Declan, Beckett, and Kieran give me shit the whole way home because I couldn’t close the deal with some commoner breakfast waitress, and I roll my eyes and try to play it off. It’s not like I’ve never been turned down before. No one gets lucky every single time, but it’s sure an unusual feeling.

After all, girls flock to me. I haven’t chased anyone in years, because there’s simply no need. I’ve never met a girl worth going after like that, not when there are literally thousands of women who’d get on their knees for me in a heartbeat.

It’s nearing nine in the morning when we finally pull through the gates of the castle. The other three are staying here on an extended vacation — it’s a castle, so we’ve got the room, after all, and we stumble out of our limousine and through the garage door, getting looks from some of the household staff.

They’re carefully neutral looks, of course. The household staff aren’t idiots. They know better than to let what they’re thinking show on their faces, but I’m not stupid.

They’re thinking I can’t believe he’s getting home at nine in the morning again when I started dusting chandeliers at eight.

Well, some are thinking that. I’ve dallied with more than a few of the younger female members — all right, and some of the older ones because I like a cougar now and then — and they’re all wondering when I’ll ask them to my chambers again.

Beckett slaps me on the shoulder as he heads off to his guest bedroom, and Declan gives me a friendly shoulder-punch.

“Better luck next time, mate,” he says. “Maybe tonight we’ll go out and take the edge off, yeah?”

I know take the edge off means find another girl to fuck, and I grin in agreement.

“Sounds perfect,” I say, and we walk in separate directions.

My bedroom is more like a wing of the castle, a suite of a dozen rooms. Hell, I’ve got a conference room, a kitchen, a living room, three bathrooms and my own patio.

I toss my tuxedo into the dry-cleaning hamper and walk to the bathroom totally naked. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, going straight to bed after an all-night bender is just about the worst thing you can do.

Prince Grayson’s number one rule of living the high life? Take a shower after a night out, before you get in bed. You’ll thank yourself later.

My bathroom’s got its own jacuzzi, marble countertops, mirrors everywhere, the whole nine yards. It’s fucking fancy, but I just want to get clean so I hop into the standing shower, turn it onto hot, and lather up.

The second I close my eyes under the stream of water, I see her. The hot waitress, just slightly bending over our table, her shorts tight against her luscious ass for a split second.

And blood just fucking rushes to His Royal Hardness. I wish I knew what it was about that girl, but I’ve got no clue whatsoever. I just know that thinking about her makes me hard as fuck like no other girl has in a long, long time.

Maybe ever.

I wrap one fist around my cock, the hot water still hitting me full in the chest, and start stroking myself slowly. I try to imagine the girl from two nights ago whose name I either didn’t know or forgot: tiny, short, low-cut dress. No bra, fake breasts, nipples hard as rocks as she straddled me in the VIP section of the club we were in, not caring at all that virtually everyone could see her tiny thong as her skirt rode up.

But then I think about the waitress. Her pink lips, slightly open in surprise. The way she’d look at me if I unbuttoned the top of her uniform, maybe the way her eyelids would flutter as I kissed her neck...

I squeeze my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and command myself to think about the brunette. The way she was on her knees before the bathroom door even closed, the way she gasped with delight when she unzipped my pants and freed my monster cock, the way she inhaled me while looking up through her thick eyelashes.

And then she’s the waitress, and she’s not in the bathroom but she’s in my bedroom. She’s got one hand wrapped around the base of my cock as she licks the swollen head slowly, then puts her lips around it, sucking and licking. I put my hand on her head and push her down, slowly, until I hit the back of her mouth and groan out loud, the noise echoing through the shower.

I give up on trying to imagine the other girl. I’m too far gone thinking about the waitress, her lips around my cock as she sucks me harder and harder, her eyes begging me to use her, take her, claim her —

I come with a grunt, one hand against the shower wall, and I keep stroking until I’m totally spent and suddenly exhausted as all hell. I can tell that little jerk-off session isn’t gonna do it where the waitress is concerned, but it was better than nothing.

I rinse off one last time, get out of the shower, dry off, and fall into bed. I gotta have the energy to go back out tonight and really forget this girl, after all.

* * *

I haven’t been asleep for nearly long enough when there’s a loud banging on my door. I get up, not bothering to put on more than the boxer-briefs I’m wearing, and open the door to my suite.

It’s George, my father’s valet, and probably the person he trusts the most in the world. George doesn’t bat an eye at my state of undress, but if he’s here in person, I know I’m about to be in big fucking trouble from the other person in the kingdom who can actually create problems for me.

My father, of course. The King.

“Your father wishes a word with you, Your Highness,” George says. His face stays impressively neutral, though it’s not as if he hasn’t seen me in a far worse state before.

I run one hand through my hair.

“Right now?” I ask. The clock says it’s about four in the afternoon.

“Yes. He didn’t seem to think that you’d be indisposed,” George says.

What he means is you shouldn’t be asleep, it’s four in the fucking afternoon, but George would never ever use that sort of language.

But this might be bad. My father rarely wants to see me, and he never sends George to wake me up. I run my hand through my hair again, wondering if I can get out of this, but I think I’m stuck.

“Let me get decent,” I mutter.

“Of course,” George says, ever polite.

Fuck. This might be bad. Fuck.