Beauty and the Bastard: A Royal Bad Boy Romance

by Annette Fields

  Beauty and the Bastard

  A Royal Bad Boy Romance

  by Annette Fields

  Thanks for choosing to read Beauty and the Bastard! I hope you enjoy it.

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  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events reside solely in the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters are eighteen years of age or older.

  ©2016, Annette Fields. No portion of this work can be reproduced in any way without prior written consent from the author with the exception for a fair use excerpt for review and editorial purposes.

  This title is for adults only. It contains explicit sex acts, adult themes, and material that some folks may find offensive. Please keep out of reach of children.

  Beauty and the Bastard

  A Royal Bad Boy Romance

  by Annette Fields

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  STELLA

  TEN YEARS EARLIER

  Mum always told me I could marry a prince one day. But even if I didn’t, being a member of the royal family was a great privilege. I could use my position to do great things in the world. Our family’s nobility could be traced back 600 years and did many a great thing across those centuries.

  That’s nice enough but what little rich girl doesn’t dream of marrying a prince, complete with a fairytale wedding?

  I positioned my dolls next to each other, bringing their faces closer slowly to seal that undying love with a kiss.

  My whole, innocent world was ripped away from me that day.

  Dad was at work. He was an extremely important person in the Queen’s Cabinet and often worked late. Mum and Janie, my nanny, were having tea in one of the sunrooms while I played with my dolls on the floor. For some reason, I was especially enamored with the idea of marrying a prince that day.

  “When do I marry the prince, Mum?” I asked for probably the 100th time.

  “Well, you two should become friends first. Then you can talk about marriage when you’re adults.”

  “We are friends,” I insisted. “I went to his birthday party.”

  Alexander, the Crown Prince of Amberfall. Five years older than me and already devastatingly handsome. Of course, he didn’t look twice at ten-year-old me but he was nice enough and remembered my name, which gave me hope.

  “Good. Ask for his hand when you’re eighteen.” Mum smiled into her teacup while Janie chuckled. At the time, they were too kind to tell me he would most likely marry a princess of Sweden or Denmark before a local Lord’s daughter.

  A sudden flutter of commotion from downstairs caused Janie to spill a few drops of tea. A door slammed and Mum looked up in surprise. We all looked at each other in confusion. It was awfully early for Dad to be home.

  His heavy footsteps, along with several others, marched closer to the sunroom like booming thunderclaps. When Dad appeared in the doorway, he looked ill. Usually handsome with a radiant smile, his lips pressed into a thin, tense line. The color drained from his face and large bags sat under his eyes.

  Several men in dark uniforms surrounded him. I recognized them as the Queen’s Police. For the first time in my young, sheltered life, an intense sensation of uneasiness filled me. Why did they all come home with him?

  “Janie, please take Stella to her room. I need to speak with my wife,” he said tersely.

  “Dad, whyyy?” I whined as Janie snatched me by the hand and proceeded to drag me out of the room. She pulled me past Dad in the doorway, and he gave me a sad look and a gentle stroke on the cheek as I went by. The Queen’s Police eyeballed me with glares that gripped my ten-year-old heart with fear. Even at that age, I knew something was very wrong.

  I resisted Janie as much as I could, pulling my arm away and dragging my feet as she scolded and pleaded with me.

  “What’s going on?” I begged her. “Why are the police here?”

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t concern you,” she snapped but I heard the fear in her voice as well.

  I looked back toward the doorway of the sunroom. Father had stepped inside, but the Queen’s police remained gathered around the doorway. One of them barked a command and I heard my father shout, “For fuck’s sake, let me speak to my family!”

  Never in all my young life did I hear him raise his voice or use bad words. He always said we were above speaking like that.

  Janie tried to distract me with dolls and stories while in my room, but I knew she was just as nervous as I was. Her watery brown eyes kept flickering to the clock on the wall. Time seemed to stand still.

  After what felt like an eternity, my parents finally came to my room.

  My mother smiled at me but through red, puffy eyes. She had clearly been crying. She sat next to me on the floor while Dad stood in the doorway. The Queen’s Police were nowhere to be seen.

  “Stella, darling, we’re going to be living somewhere new for a little while.” Mum’s voice cracked as she tried to sound happy.

  “Why?” I asked. Seeing her face made me want to cry too.

  “The queen feels it’s best for us,” Dad answered, his voice low and bitter.

  “But for how long?” My mother’s sad face and my dad’s grim entrance only compounded the fear in my young mind

  “We don’t know, sweetheart.” Mum’s eyes welled with tears again.

  “We have to leave tonight.” Dad glanced nervously down the hallway.

  “Tonight?!” I shrieked in a panic. I wouldn’t have time to say goodbye to any of my friends, let alone Prince Alex!

