Chapter One
Dare
Three months earlier . . .
Stud needed for family-owned business—free rent and all-you-can-eat pussy in exchange for work. Call His Royal Highness King Andro Nikolaevich Avalioni, or inquire inside the royal palace for more information. Must be willing to relocate to a small country.
Sorry. Is that too blunt for you?
Because apparently I’m the stud in question, and I’m just as disbelieving as you. I slouch in my chair—a four-hundred-year-old monstrosity some ancestor of mine pilfered from Versailles when the French king wasn’t looking—and stare at my uncle. His Royal Highness Uncle Queenie glares back from the other side of his massive desk. Despite my affectionate nickname for him, he’s got as much back-down in him as a brick wall or a bulldog on steroids.
“You need to get married,” he snaps. Since he’s flipping a small, ceremonial dagger end over end while he makes his point (all puns intended), I’m paying attention. I know I drive him crazy, but he’s never actually stabbed me. Yet. What? You don’t fight with your family?
“Married?” Repeating the last word in someone else’s sentence has saved my royal ass countless times. It’s an important skill, one that should be taught in kindergartens everywhere.
The dagger spears a particularly impressive stack of paperwork. “Married.”
I actually have excellent listening skills. I’m not the type who ignores what the near and dear in my life are saying. You can learn a lot by using your ears—and even more if you bring your eyes into play. Just look at how my uncle’s sitting. His back’s as straight as ever, as if being born royal substituted a steel ramrod for his spine, but there’s the slightest hunch to his shoulders as he leans toward me. He’s unhappy and pissed off, and not because he raised the M word with me.
I’m the spare. The extra. The free gift with purchase. Number two of three when the only number that matters is number one. My older brother, His Royal Highness Nikoloz Avalioni, will rule Vale someday and inherit the throne thanks to Vale’s old-fashioned love of primogeniture. He’s the Good Prince and I’m the Wild Child, the one who may or may not be a cuckoo in the royal nest. My younger brother, Luca, and I are not supposed to even touch that crown. You’ve never heard of Vale? We prefer it that way. We’re a tiny, oil-rich country sandwiched between Russia and Georgia on the Black Sea. Just imagine being in a ménage a trois where you’re always the bottom and never the top, and you’ve got the history of Vale in a nutshell.
Until this morning, I’d have said I was thrilled with the leadership of my country and that I wasn’t in any rush to see the old battle-ax move on. Most days, I love my uncle. Right now, however, I’m rethinking my position on his living a long, happy life. Nik’s been engaged for the last twelve months to a lovely girl Queenie picked out for him—aristocratic, well-bred, nice manners, and undoubtedly fertile as a bunny rabbit. Because there’s no way the old man leaves that to chance. He wants grandbabies for dynastic reasons, so grandbabies he gets.
Just not from me.
“You’ve got the wrong prince,” I tell him. “Nik’s your man.”
My uncle slaps a hand onto the file folder sitting on his desk. “According to your most recent physical, you are more than capable of siring an heir, so get on with it. You’ve practiced enough.”
Yes. My uncle just went there.
I close my eyes as if that could make all this go away. Maybe I’m having one of those horrifying dreams where you’re naked and your dick’s out there for everyone to see except you’ve just been swimming in the world’s coldest lake and everything’s shrunk up and not presenting well.
Unfortunately, when I open my eyes, Queenie’s still staring at me. At least I’m wearing pants.
“I know what sex is, Dare,” he says.
His patronizing smile is the most annoying sight in the world. I literally try to will him to stop. I want our conversations to go back to their usual epic glory, him chiding me for my most recent dustup in the press, a media circus that starred two naked girls and my coconut-bra-wearing, beer-drinking self. My attempts at dancing the hula are now legendary. Last month I buzzed the palace, doing a flyover at 80 mph in a military helicopter I’d borrowed for the afternoon (trust me when I say there’s nothing like picking a girl up for a champagne picnic and flying her to a remote mountaintop for outdoor sex). Those things are fun. Those things are the kind of wild and crazy my fellow Valeians expect from me.
