppose my mother and Claire have given
you quite the royal treatment,” she says. “Well, I assure you not
all royals are like that. I certainly am not.”

She links arms with me. I’m stunned.

She says, “You and I are going to get to
know each other better. And I have a feeling we’re going to be very
good friends. Shall we?”

She indicates a waiting limo whose driver
holds the passenger door open. He bows to her.

Oh, she wants us to go together.

“OK,” I say, still bewildered. It’s like
being asked to hang out by the prom queen, especially when you are
the class dork.

As I get into the limo, I catch Madame
Fournier’s dark look.

It clearly says, ‘Beware’.

2

In the next few weeks, I don’t get to see
Alex much in the daytime. He has his father’s estate to sort out,
affairs to settle. He still comes to my bed every night. But he is
visibly tired from his increasingly long days, and most of the
time, I let him sleep.

I watch him sleep in my bed in the palace
guest room. His long dark hair is fanned upon the pillow and his
naked chest rises and falls so peacefully. He has not moved into
his father’s bedchambers.

“It’s not the right time,” he says.
“Besides, I can’t turn my mother out of her own bed.”

Nothing ever seems to be the right time.
It’s as though we are so afraid to let the world know we are out of
the mourning period. Or maybe that’s the way things work around
here, and I’m being an impatient American.

Not that I want to sleep in the King’s
bedchamber. I’m perfectly happy having Alex here in my bed forever.
I’d be perfectly happy having him anywhere, so long as we’re
together.

Alex’s dreams are troubled. I know this
because he mutters and cries in his sleep. We make love, but not as
often as before. I attribute this to stress. Both of us are
immensely stressed.

“When is your coronation?” I asked him
earlier.

“Probably a year from now,” he replies in a
wry tone.

A year? Is he kidding me?

“It is not deemed seemly in this period of
mourning,” he explains. “But I am still King. I don’t need a crown
to tell me that.”

“I know, but a year?” I marvel.

“Queen Elizabeth was also crowned a year
after her father’s state funeral. We are no longer in medieval
times where the crowning of a King is essential to the seizure of
power.”

I don’t know about that. I know Alex isn’t
into power, but I have a bad feeling about this. The longer we wait
to tell the world about our engagement and the longer it takes for
Alex to be crowned, the more bad things can happen.

There’s got to be a law on it, like Murphy’s
Law. If anything bad can happen in a year, it will happen on the
eleventh month, or something like that.

I do, however, have a new BFF.

Maybe I should not be calling her a BFF
because I’m not sure we’re going to be friends forever. (After all,
look what happened to me and my roommate, Deanna). But I do sure
enjoy her company because she’s closer to my age. I’m talking about
Marie Vassar, of course. Unlike Claire and Tatiana, she has no
queenly airs. In fact, she could have been just another American
college student, even though she has technically finished her final
term.

“I think it’s because I spent most of my
teenage life in America,” she says. “Mother wanted me to have an
American education from the start and Claire to be sent to Swiss
finishing school. She wanted us to embrace separate education
systems.”

Ah well. I privately think one is working
out better than the other.

“What are you going to do after
college?”

“Take over the family’s businesses, of
course.” She laughs. “That’s my major. Economics. I’m going to make
Moldavia the jewel in the EU. We already have the second highest
GDP per capita in Europe. We need to be the first.”

Marie Vassar is certainly ambitious. She has
great plans to make Moldavian economy soar more than ever before.
We go for walks down the Riviera, where bathers soak themselves in
the sun and splash in the silvery Mediterranean waves. Paparazzi
follow us, but are kept at arm’s length by our bodyguards. I have
since learned to ignore these distractions.

“Look at this.” She waves her hand around
the beach. “We need more tourists, more hotels, more casinos, more
land. Moldavia can be twice as rich as it is. We’ll surpass
Singapore.”

