Royal Treatment (Royal Scandal Book 3)

by Parker Swift

  Emily looked to Lydia apologetically. “Sorry, but it won’t help to ignore it. And it’s bloody obvious by the picture of you two that you’re not just “casually dating” or whatever it is you’ve been trying to pull off for the last six months. Look, you two need to come clean. And not after a wedding. Not with some quiet private ceremony. Not with a fake engagement leading up to a fake wedding. You need to come out, and big-time.” Lydia and I looked at each other, bracing ourselves. This wasn’t exactly what we’d been imagining. “Instead of avoiding the press, you need to get them on your side. First, you need to announce that you’re already married. Come out and say that this bloke Evan—”

  “Eric,” Lydia corrected her. “I believe him when he said he didn’t leak this.” I looked at her skeptically. We’d called him—he was the most obvious source—but he’d claimed he hadn’t, and what motivation would he have had for planting a photographer to catch him kissing her? It didn’t make sense. I admitted there was a part of me that would have been happy to have another reason to despise that nitwit, but I had to agree with Lydia that it didn’t seem like he’d been behind this. Bad luck is what this was. The only good thing to come of this was that we didn’t have to give him an exclusive anything anymore—he’d gotten his own bit of fame by association, and at this point it would just look odd if he were reporting on our wedding.

  “Whatever. Eric,” Emily continued, waving her hands about. “So come out—and Dylan you should say this—come out and say Eric didn’t know Lydia was engaged, and how you set him straight, and how Lydia was taken off guard. Tell everyone how you romantically eloped. People will love it. They’ll fall in love with you two.”

  “Really?” Lydia asked. “I feel like it’s going to take more than an elopement to win people over. Your mother, in particular.”

  “First,” Emily continued, “you’re right. Which is why you also have to give them a big, lavish wedding to anticipate. And you’ll have to leak the best details leading up to it—people will go absolutely mad. They’re hammering for more of Richard and Jemma, but in the absence of that they’ll take you two.” Prince Richard and Jemma were getting married at the end of the summer, and the public was insatiable for anything about the “wedding-of-the-century.” After a debacle in which a wedding atelier had been broken into by some clearly insane people looking for sketches of Jemma’s dress, the palace had become an inviolable vault when it came to details about their impending nuptials. Emily was right—we could fill that void, and people were primed to forgive when a wedding was on the table. “And as for my mother—she’ll follow the public, unfortunately. All she cares about right now is herself. She’s not in a good place. If Dylan looks good, if the Abingdon name looks good, she’ll be pleased. Plus—”

  I cut her off. “Plus, I don’t give a rat’s arse if she never comes around.” I pulled Lydia onto my lap, balancing us on the bar stool. “You and me, remember?” I whispered into her ear. I tucked my hand between her crossed legs and gripped her thigh under the counter.

  “Dylan, don’t be daft. It’s sweet that you don’t care, but that’s a horrible position for Lydia to be in, for about eight billion reasons.”

  Lydia giggled, actually giggled, for the first time that day. It wasn’t a long giggle, mind you, but it was there.

  “Fine,” I said, exhaling. “So, what do we do, if you’re so smart?”

  Emily beamed, so fucking pleased to have me deferring to her.

  “You,” she said, pointing to me, “call that chap at the Guardian and fix this bleeding mess,” she said, pointing to the paper. “No PR people—they’ll want it from you. Don’t forget the part where you tell them you already swept her off her feet and married her. Everyone’s going to think you’ve gotten her pregnant, but who cares.”

  My heart beat out of my chest. I looked to Lydia immediately and saw she was pale as a ghost, and her eyes were wide. Fuck, she really wasn’t ready to have babies with me, was she?

  “Christ,” I muttered under my breath and rubbed my forehead with my fingers.

  “And you,” Emily said, directing her attention towards Lydia, “are going to plan a wedding.” This time Emily was practically giddy, jumping up and down. “And get that boss of yours on the phone. You’ll need a proper dress this time.”

