Asteria In Love with the Prince (11 page)

I thought back to the letter.
There will be a delivery for you at some point this morning: this contains some additional treaty paperwork from Asteria. Please bring it when you meet me this evening.
He wanted me to wear this ensemble that night.

The only problem was, I didn’t have anything to wear it
with
, unless he intended me to wear it under one of the suits. The dress I’d worn to the casino was far too form-fitting: it would show every line of the corset. I pondered, and re-read the letter.

You will not require any of the other treaties.

Oh, great. He wanted me to wear the lingerie and nothing else. I was meant to meet him in town: how was I supposed to reach him, dressed like that?

Jagor, I was learning, was all about the details. He must have a plan.

On instinct, I went to the wardrobe. Hanging up next to the suits was a new addition: a raincoat.

I tried to imagine travelling in one of the black SUVs to meet him with only the coat over the lingerie. Could I refuse: say it was ridiculous; that it was summer? But a glance out of the window revealed that the heat and mugginess of yesterday had finally built into a storm: dark clouds were gathering over the ocean, rolling in towards us. It would rain by this evening, or at least it would be likely enough that a coat wouldn’t be suspicious.

I imagined Jagor checking the weather forecast a few days ago. Telling his dresser, quite innocently, to make sure a raincoat was in my wardrobe. Ordering the lingerie via his friend in Asteria. The man’s ability to engineer things was incredible: all so he could have me trembling on a knife edge of trepidation and desire. I genuinely had no idea what he was going to do next, which made it all the hotter.

For the rest of the day I pored over the legal texts. At lunchtime I sat out on the balcony with a salad and an iced tea from room service, and watched the clouds breed.

At six, Villik came to tell me that Jagor had chosen a meeting place for us.

“The bar is actually only around the corner,” he told me. “A few minute’s walk.” He looked doubtfully out of the window. “Do you have a coat?”

“Oh yes,” I said weakly.

Chapter Seven

And so, at ten to nine I was standing outside the hotel entrance, an umbrella over my head and a raincoat over my mostly naked body. I’d both buttoned and belted the coat, and it covered me from neck to mid-thigh: there was nothing to suggest that I was in lingerie underneath. That did precisely nothing to comfort me.

It wasn’t a long walk to the bar, but with every step I could feel my bare thighs rubbing against the thin fabric of the coat; my sex feeling exposed and incredibly sensitive under its thin covering of silk. The storm had unleashed its full force now, the rain not so much falling as smacking violently into the flagstones and bouncing up. I’d worn a pair of the shining, five-inch heels and stalking along the slippery, uneven sidewalk was...interesting. I would have gone sideways a few times if it weren’t for sheer mental will: I knew that if I fell, I’d likely expose my entire lower body as the coat flapped up.

Then there was the corset. Standing in front of a mirror, I’d worked the thing tighter and tighter, gasping as it cinched my waist in. Even under the coat, my hourglass figure was obvious and the feeling of the thing was impossible to ignore. I felt like I was being squeezed by a lover, my breathing soft and short. I felt powerless, too: I could no longer bend at the waist. If I wanted to pick something up, I had to bend from the hips, thrusting my ass in the air, or squat right down. I could see why men loved them.

I was scared...yet every step increased my arousal. The feeling of being near-naked in public; the fact that I was having this experience scant feet from oblivious passers-by. Even in the raincoat, the combination of stockinged legs and towering heels meant I attracted quite a few glances from men sheltering in doorways: they didn’t know what I was wearing underneath, but it felt like they did and that made me even hotter.

The walk must have only taken minutes, but it felt like an hour: by the end of it, I was almost panting, my face flushed and the rising heat inside me beginning to turn to hot, slick moisture. Without the covering of clothes, being turned on like that was itself a turn-on: I could feel myself throbbing, practically in the open air.

I finally saw the bar and pushed through the double doors. Jagor was standing beside a table at the end, forcing me to walk down the entire length of the crowded room. I had a feeling that was intentional. I could feel heads turning as I walked, my heels clicking loudly on the wooden floor. It was an upmarket place, filled with people in suits sheltering from the rain.