So, one would think that marriage and Dare could never, ever coexist in the same sentence. I’m the prince voted most likely to be accidentally shot or to gamble away the enormous private fortune my parents left me during a spur-of-the-moment trip to Monaco.
I don’t do bridal white.
Tulle, diamonds, and promises of forever?
Not on my to do list.
Queenie glares at me, the expression on his face a familiar mix of disapproval and gruff affection. Despite the fluffy nickname I’ve gifted him with, he’s a hard, dirty-mouthed, hands-on fighter. He loves his guns, his beer, and his freakishly huge Maine coon cat that he imported from an animal shelter in the United States because he—and I quote—hadn’t tried online pussy.
After the helicopter crash that took our parents and his wife, Rose, he moved us into the palace with him and turned the centuries-old flower gardens into an obstacle course and shooting range. It’s the only time I’ve seen him not put Vale first. He refused to marry again. He still wears her ring on a necklace around his throat. He announced that he was Rose’s and that the three of us were heirs enough. He ran the obstacle course with us, too, in the mud, the sun, the dead of night—whenever the nightmares came, because, he said, he’d never be too old to kick our asses.
He’s like some kind of aged, cranky superhero with telepathic abilities. Certainly, he’s always known what we’ve gotten up to.
Or maybe it’s the years he spent fighting with resistance groups in the Caucasus Mountains. He learned how to gather intel there because mountain life is all about do or die. He also rides like a demon, shoots better than any man I’ve ever seen, and has a PhD in medieval history from Oxford. He’s powerful and as laidback as a tiger in a zoo—one that could clear its cage anytime it wants and eat its audience.
Getting into trouble has always been easy.
Getting out of it, with my uncle around? Not so much.
This is where I miss having my brother as my wingman. Nik vanished almost a month ago on a “health retreat,” which sounds like a load of shit rather than the relaxing, mature activity the Palace Press Office tried to pass it off as. Honestly, Nik’s probably off doing some top-secret diplomatic mission that will save the world and cure cancer in some genius two-for-one move. Nik’s a great guy like that. By the time he’s king, he’ll qualify for canonization.
I, on the other hand, am Prince Darejan. You can call me Dare. Yes, that’s both a nickname and a label. I’ve never envied Nik being first in line—and no one has ever mentioned the M word in my hearing, unless it’s been in the context of Oh that Dare . . . can you imagine him getting married? My dick is neither monogamous nor reproductive—and I’m generous, sharing its magnificence with all my loyal female subjects. I’m the playboy prince, royal party central, a maverick who’s as impetuous as he is unpredictable. And unpredictable is good. It keeps my fans on their pretty little toes, because everyone wants a piece of me—and once they’ve got that piece, they take it to market. Remember Shylock who wanted his two pounds of flesh so badly? I’ve been sold out by nannies, tutors, schoolmates, fellow officers, taxi drivers, and dozens of lovers.
I am so not the guy who settles down. But my uncle’s blasting on ahead, shoving a stack of color-coordinated, tasteful pink leather binders at me. I flip the first one open automatically and stare down at the glossy eight-by-ten of Princess Tallulah Tamsin Something-Something-Something. I’m sure she’s a lovely girl and that I could have her screaming Yes, yes, Dare, do me harder in minutes, but I prefer to do my own shopping.
Queenie points to the binders in my hands. “I’ve chosen three young women. Anyone of them would make an excellent queen. Pick one.”
It’s not their capabilities that I doubt. “No,” I say.
That “no”?
It’s a token protest, and we both know it. I don’t refuse my king, and that he’s my uncle just makes it worse. Queenie’s presented me with a tasteful a la carte menu when I usually just head to the buffet and load my plate up with whatever catches my eye.