  Chapter 24

  Lydia

  The morning Dylan’s mother had come over was terrifying. Before Emily took over and gave us hope, I’d been sure I would be too mortified to leave the house, terrified that everyone who saw me was thinking that I was unfaithful to Dylan, that I was some kind of slut, that I should have a scarlet letter tattooed to my chest.

  A few days later, I was terrified to leave the house for an entirely different reason. Emily’s planned had worked. Well. Too well.

  The very next day a front-page story ran in the Guardian about our elopement, complete with quotes from Dylan about him surprising me in New York, about how we’d met, how we’d actually been engaged for months but had wanted it to be private, about the ring I wore and our plans for a big English wedding. He’d explained about Eric, albeit briefly, and even said, on record, that I was the love of his life. And people ate it up. The public seemed to love that we’d been hiding away our commitment—it seemed romantic and dramatic. They loved that I was an American but had been born here. They seemed to love all of it. Of course there were snide Twitter posts and comments on the articles, but all in all, Emily’s plan had gone off without a hitch, and people were going mad.

  My public perception problem may have been largely fixed, but I don’t think I could have imagined the spotlight being quite so bright if I’d tried. The day after the article ran, I’d opened the front door to leave for work, and there was an enormous man dressed in black and khaki with a camera at the ready and a flash exploding, blurring my vision. He was firing off questions at me, but all I heard was my name, “duchess,” “eloped,” and things like “the other guy,” and “are you sure the baby is his?”

  I was never leaving the house again.

  Dylan had somehow snuck out the back door that morning before I’d woken—he’d called from the office around seven thirty to wake me up. I had gotten dressed, had coffee, and opened the door thinking I was actually going to go to work when Rambo paparazzi had attacked me.

  So right, apparently I was a hermit now, because there was no way I was going to go through that again. I mean, I knew I’d have to leave the house eventually, but maybe later?

  I’d called Hannah and asked if someone else could watch the store until I could figure things out. She’d agreed, but “only because you’re allowing me to make the wedding gown, and I’m sure you’re going to quit on me soon anyway,” and then she’d hung up on me in a flurry—I could hear her barking orders at her apprentice before she’d even gotten off the phone. There were so many things about that phone call that had bothered me. For one, “allowing” her to make the gown? Since when was I someone who “allowed” Hannah to do anything? I cringed thinking about how being Dylan’s wife had already started to change everything that had been familiar about my life. And second, she thought I was going to quit? Anxiety rose like poison, making me feel queasy. I knew that Dylan and I would come up with our plan, that I’d figure out what I wanted to do with my career and how it fit into being a duchess, but the idea that the whole of England would continue to think I was a horrible wife, or woman, or aristocrat or whatever just because I kept my job was exhausting. It all made me want to dive back into bed and stay there. I figured every good restaurant delivered, and there was really no reason why I’d ever have to leave the house again.

  Unfortunately there was apparently no way Dylan or Emily was going to allow me to do that.

  Emily had called four times that morning already, urging me out the door and already asking me if Dylan and I had set a date. And at that moment I heard a commotion on the street outside, shouts of Dylan’s name. Crap, that meant he’d come home. He was definitely going to try to co
ax me out the door.

  I hid even deeper under the covers.

  It was only a few minutes later when I felt the bed dip where he must have been sitting. Then I felt his hand intertwine with my own—my treacherous fingers must have been peeking out from the duvet.

  “Baby,” he said, pulling back the covers.

  I opened one eye and looked at him warily. He smiled and pulled the covers back further.

  “What on earth are you wearing?”

  After I’d retreated from the door, I’d shimmied out of my pencil skirt, but I was still in thigh highs, a bra, and a silk blouse.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he continued, running his warm hand over my bare backside and up the inside of my blouse, rubbing my back.

  I groaned and buried my head back in the pillow. Dylan chuckled and stood. I could hear him removing his jacket and shoes, the telltale zip of his trousers. Within a minute, I felt the heat of his bare chest hovering above me.

