by Parker Grey
“Doesn’t look half bad,” that rough, gritty voice says as I pour coffee into his mug.
“You did say strong,” I say, as sweetly as I can muster.
“Think you got it right?” he asks, smirking.
What an asshole.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me if I didn’t,” I say, still smiling as I pour the other three men coffee. They’re all good-looking despite their hangovers, but none of them makes my breath catch in my throat quite the way he does.
The jerk. Of course.
Just get them breakfast and be done with it, Ella.
He takes a sip as I place the carafe on the table. There’s something sensual about even that, the way his lips move, the way his eyes linger on mine.
“It needs sugar,” he finally says. “Got any?”
I point at the sugar container on the table, in plain sight. He looks at it, then takes another sip.
“Got any other sugar?” he asks, his eyes raking down my body. His three friends all smirk, and I feel my face heating up again.
“We’ve got Sweet & Low, Equal, stevia, and I think there’s some—”
He just laughs.
“Nevermind,” he says. “I’ll have the pancakes.”
They all order, and I practically sprint back to the kitchen. We’re finally getting busy with the breakfast rush, so Flynn’s just cooking, flipping things, and shouting questions at me. Thank God he doesn’t notice that I’m red-faced and flustered, because I’m absolutely positive there would be questions about it.
He was hitting on me, right? Asking me for sugar? It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that, in that way, but it’s the first time I’ve kind of considered it.
Not that I was really considering it. What exactly am I supposed to do, follow him into the men’s room and let him bend me over the sink? Let him pull my hair as he pushes my shorts down, sliding his fingers through my dripping wet—
“Excuse me, miss,” one of the old ladies calls, and I realize I was just staring at the wall, my panties slowing soaking through thinking about the things this total stranger could do to me in the bathroom.
“Could we please get the check?”
“Of course!” I chirp, and grab it out of my apron.
When the food comes up for the jerk’s table, I pretend I’m busy with my three other tables and beg the other waitress, Chloe, to give it to them.
She comes back wide-eyed.
“Jerks, right?” I whisper, checking an order against the ticket.
Chloe grabs me by the shoulder and turns me around.
“You could have told me that Prince Grayson was here,” she hisses.
I’m stunned. My mouth drops open.
“What?” I squeak out.
Chloe just makes an are you kidding me right now face, and Flynn comes over.
“Did you just say Prince Grayson is here?” he asks, spatula still in hand.
Chloe nods wordlessly.
“You gave them menus!” I whisper at Flynn. “You didn’t know either!”
“It was dark! They weren’t looking at me! I was in a hurry because your ass was late, girl!” he says, rolling his eyes. “Besides, Prince Grayson is one hot-ass hunk of man, and those boys over there are hungover wrecks.”
I disagree, having already thought several times this morning about that hungover wreck between my thighs, but I don’t say anything.
“Do we give them a discount?” Chloe whispers.
“Hell no!” Flynn says, darting his eyes at the table. “He’s richer than God, he doesn’t get a discount.”
“What do we do?” I whisper.
We all look at each other. Chloe and Flynn shrug.
“Make sure they get lots of refills?” she says. Flynn nods in agreement.
For the rest of the time they’re there, I’m super awkward. I don’t know if they’re here because they don’t want to be recognized, so I don’t say anything, but I know I’m acting weird and not just because looking at the guy makes me wet as a waterfall.
Instead of asking for the check, Prince Grayson just hands me an all-black credit card. I’m almost nervous to run it through our machine, because just this card looks like something way too fancy for me to touch.
When they’re finally leaving, I heave a sigh of relief. I just want to have a regular morning at work, not a morning where all I can think about is the incredibly sexy crown prince and the things I want him to do to me. Even though he’s a jerk.
I’m wiping down a table when I turn around, and he’s right behind me, that stupid smirk on his handsome face, that cocky look in his eyes. My breath catches in my throat, and I don’t say anything, just stand there like an idiot.
“What do you say to taking a well-deserved break?” he says, his voice low and growly. “You’ve been on your feet all morning, might be nice to be on your knees for a few minutes.”
I open my mouth, then shut it, turning bright red.
“I’d return the favor, naturally,” he says, still smirking. “Ever wondered why they call me His Royal Hardness? The rumors are true. Think of how you could brag to your friends.”
I look down. I can’t help it. I try not to read the tabloids, because ew, but everyone in the kingdom knows that Prince Grayson is legendarily well-endowed. Hell, he got photographed drunk and naked a few months ago, and Flynn waxed rhapsodical about his magnificent cock.
I didn’t look at the pictures. It felt wrong and weird, but right now I’m staring at the enormous bulge in his tuxedo pants, and even though I’m not exactly an expert on penises — okay, fine, I’ve never seen one in person — it seems like they can’t possibly be that big.
“What do you say?” he asks, putting one hand on the table behind me and leaning in. “Fancy a quick fuck before you get back to work?”
I duck to one side, heart hammering because I can’t believe he’s propositioning me like this. I’m a nice girl, a virgin, not some coked-up partier who’d say yes to having sex in the bathroom while I’m at work.
