Prince: A Filthy Sweet Fairy Tale Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Prince

  A Filthy Sweet Fairy Tale Romance

  Miranda Martin

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  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Red Hot Preview: Dragon’s Baby

  Blurb

  Consider this—who exactly comes to a cotillion?

  Females.

  Young, innocent, virgin females. That's who.

  Enough to satisfy even my desires.

  Women are my weakness and I indulge that weakness as often as I can.

  Gold-diggers. Coquettes. Self-serving opportunists.

  I'm a Prince, why wouldn't they throw themselves at me?

  I take what's freely offered because it's satisfying, but I'll never love someone who has nothing but a pretty face.

  I'm not interested in being the hunted.

  Not when there's prey as delicious as Elle Gray.

  Sweet, intelligent, motivated.

  The girl I can't get out of my head.

  She's got her ticket away from mediocrity, an acceptance letter to a prestigious fashion school. All she needs is a sponsor.

  A sponsor she can find at my cotillion.

  I'll find her again that night.

  And that night I'll be her first…

  *** Prince is an over-the-top, spun sugar sweet and filthy STANDALONE modern fairy tale romance novella with no cliffhanger, no cheating, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. ***

  Copyright © 2017 Miranda Martin

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter 1

  Elle

  I dip the scrub brush into the bucket of soapy water, and look at how much of the foyer still needs to be done. Too much. Sometimes, it seems my life can be measured in the number of times I've cleaned this same stretch of faux wood. I rub the floor with the brush, leaving overlapping arcs of tiny bubbles, a pattern that shows where I’ve cleaned. The small of my back is already aching from how long I've been bent over.

  It’s ridiculous that I'm still scrubbing floors by hand. My stepmother refuses to buy the standard cleaning robot that everyone else has to handle chores like this. She says the robots don't do as good a job as a person can. I guess that's easy to say when the person doing the cleaning isn’t you. I realized long ago that she doesn't buy one because this way, I’m on my knees.

  She never liked me. After Father died, she didn't have any incentive to pretend she did.

  In the end, the reason why doesn't matter, does it? I'd still be down here scrubbing even if she just particularly liked the way I did it.

  I let my mind drift as I scrape at a particularly stubborn spot. I've found the best way to get through chores like this is to not focus on them. I'm brought right back to reality as my stepsisters walk down the hall towards me.

  They’re hard to miss. They're always talking a mile a minute about the current gossip. I don't know how they're always so caught up on every situation. It's almost a superpower. I half-listen as they draw closer. There’s no better source for what’s going on socially, after all.

  "He'll take one look at me and he'll be done for!"

  "Please!" A snort. "I deserve to be chosen much more than you do. You're always putting your foot right into your big mouth. How would a Singarti Prince ever take you anywhere?"

  A Singarti Prince? They must be talking about the upcoming cotillion.

  "Oh, are we talking about big mouths now? At least a foot is all I stick in mine, my dear sister."

  Oh. Low blow. I stifle a snicker.

  Her sister gasps. "You—"

  As they walk into the foyer, I look up just in time as one of their big feet move towards the bucket. It all happens in slow motion. I open my mouth to warn her, but it's too late. This is going to get ugly. The bucket tips over with a thud, spilling dingy, soapy water across the floor in an impressive arc.

  My hands and knees are soaked instantly. So are my stepsisters' over-priced shoes, and the holographic components sputter out as water hits them. In my opinion, it's an improvement on the garish, multi-color, flashing shoes, but no one cares about my opinion.

  A moment of silence as we all take in the mess and the collateral damage.

  Their heavily-made-up faces are frozen in shock. Then the shock gives way to disgust and anger. Here it comes. I brace myself. They both turn their eyes to me. And now I can predict every word they’re about to say, like I’d read the script beforehand.

  "Why are you sitting right in the middle of the foyer, you idiot!"

  "What if one of us had tripped over your stupid bucket?"

  "The floor isn't even clean! You're a safety hazard on top of being too stupid to even clean a floor without missing spots!"

  "There are spots because I haven't finished cleaning here yet," I retort grimly.

  "Don't talk back to me!"

  I sigh, standing up to right the bucket.

  "Don't you make that face at us!"

  "Yeah, you ugly, worthless waste of space! You're lucky we even let you stay here! Ungrateful brat!"

  "You're right. I am ever so grateful," I say, my face deadpan. Probably it would be smarter to stay quiet and just take it, but I'm only human. Sometimes the smart thing is not nearly as satisfying as the stupid thing. My response only gets me more of their over the top theatrics.

  They sputter as they start repeating insults and yelling in an attempt to get a rise out of me. But now I'm so not in the mood. Ignoring them, I move to another spot with my bucket and lay a towel down for my knees. I'll just scrub now and wipe up the mess after it's clean. At least I won't have to dip my brush again.

  I don't respond to them as they keep throwing insults at me. I know it won't last as long if they don't get a response. They eventually tire, soon after I stop feeding into their crazy vitriol. Right on cue. My shoulders relax a little as they finally walk out the door. I'm so tired of having to constantly walk on eggshells.

  My father would never have let this happen if he was alive. But he's been gone a long time now. The old, familiar ache in my chest makes itself known again. I know now that it will never fully go away. And I don't want it to. As long as I feel that ache, I’m still connected to my father. It’s the only thing of his that I have left.

  I push the scrub brush harder against the floor. The rhythmic rasp is soothing. I used to rail against the unfairness of it all when I was younger. That was before I knew that fairness is just a construct, used to keep children in line. It doesn't really apply in the real world.

