“You’re in love with him?”
Ella was silent.
“Well,” Mary said. “At least I made you realize your true feelings for him. Some good came out of this.”
Silence.
“I forgive you,” Mary said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You can kiss Lucas in public without feeling guilty. But don’t expect me to forget what happened.” She got up and walked away.
Ella sighed. Suddenly, she wasn’t interested in the game anymore.
Their team won the game which led to an extravagant after party at a hotel booked by one of the sponsors of the team. Ella didn’t feel much up to dancing but a very drunk Adam dragged her on the dance floor and she had no choice but to go along with it. She noticed a few girls throwing envious stares in her direction.
“Hey, Adam,” Ella said over the blaring music. “I think you shouldn’t keep your admirers waiting. They look like they’ll kill me any second.”
Adam turned to look at the girls and laughed. “Alicia Kyle looks exceptionally nice today.”
“Go on, then,” Ella urged.
“You just need an excuse to stop dancing and go skulk in a corner,” Adam accused. “And why are you so sober?”
Ella shook her head. “We’ll talk later, Adam. Now go get Alicia before that other boy does.”
“Not worried about any other boy,” Adam said before he walked away.
Ella turned away and headed for the door that would lead her to fresh air and silence. She only had a few minutes of solitude before a girl she mildly recognized came up to her. “Your friend Mary is in the bathroom. I think you should go see her.”
“My God, Mary, how many bottles did you have?” Ella asked the moment she saw her. She held Mary’s hair back as the latter girl threw up. Mary looked like she was ready to pass out.
“A few,” Mary replied when she was calmer. She sat on the tiled floor. “I’m such an idiot.”
“It’s alright, we’ll get you home,” Ella told her.
“Normally, I have you to keep check of how much I drink,” Mary continued in a low, faint voice.
“I’m still here.”
Mary heaved again.
Afterwards, Ella half carried Mary outside and in the direction of her car. She left Lucas a message and he joined her moments later. He relieved Ella of the duty of carrying Mary and lifted her up towards the car. When they reached their apartment, Lucas carried her to her bedroom.
They watched as Mary stirred. Then Ella turned to Lucas.
“I’ll stay here with her. You should probably leave. She wouldn’t like it if she wakes up and finds you here.”
“I don’t mind,” Mary murmured in her sleep. “He can stay.”
Ella stared at Mary before addressing Lucas again. “I still think you should leave,” she whispered.
“Call me if you need anything,” Lucas said.
An hour later, Ella still sat on Mary’s bed, waiting for her to wake up. Eventually, she did.
“I feel terrible,” Mary said.
“You look terrible.”
“Thanks,” Mary groaned. “Did the boyfriend leave?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t have to.”
“It’s alright.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
“It had only been an hour.”
Mary sat up. “I have a headache.”
“You should sleep.”
She nodded. “I will.”
Ella stood up.
“Thank you, Ella,” Mary said before she fell back on her bed again.
Hours later, as the morning sun broke through the blinds in Ella’s room, Mary knocked on her door. Ella was sleeping as Mary slid into the bed besides her.
“What time is it?” Ella murmured sleepily.
“6 am.”
“Are you better now?”
“Never been better.”
They lay next to each other just like they used to before they started fighting.
“I miss you, Ella Scott,” Mary said at length.
“I miss you too.”
“I know I said we can’t be friends like we were before… but maybe we can try.”
“I would love that.”
In the silence of the morning, the two girls drifted off to sleep again. Things seemed infinitely better after that.
Chapter 12
Lucas’ lips were warm against hers. They were perfectly synchronized with hers and felt good against her lips. Ella pondered on this fact as she kissed him. They were interrupted with the sound of the door banging open.
“I’m not a fan of PDA,” Mary mocked.
Ella smiled. “Hi, Mary.”
“Hello, Ella. Lucas.”
Mary stepped between them and draped an arm around each of them. “Let’s go, then. I’m excited for this exhibition.”
Mary felt a sense of relief when she made up with Ella. Ella and Lucas’ relationship didn’t bother her as much as fighting with Ella did.
Mary and Lucas helped Ella carry her paintings and art work into The Gallery. A few major artists were displaying their work too which is why all tickets were sold out and the halls were going to be packed in a few hours. The exposure was excellent for emerging artists like Ella.
As the exhibition progressed, Ella was in the middle of a conversation with a few people who had seemed interested in her work earlier but were now going on about their own art endeavors and how they had to give them up in favor of “real careers”. Ella listened politely and looked around for an escape which came minutes later in the form of Lucas.
“Mind if I borrow Ella?” he asked the group. Without waiting for an answer, he led her away into a small room at the end of the hall.
“You just saved my life,” Ella told him.
“I had my reasons for saving your life,” Lucas said. Ella was pressed against the wall and Lucas’ lips lingered near hers.
“Like what?” Ella breathed.
