Royally Mine: 22 All-New Bad Boy Romance Novellas Read online

  The check-in complete, Kaspar took over, herding the women below deck to his playroom—a dungeon on the sea. He’d wedged a king and queen bed mattress side by side to fill the entire length of the room and had hardware mounted above it on the ceiling for bondage. The wall opposite the bed featured a bevy of implements, each lovingly displayed on hooks or brackets, like pieces of art for the women to examine.

  The giddy ones giggled. Marina looked bored. Allegra—if that was her name—turned white as a sheet. Someone hadn’t read through her paperwork before signing.

  Fuck. I should find it funny. Whatever trick she was trying to pull had just flipped her. Except the protective dom in me rose up, not wanting any woman to be touched against her will. I had to fight the urge to take her hand and lead her to the door. To tell her, Listen, sweetheart, you don’t belong here. You’re going to get scared and hurt. So get off the Sweet Surrender before it’s too late.

  “Strip,” Kaspar commanded, sweeping a finger over one of the other girl’s collarbone. “All of you.”

  “I, uh, have to pee,” Allegra burst out.

  Kaspar made an impatient gesture toward his ensuite bathroom, and she hightailed it in, but not before she threw a nervous glance over her shoulder at me.

  That’s right, little girl. Be afraid. I have your number.

  ***

  Chelsea

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. What in the hell did I get myself into?

  I took as long as I could in the bathroom, trying to figure out what to do.

  The yacht had only lifted anchor a few moments ago. Maybe I should just confess everything, and get them to turn around before it was too late. Why in the hell hadn’t Marina told me Prince Kaspar was a sexual deviant? Seriously? She didn’t think I needed to know that I’d be tortured and fucked for three days straight? Because it kind of made a difference.

  Torture wasn’t my thing.

  I was in way over my head. And for some reason, I had a feeling the prince’s unsavory cousin, Darius, had a bead on me. Unsavory and sexy. He was even more drool-worthy than the tabloid photos portrayed him, and he’d been their darling for the last ten years. His dark curly hair covered his ears in a shaggy cut, setting off his square jaw and dimpled chin. He wore a black fitted t-shirt that molded to his bulging muscles. Tattoos covered his arms. Yeah. His sheer magnetism pretty much made my ovaries throw eggs down like grenades.

  Unlike the others, he appeared sober and stood back from the group like he had a supervisory role. And he’d had a suspicious eye on me from the beginning.

  Did he know I was here for a scoop?

  A thrill of danger ran through me; not the gut-clenching fear over what whip the prince wanted to use on me, but something more akin to excitement. Ambition. What if I could get the real dirt on the dangerous Devil Duke? I’d score the best story on the royals in a decade.

  I reapplied lip gloss and took a critical look at myself in the mirror.

  You can do this. Take your clothes off, and go out there with your eyes wide open. How bad can it be?

  I stepped out and froze. Cold sweat trickled down my ribs as I watched them buckling the other call girls into wrist cuffs mounted on the wall above the beds.

  “You, over here,” one of the boys commanded me. His accent was thick Austrinian.

  I forced my feet to move, my face flaming over my nudity. I climbed gingerly into place where he pointed and held up my wrists to be buckled. But when he put on the collar, I couldn’t keep it together.

  Damn my irrational fear of strangulation.

  “I’m taking this one,” the Devil Duke announced when I fought the collar and complained it was too tight. And he tossed me over his shoulder and walked out.

  Chapter Two

  Darius

  Allegra was fucking beautiful—if that was her name. Way prettier than any prostitute could ever be. I loved the sight of her sprawled naked on my bed. Her youthful body practically screamed to be violated. A pair of perky tits taunted me, their peachy tips beaded up, ready to be sucked. Her flat belly led down to her neatly trimmed mons, followed by a pair of sturdy thighs. American thighs. Definitely not Italian.

  I had to admit, I liked the fear on her.

  Not the panic she’d had over choking back in Kaspar’s room, but the intelligent wariness she wore now. Her lips parted, but no words came out. She wore little makeup other than lip gloss, and she didn’t need it.

