ELL, I REMEMBER thinking as I ran from the club, That’s my life ruined.
That moment was when I knew for sure that I was never going to find the man of my dreams. Because I found him and he’s a world-famous pant-snake. A one and done royal swordsman.
Add to that, I was certainly going to lose my job. Maybe that was for the best. Lately it started to seem like I was suffering with delusions of adequacy, thinking I could pay off my student loans and help my father out of the hole of debt he had been trapped into and do it all with just honest, hard work. Now my best option was the one I probably should have taken when it was first offered.
Swallow my pride and swallow the marriage proposal and swallow all that would go along with it. Including the humiliation of having to crawl back to the man I had rejected with such a force.
I had to confide in someone. I called my closest friend, Clodagh. I swore her to secrecy but as she admitted, “I can keep anything except secrets, money, and men. Oh, and chocolate I’m not so good on. Or wine. Anything else, I’m Fort Knox.”
“This time you have to, Clodagh. Promise me. This is serious.”
“Ooh!” her voice on the phone got breathy, “Sounds sexy.”
“Okay, it is. But you have to keep it to yourself. You promise?”
“Serena, you know what I’m like.”
“Seriously, Clodagh. Please.”
Her need to know got the better of her eagerness to gossip. At least for now it did.
“Okay. But you have to tell me everything. Right? Every. Thing.”
So, I did. I hesitated about telling her who he was, but from my description right at the beginning, when he prowled into HornDogz, tall, commanding and with that animal grace, she squealed into the phone, “Squee!” She literally said, squee. “It’s him! Oh my eff gee!”
“You have to keep your promise, Clodagh. You see why I told you it was important?” Even then I thought I needed a backup plan, “And that’s your assumption. I haven’t said anything.”
“No, no, no. Of course. I understand.” then, “It is, though, isn’t it! It’s fucking him! Serena it can’t be. Oh, wow. Just. Fucking. Wow.”
“Clodagh, if you repeat that I’ll deny it. I’ll call you a liar.”
“Understood.” She calmed down. Some. Then she said, “So you have to tell me every detail. Don’t hold back a single breath, Serena.”
I gave her as much of what happened as I dared. Probably more than I should have. Well, no. Definitely more than I should have. I shouldn’t have told any of it to anyone, and especially not to Clodagh.
After I told her she sounded exhausted. I felt completely wiped out.
Before we hung up she said, “Are you sure it’s worth you hanging on to, you know, your special thing?”
“I haven’t really been hanging on to it, you know? I just haven’t been in a situation where I really wanted to give it up.”
“Not tonight?”
“Tonight, I would have ripped it up. I would have thrown it away to the winds.”
“Oh,” she sounded distracted, “Me, too.”
“But he’s a total bastard.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t believe all that you read in the blogs.”
“I don’t read any of it. You know I don’t. If even I know that he’s a bastard, he really must be.”
“Still…”
“Clodagh!”
“Okay. But I mean, supposing. You know, just supposing… if you’d given him an heir…”
“You know as well as I do that if a girl conceives by a prince one day before they’re married, she’s never going to marry him.”
“Royalty do always take pretty good care of their unofficial offspring, you know.”
I didn’t want to follow Clodagh down that path. She was still going. “Everybody knows that the father of Prince…”
I cut her off. “I need you to support me, Clodagh.”
Her voice firmed right up. I could almost hear her straighten in her seat. “You’re right, Serena. I’m here for you. Whatever you need. Hey, you want to meet up for a hot chocolate?”
“Tomorrow, Clodagh. I need sleep. I’m pretty sure I need to find a new job tomorrow.”
My father owed money. A lot of money. He had a great idea for a baby alarm. It seemed pretty revolutionary to me. He found an investor who seemed experienced and was very wealthy as well as being well placed in the government of neighboring Uglagistan.
The long and short of it is that the wealthy and powerful minister turned out to be an expert swindler. He used Daddy’s invention as cover for some horrible arms deal and, as if that weren’t enough, he ran the business into a massive debt. And he had Daddy’s signature on the deeds to prove liability.
I never trusted the ugly, pompous man. From the first time Daddy told me about him I was suspicious of his public smile and the great show he made of respectability.
