Royal Disaster

by Parker Swift

  I rolled over immediately, desperately. Yes. This was going to be—swack.

  His palm. Right across my right ass cheek.

  “Yes,” I said, inviting him. In an instant he was behind me on the bed, his bare thighs resting against my ass. He must have dropped the trousers. His hands roamed and groped as I was presented before him on all fours. They stroked my legs, smoothed over my back. He unclasped the bra I was still wearing and roughly shoved it down my arms so it rested on the bed below me. My breasts filled his hands, and he rolled my taut nipples between his fingers, kneading them.

  I don’t know what in the hell he was waiting for other than to torture me—I was so blissfully ready for him, but bliss would soon turn to agony. He wanted me writhing.

  “This is for you, my impressive, business-minded, smart-as-fuck girl,” he started, his hardness barely grazing my entrance, taunting, teasing. “And you. Are. Going. To. Take it.” The heels of my palms dug into the sheets, and I nearly collapsed with the force of him entering me. He hit the desire in my belly square-on, and I called out in needy satisfaction.

  Dylan’s firm muscular legs met my ass with each thrust, and as he rolled back and hit me in just the right place, I squeezed around him, desperate to hold on to him. “Fuuuck, Lydia. Do that again, and I’ll deny you…Oh, fuck it—please do that again!” I smiled and couldn’t help but let go of a breathy giggle as I complied with his request.

  Dylan fucked me like he meant it. He always meant it, but since our over-the-top confession of love at Primrose Hill, every time we’d made love, no matter how adventurous, kinky, or brazen, the reverence of our feelings for each other was always there, making it deeper. But this time, we were in it for no more than the fun of it. It was sex as celebration. Our feelings were by no means forgotten, but they weren’t the point. This—this was a reward, not a profession. This was strictly fun. I was pretty sure that when I came I screamed his entire endless aristocratic name: Dylan William Lucas Hale. And when he came a moment later, I don’t think what he screamed was even words, or if it was, it wasn’t English.

  My body collapsed beneath his and sank into the luxurious mattress. He fell next to me and stroked my back. We lay there for several moments, catching our breath.

  “Baby, look at me,” he said. I had been facing the window, away from him, my eyes closed in recovery. I turned, and my hair fell in front of my eyes. He promptly brushed it to the side. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “You said that.”

  “I meant it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, basking in his pride. “So you got an expensive hotel room to celebrate my success? What were you going to do if we didn’t have anything to celebrate? What if I hadn’t gotten the money?”

  “Then I would’ve done the same thing, only to make you forget.” I looked at him staring back at me, and I was floating. I was completely blissed out, in love, gazing starry-eyed at my perfect boyfriend. Then I had the misfortune of catching the time on his enormous gold watch: 3:25 p.m.

  “Shit. I have to get back to work,” I said and let out a sigh. “I wish I could stay here with you all afternoon and do what we just did again and again.” I was already standing, pulling on my boots.

  Dylan sighed and stared at me appreciatively. “As do I.”

  “Where’s my blouse?” I asked, now stalking the room in my boots and bra, holding my skirt in a viselike grip. Dylan rose and helped me look. I was standing in the middle of the room, the tingly post-orgasmic feel quickly being replaced by anxiety at my need to get back to work. Then I saw the red silk poking out from the garbage can by the desk. I pulled it out, only to find one side smeared with what must have been Dylan’s lunch. “Curry?! You dropped my blouse in a curry?!”

  “Shit, baby. I’m sorry. I was distracted.” He glanced down at the blouse apologetically. He was stroking my shoulder, giving me these adorable and seriously smoldering puppy-dog eyes. I sighed in resignation.

  “Do you have a spare shirt in your car?” I asked. Dylan always kept spare clothes handy—he was constantly going from meeting to meeting, and he was Captain Prepared. He nodded. “Good, then give me yours.” He looked at me, eyebrow raised, but clearly didn’t dare disobey.

  As Dylan texted Lloyd to retrieve a clean shirt, I stood in front of the mirror and tweaked, stretched, fussed, and pulled at his bespoke pale blue button-down. I somehow managed to twist it into a kind of collared wrap shirt that tied at the small of my back. I rolled up the sleeves into tight cuffs above my elbows and layered my necklaces over the shirt, hoping they’d distract anyone from noticing that I was clearly wearing a man’s dress shirt.

