Текст книги "Prince Albert"
Автор книги: Sabrina Paige
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Albie
My sister’s bodyguard, Max, darts down the drive. I know he’s smart enough to have a vehicle here on standby, one of the dark-tinted black SUVs the security detail drives that are supposed to be inconspicuous but stick out anymore like a sore thumb.
My bodyguard, Noah, shakes his head. “Do you know where she’s going, sir?” he asks.
He insists on calling me “sir,” despite the fact that he’s been my security detail forever. And despite the fact that I’ve asked him a hundred times to call me by my name. Noah knows more about me than anyone, and he also knows I’m not about to rat out my sister, even if she’s off running around with a spoiled asshole like Finn Asher.
Belle stands beside me, her hair tousled from the wind, looking sexy and disheveled and basically confused as hell. “Is everything okay?” she asks.
“I have no idea where she’s headed, Noah,” I lie, shrugging. “Besides, I’m sure Max is on it.”
As if on cue, the bodyguard peels past us in an SUV, kicking dust up behind his wheels as he flies down the driveway after Alex and Finn.
Noah narrows his eyes as he looks at me. “Yes, I’m sure he’s on it, sir.”
“We’re going to tour the grounds, Noah,” I say. “I’m sure we don’t need an escort.”
He gives me a stern look before issuing a “yes, sir” in response, walking ahead of us. The estate is fully staffed, with its own security detail.
“You should go have a beer or something, Noah,” I call to his retreating figure, and he flips me off behind his head.
Beside me, Belle laughs. “Do your bodyguards usually give you the finger?” she asks.
“Only Noah,” I tell her. “He’s been with me for along time. He’s probably the closest thing I have to a best friend.”
“A best friend that calls you sir?” she asks.
“He does it because he knows it pisses me off,” I say. “He only does it when he’s annoyed with me.”
“So he calls you ‘sir’ pretty much all the time, then?”
“You're so quick-witted," I say, rolling my eyes. "Do people tell you that all the time?"
“Constantly,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me. It’s a childish response, but it makes me laugh. We walk in silence across the expanse of lawn from the helicopter pad toward the summerhouse, and from the corner of my eye, I can see Belle breathing in deeply, visibly relaxing as we walk.
I don't know quite why, but it makes me satisfied to see her happy here.
"So, do you always fly your wives out to your estates?" she asks.
"You're the first, actually," I say.
"So I'm special, then," she says. "I feel flattered."
"Well, we were married by Fake Elvis, so that automatically puts you leaps and bounds ahead of my other marriages," I joke.
"I'm overjoyed," she says sarcastically, then falls silent as we walk across the lawn. I point out various places on the estate – the stables, gardens, and the lake to the south, just barely visible on the horizon.
"When Alex and I were kids, my father used to take us out there to fish on Sunday mornings in the summer, early," I say. "No matter how busy he was. We'd get up at six in the morning, and return a few hours later and wake up my mother."
"Your father seems like a good man," she says. "Like...a normal guy, almost."
"He's the people's king," I say. "It's what they call him.”
"Was it weird, growing up like this?" she asks.
I shrug. "I don't know," I say. "Was it weird growing up the way you did?"
"Touché," she says.
"I don't know any other way of life," I tell her.
Inside the castle, I show her my favorite places, the things that are a part of my family history – the Chinese pottery that I broke when Alex and I were running through the house when I was nine, thousands of years old and super-glued back together; and the place where my sister and I shimmied off a low overhang from one of the windows when I was twelve and Alex broke her arm. It was the first time I'd gotten in real trouble, grounded from everything.
Belle and I stand on the roof, looking out over the expanse of the estate, the lawn so vivid it's nearly emerald-colored. Everything out here, in the country, is more vivid and intense than the city.
This place holds all of the important memories of my life.
"This is where Alex and I would come up and get high, before I left for the army," I tell her.