The press would caption us as ‘The Princess
and her future Queen?’ So even if we have not leaked out news of
our (informal) engagement, the world is already speculating that
Alex and I would marry in place of Alex and Tatiana. Poor Tatiana.
She’s completely out of the picture at this stage. But this is not
a pity party. I’ll do anything to be with Alex but I’ll do it the
correct way – without guile or stabbing anyone in the back.

Already they are calling Alex ‘the most
eligible bachelor in the world’. It’s true. He’s a new King.
Handsome as the gods themselves. Hunky, delectable, rich beyond
most people’s wildest imaginings. And single.

Still.

I should be so lucky. And I am, but not
because Alex is the most eligible bachelor alive. But because he’s
Alex, and he loves me.

Alex is genuinely happy that at least one
member of his family doesn’t think I’m pond scum.

“I’m glad you’re seeing her,” he
remarks.

“You make it sound like I’m having an
affair,” I complain.

His eyes sparkle dangerously. “Do you know
what I would do if I ever caught you having an affair?”

I breathe. Alex still has the ability to
make me runny in all my most erotic spots.

“No,” I whisper, “what will you do?”

He moves closer to me. So close that we are
breasts to chest, so close that if he tips his head just two inches
towards me, his lips will seize mine.

He says, “I would put you over my knee,
hogtie your wrists behind you and spank you.”

A delicious goose bump trail simmers down my
body.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I tease.

“Oh? Try me.” He grins, that dangerous stare
still mesmerizing me. I can look at Alex forever. No King has ever
been so fine.

“Kiss me,” I beg.

“No.”

“But why?”

It’s ten at night, and we are alone in the
East Wing parlor.

“Because I want to show you something.”

My gaze dips down to his very obvious
erection. He wears jeans, but the bulge is very prominent. The
denim practically strains to burst forth, contained only by three
stretched buttons.

“I’ve seen it before, Your Majesty,” I say
in a husky voice. It seems strange to be calling him that. It was
only something I reserved for his father.

“Well, I want to show it you someplace
else.”

Oooooo. The plot thickens.

“Where?”

“If I tell you now, it won’t be a
surprise.”

“But you continue to surprise me every day,
Your Majesty.”

“Not like this.”

He moves to an antique half-moon table and
pulls out a drawer. He retrieves a red silk scarf and holds it
up.

“Turn around,” he says. No . . .
orders
. His tone is all at once commanding.

He has never been like this before. I
shiver, and I can’t decide if it’s out of pleasure or fear at this
new Alex. Has his sudden elevation to kinghood changed him?

My lips moisten and part as I obey him. I
turn my back to him, my skin prickling in anticipation. His shadow
moves towards me. The scarf comes around my eyes and he wraps it
tightly around my head.

“Don’t peek,” he whispers. His breath is hot
and sweet against my ear.

As I stand there, trembling, wondering if he
has been changed for good, he runs his palms across my breasts and
belly. My nipples tense at his fluttery touch. Oh, how he knows
every inch and every pore of me. He knows exactly how to excite me
and leave me wanting more.

My breathing quickens.

His hands roam down to massage my buttocks.
He avoids my sex, already moistening at the anticipation of
pleasure. My clit clenches in its throbbing need. My pussy muscles
tighten, already imagining the heat of his hard, pulsing cock.

Oh Alex, Alex. I want to kiss and roam my
lips over every inch of you.

With one hand, he pulls up my shoal of dark
hair and holds it aloft. His lips flit to the back of my neck,
kissing my skin, grazing me with his teeth as though to claim me.
He nibbles and sucks at my earlobes. My senses are more primed than
if I had sight. His subtle touch is simultaneously tantalizing and
ticklish.

He places a wet suction pressure upon the
side of my neck.

“Ohhh,” I gasp. “You’re not giving me a love
bite.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will show up in photos!”