  “Impressive,” said Dylan, standing behind me, his hands resting on my hips and looking into the mirror with me. “Are you sure you’re not interested in the design side of fashion?”

  I turned around and settled into his arms just as a knock at the door announced Lloyd’s delivery of Dylan’s shirt. I waved at Lloyd with a smile before he let the door close, leaving us alone in the room once again…“I should have taken the clean one,” I said, eyeing Dylan as he unboxed the freshly laundered shirt.

  “No. This is better,” he replied, looking at me sternly as he put on the shirt. He pulled me back into him, buttoning his shirt one-handed so he could keep me trapped. “This way you’ll smell like me the rest of the day.” I hid my smile in his warm chest. “Come on, let’s get you to work.”

  We stood outside the hotel for a moment, both of our cars behind us, ready to take us to our respective workplaces. He brushed his fingers under my chin, and I reflexively looked up into his waiting eyes. I got one sweet kiss, a deep pressing of his lips onto mine, and we parted.

  I wasn’t a half a block from the hotel before my phone rang.

  “Miss me already?” I answered.

  “Always.” I could hear him smiling. “But that’s not why I’m calling. I forgot to mention that I won’t be home until late tonight.” It was Monday, and we’d settled on weekends at mine and weekdays at his—I couldn’t deny the advantages of a housekeeper, especially on weekdays.

  “Oh? What’s going on?”

  “A meeting with my security team, and then I’ve got a dinner. Might go late. You’ll be in my bed when I get home, damsel?” He wasn’t usually so vague, and actually I’d been accompanying him to these dinners lately. I was quiet.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I asked, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted asking. If he wanted me there he would have asked me.

  He was quiet for a moment. “Tonight is business. You’d be bored, trust me.”

  “I’ll just go to my place—we can see each other tomorrow night.” It didn’t make sense for me to go to his place if he wasn’t going to be there anyway. Plus, the little nagging part of me that wasn’t quite ready to move in with him was getting its turn at the microphone. Sometimes I felt this little tug-of-war in my brain—one side saying to never leave Dylan’s side, the other hastily retreating to my own independent world.

  “Lydia.” He was using his I’m-the-boss tone, which was sexy as hell in the bedroom but drove me crazy outside of it.

  “What, Dylan?”

  He sighed deeply on the other end of the line. “Christ. I’m having dinner with my father. It’s about family business…He’s been impossible lately.”

  “Oh.”

  Three weeks after seeing his parents at the party, and I still knew next to nothing about them or Dylan’s relationship with them, except that it wasn’t exactly rosy. I knew he’d been seeing his father a lot lately—he’d referenced lunches and weekday meetings, and I knew the difference I saw in him in the wake of these encounters. He was tense. Frustrated. Cold. He emerged as the hardened Dylan I saw with other people. The ruthless, closed-off, my-way-or-the-highway architect and businessman. I’d asked him a few times, probed gently for him to tell me more, but I never got more than a vague huff or disgusted grunt.

  “I’d really prefer to come home to yo
u than to an empty bed,” he said in a way that, even if I didn’t know the details, somehow spoke to everything he wasn’t saying about the dinner.

  “I’ll be there.” I could almost hear the weight on his shoulders lighten as I said the words.

  Chapter 3

  I expected the remainder of the workday to be uneventful. I probably could have told Hannah I’d finish up the emailing and phone calls I had to make from home—she probably even expected me to hide away somewhere and regroup after the pitch meeting with Giles Cabot. The truth was, I only went back to the office for two admittedly selfish reasons.

  The first was that one of Hannah’s apprentice designers was doing some final tweaks on a dress I was borrowing for an event that Friday night with Dylan. Hannah had been incredibly gracious three times already, letting me borrow and alter dresses from The Closet. The sad truth was that I couldn’t afford one dress that would be appropriate for the kinds of parties and dinners Dylan took me to, let alone several. The first few times I’d figured out ways to dress up things I already owned, but I quickly ran out of options. And the salary of a second assistant didn’t exactly allow for the purchasing of designer clothes. For the party Dylan was taking me to that Friday, Hannah had offered me something she’d been working on for an upcoming collection. Hence, the extensive tweaking.