“Who’s the king here?” He flattens his palms on the desk and leans forward. He’s still a big, built guy, and his shoulders temporarily eclipse the sun shining in via the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. The desk was a gift from Rose when he ascended the throne. It’s a big, mahogany, gleaming behemoth with approximately a million drawers and built in the early nineteenth century by an English cabinetmaker who had no idea his work would end up in a Slavic palace three thousand miles away. Palace rumor has it that my aunt promptly proceeded to christen that desk with her royal spouse so that he’d always think of her when he had to work. I try, and fail, to imagine feeling that way about any of the three Binder Girls.
I straighten up from my slouch and make him a bow. “Your Majesty.”
“You do this, Darejan.” My uncle never shortens my name and he never wastes words. If he wanted to, he could probably take over the world by noon.
“You’ve got Nik,” I protest. This is like tap-dancing across a freshly seeded minefield. “Nik’s already engaged to perfect princess material, so it’s not like Vale needs me to volunteer my swimmers in the procreative cause. Maybe my older brother could end his month-long incommunicado health retreat and march to the altar instead.”
Marriage is about duty. About doing what’s right even when I’ve made a career out of doing what’s wrong. Suddenly I’m supposed to become the poster child for All’s Right in the World, and I . . . don’t know how to do that. Not that Nik’s not a wild one when he’s in private—because he is. He’s just much better than I am about giving a fuck and making sure Public Nik looks like Saint Nik.
“There is some doubt about his marriage,” Queenie admits. He lets those bombshell words hang in the air between us.
I almost fall out of my chair. “She dumped him?”
Queenie shakes his head. “I’m not discussing reasons now, but you’re up to bat.”
He’s not only built like a tank, but he has the mindset of one, too. If he wants me married, married I’ll be—and if he’s actually stopping to pick and choose his words, I’m not going to like what comes next. At all.
“I need you married, Dare. I need you married now.”
“You can’t just order a baby the way you would a handbag,” I protest. “Think of the pressure. My poor swimmers might be so stressed they’d refuse to come out.”
“From what I’ve read, your swimmers routinely score a perfect ten,” Queenie deadpans. No one can accuse the old man of not having a sense of humor. From what I’ve heard, he and my aunt christened every room in the palace after they’d done it on the royal desk. Although they never had children of their own, they gave it their best shot.
“This is Nik’s job.” Do I sound stubborn? Well, this is my life on the line here. Why wouldn’t I dig in my heels?
“Maybe Nik won’t be king,” Queenie growls. “Maybe you will be.”
Do you hear that whistle and the soft, innocuous thud of a landing, right before all hell breaks loose and my life explodes around my ears? That’s Queenie firing his bombshell at me.
“Things change,” my uncle continues. “I need you to do this.”
His eyes hold mine, not an inch of give in them.
“Is that a royal command?”
My king doesn’t look away, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t change his royal mind. “Yes.”
I can’t refuse an order from my king. The dossiers of the three Perfect Princesses practically quiver in my hands, and it’s possible I panic. Just a little. Bad boy princes don’t get married—we fuck our way around the globe, bringing orgasms and happiness to all. Settling down isn’t something I’d be good at. But since my king commands . . . I do.
I stand up, shoving my chair back and the binders under my arm. I haven’t been dismissed, but I’m allowed to break the little rules.
“Where are you going?” Queenie barks out the question behind me, and I turn my gaze toward the door.
“Are you going to call out the royal guards on me?” I’ve fought with those men. I’ve trained with them, bled with them, and yes, I’ve also gone drinking with them. But they’ll do what they’re ordered to do, just like me.
“Darejan.” Just my name. Nothing more.
For a moment, I pretend that I’m going to tell my uncle to go to hell. That I won’t do this. That I intend to kick over the traces. But I’m a prince of Vale.
“Where are you going?”
That’s an excellent question. I pause, with my hand on the doorknob. “I’m going to get my stag party underway.”
Every condemned man gets a last meal, and if I’m about to enter the Land of Monogamy and Respectability, I plan to make mine a buffet of girls.