The Prince: The Young Royals 1 Read online

  Caitlin stood, taking the banana peels and the newspaper from the bench and throwing them all into the trashcan.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  David splashed his face with water and then leaned on the bathroom sink as he inspected himself closely in the mirror above it. Regular facials kept his skin in good condition—and there was no such thing as too good condition, with every paparazzo’s camera in the world now shooting in digital—but it never hurt to check if anything needed maintenance. His friends had long ago stopped teasing him about his grooming regimen. Once he’d explained that is was part of his job—that he had to look presentable if he was to properly represent his father, the King, not to mention his country—they’d made comments only a handful more times.

  Now that he was twenty-six, the comments had stopped altogether and his friends were going for facials of their own. Everyone aged, whether they were a privileged upper-class idiot or not. And he should know: he was the sine qua non of upper-class idiots—the most privileged of a privileged few. He had, he knew, the ultimate rich playboy’s existence: because his older sister, Princess Alexandra—also known as the Princess Royal—was the heir to the throne, David’s life was one of all care and no responsibility. Their father was only in his fifties; in all likelihood it would be decades before Alexandra became Queen and by then she’d have children, which would put her little brother even further from the throne. In the meantime, David had access to everything that being a member of the royal family had to offer, as well as his mother’s private fortune, left to him and his sisters.

  His mother. David closed his eyes and leaned a little closer to the mirror. She had been the finest of them all—an aristocratic beauty who had rewritten the definition of it, a living example of the sort of compassion rarely seen in public figures. And she was gone. All of their wealth and privilege—the very best medical treatment in the world—couldn’t save her from the cancer that had lain hidden inside her and finally struck in the most vicious of ways. She had only been Queen for a year, and for most of that time she had been absent from public life, undergoing treatment and resting in the palace, which came to resemble nothing so much as a historically impressive hospital.

  Alexandra had had to step in to fulfill her mother’s duties at the King’s side. At just twenty years of age, she had effectively become Queen and now she was still playing that role. She would be doing it for the rest of her life. The only difference between being the consort and the actual monarch was that she’d have to deal with Parliamentary matters more once she ruled in her own right. But everything else—the engagements, the charities, the endless rounds of making small talk with people she would only ever meet for one minute out of their entire lives but who would talk about that one minute forever—would be the same. And he, David, had escaped it. He had escaped it—albeit temporarily—by running away from England and running toward the country where young men of his wealth could find themselves a multitude of companions and other entertainments without even trying.

  That’s why he was here, in New York City, in this hotel room that was far too big for him. That’s why his photograph was in that ridiculous tabloid. And that’s why, he knew, his younger sister, Margaret—the conscience of their family—would call him any second now, to chastise him for embarrassing their father and their sister by being seen with someone who was clearly never going to be his bride. For no matter how far away David ran, he couldn’t run from this reality: he had to marry someone, and that someone had to be right for the job as much as she was right for him. His friends had the luxury of marrying someone just because they wanted to; David would have to marry someone who was prepared to put up with everything he put up with, and more, because while his father and his father’s advisers were letting him have this time to do whatever he pleased, it wasn’t going to last forever. And as much as he liked to give the illusion of being carefree, at his fundament he was loyal to his family and he understood what his duty to them and his country was. They’d let him have his head—and they trusted him to rein himself in. He suspected, though, that it was going to be a lonely life.

  Where could he find a young woman who not only loved him—and who he loved—but who was also prepared to have the rest of her life decided for her upon her marriage? He wasn’t sure that person existed—or, if she existed, that she actually was someone he’d want to marry. There were plenty of young aristocrats whose mothers were very keen for them to marry him—and he loved the fact that those girls weren’t after him for fame and money—but they were mostly horrified at the restrictions his position brought.

  He was scared that he would never find anyone to share his life with. And he wanted that. It wasn’t fashionable—it wasn’t cool—but he was lonely.

  As his cell phone rang he shook his head to break his reverie. He picked up the phone that was several models too old to be the latest thing—he liked it that way—then smiled knowingly.

  “Margarita,” he said as he answered, still smiling. “What a surprise.”

  *

  Dinner had been pleasant enough—a small party for a mere twenty people at the downtown loft of an uptown woman who had decided it made her more hip to live outside of the Upper East Side. The woman was the main benefactor of a charity that was close to the Princess Royal’s heart: a foundation that made life easier for blind children or something like that; David had long since stopped retaining the details of his sister’s many interests. He was happy to support her work—more than happy, especially as in the eyes of his father’s advisers it meant he could legitimize staying in New York for a while longer—but he just didn’t remember exactly what all of her charities did. He’d have his own charities and causes to think about soon enough. For now, he would show up and smile and the wealthy New York matrons would swoon over his swarthy handsomeness and his Eton accent with its hint of plum, then hand over a check, and Alix would call him tomorrow and thank him profusely and tell him that she missed him and Margaret missed him but he didn’t need to come home for a while. The King never missed him—not that he ever said. He was never Papa to them, not really—he was always the King. And kings didn’t miss sons. Kings missed empires.