  “It’ll be an adventure!” Mum tried so hard to be strong and positive. She made another strained smile. “We’ll have a new life.”

  That sounded awfully permanent as the fear began settling in my stomach.

  “What do you mean?” I asked with a high, shaky voice.

  I saw Mum’s internal struggle etched clearly on her face. “We’re not royals anymore, dear. We’re… just ordinary people.”

  “Can I still marry the prince?” Without a having a clue as to what was happening, it seemed like a fair question to ask.

  Two tears fell from my mother’s eyes as she drew in a ragged breath. My father stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders as she cried softly for a few moments before raising her head again to answer me.

  “I’m afraid not, dear.”

  ***

  Even if they did tell me everything, I couldn’t grasp the severity of the situation at that age. All I knew was it seemed bad. Really bad.

  Under the close wat
ch of the Queen’s Police, we packed our few essential belongings. One officer followed me and Janie as we packed clothes, books, toys and snacks for the journey. It felt like being haunted by a stern, sharply dressed ghost. Two of the uniformed guards each followed my parents closely from room to room, their gloved hands never leaving the weapons on their belts.

  We left in the middle of the night, hours past my bedtime. My eyelids drooped so heavily I almost didn’t get a final look at my home as we left. The grand castle I was born in and lived my whole life, along with my father and grandfather. Our ancestors built it hundreds of years ago and we were leaving it forever.

  The Queen’s Police ushered us into a large, black car. It almost felt like a kidnapping.

  “Where are we going?” I was almost too afraid to ask.

  “Our new house is in the country. You’ll be able to run around and play in the woods, and pick flowers in the field.” Mum stroked my hair in her lap while my Dad said nothing, but I could feel his presence in the seat across from me.

  The last thing I saw before my eyes closed were his clenched fists on his knees.

  I dreamed of running through the castle garden, my real home. At first, Janie chased me in a spirited game of tag but when I looked back, a dark, scary shadow was right on my heels. I ran for my life toward the castle, but it had disappeared. I spun around desperately looking for my home, my safe haven, while the shadow monster caught up to me. It towered over me, a black, shapeless plume of smoke. I was just about to be devoured when I woke up with a start.

  Despair washed over me as I realized we were still in the car that stole us away. I’d never see my beloved home again.

  The dark-tinted windows blocked out the sunlight, keeping the interior dark and gloomy. It dawned on me the Queen’s Police and this car represented the shadow monster in my dream. This was the darkness that took my happiness away.

  I drifted in and out of sleep for several more hours while my parents and Janie never seemed to sleep a wink. When the car finally slowed to a stop, I was afraid of what laid outside. A dungeon? Some forced labor camp like I read about in the history books?

  Mum gripped my hand tightly when we exited the backseat. When I saw our new home my spirits lifted a tiny bit.

  It was much smaller than our castle but reminded me of our summer cottage on the coast. A charming, two-story wooden cabin with a porch that wrapped around it like an American plantation house. The air smelled clean and fresh while birds chirped in the surrounding forest. If I convinced myself this was a long holiday, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  As we settled in over the next few weeks, my parents remained tight-lipped about the reason behind our move. Dad didn’t speak much at all and Mum continued to smile and reassure me through her tears. So naturally I did what all young, curious children do best. I eavesdropped.

  Dad spent a lot of time on the phone and I heard several words being repeated while I listened. Things like “exile” and “economy” and “embezzle”. I looked up the words in the dictionary and tried to piece them together like a puzzle. It wasn’t hard to figure out my family had been exiled, but I didn’t know what the economy and embezzlement had to do with it.

  If they wouldn’t answer my questions when I asked, I decided to tell them what I did know.

  “I learned some new words today,” I declared to my family at dinner.

  “Let’s hear them!” Mum said with her fake cheer as she poured more wine. She drank an awful lot of wine lately.

  “Exile.” I looked directly at my father when I said the word. My first true act of rebellion.

  His fork clattered noisily as he dropped it. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Nowhere. I read it in the dictionary.” That was mostly the truth.

  “Have you been listening to my conversations? Answer me, Stella!”

  “Darling, don’t be so harsh. She’s bound to be curious about all this,” my mother piped up.

  After glaring at both of us for several long seconds, my father sat back, deflated. “I’m sorry for yelling, dear. But you’re too young to worry about this.”

  “When will I not be too young?” I demanded. “Is it true we’re not royals anymore? Why did the queen exile us?” All my confusion bubbled up to the surface as I asked the questions plaguing my mind for weeks.

  My parents looked at each other and said nothing for a few long moments.

