Royal Disaster

by Parker Swift

  Oh god.

  Thirty more seconds and he had me just the way he wanted: arms splayed and thighs spread, my feet resting on the mattress, my pussy on full display. Suddenly that soft bathroom light felt like too much. I’d never been this restrained before. Or this exposed without any hope of hiding.

  “I can’t imagine this is typical Humboldt Park behavior.” I smirked at him. “Aren’t the ghosts shocked right now?” I heaved out. My breath felt short, like my vulnerability was registering in each tiny corner of my lungs.

  Dylan smiled and shrugged. “It’s an old house. I’m sure the ghosts have seen plenty.”

  A sheen of sweat, purely from anticipation, and the tiniest hint of fear—the good kind—coated my forehead.

  “Dylan,” I started breathily.

  “Shh, baby.” He trailed one finger down between my breasts, landing it right in my slick slit. “So wet for me. I love this little pussy, you know that?” I gasped and threw my head back only to be stopped by the high headboard. “Watch—I want you to watch everything.”

  Fuck, I was so primed. Just by virtue of being tied up this way, exposed to him, the very fact of my inability to do anything to curb my arousal fueled it. I looked down to see his finger sliding in and out of me, spreading my wetness, and I had to close my eyes. I was raw, on the brink.

  Dylan was still fully dressed and I was trussed up like some kind of trophy on his wall. He removed his finger and leaned back over the bed to retrieve something else and returned with a small pink vibrator.

  “Dylan, I can’t handle—”

  “You can,” he said matter-of-factly. He switched on the toy—I could hear its subtle hum—and he slid it into me. I wanted to writhe; I wanted to squirm. But I couldn’t even lift my ass. I clenched my stomach muscles, trying to do anything to cope with the sudden sensations, but nothing worked. I had no purchase, no control. Dylan placed his broad palm between my breasts. “Shh, baby.” He was cooing, calming me like I was a spooked horse. “Just take it.”

  The vibrations weren’t enough to get me where I needed to be. Instead the vibrator sharpened everything, urged me to the edge of the cliff while also holding me back. There was nothing tender about this, nothing sweet. It was brutal and passionate and the hottest thing that had probably ever happened to me.

  “Dylan!” I begged, but in response to my begging, he retreated, got off the bed. “What the—?” I objected. “Where—?” I moaned.

  “Shh.”

  “Dylan! Stop fucking shushing me and start fucking fucking me!”

  He slapped my thigh, making me jolt. Then the man had the nerve to say “Tsk, tsk,” shake his head, and actually leave me there, wanting. He went into the bathroom and closed the door! I was about to kill him. I felt sweat run between my breasts and wished like hell I had the use of my arms, not just to relieve the tickle of sweat rivulets on my body but also to be able to touch myself.

  Dylan emerged from the bathroom only in his trousers, and I thanked all that was holy that he was back. But then he lifted the club chair and placed it at the foot of the bed. He retrieved his water and sat down, legs crossed, and looked like he was settling in for a goddamn movie or something.

  “You have to be kidding me,” I breathed. “Please.”

  “What’s the rush, baby?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You’re fucking beautiful like this. I could watch you all night.”

  “No,” I groaned. “Dylan!”

  My pleasure was pulsing through me, none of it enough, all of it delicious. Thankfully he had no intention of torturing me indefinitely, which was good, because I was a hair away from charging him with the crime of orgasm denial, which had to be a real thing.

  “Okay, okay, baby, I got you.” Done teasing me, he said the words softly while crawling onto the bed and approaching me on all fours. He kissed his way up my leg and landed at the crux of my leg and my sex. I was breathing so hard. I needed him inside me. A hundred desperate snarky protests rolled through my mind, but they all remained just out of reach. I couldn’t focus enough to speak. All attention was on us, on the feverish anticipation coursing through me.

  He withdrew the vibrator, inciting as much relief as yearning, and replaced it with his tongue. “God, baby, you’re drenched. You taste so fucking sweet.”