  And second, Josh had just come back that afternoon from a vacation in Marbella, Spain, where he’d been for two long weeks. I was dying to see him. Fiona and I had received one cryptic postcard at the office with a picture of a beach at sunset on the front and the words Sand EVERYWHERE. XO—Joshy on the back. We needed the story.

  At that moment the three of us stood in The Closet while the apprentice designer tweaked, Fiona and I riveted by the play-by-play Josh was giving us, down to detailed descriptions of every tropical-themed cocktail imbibed and outfit worn.

  “Blimey,” Fiona responded once Josh had finished his retelling. “I mean, you’re a massive whore, obviously. But well done, you.”

  “You don’t understand, Fee. Fernando is hot,” replied Josh, closing his eyes as if remembering at that moment. “The most ravishing tosser I’ve seen. He’s Dylan hot,” he added, looking right at me, just daring me to judge him in light of this new information. I blushed on cue. I mean, I wasn’t going to argue with him. Dylan was hot.

  As we stood there gossiping, Hannah’s apprentice was resewing a thin strap onto the emerald-green satin silk cocktail dress I was to wear. It was a 1920s boudoir–inspired dress—simple, clingy, brilliant green silk hitting above my knees, strategic pin tucks around my hips, with bejeweled broach-like clasps linking the thin straps to the bodice. It was basically backless, the fabric coming into a deep curve that hit just above my derrière. It was, without a doubt, the most unique and startlingly sexy thing I’d ever worn.

  “Well, if that’s true”—I laughed at Josh while trying not to move my shoulders too much—“then it couldn’t be helped. And I’m certainly not in any position to judge.”

  “Seriously, lovey,” Josh said, rolling his eyes at me. “Have you agreed to move in with that scoundrel of yours yet?” Then he quickly added, “Fuck all, that dress is slutty. I mean classy, but slutty. Lydia, you look ferocious in it.” I giggled in response, so thrilled to have his exuberance back in-house.

  But when I thought about his question, I gazed at the floor and shook my head, hoping this line of conversation would end. It hadn’t taken long for things to get weird at the office in terms of the whole me-dating-an-aristocratic-celebrity thing. Or maybe it was just that I felt awkward about it—I couldn’t forget that stunned, stargazing look that had appeared on Fiona’s and Hannah’s faces when I’d first told them I was dating Dylan Hale. Ever since, I’d felt keenly aware, probably too aware, that it was a thing.

  I felt I had to walk a fine line—if I said too many good things about how it was going with Dylan, then I could be perceived as bragging. If I didn’t say anything at all, then it looked like I was haughty. So I tried to keep it light or blasé, didn’t dwell or go into details. When I’d told Josh and Fiona that Dylan had asked me to move in with him right after we’d made up from our fight, they’d both been shocked—as they should have been. It’s bonkers to move in with someone you’ve been dating for a few weeks. But it was more than just the craziness of the idea. Dylan’s world was full of new territory—it was a world where people went starry-eyed at the mention of his name, a world with archaic social rules and where people with cameras hid behind bushes, a world where I had to keep secrets about threatening emails. It wasn’t a world I knew, and I didn’t like not knowing. I felt like I had to get a grip on it all before I went moving in with anyone.

  Keeping the balance between the Dylan world and my old just-Lydia world was frankly bizarre. As it was, I was standing before them getting fitted for a gown designed by our boss, not for a work reason, but because I was attending the year’s biggest art-world party at the Serpentine Gallery—an event whose guest list had been locked in place six months earlier and which was promised to be covered in Vanity Fair’s “About Town” column. There were people who’d give their left arm to get into this party, but because Dylan was Dylan, he’d simply called and told them he’d be bringing a date. It was like I was leading a double life—by day I slogged away over email, feverishly trying to make it in the early stages of my career, and by night I was chauffeured by Frank in a Jag. The contrast made my head spin, made me feel like I had to keep track of who I was.

