Chandelier (Tarnished Crowns Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “If something had happened, two people would’ve been better. I apologise if I’ve overstepped.” Your highness. He doesn’t add the words, but he may as well have.

  We move towards the shore, the night turning blacker. Ben won’t let me go and if I thought I was just a fuck, I now know better.

  “It’d be easier if I swam back myself.” I manage to get the words out through my annoyance.

  “But then I can’t feel your tits in front of someone else.” His words are quiet enough to not be heard. Isaac is slightly in front of us. “I’ll see you in your room when we get back. Join me for a whisky.”

  For his nerves.

  “Don’t bother with clothes.”

  He didn’t need to add that last part.

  My bikini is in disarray when I climb out of the ocean, my nipple exposed. Isaac is already on the sand, facing us and pulling shorts onto his dripping body. The lack of light gives us all privacy to a degree but I can’t help think and silently laugh about how my brother would react if he knew what’d just happened.

  “Next time you want a night time dip, we’ll go together,” Ben says. He’s out of the water too, as naked as the day as he was born, only he still has a semi-hard cock. “Then I’m not losing my few remaining marbles thinking about you drowning.”

  Isaac laughs. “I’m with you on that. The Prime Minister would be most upset if anything happened.” His tone is sarcastic, telling.

  There’s more to this. More to their acquaintance than just a few passing moments when Isaac’s been at the castle. I rearrange my bikini and look from one to the other, see them both looking at my chest.

  I roll my eyes, not that either of them would notice.

  “Pair of perverts.”

  They notice that.

  “Sorry,” Isaac says, looking away. “And don’t worry, no one else will find out about this.”

  “Not sorry.” Ben pulls on his trousers which cling onto his damp thighs.

  I ignore them both and strop back to the estate, managing to remember to grab my sundress, now covered with fine grains of sand.

  I shower and dry off in a room that’s lit only with a single lamp. Tonight I want the dark to envelope me, to smother me like a child with its concealing blanket. Ben was too open in front of Isaac; the memory of him holding my breast while the three of us treaded water replaying through my head. Ben didn’t take risks. Doesn’t take risks. If he’d been in the slightest bit concerned that Isaac would say something about me being held inappropriately by my security, he would never have done it, or walked out of the water naked.

  I towel dry my hair and apply moisturiser, trying to stop the sun from drying out my skin. There’s a brief knock at my door and it opens. Just as he’d promised, Ben’s here, wearing fatigues and bare feet, carrying two glasses of whisky.

  Every night since the first night he stayed in my bed, he’s been here. Sometimes it’s been the early hours before I’ve felt him climb in next to me, if he’s been away for a meeting or to pick something up. Every morning he’s gone before I’ve woken.

  He puts the whisky down on the bedside table and sits on the bed.

  “Will you come here?”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  He grins. “Orgasm.”

  I laugh. “Close enough.”

  I go to sit next to him, but he pulls me onto his knee and undoes the towel that’s tied just above my breasts.

  “I told you to be naked.”

  “I don’t always do as I’m told.”

  His hands cup my breasts, carrying their weight, rolling my nipples with his fingers and thumbs. My arms are stretched overhead, allowing him easy access to do what he wants.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good thing or bad.”

  “It’s a good thing. You wouldn’t be interested in a well behaved sub.”

  His lips are tender against the skin of my neck.

  “You’re right. I prefer a switch.”

  A person who can be both subordinate and Dominant. I’ve known who I was since I saw a woman play both parts at a club in Seattle. She was tall and beautiful, high breasts with full hard nipples and arms that were toned and muscled. She oozed power, even when I saw her at the mercy of a man who made her beg to come with a paddle and his fingers. I am none of those things; I have a label and it weighs heavy on my head.

  “I’m sorry I went in to save you when you didn’t need saving.”

  His apology freezes me.

  “I lost sight of you and I panicked.”

  My towel slips open and I’m naked on his knee. Who holds the power now? I’m not sure.

  “I’m a strong swimmer.”

  “I know. I’m a strong man.”

  He doesn’t mean physically. He’s telling me something else.

  “Why do you leave my bed so early each morning when there’s no one around but the staff who won’t breathe a word?”

  “Because if I stay I’ll give you something I’m not ready for.”

  His hands have slowed, his fingers the gentlest they’ve ever been. The kiss that follows doesn’t have a precedent. It sets one.

  Our lips touch as if we both might break with any pressure and my hand spreads across his chest, feeling his heart beat.

  I know what I knew years ago. I fell in love with Ben Smith the day he went back into a maze to try and find me for fear I was lost and I’ve been in love with him ever since. His hands trace like they did years before, exploring unknown territory. We both need to memorise what is written on our bodies, the scars and the marks and the bruises, the tracks where tears have stained and the kisses other lovers have placed. I’m facing him, straddled on his lap and he sucks on a nipple without nipping or biting.

  He leaves me raw.

  I’m wet and pulsing. This can only go on for so long before one of us snaps and our lust becomes violent. I bounce up and down to urge his hand to drop further south, needing some release. In the water, I’d felt his erection pressed against me. Now I wished he’d moved away my bikini bottoms and fucked me in the sea while Isaac was there, bobbed me up and down on his dick.