  “Her Majesty is… a silly woman.” Dad broke the silence, struggling to find the right words. “And the country is changing. That’s all I’ll say about it.”

  Feeling defeated, I excused myself from the table. Nothing had been said that I didn’t already know.

  I asked Janie why they refused to tell me anything but she gave the same canned answers as my parents.

  “You don’t need the burden of knowing now, child. But eventually, you will.” She tucked the covers around me like when I was younger, and I pushed them back rebelliously. I hated that everyone was treating me like a child.

  “How long do we have to stay here? Will we ever go home?” I wailed.

  Janie patted my hand sympathetically. “This is your home now, Stella.”

  CHAPTER 1

  GAVIN

  I’m literally a royal son of a bitch.

  My mum’s a queen and she’s a bitch, but that’s as royal as I get. I’m a bastard. A product of an affair hidden away and swept under a rug to protect dear old Mum’s reputation, as if she still had one.

  Welcome to the Kingdom of Amberfall, my ass. This country’s been in financial ruin under my mother’s leadership for my entire life and that’s not just me bitching about my meager stipend from the Crown.

  I’ve actually done alright for myself but anyone can see the strain placed on the citizens. Schools have closed, industries laid off workers, and our inflation has gone through the roof. The only one who can’t see it is the woman sitting at the top of her gilded tower with all of her pawns in the government.

  That same woman placed me in a foster home the moment I was born and pretended I never existed. She never even gave me a name.

  So yes. The monarchy of Amberfall can suck my dick and I’m not the only one saying that.

  My foster family wasn’t much better. They cashed my stipend cheques from the Crown and blew it all on booze and lottery tickets until I turned 16. At that age, I could finally stand up to that cowardly asshole of a foster father. I squirreled away all my money until the day I turned 18, then walked out and never looked back.

  Who’s my biological father? Who fucking knows. I don’t look anything like the queen— a blonde, big-titted bimbo— so I figured I got all my tall, dark features from him. He must have been strong, born into a life of hard, manual labor. That would explain my height and my solid, muscular build that the barflies love running their hands over.

  From my mother, I must’ve inherited the ability to sleep around without giving a fuck about anyone but myself. It’s served me well enough. I get fresh pussy on tap and no one fucks with me when I’m done with their bullshit. It probably works out better for me as a lone wolf bastard than a failing monarch.

  The only good things about the royal family are my half-siblings, Prince Alexander and Princess Scarlett. But I just call them Alex and Scar because they’re my only friends as well as my siblings. They gave a shit about me when no one else did and that’s what makes them my family.

  Alex was always a clever little shit head, sneaking around the palace playing where he wasn’t supposed to. One day he practiced his lock picking skills on a file drawer in one of the royal offices. He found medical records indicating our mother’s secret pregnancy with me, and the organization where she gave me up.

  He was fifteen and I was thirteen when he started sneaking out to the city to visit me at my foster home. That sneaky little punk dressed up in shabby clothes like us public school kids and my guardians were none the wiser. I didn’t believe he was my brother or the Crown Prince until he took me for a rid
e in his motorcade. Before that, I’d never even sat in a car without peeling paint, squealing brakes, and ripped upholstery.

  Soon he started bringing our sister Scarlett out to visit me, too. When I was a teenager, they started encouraging me to stand up to my drunk ass foster father and take my money from the Crown like I deserved.

  Those two. They’re the only family I give a shit about.

  Ever since I left that shit hole on my eighteenth birthday, Alex and I have been meeting up in a local pub for drinks and general fuckery about once a week. I figured buying him rounds was the least I could do for helping me make the best of the shitty hand I was dealt.

  Over the years we’ve joked and ranted about how the country is going down the tubes. Working class folks like me were tense and preparing for a revolt, while Alex and Scar were trying to make the queen and her henchmen act like reasonable goddamn human beings.

  All of us were just waiting until shit hit rock bottom, or our mother abdicated the throne so Alex could rule Amberfall. But who knew when that would be.

  ***

  Alex didn’t hit the bars with me last night. He said he had some business at the palace so I got shitfaced on my own and stumbled home with some girl. Just another Friday night for Amberfall’s most eligible bastard.

  I woke up bleary-eyed to my phone screeching at me through my hangover at an ungodly hour in the morning. Of course, it was a text from Alex.

  “Scar and I are on our way over. Get decent. Important shit to discuss.”

  The time read 7:48am. Important shit on a hungover Saturday morning? What the fuck, bro.

  I looked over my shoulder to the other side of the bed. It laid empty except for the crumpled sheet and a faint scent of perfume. Good riddance. I didn’t need last night’s fuck fawning over my prince brother when he arrived.

  Love you bro, but you do tend to cockblock me when the chicks find out you’re the prince, I thought.