  As I stood there, I realized I hadn’t yet told Josh and Fiona about the store—I’d momentarily forgotten one of the details I should be sharing with them. Josh would be thrilled. He was always enthusiastic about Hannah expanding the business—it helped quell his constant fear of “getting sacked.” And while Fiona hadn’t said much about the idea, the plan would benefit us both—less crazy running back and forth to Hannah’s studio for fittings, less one-on-one interaction with the likes of Amelia Reynolds and her posse of posh, snobby socialites. I was about to tell them when Fiona piped up.

  “God, I’m so jealous of you two twats,” she said quietly, picking lint off of her sweater and not looking either of us in the eye.

  Hannah’s apprentice had finished with the dress, and I was sliding back into my clothes behind a Japanese screen. I peeked my head out. “Fiona? What’s going on? Aren’t things going well with you and Ben?” I could see now that she was fighting off crying. She was a pro at holding back emotion and burying it under her Yorkshire wit, but I could see it.

  “Ahh, it’s fine,” she quickly said, straightening. “He’s just being a plonker, is all. You’ll have to take my word for it, Lydia—guys who are our age and don’t have heaps of money can be right idiots.”

  I wasn’t imagining things. I definitely heard the subtext—somehow I wouldn’t understand because my boyfriend was older, rich, and supposedly perfect. “Well, I’m happy to listen, if you want to talk?” I said, to which she shook her head slightly, picked up her bag, and headed back to our office.

  By the time I sat at my desk to wrap things up for the day it was nearly seven. Hannah had ended up sending an office-wide email about the store, announcing that as soon as I found retail space, I’d be moving to work from there. Fiona, who’d been quiet the rest of the day, had left shortly after, leaving me in a quiet office, checking things off my to-do list.

  Knowing Dylan was out for a work thing and dinner with his father, I hadn’t rushed, and there was a lot to tie up after the presentation. I was about to shoot off a thank-you message to Mr. Cabot when I heard the familiar ping of a new email waiting for me. I saw the new bold line in my inbox, and I immediately got chills.

  The sender was once again unknown—a series of jumbled numbers and letters—and the subject line read: Don’t be fooled. When I opened the email, I saw only one line of text: CAN YOU TRUST HIM?

  Below the words was a crystal-clear photograph of Dylan outside a restaurant with a man in a dark suit and long dark co
at. I recognized the restaurant—a pizza chain in Trafalgar Square, not at all a place Dylan would go with any of his friends or clients. It looked like they were in a heated exchange, and the man was pressing a large envelope into Dylan’s hand. If it hadn’t been for the clear date stamp on the photo I wouldn’t have thought much of it. Dylan out to dinner with some other business dude? A person who looked less than pleased with whatever Dylan was saying? That was pretty much Dylan’s life when he wasn’t with me. But the date was a night when he had said he was in Amsterdam for a meeting about a new building. A Thursday. I remembered it well because it was the first night we’d spent apart since we’d said I love you. I’d seen him that day, and he’d been wearing the tie I now saw in the photo in front of me, a tie I’d given him.

  He’d lied to me.

  * * *

  I stared at the screen and noticed my chest rising and falling rapidly. My breath quickening. A pit settling in my stomach. My immediate instinct was to feel like a fool. I’d been here before—on the receiving end of a message from the world that Dylan was lying to me, that he wasn’t who I thought he was. The gut punch of finding out he was engaged to Amelia.

  But then I remembered: I’d been here before, and the world had been wrong. Dylan hadn’t lied to me then, and I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt now.

  I immediately took a screen shot of the email, suspecting that, like the last one, if I tried to save it, it would simply disappear. I attached the screen shot to a new email to Dylan with the subject line: Another email.

  My phone rang within the minute.

  “Baby, when did you get this?” Dylan asked as soon as I’d answered.

  “Just now,” I said. I heard him tell someone else in the room with him that I’d just received the email; then it sounded like he was stepping away from that person, moving.

  “I have my people looking at it—it’s perfect timing. I was meeting with my security and IT.” Dylan was speaking to me as though we were on a fact-finding mission together, like we were Mulder and Scully solving mysteries, one disturbing clue at a time. That somehow there was such a thing as the “perfect timing” to get an email like this. Only the information I needed at that moment was not going to come from his IT or security people. And it was less about who had sent the email than what the email contained. I needed him to show me that I wasn’t a fool for giving him the benefit of the doubt.