  Her full, lush mouth and plump lips made my cock ache to be inside. I’d train her to deep-throat me like a champ.

  Only because I needed help controlling my lust, I pulled an old t-shirt out of my drawer and tossed it to her. She wasn’t in my room for sex.

  If I’d had any doubt she was a prostitute, the speed with which she snatched it up and pulled it over her head would have dispelled it.

  “Talk. Or else I call Samson in here and you find out how he deals with stowaways.”

  She swallowed. “Who’s Samson?”

  I gave a sharp shake of my head to let her know I wouldn’t be distracted. “Who. The fuck. Are you?”

  She sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “I’m Allegra’s roommate. Allegra was sick—food poisoning or something, and Marina showed up and convinced me to come instead.”

  “Bullshit. You’re a reporter.”

  She blanched, and something in my solar plexus twisted. I didn’t want her to be the paparazzi, even though I knew she had to be. The way she pressed her lips together in a firm line was all the answer I needed.

  “Baby, there are only two ways this can go.” I stalked over to her. “You can come clean, sign the nondisclosure agreement and I’ll let you stay. I might even let you collect your five grand. Or Samson will throw you overboard. I’m not kidding. You think the Halsburg family fucks around with paparazzi scum?”

  No, I didn’t really plan to let Samson know we had a reporter on board, because he actually might do something unsavory to her, especially after the Madison debacle last year. But if she signed the NDA, I’d be a perfect fucking gentleman and keep her in my room, so she didn’t have to whore herself out to the testosterone-laden group of frisky boys. I’d even keep my cock in my pants.

  Unless she asked for it.

  She looked too young to be a reporter. Oh Jesus. What if she wasn’t even eighteen and this was a police bust? Or a setup through the paparazzi to catch us on statutory rape? “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  I believed her. Mostly because her face was an easy read. I thought I’d know if she was lying. “Are you with law enforcement?” I just had to be sure.

  Her surprised scoff appeared real. “No.”

  “But you’re a reporter.”

  She rolled her lips together, and her eyes darted around the room. Yeah, very easy to read. Definitely a reporter. “What’s your real name, and who do you work for?”

  The voices of my cousin’s buddies sounded down the corridor. “Let’s get the fifth girl. Why does Darius get to take one for himself?”

  Fuck. I hadn’t locked the door.

  I moved before I knew I meant to, launching onto the bed and rolling her to one side to smack her ass. The sound of the slap rang out, almost as loud as her shriek. Nothing like a real squeal for authenticity. I slapped again. She gave another cry of protest. Though I was acting for show, my cock took it all for real, her cute squeals making me sprout a chubby.

  “Darius!” One of the idiots bellowed outside my door.

  I looked down at her beautiful, startled face, the question in her eyes, the flush of her cheeks. Her nipples tented my worn, thin t-shirt.

  Lord, help me. She was turned on, too?

  I didn’t mean to—but my body moved of its own accord. I fell on her, pinning her wrists above her head, claiming her mouth with a brutal kiss. Her lip gloss tasted like strawberries. “Get lost,” I shouted in my native language as one of my hands shoved the hem of the t-shirt up over her breasts.

  “What are you d
oing?” She sounded breathless. Her struggles were feeble at best.

  The door banged open, and I stamped my lips on her mouth, smothering her protests, angling my body on top of hers so they’d only see her legs and squirming body beneath mine. I tongued down her neck with hot, open-mouthed kisses, nipped her shoulder. I gave them a good show, bringing my hand to cup her mons.

  She was wet. If she hadn’t been, I would’ve kept it as a farce, but finding evidence of her arousal flipped me. The little troublemaker liked being manhandled. A kick of lust shot through me, making me forget everything but making her body sing. My fingers sought her folds, the heel of my hand grinding on her clit.

  Her hips jolted off the bed, but I swallowed her gasp with another demanding kiss.