  “Baby,” he whispered, and he moved the hair from my back and over my shoulder. “Listen to me.” His tone was soothing but firm. So in control. And already his control was making me feel better, making feel like at least one of us had some ideas as to how to steer us through this chaos.

  He kneeled up on the bed behind me, his legs on either side of my own. And in a flash he had effortlessly lifted me so my knees were tucked beneath me, my backside in the air. His fingers tickled my chest as they unfastened the buttons of my blouse, and he pulled it from my back and arms. My bra followed in quick succession, and the fabric was replaced with his wandering hands.

  “I know,” he said. “Those vultures are bloody terrifying.” Kisses were placed on my back, his warm mouth making a trail over my body in concert with his hands. “But you are my wife. And I won’t have my wife feeling like she has to hide away in our house. Understand?”

  His words were loving, understanding, but he wasn’t going to let me go around this problem—we were going to have to dive in. Dylan had been this way on our first date, not letting me play coy or dumb, and he was going to be this way forever. He’d never let me hide, and I knew, even if it was terrifying, that he was right.

  He kissed my ass cheek, and suddenly I was on my back looking up into my eyes. “Understand?”

  I nodded, the heat spreading so fast, pulsing in my limbs, pooling at my core.

  “Good girl.” He kissed my breast. “This is what is going to happen.” His words were echoed by his hands, his fingers previewing his words. At that moment, his fingers sank into me, and my back arched off the bed, my eyes closing, so happy for this escape.

  “Look at me, Lydia.” Damn him and his never letting me hide. “Open those gorgeous eyes for me and look.” I did, and I saw the most loving face, those ocean-blue eyes, staring down at me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He kissed me again.

  “I’m going to fuck you, darling. So hard, and so well, that you won’t even remember what had you hiding.” My chest was rising and falling off the bed, anticipation crawling all over me. His fingers pressing inside of me, summoning every cell, lining every vein of desire up like a soldier, ready to be commanded. I nodded again.

  “You’re going to remember that you are my girl, my brilliant wife, my gorgeous duchess, a woman no one should reckon with. Then you’re going to get this fine ass to work.” He slapped the side of my ass for emphasis, and my breathing hitched. Shit, that felt good. The heat that remained in the wake of his hand added a sweet sting to the wave threatening to crest against his fingers, now strumming my clit in sync with their thrusts.

  “Dylan,” I moaned.

  “That’s right, my sweet girl. That’s right.” He lifted my ass onto his thighs and slid into me, his cock so much thicker than his fingers that I gasped and rolled as my body tried to accept him. As though he didn’t do this to me all the time, as though my body shouldn’t know exactly what was coming.

  Within a moment, I was pulsing around him, crying his name as he took me with complete control. His hands held my waist, keeping me steady, and it was as though my anxiety, my fatigue, my feelings of being so small in the face of the world outside the door writhed out of me as the orgasm took me over, as I gripped his forearms with my hands and felt his strength beneath my palms.

  “Dylan,” I exhaled and took him, took everything he did to me. I heard his own heavy breathing, his own shuddering chest as he came inside me, and in that moment he had succumbed as much as I had.

  The broad daylight settled over our naked limbs, and I found myself sitting up, my stocking-clad thighs wrapped around his waist as he leaned against the headboard. His hand pulled one of the sheer black stockings down to my knee, and he rubbed the skin of my thigh.

  “I love these,” he said, looking down appreciatively.

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. Then I looked at him, caught his attention so he understood that I needed him to look right back at me. “Thank you,” I said again, this time for shaking me loose.

  He nodded, and kissed me again on the lips.

  “Time to face the music. You’re stronger than they are.”

  I nodded.

  “And fucking gorgeous to boot.”

  I laughed and collapsed against his chest.

  “No, up. I have to go too, damsel. I came right from a lunch with a client and I have another meeting.”

  “You squeezed rescuing your pathetic wife between important business meetings?”