I even asked my father, “Respectable people don’t usually have to keep saying how respectable they are, do they? Like clever people never have to tell you that they’re clever. You can see it.” But Daddy wanted his invention to succeed and I think he was blinded by the Uglagistan minister’s riches.
When it all went horribly wrong, Daddy was facing not only the debts but maybe even jail and so, while I was still in college, even while I was working on my final papers, I worked two jobs and paid off what I could.
The first time I went to his huge, dark apartment, in rooms high up in an old Gothic mansion, he made his offer. “Would you like to work off the money instead? It’s not so much. I think there may be something you could for me that would work it off.”
I told him that giving him the money was fine and I wasn’t interested.
“Surely, you must want to know what it is. Aren’t you a business studies major? How can you know judge the worth of a deal if you don’t know what the bargain entails?”
As he looked me up and down, his neck craned as he tried to get a better look at my ass. “Turn around, would you dear?”
His eyes slipped and slithered all over me.
I could have told him that I thought I could make a good enough guess what his ‘deal’ was, but I knew he was just trying to needle me into talking about it. I was sure that getting into more detail would not make make me more likely to accept any of his ‘bargains.’ But it could give him satisfactions that I didn’t want to be around to see.
“You asked me to bring the money.” I said, simply, “Here it is.”
I held out the money but he made no move to take it. He prowled around me. “I could be very happy,” his grin was razor sharp, “Knowing that after a hard day on the great offices of State,” he loved to brag about how important he was, “I could come home to rest in the comfort and joy of your welcoming bosom.”
Still he didn’t take the money. When I first took over covering father’s debts, I tried to make the monthly payments by a bank transfer, or an online payment, or even by a check in the mail.
Father’s creditor didn’t want any of that. It was as though having me make the journey, my going to him, and our meetings were as important to him as the money. Maybe more important. He seemed keen to trade and I sensed he would have been happy to have more visit and less money. But I was in no doubt, what he wanted was more of my company, and he wanted more of me to be available to him.
From that first time, it was the same every month and every month I dreaded the journey to the Gothic quarter of our capital city.
Every month I went to him with the money I scraped together. Every month I had to bite my tongue as he leered and told me we could make, “A better arrangement.” He bent his face closer to mine. The lids of his bulging eyes slid down and up like fleshy shutters.
“Do you know what I mean?” The point of his tongues flicked around the corners of his hard grin. “Your talents would be a far better payment than these measly installments against your stupid father’s gigantic debts.”
Yes, I knew what he meant. But, just in case, he enjoyed taking the opportunity to tell me. In awful detail.
“Your gifts, plump little princess,” he always referred to my weight, “Your wonderful endowments,” His eyes gleamed and his wet tongue flicked around his lips as his fingers wriggled like the legs of trapped spiders. “I would be able to make a very favorable arrangement,” he shifted as the hoods of his eyes slid open and half closed, “If we could reach an understanding.” When he smiled, it was even worse.
“You have everything I want.” His beady eyes glowed, “All that I need.”
He thought that I turned his offers down because he was so much older, and maybe because of his creepy, repulsive leer. But that wasn’t why. I rejected him because I didn’t love him and I knew that I never could. And I told him so. And I was even more sure when he grinned and told me it didn’t matter.
Maybe he wouldn’t take me now. Although I was sure that he would. Only, he would add more conditions. More humiliation. More awfulness I would have to endure while he dangled my father’s debt over my head.
Fucking crown prince. I should have known as soon as I saw him. How could I be such an idiot? If I had taken the slightest interest in what was going on around me, I should at least have recognized him. He’s more than six and a half feet tall, damn it. And he’s the fucking prince! How hard can it be?
But it can be ridiculously hard, apparently. And incredibly long. And terrifyingly thick. And hot. With a pulse to melt my knees and thighs.
So now I would carry that regret, too. I didn’t fuck him because he didn’t love me. Now instead, I would spend the rest of my life wishing that I had fucked him, while I have a life of being used in the most godawful ways by a man whose very breath makes my chest heave and convulse. Whose eyes skewer me like a bug he’s going to pull the wings off. And then, probably, the legs, too.
What would I have done differently if I’d had the sense to recognize him?