  Dylan proceeded to do that thing with his tongue, and in a flash I was thrown into oblivion. Had I been able to move I surely would have knocked him out with my pelvis. The pinpricks, the starbursts, the goddamn supernovas that were dancing over my body took me over. I crested, but the craving was still there. The orgasm was no match for the need he’d created—no orgasm would have been. It was so good, but it wasn’t enough.

  “More!” I cried.

  “Oh, you’re getting more,” Dylan said sternly, playfully, and before I knew what was happening he dragged his finger through my wetness and plunged it into my rear. I groaned—it felt fucking amazing. I felt so possessed. He fucked me there with his finger and went back to work on me with his tongue.

  “No, I want you,” I begged. “Not fingers. Not your mouth.”

  In a second, Dylan untied the fabric around my thighs, freeing me. He hurried out of his trousers and deposited me firmly on top of his hard, waiting cock. Moving like some kind of gymnast, he had me riding him in the blink of an eye. My wrists dragging lengths of velvet rope, my hands gripping his shoulders, and his hands on my hips, I leaned back and took him as deeply into me as I could.

  I know I started to scream, because Dylan pulled me down to him, covering my mouth with his own. “Shh, baby. I love your screams, but they’re only for me.” I kissed him to stop myself from making noise.

  Dylan pushed me onto my back and quickly flung my legs over his shoulders. The moment he thrust into me, that one perfect moment when he hit me square-on, the deep need I’d been a slave to broke into a thousand pieces. I have no idea how long it went on or when Dylan came. It was satiation embodied, and I was lost to it completely.

  When the world finally came back into focus, I had collapsed into his firm muscular side, my head on his chest, most of my body draped over his, and he was gingerly untying the fabric from the easily accessible wrist on his chest. When he was done, he rubbed it tenderly and kissed it.

  Then he lifted me effortlessly and repositioned me on his other side, giving him access to the other wrist. When I was completely disentangled, he moved me so I was draped entirely on top of him, my legs between his own, my front pressed into his, my cheek resting on his firm chest. I was dreamy, barely lucid, and relishing our contact. My hands were tucked under his back, and he was drawing slow, lazy circles on my back.

  “You all right, damsel?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You handled tonight beautifully, baby.”

  “Which part?” I asked, and I could feel his chuckle vibrating in his chest.

  “All of it, you cheeky thing. I know my parents aren’t the easiest people to be around. You even got my mum to laugh—I haven’t seen that in a long time.”

  “I did?” I hadn’t noticed her laughing, which was probably a testament to how odd and foreign and formal the whole evening had felt to me.

  “You did. When you were telling them about your trip to Peru in college, that story about the salt in the tea. You were brilliant.”

  “I don’t know about that, and I am still pretty sure your parents don’t like me.”

  “You let me worry about my parents. You’re right where you belong, Lydia.”

  “What? Naked and pressed up against your male member?”

  “Precisely,” he said, and I scoffed.

  * * *

  “I can feel your eyelashes on my skin.”

  Dylan’s words startled me—I had been sure he was still asleep. I was just waking up. The sun only just slipping between the heavy drapes in his ornate childhood bedroom, a column of brightness in an otherwise dark room of red-and-gold brocade. Dylan’s whole body was cleaved to my own, as though we�
��d tried to maximize contact in our sleep. His breathing was steady, and his heavy, broad hand heated the expanse of my back.

  “And now I can feel your smile,” he continued and moved his hand into my hair as his other hand went to rest on my ass.

  “Shh,” I said, wanting to fall back into sleep. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sleeping.”

  “Babe, it’s already eight, and it would be wise for us to get downstairs,” he started and rolled to hover over me. “I don’t want to stay here all day—I want you back in London, where I can coax that pretty little cunt of yours into submission. Again.”

  “Funny,” I said and closed my eyes again, not wanting to move from my current position.

  “Come on, damsel. Let’s clean you up.”

  “You know,” I said, remembering the night before, “I can exact my own torture.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he replied, then he stepped back, taking a deep breath as though to calm himself down. “Let’s dress, damsel. It’s time for breakfast.”