Jagor smiled as I walked up. “Did you get very wet?”

I looked behind him. Four bodyguards were standing within earshot.

“Yes,” I said simply, laying down the umbrella. Not for the first time, I didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him.

“Would you be so good as to get a drink for yourself, and for me?” he asked. “Wine, I think. Ask them to recommend something: they have an excellent wine list.”

The bar hadn’t cleared an area for us as the hotel restaurant had. Jagor had gone low-key, I realized: the bar didn’t know who he was, other than some rich man with guards, and there are plenty of those in Monaco.

I glanced around. Thanks to the storm outside, the crush at the bar was five deep, the bar staff struggling to cope. Jagor smiled. “You don’t mind, do you, Lucy?”

I smiled sweetly. “Of course not.” I nearly added “Your Highness”, but stopped myself in time: if he wanted to keep it low key, I’d be low key. He nodded his approval.

As I looked at the crush around the bar, I realized the low key approach wasn’t coincidence. He hadn’t told the bar who was visiting to ensure the place was heaving. He wanted me to be surrounded by people, knowing I was next-to-naked under the coat. He was putting us – or at least our sex games – ahead of his own safety.

It also occurred to me that I didn’t have any Euros. I know that seems ridiculous, but we’d swept out of New York in an afternoon, then breezed straight through the airport in Nice, the heliport and then the hotel. I had Jagor’s credit card, but I couldn’t use that if we wanted to remain anonymous.

Jagor stepped closer and pressed something into my hand. A 100 Euro note. It should have been a simple thing, but all I could think about was Asteria. I was standing in a bar, in lingerie, with not a usable cent to my name except what he’d just given me, about to fetch him a drink. I looked into his eyes and he wasn’t just thinking the same thing: he was checking that
I
was.

Plunging into the crowd was like pushing off from the side of a swimming pool. I was immersed in flesh, people pushing up against me from every side. Europeans are very relaxed about personal space – French men on the Riviera especially. Only with the other women, they were brushing up against layers: coat, suit, blouse and bra. With me, every brush of an arm or back against my chest was brushing the bare upper curves of my breasts under the thin coat. Every groin that rubbed me from behind was essentially against my naked ass.

By the time I got to the bar I was twice as flustered and aroused as when I arrived. And thanks to Jagor’s insistence that I ask for advice, I had to stand against the bar for a good few minutes while cursing, frustrated patrons piled up behind me, their bodies molding to mine.

Even the 100 Euro note and the vast amount of change it required had been designed to prolong my torture, I realized. Then, when I returned to Jagor’s table, a glass of wine in each hand, Jagor suddenly said to one of the guards, “Arno, take Lucy’s coat for her, will you?”

The bodyguard sprang up to unfasten my coat. For two terrifying seconds as his hands approached, every word of Asterian I’d ever learned vanished from my head. When I managed to speak, I snapped out “
I’m fine, thank you!”
so fast and violently that he actually took a step back, which Jagor found hilarious.

When I finally stood at the table and sipped the wine, the relief was glorious: after the walk through town and then the crush at the bar, merely standing there half-naked in public felt almost tame. Was that deliberate? Was he...
training
me?

He questioned me, seriously and deliberately, on what I’d learned about Asterian law. I knew the real learning would come later – when he showed me the ways of Asteria in practice.

At last, we finished our wine and he declared that it was time for dinner. There was a horrible moment when I thought he intended to take me out to a restaurant like that, but he said that we had work to do back at the hotel, and that he’d need me to translate documents: a working dinner. In his room.

We walked back, two bodyguards in front of us and two behind. The rain was still pounding and the wind was getting up: we had to angle our umbrellas down in front of us like shields. I longed to hold his hand, to have him slip his arm around my waist, but we walked as formally as any work colleagues would. Normally, it would have been frustrating. With me as worked up as I was, I had to stop myself just grabbing his lapels and pulling him into a kiss.

Minutes later, we were back at the hotel. He took me straight to his room and told his advisors we weren’t to be disturbed. Trays of salad and cold meats, cheese and fruit were waiting for us, together with a bottle of wine.