  “Not pathetic,” he said sternly, giving me that warning look he gave when I said things about myself he knew not to be true. “And yes. Hannah called me when you didn’t come in.”

  “She did?” I asked, crawling off of him and heading to the closet. I could hear him rustling out of the bed himself.

  “Mmm. I know you think she’s cold, but she cares about you.” He came up behind me, zipping his trousers, and reached over me into the closet to pull out a fitted dress with a short pleated skirt. “You look so bloody fit in this—makes every one who sees you go mental.”

  He handed me the hanger, and I began pulling myself together. I couldn’t believe Hannah had called him.

  “Fiona called as well. Apparently you two were supposed to have lunch.”

  “Oh, fuck.” I put my hand to my mouth. “I completely forgot. I emailed her and Josh when we got back and told her we got married, but I still haven’t seen them. I was going to catch her up, and we were going to look at branding options for her jewelry line. Shiiiiit.” I hurriedly chose a pair of red suede booties to go with the dress.

  His hand slid down my arms from behind soothingly, and he kissed the top of my head. “I think she understands. They were both just worried about you. I think they are also excited for you, baby. They wanted to chew my ear off about our wedding.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which what?” he asked, buttoning his shirt and straightening the cuff links.

  “Which wedding?”

  “Oh, Fiona wanted to know all about the real one. Hannah was fishing for design details about the fake one.”

  “Figures.”

  “Speaking of, my mother called.”

  I paused completely, my dress half zipped, and stared at him. Did I really want to hear this?

  “How do you feel about a wedding at Humboldt?”

  “Great?” I said, wondering what the catch was. “I mean, great. I assumed that’s where this shindig would be. Why? What did your mother say?”

  “Well, I asked her about it, and she was rather pleased. I don’t know what to do about her, darling, honestly. And I want to throttle her for saying everything she’s said—”

  “Dylan, I’m not worried about your mother. I mean I was, but I know she’s still grieving. I know I’m not what she envisioned for you. But I have faith in us. We’ll earn her blessing.” I almost believed the words I was saying. “Somehow.”

  He turned me towards him and kissed me again. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Tell me about
it,” I said, and in a flash, he’d turned me, lifted up the hem of my dress, and smacked me on the ass. I jumped three feet and laughed, put my hands on my hips, giving him a playful glare of death. “There’ll be no more of that. I need to get to work.”

  Dylan said he’d drop me at work and pick me up—I agreed it was time to get back to my office at the store, but I honestly did feel safer with him. As we rode in the Mercedes, he held my hand firmly in his own and played with my rings, which was quickly becoming his new mindless habit.

  “What’s your meeting this afternoon?” I asked as I caught him turning our hands to look at his watch.

  He sighed, which couldn’t be a good sign. “MI6.”

  We’d both been avoiding this particular subject lately. It made me nervous. I knew it was going to be dangerous, and now more than ever I didn’t want that. It gave me a pit in my stomach. I couldn’t lose him. Maybe I was being ridiculous, but it physically hurt to think about him going into danger. Just thinking about how he’d been able to pull me out of my bad mood, how he knew me so intimately to do that. How could I ever again be in the world without that person, without him?

  Dylan squeezed my hand, sensing my anxiety. “It will be fine.”

  * * *

  Once at the shop, as long as I didn’t look outside where there was a throng of bored-looking photographers hanging around, I could mostly forget the chaos of the marriage announcement. And when Fiona and Josh came barreling in an hour before closing, I was able to forget it completely.

  Josh flung open the door dramatically, held it open for Fiona, who struggled her way with some giant box, and then he turned in the doorway, and actually curtsied for the photographers. I could hear the flashbulbs eating up his show, and when he came fully inside, he had a huge smile on his face and promptly locked the shop door behind him.

  I could barely speak through my laughter. “What are you doing? We don’t close for an hour!” Before I even finished the thought, I was deep in a hug with both of them. I hadn’t even seen them since I’d returned from New York.