  Chapter 15

  By the time we were both dressed, I had remembered where we were, that outside his bedroom door were his parents and the castle that was his birthright. I found myself grabbing his hand as we left his suite of rooms and entered the hallway, concerned that I might actually get lost in the place. When I attempted to turn to the right, towards the grand central staircase, Dylan pulled my hand to the left. “This way—we have to go down a rear staircase over here.”

  “Why?”

  “Second Sunday of every month the main house is open to the public.”

  “Like a museum?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But not the whole house?”

  “Certainly not,” he explained as we wound down the narrow back staircase. “All the big estates began doing it during the Second World War. Now it’s a public service, so people can get a bit of history, some proper English heritage. The visitors book weeks in advance. They come to see my grandfather’s collection of cars—some are from before the turn of the century. They can see the central part of the house and the east wing.” I must have looked in want of a compass, because Dylan clarified and pointed. “That’s west, where we came from and where my parents, Emily, and I have personal apartments. That way”—he pointed in the opposite direction—“is east, where there are more guest apartments, a ballroom, billiards, a second larger library with a map room, among other rooms.”

  “Otherwise, does Hale Shipping support your family and the house?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Income from HS, other assets that my grandfather accrued, and income from the remaining tenants. We own parts of the village as well. Thankfully there are customs about not raising rents and such. Otherwise I’m sure my father would bleed the lovely people dry.”

  “You own parts of the village? Like the shops?”

  Dylan nodded again. “It’s not uncommon. My grandfather sold some land, but for the most part the tenancy is still intact. Some families have been with us for six generations or more.” God, six generations? I had no idea what my family had been up to six generations ago. It seemed impossible in this day and age that anyone did.

  “But I thought you said being the Duke of Abingdon was just a title, that it didn’t involve much work?” I recalled our first conversation in London, the night Dylan and I had embarked on our relationship. He’d made it sound as though being a duke was no more than pomp and circumstance.

  “We have an estate manager who takes care of it all, and with the right staff, the right organization, the place basically runs itself, or should. Ideally my father would know when to chime in and when to leave it be, but that’s not really his strong suit. In fact, Mrs. Barnes has told me some details about how my father seems to be running things that give me concern. We employ over two hundred people at various times of the year, nearly sixty year-round—there are a lot of people’s livelihoods at stake, and it’s an expensive enterprise.”

  “Two hundred?!” I asked, imagining the music shop my father had run with a friend when I was young, which had employed a mere four people. I suddenly realized why it was such an enormous responsibility being the duke, and why Dylan must find it so offensive if it was being done poorly.

  We landed in a vast warm green kitchen with a lovely large wooden table and huge windows looking out onto a small garden. Mrs. Barnes was at the stove, hovering over a pot of water. Dylan came up behind her and touched her shoulder.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Barnes. What can I do to help?”

  “Oh,” she started and smiled. “Good morning. You’re such a dear. Rosemary?” She was practically singing, and Dylan nodded and ducked out the back door. I looked puzzled for a moment—shouldn’t he be going to a cabinet or a refrigerator? But he quickly returned with a sprig of rosemary and handed it to Mrs. Barnes, who thanked him distractedly while she removed perfectly poached eggs from the pot. Dylan pointed to the door he’d just come through and simply said “Cook’s garden” by way of explanation. Because of course—why wouldn’t there be an entire perfectly located garden devoted to the cook’s needs?

  Dylan poured us coffees, and we sat at the big table and began munching on freshly baked bread with butter and jam. He leaned in to kiss my cheek, which I thought was sweet until I realized it was just a ploy to land a dollop of raspberry jam on my nose.

  “Dylan!” I scolded while giggling, wiping the jam from my nose and then promptly licking it off my finger. I stuck my tongue out at him, and just as he was laughing back at me, his father entered the room. Dylan stiffened, any trace of playfulness and humor disappearing.

  “Good morning, Father.”