No matter how sexy this guy is. Even though he’s the Prince. I’m not swiping my v-card like this.
“No!” I manage to squeak out.
He just laughs.
“You just mean not here,” he says, still cocky as ever. “How about I pay off your boss for the rest of your shift, call my limousine, and you can find out what it feels like to come for royalty?”
I’m the color of a tomato, I just know it. My face is hotter than a furnace, my heart thumping in my chest.
“I have tables!” I say, then finally manage to duck around him.
I practically run into the kitchen, and I don’t come out until I’m completely certain he’s gone.
Chapter Four
Grayson
Declan, Beckett, and Kieran give me shit the whole way home because I couldn’t close the deal with some commoner breakfast waitress, and I roll my eyes and try to play it off. It’s not like I’ve never been turned down before. No one gets lucky every single time, but it’s sure an unusual feeling.
After all, girls flock to me. I haven’t chased anyone in years, because there’s simply no need. I’ve never met a girl worth going after like that, not when there are literally thousands of women who’d get on their knees for me in a heartbeat.
It’s nearing nine in the morning when we finally pull through the gates of the castle. The other three are staying here on an extended vacation — it’s a castle, so we’ve got the room, after all, and we stumble out of our limousine and through the garage door, getting looks from some of the household staff.
They’re carefully neutral looks, of course. The household staff aren’t idiots. They know better than to let what they’re thinking show on their faces, but I’m not stupid.
They’re thinking I can’t believe he’s getting home at nine in the morning again when I started dusting chandeliers at eight.
Well, some are thinking that. I’ve dallied with more than a few of the younger female members �
� all right, and some of the older ones because I like a cougar now and then — and they’re all wondering when I’ll ask them to my chambers again.
Beckett slaps me on the shoulder as he heads off to his guest bedroom, and Declan gives me a friendly shoulder-punch.
“Better luck next time, mate,” he says. “Maybe tonight we’ll go out and take the edge off, yeah?”
I know take the edge off means find another girl to fuck, and I grin in agreement.
“Sounds perfect,” I say, and we walk in separate directions.
My bedroom is more like a wing of the castle, a suite of a dozen rooms. Hell, I’ve got a conference room, a kitchen, a living room, three bathrooms and my own patio.
I toss my tuxedo into the dry-cleaning hamper and walk to the bathroom totally naked. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, going straight to bed after an all-night bender is just about the worst thing you can do.
Prince Grayson’s number one rule of living the high life? Take a shower after a night out, before you get in bed. You’ll thank yourself later.
My bathroom’s got its own jacuzzi, marble countertops, mirrors everywhere, the whole nine yards. It’s fucking fancy, but I just want to get clean so I hop into the standing shower, turn it onto hot, and lather up.
The second I close my eyes under the stream of water, I see her. The hot waitress, just slightly bending over our table, her shorts tight against her luscious ass for a split second.
And blood just fucking rushes to His Royal Hardness. I wish I knew what it was about that girl, but I’ve got no clue whatsoever. I just know that thinking about her makes me hard as fuck like no other girl has in a long, long time.
Maybe ever.
I wrap one fist around my cock, the hot water still hitting me full in the chest, and start stroking myself slowly. I try to imagine the girl from two nights ago whose name I either didn’t know or forgot: tiny, short, low-cut dress. No bra, fake breasts, nipples hard as rocks as she straddled me in the VIP section of the club we were in, not caring at all that virtually everyone could see her tiny thong as her skirt rode up.
But then I think about the waitress. Her pink lips, slightly open in surprise. The way she’d look at me if I unbuttoned the top of her uniform, maybe the way her eyelids would flutter as I kissed her neck...
I squeeze my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and command myself to think about the brunette. The way she was on her knees before the bathroom door even closed, the way she gasped with delight when she unzipped my pants and freed my monster cock, the way she inhaled me while looking up through her thick eyelashes.
And then she’s the waitress, and she’s not in the bathroom but she’s in my bedroom. She’s got one hand wrapped around the base of my cock as she licks the swollen head slowly, then puts her lips around it, sucking and licking. I put my hand on her head and push her down, slowly, until I hit the back of her mouth and groan out loud, the noise echoing through the shower.
I give up on trying to imagine the other girl. I’m too far gone thinking about the waitress, her lips around my cock as she sucks me harder and harder, her eyes begging me to use her, take her, claim her —
I come with a grunt, one hand against the shower wall, and I keep stroking until I’m totally spent and suddenly exhausted as all hell. I can tell that little jerk-off session isn’t gonna do it where the waitress is concerned, but it was better than nothing.
I rinse off one last time, get out of the shower, dry off, and fall into bed. I gotta have the energy to go back out tonight and really forget this girl, after all.
I haven’t been asleep for nearly long enough when there’s a loud banging on my door. I get up, not bothering to put on more than the boxer-briefs I’m wearing, and open the door to my suite.
It’s George, my father’s valet, and probably the person he trusts the most in the world. George doesn’t bat an eye at my state of undress, but if he’s here in person, I know I’m about to be in big fucking trouble from the other person in the kingdom who can actually create problems for me.