See how my life has changed? Three months
ago, such a thing wouldn’t have bothered me because no one would
have wanted to photograph me. But three months ago, I wouldn’t have
had been receiving love bites from the most eligible bachelor in
the world because I wouldn’t have believed myself capable of
attracting anyone, let alone such a man.

I can’t see, but I can
feel
him
grinning as he applies the love bite on my neck anyway, as though
to claim me:
You are mine, mine, mine.

He murmurs, “I’m going to lead you by the
hand. Don’t trip, OK?”

I try not to as I follow him. I’m trusting
in him completely not to let me fall.

He leads me through a maze of turns. I swear
I will never be able to find my way back blindfolded. A tiny
frisson of uncertainty fleets through me. Has Alex really changed?
Or has he always been this way and he’s showing his true self to me
for the first time? I don’t doubt that we love each other, but I’ve
always wondered about Alex’s dominant side. The side he showed when
he took me and slammed me against the bathroom wall for the very
first time when we met.

Later, as we became lovers, we became more
giving to each other. More solicitous of each other’s needs. More
loving. But I’ve always wondered about the side of him he showed me
that day. I’ve thought about it often. Even fantasized about him
taking me in a very public place once again.

Ooooh
.

I’m a little nervous.

He is, after all, the King, and he can do
whatever he wants. I am only his damsel in mock distress.

OK, I will be distressed if he doesn’t throw
me on some bed and take me soon.

We finally stop. My shoes are perched upon
deep, lush carpeting. I have no idea where I am.

“Where are we?”

“No peeking or I’ll have to tie you up,” he
chastises. “Just enjoy the ride, sweetheart, wherever I’m taking
you. Now keep very, very still. And don’t peek.”

I recall what he said about the hogtying and
spanking, and a shudder passes through my groin. Alex has never
tried the bondage and domination route before. At least not with
me. An excited tingle flushes through my body as I envision being
bent over his knee and spanked.

Oh! I don’t think I would mind being spanked
by Alex at all!

I’m a statue as he starts to unbutton my
blouse. My Moldavian designer blouse, the one with the gold
Chanel-like buttons, only they are shaped like roses. The cool air
caresses my skin as he peels my blouse off oh-so-slowly. I’m
hyperaware of every sensation, every nuance in the charged air
particles around us. I suck in my breath and hold it. My diaphragm
beneath my ribs is tensed and ready.

He unsheathes my blouse, dragging the
inverted sleeves off my hands. I’m wearing a pretty brassiere
underneath with matching panties. La Perla. The only non-Moldavian
pieces of clothing I have allowed myself since this whole Public
Relations image-grooming thing started.

He rubs his thumb pads across my
collarbones. His touch is so warm, so sensuous that a fresh gush of
cream spills forth from my pussy. He reaches behind me to unhook my
brassiere. He’s purposefully prolonging this. Teasing me so that I
will experience everything in magnification. I hear the plop of my
brassiere as he drops it on the carpet. His warm thumbs and fingers
latch on to my nipples, already as hard as stones, and compresses
my ultra-sensitive tips.

He scissors my nipple tips in between his
fingers and thumbs, rubbing them back and forth. The sensations
these movements evoke are exquisite and toe curling. Hell, they are
clit
curling. I moan with the erotic pleasure.

He takes this for a sign that I want more.
(Damn right I do.) Next, I feel his tongue making increasingly
moist circles around my right nipple and areola – laving the entire
puckered flesh there, eliciting goose bumps around the area.

“Oh, Alex,” I cry.

My hands fly up to his shoulders, or where I
think his shoulders are. My clit is throbbing and my nipples are
so, so hard.

He sucks at my right nipple so expansively
that I can feel the blood under the surface pooling towards him. My
toes flex and unflex. I grip his shoulders, which are at the level
of my midriff, and his muscled arms. I picture him crouching or
being slightly bent at the knees as he tortures my nipples. His
tongue becomes a wicked, probing tool of pleasure, slathering my
nerve endings with almost unbearable stimulation.

Oh, oh, oh, oh!