Prince William couldn’t do that.
Prince Harry couldn’t do that.
Augustine must have an impressive amount of money, though. This hotel was incredible and must cost thousands of dollars per night. Being a prince made some sense.
But, wouldn’t “Prince Augustine” have to live in a castle and inspect hospitals all day and wear a crown and stuff?
Augustine wasn’t doing any of that.
It didn’t make any sense.
It totally didn’t—
Light.
Dawned.
Oh, right.
Augustine was lying to her about himself, just like she’d asked him to.
Of course, he was lying to her. He’d said he had a job that he was thinking about quitting for something else and had to travel to The Congo next for work.
Duh. He wasn’t a prince.
Dree was LOL’ing at herself for being so gullible, but it was funny, too.
“Oh,” she said, her voice rising and falling in revelation. “Oh, right. Yeah. Sure. Tell me more about Monagasquay, ‘Prince Auggie.’” Her grin tempered her sarcasm.
Augustine’s smile widened because he was, after all, pulling her leg. “I’m second in line to the throne, in theory, or at least I would have been in medieval times. About a century ago, around the time of World War I, we changed to an elected monarchy like Denmark had during the Middle Ages.”
Dree looked at him with one eye, turning her head so he would know she had caught on. “We call that a president when you elect them.”
Augustine shook his head. “The monarch can’t be just anyone off the street. When we need a new sovereign, the nobles of Monagasquay meet in a council session, and someone is chosen from us to be the sovereign.” Augustine stopped talking for a second because he was biting his lower lip. His dark eyes were laughing at her, and it was fun that they were sharing the joke. “It’s more like how, in the Catholic Church, the cardinals elect one of themselves to be the new pope, rather than an open political election like the commoners have.”
That was kind of confusing. “That’s not how they do it in England, right?”
She knew a little about the world. Not geography, obviously.
Augustine said, “Oh, no. It’s not how Great Britain does it at all. They have an absolute-primogeniture, constitutional monarchy, so the oldest child of the monarch inherits everything. Then, their children would be next in line for the throne, assuming they have kids. If the monarch doesn’t have any living heirs, then their next younger sibling or that person’s heirs would get the throne.”
Yeah, that sounded right. “Oh, that’s why William—”
Augustine sat on the bed and stuck his long legs under the covers. Those jammie pants were garish. “Precisely.”
“But that’s not how Monagasquay works.”
“That’s how Monagasquay used to be, before World War I. However, our monarch died on the eve of the Great War—”
“The Great War is World War I?”
“Yes, that one, and he did not have any legitimate children. There was a huge crisis because once the nobles of Monagasquay—”
Augustine started coughing again, and Dree reached over to pound him on the back. “You okay?”
He recovered, “Oh, God, yes. I’m more than okay. Monagasquay. Anyway, once they’d traced his lineage, the next heir who was not the issue of a morganatic marriage or an illegitimate child was a German duke.”
“Oh, Germany. Yeah. Germany.” Dree was wracking her head for any information about World War I. None of her school history classes had gotten past the US Civil War in the late 1800s. She figured that Germany must have been on the opposite side, while the US and France were on the same team, just like in World War II. Monagasquay must have been on France’s side, too.
Augustine continued, “Monagasquay did not want a German duke to be our sovereign because it looked like Germany was going to war with the rest of Europe. France certainly didn’t want a German-allied small country right on their border.”
“Right,” Dree said. Yes, she was probably right about the sides. Okay, then.
“So, there was a great national crisis, but within a week, a constitution was written that allowed the few nobles of Monagasquay to elect a new sovereign.”
“I’ve never even heard of any country electing a king,” she said. Obviously, that was because Augustine was messing with her, but it was a pretty cool story.
Indeed, she kind of wanted to see just how far he could go with this story of his.
Quiz time.
She was totally going to pimp him with questions about this baloney.
He said, “It was commonly done in Viking and Scandinavian cultures. Denmark elected their monarchs for centuries. That’s why in the play Hamlet, his uncle was elected as king after Hamlet’s father, the original king, died. Hamlet thought his uncle usurped his rightful inheritance because he couldn’t get back from University before the election.”
Oh, he was telling her the story of Hamlet. “Tell me a bedtime story, Auggie.”
Augustine laughed and flipped the covers over himself better, holding them against his stomach with his arms. “That’s about it.”
“But how are you a prince of Monagasquay if the next king is going to be elected?”
“We don’t have a king. We have a sovereign prince.”
“And he’s the ruler.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So, your head honcho is a prince, not a king.”
“Right.”
“So is it a prince-dom instead of a king-dom?”
“It’s called a principality, but I’ve been accused of being a Prince-Dom.”
Dree tried to wrap her head around the word. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind. Not important, pet.”
“So,” she said, “you have a ruler who’s a prince, you have more than one prince, but you have no kings and it’s not a kingdom.”
He grinned. “Yes.”
“That’s so screwed up.”
“Ah, now you’ve got it. I think so, too. We should have a king, but there are rules about calling someone a king or a prince. Anyway, ever since the World War I election, the nobles have almost always elected one of the previous sovereign prince’s sons as the next ruler.”