My father, of course. The King.
“Your father wishes a word with you, Your Highness,” George says. His face stays impressively neutral, though it’s not as if he hasn’t seen me in a far worse state before.
I run one hand through my hair.
“Right now?” I ask. The clock says it’s about four in the afternoon.
“Yes. He didn’t seem to think that you’d be indisposed,” George says.
What he means is you shouldn’t be asleep, it’s four in the fucking afternoon, but George would never ever use that sort of language.
But this might be bad. My father rarely wants to see me, and he never sends George to wake me up. I run my hand through my hair again, wondering if I can get out of this, but I think I’m stuck.
“Let me get decent,” I mutter.
“Of course,” George says, ever polite.
Fuck. This might be bad. Fuck.
Chapter Five
Ella
“You’re kidding me,” Flynn says, scraping off the griddle.
I’m standing on the other side of the service window, rolling napkins around silverware for tomorrow morning.
“He really hit on me that way,” I say, and shrug. “The man is famous for not being able to keep it in his pants, Flynn, I think I was just the closest available person with breasts and two legs.”
I don’t tell Flynn that for the rest of my shift, I couldn’t think about anything else. I didn’t really consider taking the prince up on his offer — if nothing else, my stepmother would find out and she’d probably lock me in the basement for a month — but all day I’ve been fantasizing about the enormous bulge in his pants.
I’ve been thinking about the prince, in his limousine, bending me over the back seat and sliding the head of that monster along my lips, one hand in my hair, holding me down. Making me absolutely delirious with anticipation before he finally pushed it inside me—
“Earth to Ella,” Flynn says again, waving a spatula in my direction.
“Huh?”
“I said, give yourself a little more credit, girl. And I said it about twenty times. Daydreaming?”
I blush. I’ve always hated that about myself — I blush way too easily.
“No!”
He grins.
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Prince Grayson’s a sexy-ass fox, girl. I’d let him fuck me in the men’s bathroom for sure,” he says, reaching for a rag. “Thomas would understand. Thomas would probably want to watch.”
Flynn winks at me, and I just blush harder. He laughs, because he loves getting a rise out of me.
“Well, it’s not like I’m ever going to see him again,” I point out. “And I wouldn’t see him again even if I had, you know, gone into the bathroom with him, so it’s for the best.”
Flynn just sighs dramatically, and I glance at the clock. It’s four-thirty.
Crap. I drop the silverware I’m holding back into its trays, and Flynn glances over.
“I gotta go,” I say. “You’re good here, right?”
He waves the rag at me.
“Which troll-beast needs you to pluck her nose hairs again because she can’t figure out which end of the tweezers to use?” he asks.
“Shhh,” I hiss, shooting him a glare. “Come on, don’t get me in trouble.”
“Everyone else is gone, you know,” he says.
“I’ve gotta make dinner, then make sure Peyton’s gown is pressed and ready,” I say. “She’s going to the opera tonight with some rich duke, I forget which one.”
“For her sake, I hope he’s blind,” Flynn says.
“Flynn!”
He just laughs.
“Go on, get,” he says, and I rush out the door.
I’m barely in the front door when the screeching starts, echoing down the wide foyer of my father’s mansion.
My deceased father’s mansion. Technically, that make
s it my stepmother’s, since she inherited everything because he didn’t leave a will, but I still think of it as his.
There’s not a lot of his that I have left, so it helps.
“Ella! Where is my flat iron? The ceramic one? Did you borrow it again? I swear to God my hair is an absolute nightmare!”
Peyton’s voice feels like an icepick to my eardrums, and I take a deep breath while I close the front door, trying to collect myself.
For the record, I’ve never borrowed her flat iron. My hair is naturally straight to begin with, and besides, I’m not insane. She’d probably skin me alive if I even asked.
“ELLA!!”
“I think I saw it in the middle drawer of your bathroom counter when I was cleaning in there last week,” I call.
There’s no answer, just angry footsteps stomping around upstairs. She doesn’t shout for me again, so I assume she’s found the stupid flat iron and I can get on with my day.
As quickly as I can, I head to my own room, a small one attached to the laundry room, change out of my uniform and into regular clothes. I pull my hair back into a bun again, then head into the kitchen so I can make dinner.
Slade is outside, sunning herself by the pool in a bikini that doesn’t really flatter her figure, but she likes to think it does. When she sees me through the window, she waves at me, then crooks her finger.
My blood boils, but I go see what she wants.
“I need a margarita,” she says. She’s wearing sunglasses, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even open her eyes again.
I’m tempted to say then go make yourself a margarita, but I don’t. She’ll tell her mother, and then I’d be in big trouble.
“Sure,” I say, and head back into the kitchen. There’s a pitcher of margarita mix in the fridge, and I mix Slade up a strong one — the sooner she gets drunk, the sooner she’ll fall asleep and leave me alone. She could easily do this herself, but why do anything yourself when your stepsister is practically your indentured servant?