  “Well that’s hot,” Robbie, the wild son of an English earl, said in his crisp accent. “Can we watch?”

  I both hated them there and loved it, because now that I had the American beauty finding pleasure pinned beneath me, I never wanted to let her up. Not until she went hoarse screaming my name.

  I screwed my middle finger into her entrance, nearly groaning when she grew even more wet. The boys were laughing and jeering behind us, exchanging stories about the things I’d done to women that were only half true.

  I wormed a second finger inside her and stroked her inner wall, seeking the infamous G-spot. There. A button of tissue wrinkled and hardened beneath my fingers. Her eyes went wide, and she whimpered, moisture leaking from her. Breaking the suction on our lips, I threw a furious look over my shoulder, like I was pissed at being interrupted. “Get out,” I growled in Austrinian to Kaspar. “Keep your fucking friends out of my room.”

  Kaspar grinned, his hero worship of me making him see what I portrayed—a selfish prick who wanted to keep a girl for himself. “Ja, cousin. Enjoy.” He winked and pulled the door closed.

  I stopped my seduction but didn’t withdraw, my fingertip still nudged inside her, my body pinning hers to the bed, her wrists caged in my hand.

  “What was that?” she asked breathlessly.

  She smelled sweet, like honeysuckle and ocean breeze. I didn’t want to climb off. You couldn’t have paid me to set her free. A beautiful, inexperienced and nervous woman whose body plays perfectly to my hand. I wanted to keep her.

  I meant to reassure her, tell her she was safe from Kaspar and his boys, but what came out was something altogether different. “That was me staking my claim on you.” I dragged my lips across her neck and continued my slow stroking of her inner wall.

  Her eyes dilated, turning glassy with pleasure. “I had to give them a show,” I spoke against her skin.

  She exposed her throat, tipping her head back with a soft moan.

  “Do you want me to go on?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Are you enjoying my touch, little reporter? I can take away the ache between those beautiful thighs of yours.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  I frowned. Yes, she may have come here under the pretense of being a whore, but I’d be damned if I ever took a woman against her will. “There’s always a choice, baby. Say yes if you want me to rock your world.”

  Her swollen lips parted on a gasp and she arched, rolling her clit against my hand. “Your fingers are already inside me, and now you’re asking for consent?”

  I grinned. “I call it the power of persuasion.” I continued the stroking. “All you have to do is say yes.”

  She panted. Conflict warred in her expression.

  “Just your pleasure this first time. Not mine. I want to see you come apart at the seams.” I don’t know what made me call this a first time, except the fact that now that I’d drunk from her lips and felt her supple, squirming body beneath mine, I wanted to possess her in every way. Wanted to own her, mind, body and soul.

  She rolled her hips again, her whimper making my cock as hard as stone. “I don’t know what rabbit hole I fell down today,” she rasped, sounding breathless, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Not yet. But I’ll make sure you do,” I promised. My need to rule her world pushed at me from all sides, a consuming desire to watch her control fall away, to teach her, to tame her.

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  I moved in for the kill. Releasing her wrists, I placed her hands on her breasts. “Pinch your nipples. If you move your hands from your breasts, I’ll punish you. Understand?”

  “Yes… yes.” She arched her breasts into her own hands.

  I shoved one of her knees up, pumped my fingers faster. My mouth locked onto her clit, sucking the tiny nub.

  Her free leg turned frantic, bending and extending beside me on the bed as she jacked her hips up off the mattress, squirming and wriggling. Her ragged cries grew louder until she screamed, her hands tangling in my hair.

  I pumped both fingers at the same time, and flicked her clit with my tongue.

  She came, her scream echoing off the wood-paneled walls of my bedroom.

  Write about that, little reporter.

  ***

  Chelsea

  Mind. Blown.

  Yeah.

  After the best orgasm of my life, I went limp, my limbs feeling like they’d turned to rubber.

  What in the hell just happened?

  One minute I was being interrogated—threatened, even—by the dangerous Duke of Halsburg, then suddenly he was putting on a show for everyone, and then… whoa. What guy starts his seduction with his fingers inside you?