“Only sons?” Dree asked. “Why not daughters?”
“Well, it’s male-preferred primogeniture, so the males are theoretically before the females at the same tier. However, it has happened. Princess Charlotte was elected as the ruler in that same succession crisis.”
“Oh, Princess Charlotte. I like it.”
Augustine said, “The rule is, and here’s an important part: if Monagasquay doesn’t have a rightful, anointed sovereign, we cease to exist as a nation and get absorbed back into France. We don’t want that.”
“Oh, dear.” Dree was getting emotionally involved in the trials and tribulations of a fictional country.
“It’s a big deal in Monagasquay. There are tax reasons. So, in a bid to save Monagasquay from being absorbed back into France, the dying presumptive heir to the aged sovereign prince adopted Charlotte, even though she was his illegitimate daughter.”
Dree stopped him. “I’m confused.”
“Oh, yes. Everyone was, but we managed to slip through loopholes to avoid both the German duke and getting overrun by France again. Every time that’s happened, they stripped the palace of all the silver and taxed our citizens. Anyway, my older brother, Prince Pierre of Monagasquay, is the presumptive heir, and I’m the proverbial spare.”
And she understood. “Oh, my God. You’re Prince Harry.”
“He and I have chosen different paths in life, but I’ll allow it.”
She squinted at him, but she was impressed that he was carrying the joke so far. “So, if you’re not the prince and the prince is decided by election, then why are you a prince?”
“The offspring or heirs of a sovereign prince are entitled to use p
rince and princess as courtesy titles.”
“Oh, wow. Entitled is a real thing.” Dree said.
“It is, and several of my relatives act like it, too.”
“Are there princesses now?” Dree asked. Hey, if he was going to tell her fairy tales, she was going to milk this for all it was worth.
“I have some aunts who are princesses. It’s complicated, though. The Council of Nobles doesn’t have to choose the next presumptive heir as the new sovereign prince, but they always have.”
“Oh, tradition. Do I need to start singing Fiddler on the Roof?”
“No, but that’s exactly it. Because there was that whole German duke problem, they could, in theory, choose anyone who has a direct lineage back to Princess Charlotte.”
“And you do.”
“Obviously, as I’m the number-two, but lots of people do.”
“So, it’s a crapshoot,” Dree said.
“Yes, and no. Mostly no, although the reference to shooting craps is oddly relevant.”
“Because of the casino.”
“Right,” Augustine said. “The succession is supposed to be male-preferred primogeniture, as I mentioned. The throne went from my grandfather, Prince Rainier III, to his oldest son, who is my uncle Rainier IV, the current prince. However, Rainier IV has no children, so he’s a dead end. The succession would then be to Rainier III’s second son, my father, but he’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Dree said before she remembered Augustine was telling her fairy tales.
He waved it off. “I only met him a few times. So, my dead father, then Pierre and myself. Because we’re the direct line, we get to use the courtesy titles. If something happens to us or we aren’t offered it, then succession goes to my cousins Alexandre and Christine because their father is also dead. They aren’t considered direct succession, so they don’t get courtesy titles. Xan holds a French title as a duke of a duchy. However, that’s deposed because the French nobles all met Madame Guillotine. That’s when the title passed to a Monegasque nobleman, one of our ancestors, but Christine is considered merely a lady.”
“Oh, how sad for them.”
“Oh, yes, and we remind them of that whenever they’re being assholes, too. Then, if they weren’t offered it or refused it, the crown would go to my uncle Prince Jules Grimaldi and his children, who are Maria-Therese and her sisters. If none of them were elected, then it would go to Prince Albert and his young twins, and then Princess Caroline and her children Andrea and Charlotte Casiraghi, in that order, even though Caroline is older than Albert.”
He pronounced Andrea funny, like Ahn-DRAY-uh instead of ANN-dree-uh like she did. She said, “Wow, you’ve put a lot of thought into this story.”
“It’s a subject of great interest at home.”
“Tell me more about the princesses,” Dree giggled. “Are they beautiful and good?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Are they fairy princesses who can cast magic spells?” she asked.
“Nope, just the regular kind.” He raised one eyebrow. “Unless they have put me under a spell to say that.”
“Are you a fairy prince?”
“Sadly, also no.”
“I must say that I am disappointed that you aren’t going to be the ruler.”
He snorted. “I’m not.”
“What about your brother, Prince Pierre? He’s the one who’s going to be the ruler-prince. I could throw you over for him.”
Augustine reached for the lamp. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Anything else, Prince Auggie?”
“My cousin is a rock star. I think he killed a man when he was fifteen and got away with it.”
“Yeah, sure. Anything else?”
“I’m pretty sure one of my best friends is a spy.”
“CIA?” she asked.
“MI-6.”
“Nice. Anything else?”
“I think that about covers it.”
“That was awesome.”
He turned off the light, and darkness flooded the room. “What was awesome?”
“Everything you made up. The fairy tale. You should be a writer.”
He laughed, his male laughter ringing in the darkness above the whirr of traffic from the street down below. “I am entirely unsuited for that. I like talking to people. I do not enjoy my own company.”