Belle laughs. "This isn't what I pictured," she says. "It's different from what I expected from a royal family."
"It's all trappings, you know," I say. "All of this – the castles, and the cars, and the planes, and –"
"The media stories?" she asks. She stands a foot away from me – too far, I think – and glances at me, and I think I see her smile. Teasing me about my reputation.
"I'd say those stories in the media are greatly exaggerated, but they're probably not," I tell her.
She laughs. "At least you're honest," she says. Then, abruptly: "Why did you bring me here?"
"I'm sharing royal stories – the good ones, not the PR-friendly ones – and you're not having fun?"
"No, I. That's not what I meant at all."
"Relax, luv, I'm just giving you crap," I say. "Other than playing hooky at tea? I wanted to show you the real Protrovia."
"This is the real Protrovia?" she asks, her voice lilting. "Palatial summer estates?"
"No, smarty," I say. "I'm just giving you a tour of the summer house. Come on. Now I'll show you the real Protrovia. That way, if you decide to go back to the States, at least you know what you're missing."
But I don't turn to leave. Not yet. I stand there, and she looks at me for a minute, the expression on her face unreadable. "I'm starting to get an idea of what I'd be missing," she says, her eyes lingering on my face for a split second too long. Then the moment passes, and she clears her throat. "All right, Prince Albert. Sell me on Protrovia."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Belle
“I’m not sure what I thought I was going to get when I told a prince to sell me on his country, but this was definitely not it.”
“What?” he asks innocently. “Is it the shoes? Not flattering?”
“Yeah, it’s definitely the shoes,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. But I can't quite stifle the giggle that erupts in my throat when I look at him.
Albie is wearing jeans and a grey t-shirt, a navy blue baseball cap pulled down low on his head, looking like any other guy his age.
Except for the ridiculous, bushy, dark fake mustache over his lips.
“You need a hat, too,” he says, producing a black baseball cap from behind his back, with the words ‘I Luv Las Vegas” written on it in bright orange typeface.
I snatch the hat from his hand. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” he asks, shrugging, his palms upturned. “You’ll look like a tourist. It's the perfect disguise.”
“Did you buy that for me in Vegas?” After claiming that he had no idea who I was, he produces something like this?
“Nope,” he says. “I bought it for myself in Vegas, actually. But, I’ll admit, once you got here, I was going to leave it on your bed as a welcome gift.”
“But your sense of decorum and propriety kept you from doing that? Nice,” I say, shaking my head. I slip the ball cap over my head anyway, pulling my ponytail through the back. “Fine. Let’s go wherever you’re taking me, Pornstache.”
When Albie’s bodyguard sees us, he rolls his eyes and sighs heavily. “That mustache. Really?” he says.
“Noah is just jealous because he can’t grow a sexy 'stache like this,” Albie says, leaning close to me to stage whisper.
“From what I can tell, you can't either, sir.” Noah holds the car door open for me. It’s a black sedan with a taxi plate in the back corner of the rear window, a few years old and completely non-royal, nothing like the high-end SUVs with dark-tinted windows that are dead giveaways for the royal security detail.
“Isn’t he coming with us?” I ask, watching as Noah closes my door and walks toward the SUV parked twenty feet away.
I wonder how the hell Albie gets away with such laid-back security. This is how it was in Vegas, too. There, Albie had no major security detail. None that I noticed anyway, or I’d have definitely suspected something then. He’s the most famous prince on the planet. I’d expect him to have a team of bodyguards, like a rock star or a dignitary.
“Absolutely,” Albie says, settling into the back seat of the car beside me. He doesn’t make a move, doesn’t put his hand on my leg or do anything inappropriate. I’m not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed with that. “He’s our driver.”
“Is security always this lax for the royal family?” I ask. Noah slides behind the wheel of the driver's seat, tossing a backpack on the front passenger side.
Albie turns toward me and winks, wearing his stupid ball cap and that bushy mustache.