  Darius Halsburg apparently. No wonder they call him a devil.

  And as much as I thought I should’ve hated it, I freakin’ loved it. As in, Yes, you can tie me up and whip me, as long as you do that routine one more time. Because a girl shouldn’t die without experiencing that.

  That level of mastery. Of toe-curling skill. Of take-charge control.

  I was getting wet again just thinking about it.

  Darius eased his fingers out of me and rolled off.

  Like an idiot, before I could stop the sound from escaping my lips, I let out a soft whimper, like I didn’t want him to leave.

  When he leaned over to drop a kiss below my navel, a shiver of danger ran through me. Not because I was afraid he would throw me overboard or make me sign away all possibilities of writing about him—although those threats still hung in the room—but because the affectionate gesture came so easily and felt so wonderful, it nearly broke me.

  And I couldn’t begin to examine those feelings at the moment.

  Not when he was returning from washing his hands in the ensuite bathroom with a look of dark purpose on his handsome face.

  He rolled me over to my belly. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t the quick flurry of spanks that landed on my ass. He caught my hands when they flew back and pinned my wrists to my lower back with one hand, all the while smacking me with the other.

  I lost my breath. “Ouch! Stop. What are you doing?” I gasped.

  “You and I both know you have this coming, American thighs.”

  He was calling me American Thighs? The AC/DC song ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ started playing in my head. A giggle mingled with my cries of protest. I never thought I’d enjoy this, but I loved that he spanked me, the sharp jolt of pain followed by heat. I tightened my thighs, needy again. He continued spanking me until the initial shock of pain receded, and my entire ass turned warm and tingly.

  When he stopped, he rubbed his palm over my heated flesh in soothing circles. I expected the interrogation to begin, but instead, he leaned over, his hot breath feathering over my ear as he murmured in his delicious accent, “If you want me to pound that little pussy until you forget your name, get up on your hands and knees.”

  My insides turned molten, heat flooding down my inner thighs. Did I want him to pound my pussy? My mind screamed hell no, just in reaction to the base suggestion. I mean, really—were we filming a porn movie here? My body, fresh off an orgasm, didn’t think I needed or could take any more. But a wild
greedy desire for every experience this famous, fascinating man could give had me launching up to my hands and knees.

  “Good girl,” he said softly, but his hand struck my ass again, which registered only as sensation, not pain. “Take that shirt off.”

  I hesitated. Being naked in broad daylight wasn’t easy for me, but I’d already come this far. He’d seen me naked, had tasted me, for god’s sake. I yanked it over my head and returned to the position, like an obedient dog. He pushed a palm between my shoulder blades, forcing my torso down.

  “I’ll use a condom.”

  It should have been a mood-kill. Not the condom part, but the matter-of-fact way he announced it, like he fucked a different girl every day and had years of experience with sexual negotiation. Which was probably all true. But what I heard was reassurance. He was letting me know it would be safe sex. Protecting me. Just like he’d protected me from the collar and the prince and his gang of terrifying dom-wannabes, as he’d called them. Did that make him a real dom? I was pretty sure it did. Ooh, the scoop. The Devil Duke was a sexual dominant. Yum.

  I heard the rip of foil and rustle of clothing. He shoved my knees wider and slapped my wet folds. I launched forward, onto my belly and away from him, but he made a tsking sound and pulled my hips back over my heels. “None of that, little yankee. This pussy needs fucking. And if I decide she gets spanked first, you’ll hold still and take your punishment. Because you’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you?”

  It was embarrassing and degrading, but also ridiculously hot. My head swam with a dizzying degree of lust. Who knew being spoken to like a freakin sex slave would turn me on so much?

  He slapped my sex again, which only grew wetter, and I held still. He rewarded my obedience with a caress, his palm stroking over my hip. “Good girl. Now take my cock.”

  I moaned as his manhood nudged my entrance, then stretched me wide.

  “Good girl,” he repeated.