  So now David was back in his temporary home, undoing his tie and taking out his cufflinks, watching himself in the mirror and marveling, as he did occasionally, that women—and quite a few men—could get so silly about the face he’d had all his life. It was his father’s face but he didn’t remember the King ever talking about receiving this kind of attention. David looked almost exactly like his father had at the same age, though—and he knew exactly how he’d look when he was his father’s age. It was vaguely reassuring.

  “What are you thinking about?” said the silky-toned American beauty who suddenly appeared at his side after emerging from the bathroom.

  David flinched at the intrusion and turned to her.

  “My father,” he said, smiling. Watching the confusion on the woman’s face, he realized she’d probably hoped he’d say that he was thinking about her. It was something he didn’t understand about women: even if they’d just met a man, they wanted to hear that they were at the center of his thoughts. But it would take quite a lot for any woman to cross the moat of David’s thoughts, which were usually a thick sludge of family and responsibility.

  “Oh,” the woman said, sliding a hand inside his shirt. “I can help you forget about him.”

  David frowned. “What makes you think I want to?”

  “Because …” She nuzzled his neck. “You’re here with me.”

  “Oh. Sure.” David’s eyes closed. He didn’t even know her name—and he never would. But he could give himself over to this moment.

  She removed her hand from his shirt and ran it down to his crotch, pressing lightly. “I see you’re a prince among men in more ways than one,” she said, laughing throatily.

  He turned and kissed her, hard. Anything to stop her talking. He hadn’t brought her home to talk to her.

  She mo
aned and pressed herself against him. He could feel the mounds of her breast implants and he paused. He wasn’t a fan of artificial beauty—he liked foreheads that moved and breasts that bounced. But he couldn’t very well turf this woman—this nameless woman whom he was sure had been invited to dinner because she had begged their hostess to help her meet a prince—out of his room just because she wasn’t entirely real. His whole life wasn’t entirely real.

  So he kissed her harder and she moaned louder, rocking her pelvis against his. Taking hold of her, he walked her backward to the bed, pushing her down so she fell, slightly breathless with surprise.

  David knelt before her and pushed her dress up to her chest, surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing underpants. He looked up at her.

  “I never wear them,” she said with what appeared to be an attempt at a saucy tone.

  He smiled vaguely, but in truth he wasn’t entirely happy with the hairless apparition before him. He had thought the craze for Brazilian waxes over and he had been pleased about that—he wasn’t interested in little girls or in women who looked like little girls. But it did make what he was about to do a more straightforward proposition.

  David positioned his head between the woman’s thighs and sniffed—the rich, unique scent that every woman had. Then he took his tongue to the nub of her and licked delicately. The woman jerked and gasped.

  “My goodness,” she said, a Midwestern accent suddenly emerging where before it had been vaguely Los Angelena.

  “Indeed,” David murmured before running his tongue along the length of her opening. The woman left gasping behind and started panting as his tongue explored inside her, David gripping her hips as they started to buck.

  She cried out as he sucked at her clitoris—gently but firmly, the way his first girlfriend had taught him, using the whole of his mouth to take in as much of this woman as he could.

  He groaned as the pace of her movement increased. His erect cock pressed against his suit pants but he wouldn’t let it out—not now, and not with her. It was better this way with women he didn’t intend to see again. They would never, ever feel that he had used them for sex and they could tell their friends about getting head from a prince—which their friends probably wouldn’t believe, but it didn’t matter. He loved moments like this, when he could feel this woman’s orgasm building, know how much she was enjoying what he was doing to her. He could always take care of himself later, thinking about this moment.

  The woman cried out, thrashing around on the bed as David kept sucking her with exactly the right amount of pressure. If he did it correctly, this woman would keep coming for a little while yet. He held onto her as her pelvis undulated and she thanked God or Jesus or someone like that.

  After a minute or so she grew quiet. David lifted his head, his face slick, and grinned at her.

  “Nice to have met you,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Caitlin looked around the bar that Lisa had dragged her to—the third bar in as many nights, apparently all to prove that Caitlin was far more beautiful than she had realized, but probably more likely to be in aid of Lisa’s quest to find a boyfriend. Lisa was talking to some preppy-looking boy who seemed to be too young to be of drinking age or to be sporting the rather worn suit he was sporting. He was cute, Caitlin supposed. His teeth were even and his eyes clear. He probably played racquetball or squash or whatever it was that Ivy Leaguers liked to play once they moved to the city and started their own hedge funds. Didn’t anyone just become a lawyer anymore? Or did they all go to those good schools and get their difficult degrees and then just want to make money off their own money? It was stupid. And boring.