Despite my initial misgivings, maybe the royal asshole isn’t so bad after all.
“Let’s just say that Noah and I have an understanding,” Albie says. “He knows that I’m perfectly capable of losing him, if I really wanted to. Kind of like today. We could have ditched out of the palace, gone through the tunnels, and skirted around out in town. But this way, he can follow me from afar and trust that I’m not going to try to lose him. At least not today, anyway.”
“The Prince is under a bit of a delusion, I’m afraid,” Noah says, as he pulls down the drive. “He believes he’s more clever and unobtrusive than he is.”
I choke back a laugh. “I’ve definitely gotten that impression.”
“If you don't think my ‘stache is the very definition of unobtrusive, I’m afraid we can’t be friends any longer, Noah,” Albie says.
“I feel sorry for you, Noah,” I say, shaking my head.
“Why?” he asks, his eyes forward as he drives us outside of the walled estate and down the weaving, winding road toward wherever the hell we’re going. I realized that I have no idea what Albie's plan is, yet I’m blindly following his direction as if I don’t have a care in the world.
“I'm sorry that you got stuck with this assignment to guard the prince,” I say.
“It’s a sacrifice,” Noah says. “King and country and all.”
Albie laughs, hitting a button that automatically slides up a partition between us and Noah. “That’s enough from him,” he says.
“You guys are really close,” I note.
“Noah tolerates a lot of crap from me,” he says. "He came on around the time my mom got sick."
“I can only imagine the shit he must put up with,” I say, only half-joking. From the magazine articles and media frenzy that surround the playboy prince, I can definitely see how difficult it would be to manage him.
I expect Albie to laugh, but when I look over at him, his gaze is focused out the window, his expression guarded.
“How did your mom die?" I ask, even though I already know she died. The death of Queen Sigrid was all over the media after it happened. I was in my senior year of high school. I still remember the memorials, the songs written about her. And like everyone else around the world, I remember the photo of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra, standing beside their father, staid and unflinching, pain written all over their faces.
It's one thing to read about the death of someone in an online news article, or to see their face plastered all over the media, but another thing entirely to experience that loss first-hand.
I should know. My father's death when I was a child rocked me to my core.
“Neuroendocrine Carcinoma," he says, his voice flat. "It's a rare form of cancer."
"I'm sorry," I say, my words insufficient, the way words always seem to be when it comes to loss.
Albie makes a sound in his throat, more like a 'heh' than a laugh, avoiding looking at me. "I'm sorry," he says. "I've heard it a thousand times. Just like you probably have."
"Yes," I say. "It doesn't change anything."
"No," he says, his gaze still fixated out the window. It's the first time since I've been here in Protrovia that I think maybe Albie is deeper than he appears at first glance. Until now, Albie didn't seem to have much running below the surface.
"And now they're both getting remarried," I say, my voice soft. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm not sure I've had enough time to get used to the idea.
It's not the fact that my mother is remarrying that takes some getting used to. She has certainly dated since my father's death. She even came close to getting married again, to a big Wall Street guy who ran a huge hedge fund. She called that off last-minute, which in retrospect, was a good thing, considering he was indicted a few years later for some white-collar crime I can't recall.
“Yes,” Albie says, looking at me, his expression serious for the first time since we met. “Do you think my father can compare to yours?”
The question takes me aback, and I can’t hide the question in my tone. “Your father is a king, Albie,” I say. “You’re literally the most powerful family in this country. And you’re asking me how your father measures up to mine?”
The question is ridiculous. My father was a self-made millionaire, who built an empire, a fortune from nothing. All of that was before I was born, though. I grew up rich, with the best of everything. I never wanted for anything.
But I know where I come from. And where I belong.
And where I come from is definitely not royalty.
“That’s what I’m asking,” he says, his gaze intense. “What I read about your father…his story…it’s amazing what he built.”