  “You need more?”

  “I always needed more.”

  His hand cups my sex.

  “You’re fucking dripping.”

  “Why did you never fuck me?”

  “Because I’d have never left you.”

  The words resonate like heavy drum beats and I understand what he means.

  I was too young. To innocent. Too royal.

  “You should’ve been my first.”

  “I know.”

  He pushes a finger inside my cunt, then another, bringing me close to the edge of coming but not to it.

  “I can be your first in another way.” He removes his fingers and smears my wetness to my anus, pressing a finger against the hole and making entry.

  He’s filled me with his fingers before. He wasn’t the first, but I’ve never gone all the way there. I’m too much of a princess.

  “Yes.” Thinking about it isn’t necessary. I owe him this, my last first.

  He kisses me again, open mouthed kisses that are almost as intimate as having someone inside you and his fingers carry on exploring.

  I’m not a fearful person. I wasn’t a worrier as a child and not as an adult, but whenever Ben was there, is there, I fly freer and higher without fear. Like now.

  “Where’s the lube?” He breaks the kiss, pinches a nipple with the hand that hasn’t been around my sex.

  “Bedside drawer.”

  “You want me to use a condom?” He picks me up off his knee, sits me on the edge of the bed. His eyes are on my cunt. “Spread your legs.”

  This time I obey. Because I want to.

  He drops to his knees and starts to lick my clit. Just there, small, neat flicks of his tongue that have me begging for him to stop and never stop in the same whispered breath.

  I come hard, but it isn’t satisfying. I’m empty and I need more.

  “B
ottom of the bed, lie on your front, legs down. And spread them.”

  I drag myself there, watching him open the drawer, undoing his belt, the buckle crashing against the floor as his trousers drop. My heart is racing. His cock is huge and hard as he pumps it with his fist, drizzling lube onto it as he does.

  “I don’t want to hurt you but this will at first. It’s going to burn like fuck, Blair.” He walks round to the end of the bed and I clutch onto the sheets, anticipating the pain.

  “How many times have you done this?” I need to know and I don’t.

  “What’s that? Fucked someone’s arse or fucked it for the first time?” His laugh is dark, brutal.

  “Both.” I feel him guide his cock over my clit, to my cunt, then his pushes it, not hard or rigorously, just in.

  “I was a soldier. You took what you could get and maybe you got some more.”

  I don’t ask, because I’m not sure how I’d deal with the answer. I was never Ben’s first, not in anything, not this. I was never his all.

  He pulls his cock out and I feel it slide smoothly over the crack of my ass. There’s the cool dribbling of lubrication, something I’ve felt before when he’s had his fingers in me. This time there’s more and then there’s a finger, two, stretching like scissors.

  I gasp and clutch the sheets, feeling a cold sweat cover my body.

  “I won’t come in your ass. Not this time. Spread your legs more.”

  He nudges them apart because my legs can’t move. My entrances tenses and I hear murmurs and soothing words, but I don’t understand them, because he’s pushing into me and it hurts, stings. The burn makes my eyes water and I wonder why the fuck I’m doing this because I can’t hear Ben any more or feel anything else but the white light that’s cutting through me.

  He’s still. Waiting. I relax. Breathe. Count to ten in Arabic.

  “It’ll feel good now. Trust me.”

  I do trust him. I also want to know how he knows it’ll feel good now but I can’t speak right now because he’s started to move and it is feeling better, different. Ben shifts a finger inside my pussy, making me feel fuller than I’ve ever been, and starts to play with the spot he’s too good at finding.

  I turn my head to the side, seeing the open door into the rest of the suite. Seeing shadows at the door that shouldn’t be there. I hear noises coming from me that I have no control over making because I’m lost to something that’s pulling me over, under, everywhere Ben wants to go and then I come. And I scream.

  The shadows move.

  My vision blurs.

  Ben says my name and pulls out, I should wince with the pain but instead I see a dark-haired pirate at the door way and he’s watching as Ben ejaculates onto my back. The man’s touching his cock through his shorts, looking at me straight in the eye while my head of security comes after fucking me in the ass.

  It’s Isaac.

  It’s Isaac watching me and Ben.

  And I don’t think there’s more than one other place he’d rather be.

  Chapter Twelve

  I recognised those eyes.

  I’m dressed in a fishtail gown that really means I can’t eat or potentially breathe until my body is released. I wish I was a man and I didn’t have to get trussed up like a Christmas turkey in order to impress, but this is what society dictates.

  I knew those eyes.

  When my head was turned towards the door, I saw a shadow. Its eyes were familiar and I’m looking into them again now.

  “How are you finding Chequers?”

  “It’s been beautifully re-decorated. The designer has had a real eye for its history.” Chequers is the holiday home for the English prime minister. It’s in Scotland, but we allowed – as a gesture of friendship – the English leader to continue to use it.

  It’s here where William is having his dinner and dancing, and I am here as bait.

  “We seem to meet often at occasions like this.”

  Isaac offers me his arm and I take it, linking in so he can lead me to the library which is where the small gathering is having pre-dinner drinks.