  Caitlin sighed and turned away from Lisa to gaze around the rest of the bar. More preps in suits, quite a few of them watching her. Caitlin immediately looked at the floor and then started wiping her nose, convinced that she must have had a mark or a stain or something to cause all those men to look at her like that. Like … she was a target. Then she remembered what Lisa had told her: that if a man looked at her like that, he was interested. So they were all interested, huh? Well, she wasn’t interested back. These men all looked the same and they all looked boring. She had been on enough dates with their kind to know that all they talked about was how much money they wanted to make and, if they were from the Midwest, how everyone back home was going to be so jealous once they were rich and famous. None of them had hobbies apart from playing racquetball, watching sports and drinking beer. They had full-time jobs in being full of themselves. It wasn’t what she wanted.

  So what did she want? Not Matthew, her college boyfriend. Her only boyfriend. She was twenty-four and she’d only had one boyfriend—didn’t that make her some kind of loser, no matter what Lisa said? She’d chosen a bad one, too. Oh, he’d been charming and attentive when they’d met; he was good looking but not so handsome that she was intimidated by him. He’d worked out; he’d had a good body, and she knew that that was meant to be important—all her friends had said so. He’d wooed her in an almost old-fashioned way, and she hadn’t realized at the time that what he was really doing was spinning a web so intricate that she was caught weeks before she realized it had even been spun. He’d had practice trapping women that way; he was a senior, after all, and she was only a freshman, and she should have realized that he’d targeted her not because she was beautiful and kind and whatever else she told herself she was, but because she was so young that she was an easy mark. She’d never encountered anyone as sophisticated as he was at manipulating women. She hadn’t recognized the signs—and neither had her friends, or her parents. He’d been so very good at creating his persona that no one could see the flaws until it was too late.

  What she’d never been able to work out was how she hadn’t figured him out sooner. She was smart—her grades told her she was. She should have known. She should have protected herself. She couldn’t forgive herself for having failed at that. But she also knew that she would never have been able to outwit someone who had decided to manipulate her for sport—not because he craved love and attention, not to steal her money or ruin her life or anything like that. He’d dismantled her slowly and systematically because he could. He’d got a kick out of it. And once he’d reduced her to a shattered mess—once she didn’t trust her own reflection, let alone the very friends and family who could help her recover—he’d just discarded her. It had taken him only six months. She’d had to take a semester off and gone home to her parents. Her college friends stayed in touch, telling her they’d asked around and found out about more young women he’d done it to. That hadn’t made her feel any better. She hoped that one day it would.

  For now, though, she was just trying to put that experience behind her. She was wary of getting involved with anyone—boring men were boring but they were not usually sinister; it was the ones who didn’t seem boring who could hide their depravity behind a veneer of sophistication. She didn’t know how she was meant to find a man who was interesting enough to hold her attention yet wouldn’t turn out to be someone who used his intelligence to demean and destroy her.

  Caitlin’s mind drifted to Prince David—to the way he had looked sitting there with his book. Beautiful but vulnerable, somehow. Sure, she knew his story: mother died young, older sister having no time for him anymore, father distant, younger sister just doing her own thing. She was used to feeling sorry for him, despite his privilege and despite only knowing what she read in newspapers and magazines. But she hadn’t been used to feeling attracted to him. Genuinely attracted, in a stomach-lurching way. Even thinking about him now—about the shape of his lips, the slim muscularity of his shoulders, the smoothness of his skin and the way his wrist looked just below his extremely expensive watch—she felt heat between her legs. He wasn’t boring. Not by a long shot. Nor could she believe that he would be cruel—wouldn’t the whole world know by now if he was? She realized with a start that she wanted him—really wanted him in a mad-crush way. And then quickly thought how stupid
that was, to have a crush on a prince. Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of women would have a crush on him.

  But how many have seen him up close, the way you have?

  Very few, she knew. Very few.

  “Buy you a drink?” said a too-high-pitched man’s voice beside her.

  “Uh …” She blinked a few times and glanced up to see the handsomest man in the bar standing above her. Clearly he had won the alpha male contest to approach her first—or something like that. “I, uh …”

  “Your friend seems to be busy so I thought I’d take my shot.” He grinned, showing teeth that had definitely been cosmetically whitened. His hair was impeccably neat, just like the knot in his tie. Caitlin felt nothing at all. But that wasn’t the point of the exercise, was it? The point was to find out how many men found her attractive. Or just to show her that men in general found her attractive.

  “Right. Sure.” She faked a smile. “Thanks. I’ll have, uh … I’ll have a seltzer.”

  The alpha male frowned. “A seltzer? That’s a bit boring.”

  “Oh, well—that’s me!” The fake smile continued.

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” he said, grinning lasciviously and she realized she’d walked right into that. “And I’d like to find out.”