I can’t help but raise my eyebrows. “Your father is a king,” I say, my words clipped. Talking about my father, makes the car ride suddenly more intense than I anticipated. This isn’t what I expected when I agreed to a tour of Protrovia.
Being alone with the playboy prince isn't what I expected, either.
I look out the window at the countryside passing in a blur as we drive, the greens and blues of the landscape and the greys and browns of the stone cottages whizzing by, and try to forget the growing tightness in my chest.
“My family has ruled this kingdom for five hundred years,” Albie says. “Do you know what that’s like?”
The question jerks me out of the melancholy triggered by thinking about my father. “Of course I don’t know what it’s like to be royal,” I say. My voice comes out harsher than I intend it to be.
“No,” he says. “But your father – I read the articles about him in the business journals. He started from nothing. That’s something, Belle.”
“I don’t have a pedigree,” I say stupidly. I don’t understand where this conversation is going, but it makes me feel anxious. My father has been gone for a long time, and I can’t remember the last time my mother and I talked about him.
“Exactly,” he says. “Do you know what it’s like to do nothing? To have everything passed down to you, simply because you were born who you are?”
“I haven’t exactly had to earn my way in life,” I point out. “I’m not a plucky girl from the wrong side of the tracks who’s had to fight her way through life to get what she has. My father left me millions of dollars.”
“No, I don’t suppose so,” Albie says. “Except what did you do with the money?”
I roll my eyes and look out the window, breaking away from his gaze. I’m irritated by the thought that Albie seems to have looked up everything there is to know about me just to satisfy his damn curiosity. “I’m not some kind of Mother Theresa."
“No,” he says. “You took the money and set up a foundation, then went and spent two years in Africa working for a charity.”
“Yes.” I don’t elaborate. I’m starting to feel overheated, claustrophobic in this car with him. I don’t like talking about myself, don’t like being the center of attention, and Albie is putting me on the spot. I don’t need to explain to this man – this stranger, whom I barely know – why I left when I graduated college, why I didn’t take the trust fund and blow it on some fabulous lifestyle, the way my mother encouraged me to do.
“You should have some fun, Belle,” she said, looking at me with sadness in her eyes. “You’re too serious. Life shouldn’t be so serious.”
She’d definitely never taken life seriously. Wealth, power, parties, socializing…that was what kept my mother going.
She couldn’t understand.
I didn’t want my father’s money. It was just a reminder of his death. And that’s the last thing I wanted to be reminded of.
Albie doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I during the rest of the car ride. Instead, I watch out the window as we pass houses that are closer together as we come to a small village. I don’t know what to make of Albie’s questions, except to think that maybe he’s not as flippant about life as I thought he was. I’m not sure if that makes me like him more or less.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Albie
I feel like I fucked up somehow with Belle, as if a cloud, a sense of heaviness, has descended over the car ever since I mentioned her father. Belle has me on edge since I met her in the casino. With her, I feel like I’m perpetually making missteps.
That’s not something I do when it comes to women.
I’m a master at bedding women, leveraging my status and privilege and wealth and looks to get into their panties. Belle should be no exception.
But I’ve somehow managed to turn things melancholy instead of light.
I’m the fuck-up prince, the irresponsible one, the man who doesn’t want to be king. I don’t do serious, so I have no idea why I’m having a remotely serious conversation with Belle about our dead parents.
That’s fucking depressing.
It’s like, the exact opposite of what I should be doing to get in her panties.
Noah taps the brakes as we head into the small village, traffic slowing the vehicle to a near crawl. A banner with colored flags stretches across the archway at the beginning of the main road through town, a cobblestone path that is routinely closed to traffic. Today, that stretch of road is crowded with pedestrians, throngs of families who are here for a summer festival.
I tap on the divider, and it goes down. “Turn right down here, Noah.”
“I’ll go down and around town,” Noah disagrees, shaking his head. This isn’t the first time we’ve gone into the village, and Noah knows the back roads and ways to bypass traffic far better than I do.