Dree set her phone on the nightstand and slipped farther under the covers.
The warmth of his body flowed through the sheets to the skin on her bare legs.
His sigh echoed in the night.
The story he’d told her about princes and princesses and prince-doms had taken her mind off that asshole ex-boyfriend of hers, but worry returned with a vengeance. Stupid scam-artist Francis had been stealing narcotics through the hospice he worked for, and she had been the patsy who’d helped him.
What a fucking moron she was.
Self-loathing and fear for her future swamped her, and her hand followed the warmth streaming between the sheets, seeking human connection and comfort.
She found Augustine’s hand in the dark, and his fingers closed over hers.
It helped. She was stupid, and it helped.
She held on.
His hand moved, dragging her hand and arm with it, and he lifted her hand to his mouth. Warm breath touched the skin on the back of her hand, and then the softness of his lips.
After he kissed her hand, he rested their clasped hands on his chest and the warm, soft cotton of his tee shirt.
His heartbeat drummed the back of her hand slowly.
The blackness in the room was nearly absolute, but for the slight sprinkle of gray peeking through the curtains beyond the foot of the bed.
Dree sat up. She couldn’t see anything in front of her face as she moved toward Augustine, hesitating, bobbing her head in tiny increments as she tried to find his lips with hers in the dark without letting go of his hand that still held hers over his thudding heart.
A brush on her other arm, and his fingers trailed over her skin from her elbow to her shoulder.
Her lips found his skin, and she pressed her lips to his warmth. The faint scent of lemon and mint, the herbal aroma of the hotel’s shampoo, drifted to her. Silken curls brushed her cheek.
His fingers stroked up her neck, and he reached around to rest his fingertips on her spine.
She kissed downward, her lips finding the sandpaper of his growing beard and his hard cheekbone, and then the soft plush of his lips.
His touch traveled from the back of her neck and up into her short hair, tightening as he clenched his fist and held her mouth to his.
Dree had been planning to kiss him, to be the aggressor in the dark because heck-yeah and because old-Dree wouldn’t have done something like that, but she was keenly aware that Augustine was physically controlling her every movement. One of his hands pinned hers to his chest, and the other manipulated her head with his fist in her hair as he kissed her.
Augustine pulled back on her hair and her head, and her chin tilted up. His lips traveled down her throat to her collarbone. He growled against her skin, “Take the shirt off.”
He released her, and Dree wrestled the shirt off over her head and threw it to the dark floor somewhere beyond the edge of the bed. The shirt slithered on the sheets in the darkness as Dree reached out, but Augustine had stood up or something. She could hear him.
His voice was still hoarse and low as he said, “The panties, too.”
Dree took off her underwear, the lace rough on her thighs as she pulled them off and tossed them aside. She hoped they landed somewhere near the tee shirt so she could find them later.
A bit of light sneaked through the curtains over the window and drew gray curves in the blackness. The trickle made a cluster of semicircles that was the side of Augustine’s head, the heavy rounds of his shoulders and biceps, and the inward sweep of his waist to his hip. The line that was his arm moved, and the bed under her dipped as he crawled onto it.
> Dree reached her hand toward the gray frost on the side of his shoulder and found his skin. When he settled, he plucked her hand from his arm and kissed the back of her hand, her palm, and the inside of her wrist.
She’d been so drunk last night and had just wanted a hard screw. The softness in his touch now felt so different. Awareness surfaced that her ex, Francis, had been her first and only “real” boyfriend, and this man was the second man she’d taken to bed. There was a difference in this. She’d thought that sleeping with Francis was pre-marital sex, that he would be her one and only the rest of her life. Augustine was an acknowledgment that she wasn’t just jumping the gun. This meant that she believed she could have this intimacy with a man she might never see again after next Thursday.
And that it would be soft and caring like this, too.
She felt awful comparing the two of them, but she didn’t think Francis ever kissed her hand and wrist like Augustine did, like he adored even her arm.
Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt like it.
Augustine must’ve been able to see her at least a little bit, too, because he trailed his fingers from her ear to her chin, and guided her mouth to his in the dark.
He caressed her lips with his mouth, and his fingertips followed the top of her shoulder, up her neck, and back into her hair again.
Dree spread her hands on Augustine’s massive chest. The black sheen of his chest hair, like a soft shadow last night, was like velvet under her palms.
When she stroked the inside curve of his pectoral muscle over his heart with her thumb, he made a sound low in his throat against her lips.
She wanted to touch him more. She hadn’t gotten a chance to explore his ripped body the night before because he’d tied her hands together.
And the drinking.
She wished she could do their first time over again, so they could take their time.
She traced the dips and swells of his musculature with her fingertips and fingernails, and his breath feathered over her lips and then her jawline as she touched him.
His other hand traveled up her arm to her shoulder, and then he trailed the back of his fingers down and around the swell of her breast. She’d always felt like her boobs were too big and floppy, but he’d sure seemed to like them last night. Even now, his hand encircled her generous flesh, and he palmed and held her breast before he rubbed his thumb across her nipple, sending a spark of desire through her.
Rogue Page 13