When the door closed, I leaned back against it and blew out a very heartfelt sigh of relief. Jagor stood across the room, smiling one of
those
smiles.

“Did you enjoy that?” he wanted to know. I struggled to answer. Because I’d been embarrassed, uncomfortable, terrified...but yes, dammit, I had enjoyed it. I was turned on in a dark, delicious way I wasn’t used to. I nodded.

“Good. Take off the coat.”

He’d left the curtains open. Outside, the howling wind and lashing rain had scoured everyone from the beach below, but I was still incredibly exposed: the lights were on, the whole room bathed in a warm, yellow glow. Anyone watching would be able to see everything.

I slowly unbelted the coat, then popped the buttons, one by one. It gaped gradually open, my body hidden in shadow at first. Then, as I reached the bottom, I shrugged it back over my shoulders and let it fall down my arms.

His gaze tracked down me, like a caress that warmed my body still further. I could feel it travel over my cold cheek, where a few strands of my hair had been plastered by the rain. Down over my breasts, the corset making me very aware of every breath, every rise and fall of my chest. Down to my panties, which I could feel were damp with my arousal. He smiled, and the way his strong, dark-stubbled jaw moved, the way his lips pressed almost hungrily together, made my heart lift and flutter.

“I need to teach you,” he told me, “about Asteria.” Suddenly stepping close to me, he plunged a hand into my loose hair and drew my head back, his mouth descending on my lips. I gasped into his kiss, aching for his touch. Just the slightest brush of his body was like a drug, making me want to press myself to him. He broke the kiss abruptly, leaving me wanting more. “Are you ready for that?”

I was panting, but the memories of our conversation in the limo were still fresh, my anger burning bright. “No, Your Highness.”

He abruptly cupped my sex, his fingers running over the damp silk, massaging my slickened folds. I cried out, my knees buckling. “Yes you are,” he admonished, and I felt my face flush.

“Go to the stool,” he told me, nodding across the room. There was a dressing table there, and in front of it a rectangular stool with deep red cushioning. It stood a few feet high, on carved wooden legs. I walked over to it uncertainly.

“Kneel down across it,” he told me.

I knelt, the wooden floor hard against my knees. The edge of the stool pushed against the front of my thighs, and as I lowered myself down the cushioned top pressed against my stomach and breasts, making my cleavage bulge provocatively. I gingerly put my hands on the floor on the far side of the stool. My heart was beating fast: I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

Jagor was rummaging in one of his wardrobes. Then I heard him step up behind me, and something was drawn around my thigh, just above my knee. I looked down. It was one of his silk ties: he was tying my leg to the leg of the stool. I gasped: the feeling of it, of being suddenly unable to move, caressed by soft silk and hard, unyielding wood...I’d never felt anything that was at the same time so scary and yet so erotic.

He tied my other leg, then repeated the process with my wrists, the wood cold against them. Now I was bound fast to the stool, unable to move, the ties he’d used slippery-smooth against my skin. I tugged at them experimentally. They held fast: this might be just a lesson, but the bondage was real – I certainly couldn’t free myself on my own. The thought made my heart beat faster. I glanced up at the windows. Night was falling fast, the angry sky merging with the dark beach as the wind whipped rain against the glass.

Jagor knelt down behind me – I had to crane over my shoulder to see him, and he chuckled. Then he laid his huge hands over the cheeks of my ass and started to smooth over them, again and again. My eyes fluttered closed and I let my head return to front. Every touch was stirring the heat at my groin; after a few minutes, I was unconsciously grinding my hips in the air, trying to rub my clit against the edge of the stool.

Then one hand was stroking lower. Down...oh God, underneath. I shuddered as he cupped my sex, not bothering to strip away the silk that covered it, just massaging my folds through my panties. My head lowered, my legs straining against the ties. I’d thought they were to stop me escaping. I realized now they had another purpose: I couldn’t grind my thighs together or clench his hand between them as I longed to. I had to go at his pace: I had no control over my own pleasure, and I growled in frustration.