“Do you come down here a lot?” Belle asks, finally breaking the silence between us. I don’t know why, but I feel myself exhale with relief.
“Alex and I used to sneak out here all the time in the summer,” I say. “It used to piss off my father.”
“He didn’t want you running around with the commoners?” she asks.
“No,” I say, laughing. “It was more of an issue with security risk than anything else. He’s perpetually convinced I’m going to be assassinated.”
Belle raises her eyebrows. “Given who you are, that’s probably a legitimate concern.”
I shrug. “He’s too protective,” I say.
She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Says the guy who went to Afghanistan?”
“I flew helicopters,” I say. “And, thanks to my father, I wasn’t able to get close to any real action.”
“There’s something to be said for staying alive – playing it safe,” Belle says, turning to look at me finally. The corners of her mouth turn up on the edges, just slightly, but the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. Even so, the way she looks at me, her chestnut-colored eyes wide, taking the corner of her lower lip between her teeth uncertainly, sends an almost irresistible desire to kiss her ricocheting through me.
Fuck. I want to do a hell of a lot more than just kiss this girl.
“Playing it safe is boring,” I say, not wanting to take my eyes away from hers. I watch transfixed, as she takes a deep breath, her breasts rising under the thin fabric of her t-shirt, and I swear to God, that single breath makes my cock rigid.
Hell if a girl has ever been able to make my cock hard as a rock with one look, with a single inhale of breath.
Then Noah clears his throat noisily, reminding me that Belle and I aren’t the only ones in the car. “We’re here, sir,” he says. “Miss Kensington.”
Beside me, Belle laughs, the sound light. I think it might be the best sound I’ve ever heard. “I’m not Miss Kensington,” she says. “That’s my mother. Everyone calls me Belle.”
Noah nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, ma’am is totally worse. Please never ever call me that again. I'm not that old,” she says, before turning to me. “Where are we going?”
“It's the start of the summer festival,” I say. “This is the real Protrovia.”
Noah tails us from a respectable distance as we meander through the festival, among the throngs of families and tourists playing carnival games, listening to music, and eating traditional Protrovian food.
Belle is mostly silent, contemplative, but I watch her take everything in as she walks, pausing occasionally to talk to a vendor or run her fingers along a handmade craft being sold on one of the tables. “This version of Protrovia is a ton better than the palace one,” she says, turning toward me.
Behind her, someone squeezes past, pushing her into me. Her body presses up against mine, and she doesn't jump away, not immediately. Instead, she lingers a fraction of a moment too long, and when I reach for her elbows to steady her, my hands land on her waist instead. It’s completely inappropriate, touching her like this out here, in the middle of everything, even for a moment.
She looks up at me, eyes framed by dark lashes, and I know she can feel how hard I am, my body’s immediate response to her pressed against me. Rock hard seems to be my default response to anything this girl does. But in that moment, I know she wants me just as much as I want her.
Then Belle steps away, looking down at the ground and tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously. Her cheeks are flushed, pink lightly dusting her cheekbones, and she tries to put distance between us, but the thickness of the crowd causes her to slow down. Then I'm behind her, my lips close to her ear. “I know you could feel how hard I am for you,” I say, my voice low.
The flush she gets when she’s embarrassed, the one that is usually relegated to her face, spreads all the way to her ears. I can see it from where I stand behind her, and the sight makes me inexplicably harder.
I’ve slept with models, actresses, socialites. Women throw themselves at me. They offer threesomes and foursomes. They offer me anything I want.
And some American girl wearing jeans and sneakers and a t-shirt makes me harder than I’ve been in my damn life, with a mere blush.
Belle doesn’t respond. She clears her throat and makes the same self-conscious move again, tucking her hair behind her ear as she walks forward through the crowd. When I catch up to her, I put my hand on the small of her back.
“What are you doing?” she asks, glancing behind her. “There are a million people here watching us.”