  Mrs. Barnes put plates of poached eggs and rosemary potatoes in front of us, but before he could pick up his fork, Geoffrey said, “Thank you, Mrs. Barnes, but Dylan will be joining me in my office. He’ll breakfast later. Lydia, my dear,” he said looking at me now, “why don’t you eat and wait for him in the small library when you’re through?”

  I began to nod, but Dylan stopped me. “Baby, go wherever you’d like. I’ll find you, and I won’t be long.” There was a concrete-like hardness in his voice. The tension between father and son was so hot and so hard. And I was right smack in the middle of it.

  As soon as Dylan left the room, the whole place felt bigger. Without him, I felt like a tourist myself, in the walls of a giant forbidding museum. With him, it felt like it could be a home.

  I ate my delicious eggs, drank my coffee, and contemplated the total oddity of walking around a castle that had tourists milling about but where I’d had crazy kinky sex the night before. In London we had just found that sacred personal bubble where we could be us, and it had become so important so quickly, our defense against the flashbulbs and blog posts. But being at Humboldt expanded my understanding of that bubble, stretched its parameters. I could see more fully now who Dylan was, could get a hint of what he was contending with. This place was part of him, and he’d wanted me to see it, for better or worse. The worse was that it was harder to get a handle on where I fit in this sphere, with its archaic rules and estate managers. And there was the possibility that Dylan’s life here in this grand mansion was more real than the world we’d built back in London.

  I was grateful when Mrs. Barnes called me out of my thoughts. “Miss Bell, my dear,” she started.

  “Please, please call me Lydia, Mrs. Barnes.” She smiled at that. “I can tell how much Dylan loves you.” As soon as I said that, I realized Dylan had probably never said any such thing to her, that the level of impropriety of such a thing was probably vast, but oh well. Date an American, and you’re going to some frank talk about love and emotions.

  Mrs. Barnes stilled for a moment, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her eyes were even a bit misty. “Excuse me if I made you uncomfortable.” I tried to put her at ease. “But it would feel strange to me for someone so close to Dylan not to call me by my first name. But then again, I’ve been working on Lloyd for months, and he
still insists on ‘Miss Bell,’ so I’ll understand if you must.”

  “Nah,” she said, her northern accent rich and earthy. “Let’s have it be ‘Lydia’ and ‘Christine’ between us women, shall we?”

  “Christine,” I affirmed, smiling. “So you’ve been with this family for a long time.”

  She looked at me like she knew exactly where I was headed. “I’ve known Master Dylan his whole life, my dear.”

  I looked into my coffee and wished I could know what this woman knew about him.

  “I’ve never seen him this happy,” she said, and I looked up to her face, eyes wide. “Are you close with your family, Lydia?”

  “I don’t really have any,” I said. “I never knew my mother, and my father died earlier this year.” Suddenly grief filled my chest. Falling in love with Dylan and moving out of New York had dulled the ache of loss, but when it returned, it was like a flash flood. I gulped and tried to regain a little control. “But I was very close with my father. He was my best friend, really.”

  Mrs. Barnes put her hand over my own and prompted me to look into her warm maternal gaze. “I’m sorry you lost him—that is cruel, isn’t it, love? But it is wonderful that you had each other.”

  I nodded, and she looked contemplative, hesitant, before she continued. “Dylan is blessed that his parents are still alive, for many reasons, but they’ve led a different kind of family life.” I nodded again, trying to convey that I understood, that she didn’t have to say more if she didn’t want to. “Dylan will make an excellent duke someday, but I know it’s not all he could do with his life. That’s his cross to bear. Be gentle with him, dear. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said, gesturing towards the high ceilings and towards the door that led to the rest of the grand estate.

  “He’s a marvelous architect,” I said, “and he loves it so much.”

  “He is, and he does,” she agreed. “I wish he could see that his life doesn’t have to be either-or. His lordship expects Dylan to take over Hale Shipping, as I’m sure you know, but—” She stopped short. “I’m sure you know the gardens are open to the public today.”