  Compared to the castle and the celebrations there, this is tame. The cocktails are too poised, too many ingredients and too much smoke. William has been beaming at everyone since I arrived downstairs and I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him or tan his hide for being so ignorant.

  Alcohol loosens the tongue and the morals. Business is best done over a bottle of wine or a Long Island Iced Tea, with a pen ready. Not through smoke and mirrors that you can see.

  “I don’t know when else I would meet you.” I pause, drop his arm, and look at the eyes that I once saw. And not somewhere like this. Not somewhere we can see faces.

  Isaac shrugs. “There’s nowhere else I’d have known you from. How was the rest of your holiday?”

  “Restful. I enjoyed it a lot.” If you interpret ‘restful’ as filled with sex and orgasms.

  He smiles and we enter the library. As usual, it’s man heavy, the lack of females who aren’t married to a politician noticeable and it grates on me.

  For the first time since I was old enough to be at these events I want to speak out, saying something. Highlight my stance, one which is different from my brother’s.

  I am my father’s daughter, but more importantly, I am also my mother’s.

  “Blair! I’m so glad you could make it!” William strides towards us. He’s wearing a charcoal suit that looks more appropriate for a funeral and I glance at Isaac, because he, as advisor, should be giving him ideas on what to wear.

  Isaac shakes his head, subtly, as he should.

  Here we are bound by rules and conventions as old as time and we dare not breach them. We pretend we have not breached them. Whatever we know does not exist here, but on a secret plane where masks and darkness and shadows and demons are real.

  “Thank you for asking me.”

  He bows slightly, just with his head and I smile, graciously.

  “It’s good to see Chequers in such good shape. You’re looking after it.”

  He nods and gestures for me to follow him to the bar. I leave Isaac, knowing he’s watching where I go.

  Knowing that somewhere, Ben is doing the same.

  “Heritage and history are important. Making sure this place is looked after is one of our priorities.”

  They’re pretty words, designed to make a point and it shows me what he thinks of me. I’m just a pretty thing concerned with other pretty things. A chandelier, designed to throw a harsh light in different directions and conceal hard truths.

  Then you have a strange list of priorities. Tell me, where does this lie in terms of finding peace between our countries? I don’t say the words. The truth is sometimes best left to raise its own head.

  “How’s your summer been so far?”

  William smiles. “Busy. No time to relax. How was Antigua?”

  I’m not surprised he knows; his chief advisor was there with me. “Restful. Private. Warm.”

  “I wished I could’ve joined you myself, but circumstances wouldn’t allow it.”

  He hands me a cocktail, one that is steaming with dry ice and looks decidedly feminine and sweet.

  I’d rather have a whisky.

  “We’ve brought up two award-winning mixologists from London for tonight. After dinner, they’re going to be holding a competition between themselves, you know, a little entertainment.”

  I’ve stopped hearing his words. Isaac is standing alone across the room, watching us. He lifts his tumbler silently and I offer a slim smile. I suspect that I’ll be spending most of the evening with William.

  “Maybe you could have something similar next time you have a banquet at the castle?”

  I don’t know when that will be. My father is ailing. The media have started to speculate that something is amiss given the amount of functions and appointments that have been cancelled or that my mother has attended by herself. Lennox’s plans for a conference followed by a meal have been placed
on hold.

  “I think we’d opt for whisky tasting.” I put the cocktail down on a small table having taken just a sip.

  William notices, looking from the glass to me. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s a little too sweet for me.”

  “Oh. You don’t like sweet drinks?” He looks crestfallen. “Shall I have another made up for you?”

  I shake my head. “Actually, I’d like a glass of water.”

  He nods, looks disappointed and asks a passing waiter for the water. If he was planning to get me drunk, he’s failed.

  “I did tell you, William, that Blair prefers Scotch.”

  I jump at Isaac’s voice. The man has a talent for moving like a ghost.

  William looks on edge. “I also thought she’d like sweet cocktails.”

  Then I realise that these drinks are for me. It’s possibly all for me. “She’s here and has a voice.” I look from Isaac to the prime minister. “And tonight I’ll be sampling the finest Scottish tap water, with maybe a whisky chaser before bed.”

  William smiles and nods, keeping his gaze on me. Isaac looks away, but I can tell he’s amused.

  I know his eyes. I’ve seen them before that first night at the palace. Before Antigua. Before now. The flicker of gold within them, the way they dance.

  I know how they look when he’s aroused.

  “Have you been to Chequers before?” William changes the subject abruptly.

  “Many times. When I was a girl, the Prime Minister then had a daughter the same age so I’d spend a couple of weeks here each summer. We used to play hide and seek through the bedrooms. One summer we pretended there was a wardrobe that did actually lead to a different world through the back of it. Every time we went in it, we were disappointed.”

  Claire, she had been called. She’d died aged nineteen, killed by a drunk driver. Her father had stood down from office some months later. I went to her funeral, whispered words by her grave.

  “Where haven’t you been in England? I’d love to help you discover somewhere.” He was really trying hard.

  “I’m not sure.” I start to go through the places I’ve been, listen to his suggestions. I smile, like a good princess should, but I don’t lie.