I let my fingers slide just underneath the bottom of her t-shirt, grazing her skin, hot to my touch, just for a moment, before I draw back my hand.
Propriety, I remind myself.
I should give a shit about propriety. I should give a shit about the fact that Belle Kensington is my soon-to-be stepsister. She’s part of the royal family. I should keep my dick in my pants and my hands to myself.
The problem is that I’ve never been very good at doing the things I “should” do, anyway.
When the crowd surges ahead, I take Belle’s arm and pull her to the right sharply, ducking between a group of large men drinking beer before disappearing into another group of tourists. We veer to the side and down a narrow passageway between two brick-sided buildings. The alley is empty, and Belle pauses, backing up against the wall and looking at me with a mixture of apprehension and lust.
“We lost Noah,” she says, her voice soft.
“Are you worried about Noah?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t you not be ditching your bodyguard?” Belle asks the question, her voice breathier than it was before, and I’m not sure that’s entirely the result of darting through the crowd.
“There are a lot of things I shouldn’t do,” I say. I trail a finger down her chest, toward her cleavage, and she doesn’t stop me. Instead, she sucks in a deep breath, her chest rising under my touch.
It’s the breath that undoes me. It’s the sound she makes when she inhales the way she does – sharp, between her teeth – that is going to be my unraveling, and I know it. It holds the promise of everything that’s inevitable between us – my tongue on her skin, the taste salty-sweet, the tangle of limbs, her slickness as I slip inside her.
I can picture all of it – hell, I can practically taste her on my lips now, without even touching her – just by listening to that inhale. It’s the sound I imagine she’ll make when I’m plunging my cock into her, my lips near hers, as I watch the expression on her face.
“This is definitely one of those ‘shouldn’ts’,” she says. But she doesn’t move. She stays where she is, paused with her back against the brick wall, her breasts arched up.
Everything about her screams yes.
“Prince fucks his royal stepsister,” I whisper, reaching down to flick open the button on her jeans. "It's a definite shouldn't."
Belle’s lips fall open in a slight “O”. But she doesn’t protest. I almost expect her to slap me. I’m waiting for her to call me a pervert, a manwhore. I'm waiting for her to tell me to go screw myself, to get the hell away from her.
“I’m not your stepsister,” she whispers. “Yet.”
I unzip her jeans, pulling them down slightly around her hips, angling my back toward the entrance of the alley to shield her from any wandering eyes. “So you’re okay with the fucking part, then,” I say, as I slip my fingers inside the front of her panties, my eyes never leaving hers, even though I have the almost irrepressible impulse to see what her panties look like.
This is high up there on the list of ‘shouldn’ts.’
I’ve done a lot of bullshit – flashing the press, hooking up with random girls – but I’ve never screwed one in public. Always in private. I might drop my pants for the press, but I’ve never been caught with my pants around my ankles because of a woman. That’s because whatever kind of whoring around I do, I’ve always been able to contain myself.
Belle has me going crazy. Pulling her into an alley, sliding my fingers down the front of her pants.
This is not what I do.
“My mistake,” I say. “Prince fucks his almost-stepsister. His wife.”
“No fucking,” she whispers.
“No fucking,” I repeat, not a statement but a question, rolling my fingers over her clit and watching her lids fall to half-mast, then widen. She catches that lower lip of hers between her teeth again, and I swear that all I can think about is kissing the fuck out of that mouth of hers.
I can think of a hell of a lot of things I’d like to do to that mouth.
“There’s not going to be any fucking,” she says. But the last word – fucking – comes out of her mouth in a moan, and the sound is so wanton, so desperate, that I almost lose my shit right here.
I want to tear her fucking clothes off, right here in this alley. I want to rip her shirt off. I want to fuck her hard against the wall, with her legs wrapped around me, her tits in my face.
I want Little Miss Do-Gooder, Miss Does Everything Right, to be mine in the filthiest way possible.