Lucas closed the distance between them as his lips crashed into hers. The kiss was urgent, a sign of how they had only a few minutes to steal from the exhibition before the manager would start wondering where Ella went. Ella reciprocated with equal fervor. Their tongues fought for dominance. Lucas pushed up her dress. A finger hooked her underwear to the side and nudged into her. Ella clutched his shoulder tightly as he rubbed and pumped with his fingers. Her back arched and she clung to his neck.
Ella could hear people walking around outside. As Lucas withdrew his hand, Ella looked around. There was a small couch in the corner of the room.
“I don’t like the idea of having sex on someone else’s couch,” Ella told him.
“Good,” Lucas replied. “Because I was going to take you against the wall.”
“Hurry up,” she told him. Unbuckling his belt, Ella pushed down his jeans. Lucas lifted up her right leg and wrapped it around his torso as he brought her down on his erection. She bit down on his neck to stop herself from crying out loud. Lucas lifted her leg up further which gave him deeper access. Ella stifled her cries and suspected that she might be hurting Lucas with the bites but he didn’t seem to mind. She thought her left leg would give way so she wrapped that around him too. He thrust into her easily, making her moan his name.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
“Ella?” She recognized the voice as that of the exhibition’s manager.
“Y-yes,” Ella managed to stammer.
“Are you in there?”
Lucas slowly moved into her again and Ella’s head rolled back. She knew he was doing it on purpose.
“She’ll be out in a moment,” Lucas replied loudly. Ella wanted to reprimand him for making the situation obvious but she didn’t have the strength too.
When they exited the room, Ella felt lightheaded. The manager didn’t mention her brief disappearance. Ella smiled inwardly. People should get used to it.
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Kiraz
Courtney Clein
Kiraz
Copyright 2016 by Courtney Clein
First electronic publication: November 2016
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Warning: Due to mature subject matter, such as explicit sexual situations and coarse language, this story is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older, and all acts of a sexual nature are consensual.
Kiraz
Chapter One: Giss and the Arranged Marriage
Giss frowned, leaning her elbows on the windowsill of her tiny stone-walled bedroom. Above lay a curtain of stars, and below the spirals, towers and banners of her parent’s castle. Dissatisfaction knotted in her stomach as she examined the scattered buildings of noblemen and peasants, spreading out to grain and corn fields in the distance, bordered by the sloping mountains and forests.
There were several reasons for the ball in her gut. First of all, her parents had named her Gissandra. Whilst the others in her family wore perfectly normal monikers, like “Belle”, or “Jasmin”, Giss was landed with one recommended for her by the family’s resident fairy godmother, because it was considered “lucky”. If that wasn’t enough to make her harbor a boiling resentment from an early age for all the teasing she received from her sisters, brothers, and virtually all the kids encountered in the thousand kingdoms – then, thrown into the deal, came the business of being the fifth princess in her absurdly extended family, and ninth in line to the throne. This fact was followed by the heavy expectation that at some point in her life, she would be married off to one of the princes in the neighboring kingdoms.
This didn’t stick well with Gissandra. So, when she passed her sixteenth birthday without a prospective suitor, her parents and family became mildly worried. When her seventeenth passed, and she had refused in total four noblemen and two princes of impoverished kingdoms, her mother had gradually started tearing out her own hair in despair, and her sisters treated her as if she was an ogre. Then there was that one prince who tried it on with her one drunken night, and she beat that one away with her sword, pants trailing around his ankles. The public humiliation of that event made the prince of Kor’s kingdom cut all ties.
When her eighteenth birthday came, and she had refused a court invitation from the Black Rose Prince, Ardemar, enough was enough. Since Ardemar hailed from the most powerful kingdom in the world, when her family found out about the rejected letter, they flew into livid fury at her impertinence. Even when Giss tried to explain that Ardemar showed all the warning signs of being a heinous tyrant, rumored to be plotting the murder of his family to obtain the throne (and had already caused several prominent deaths), they refused to listen.
So, she tried her best to completely avoid unnecessary contact with her family. However, in the middle of Giss’s study in her tower room, a timid knock came at her door.
“Yes? Who is it?” Giss folded her Theory of Knowledge book, quickly using her hands to comb back short dark hair as one of the castle servants entered, appearing slightly nervous. Giss examined her – a scrawny creature with grease stains on her uniform, obviously one of the kitchen workers.
The servant curtsied. “Your highness. I apologize for this intrusion. Your mother, her majesty, has requested your presence in the throne room. She and your father wish to discuss certain matters with you.”
Giss sighed. “Why can’t they just leave me alone? You would think by now they would have gotten the hint. I don’t want to do things by my family’s silly rules and customs.”
“Your highness!” The servant gasped, shocked. “You shouldn’t speak like that of royalty!”
“Why not? People with noble blood can be just as stupid as those without. I don’t see why I should pretend otherwise.”
The servant went bright red, like a beetroot, and Giss took a mean pleasure in it. She hated the submissive, frightened personalities of the staff, even though she partly understood it. Any servant caught disobeying or uttering treason could be executed. This fact led eventually to why Giss had dismissed any servants assigned to her – because they couldn’t handle what was labelled as her “radical” ways. Two had also been executed by her youngest sisters, who liked to eavesdrop on their conversations, so they could snitch on the juicy details.
Checking herself in the mirror, where dark brown eyes on a freckled, oval face examined for any flaws, Giss tugged at one snarl in her hair, before departing the chambers, the servant leading.
Inside the throne room in the middle of an opulent expanse of tapestries, statues and red carpets, sat her parents, King Patrick and Queen Beatrice Jael. Both wore plain clothes, rather than ceremonial garb, and gave Giss their patented regal stare when she came in, marching right up to the bottom steps that rose to the two throne chairs.
“Hi mother, father. You wanted to talk?”
Her mother winced at the grating tone of Giss’s voice. Her father scowled.
Queen Beatrice began the conversation. “Speak quieter, child, we can hear you just fine. And yes, we wish to speak to you over some… concerns we have.” Beatrice folded her arms. With her blonde hair, and bright blue eyes, she looked every inch a typical queen – and had passed that beauty gene to all her other daughters, except Giss. Her mother also only reached about five feet high, a becoming height for a queen. Giss hit the five foot seven mark, making her often equal to a lot of potential suitor’s heights. Most who courted her disliked being met directly eye to eye, instead of craning their heads upwards in an adorably appropriate way. She took a little too much after her father, in all the wrong directions.
“Is this still concerning prince Ardemar? I’ve already explained my reasons to you. Several times.”
The lack of respect made her mother cringe more, before she gathered herself together, and placed on her royal mask. “No. It is not about him. It’s about… your general ineligibility to the nobles in our kingdom, and those of neighboring realms. You must realize it is of great import to forge alliances. Marrying is the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a woman.”
Giss rolled her eyes.
“Maybe so, which is why I don’t want to be married to someone I don’t like. All the suitors that have come, I haven’t enjoyed them.”
“But why not? Some were incredibly fetching. Dashing, even. Some are from reputed kingdoms of great honor. Some have been wealthy nobleman. I would say you have had an amazing selection of young bachelors to choose from. Prince Ardemar was just the cream of the crop.”
“It’s not about where they come from or what they own, mother!” Giss said, exasperated. “It’s about whether there’s a brain stuffed in their heads, rather than fancy gold thread and fairly decent sword-fighting skills. There’s also the slight issue of not marrying an evil tyrant tainted by a really obvious evil fairy godmother curse.”
“I think,” her father cut across, leaning in his chair, “That you will continue rejecting the opportunities that come, regardless. Your excuses aside, your sisters have all married up. They’re all perfectly happy. You, however, don’t seem to be happy by anything.”
“My sisters aren’t exactly the sharpest sticks in the shed either, father. They’re mean, petty, and
addicted to status. They would marry a horse if it was rich enough.”
At this statement, her parents exchanged glances. “Who have you persuaded to teach you their unconventional ways this time, child?”
Giss cursed inwardly. Her use of words had given her away to her mother, as surely as a hound on the trail of a fox. Reluctantly, she admitted, “The court philosopher. I thought it would be more interesting than learning about embroidery or the half a dozen different ways to curtsy.”
“He will be fired,” her mother said, in a tired voice. “Giss, you must stop doing these radical things. You are a princess. Act like one.”
“Technically, I am. Acting like one. Since I’m a princess.” Giss stood defiantly, anger bubbling inside. Most teachers she had reined in over the years had been found out and dismissed, if they taught something unrelated to princess affairs. That left the carpenter, sword master, blacksmith, court lawyer, swimming instructor, banker, pastry chef, and now the philosopher out of range. At least this time, she had hung onto her tutor for a good two months.
“You can try to be clever, but you frustrate us. Really. You have been given freedom to choose, but you flaunt your ways and disrespect your family. Enough is enough. So, here’s what is going to happen,” her mother said, with venom dripping, “You no longer have a choice. We have found another prince willing to court you. You will marry him in three weeks. He’s from the smaller neighboring kingdom, Tynewall. They’re new and desperately seeking to establish allies, as their borders lead into giant and ogre country. They have access to tin mines, so this match up will be a great benefit to both kingdoms.”
Giss opened her mouth, then shut it, struggling to control her fury. “So,” she said between clenched teeth, glaring into the icy blue eyes of her mother, “This how you choose to handle the situation?” She then turned her disapproval on her father.
“You didn’t make this easy for us,” he implored. “Please understand. We want what is best for the kingdom and our people. You – your antics shake up the court. People mock you in the streets. People hate you. There are young girls who want to claw out your eyes for even daring to turn down prince Ardemar – including your sisters. This is to save your dignity, to prove you are not a black sheep in our family.”
Romance: The Bad Boy Affair: A Second Chance Romance Page 52