  It didn’t apply to my parents.

  When my father met my mother, she was a Vegas show dancer and one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. I can still see the stars in his ey
es when he used to tell me about her and how much he thought I resembled her.

  I remember staring at myself in the mirror, looking for her in me, trying to pose like she did in the pictures I saw of her. I wanted to be like her so badly. Wanted to have some connection to that fantasy mother I'd never met.

  When they were married, it was a small scandal. After all, men of wealth don't often marry dancers. But he loved her and didn't care what everyone else said of the match. He knew he wanted her, and he wasn't going to let anyone dissuade him.

  And, if life was fair, they'd have had a long and happy marriage. My kind, romantic father and the beautiful dancer he fell in love with.

  But life isn't fair.

  That isn't how it ended. Father didn't have nearly enough time with her. Mother died in childbirth. She left the world when I came into it, so I never even knew her.

  After some years passed, Father decided to remarry, telling me I needed a female figure in my life. I didn't agree, but for once, he didn't listen to me and did what he thought was best. He married my now-stepmother.

  He didn't love her.

  Even as a child, I knew that. Which means Stepmother knew it too. He'd been so broken by the loss of the love of his life, he purposefully married for political reasons the second time. I don't think he ever wanted to be that vulnerable again. Stepmother married him for her own reasons, not the least of which was probably the fact that Father was very wealthy. I wonder now if she regretted it, if she did have some feelings for Father.

  He was considerate of his new wife's feelings, but he kept a picture of my mother in a drawer in the bedroom and a small holographic image of her in his pocket, always. He used to take it out to show me when she wasn’t home. I saw the look on her face one day when she caught him doing it. Anger, but also pain.

  Part of the reason she doesn't like me is because I look so much like my mother, the woman Father loved so much. The fact that he loved me when he was, at best, only fond of her doesn't help matters.

  If Father hadn't died so suddenly, so unexpectedly, he might have made better plans for me in case of his death. I think he knew he'd made a mistake after a few months of marriage. But he didn't live long enough to do anything about it.

  So here I am.

  I finish wiping the floor dry and stand up, peeling off my gloves. I push my musings aside. None of that matters now. I'm finally eighteen. It won't be long before I can get out of here and get started on my dream.

  I have the acceptance letter to Parsons tucked away safely so no one finds out.

  I don't trust my stepmother or my stepsisters. I don't know what they would do if they found out, but it wouldn't be anything good. So I'm making sure they don't find out, at least not until everything is a done deal that even they can't mess up. All I need to pursue my love of fashion design is for one of the alumni to recommend me, to act as my sponsor.

  I worked so hard to be the best in my class, staying up late, working weekends, using every spare moment I had to work on my designs. When I got that acceptance letter, I cried. It was the culmination of all my hard work.

  It's my ticket out. My ticket to freedom, my ticket to become what I've always wanted to be—a fashion designer.

  I hold on tight to that hope whenever I’m down. I hold it up like a shield now as I put the cleaning supplies away and walk to my room.

  My room is small, smaller than anyone else's room in the apartment. Probably meant to be a closet since it's so much smaller than the other bedrooms, but I don't care. Having a space to call my own is enough, even if it is tiny. A place I can retreat to and be by myself.

  Before I enter, I look up and down the hall and listen. I’m all alone. I ease the door closed behind me, and go over to my bed. I don't want anyone to find out about what I'm working on. My stepsisters would tear it up or steal it out of spite alone, if they knew. They don't know about my dream, and I want to keep it that way. They don’t need any more ammunition to hurt me with.

  I lift the mattress and carefully pull out the dress.

  Scraping together the money I needed to buy the cloth, the buttons, the thread...was difficult, to say the least. But so worth it. I smile as I touch the few virtual reality parts I was able to salvage from some second-hand stores. The purples and greens of the faux flames at the hem will add movement to the skirt and contrast nicely with the navy blue of the fabric to give the dress the punch that it needs. I still have a lot of work to do on it before it's ready.

  I sit on the floor with the wall at my aching back for support, then take out my sewing kit and get to work. This dress needs to make an impression. It's going to be my calling card, an example of the work I'm capable of doing. I hope so, anyway.

  If I can just find a way to get to the cotillion, maybe I can find that sponsor I need.

  I could have gone with a pretty—and safe—sheath gown, but I need a dress that will get major attention. I picture walking into the high-society event and someone noticing the standout design of the dress. How they would walk across the room to ask who made the dress, their tone admiring. They'd jump at the chance to sponsor me, to help me start my career.…

  I sigh as the daydream dissolves. I know that specific sequence of events is pretty far-fetched.

  A girl can dream! I stare down at the hem with a critical eye. Maybe I should add—

  The door slams open with a sound like a shot. The dress is in clear view, though I clutch it to my chest, protecting it as I’d protect a helpless infant.

  My stepmother glares at me. Her face is blotchy red.

  My heart is pounding. My mouth goes dry and my stomach flips over.

  Caught.

  I'm caught.

  Chapter 2

  Herne

  "There you are, Herne. I've been looking for you all night!"

  I try to keep my face neutral at the sound of the feminine voice behind me. Maybe if I ignore her she'll take the hint. The man in front of me looks over my shoulder, his eyes widening at what he sees.

  "I'm guessing you would much rather speak to her than me," he says with a sour little smile, stepping back politely.

  Not true. But it would be rude of me to say so. I don't mind being rude under the right circumstances, but only if it serves a purpose. I have no desire to be mean for the sake of it.

  Which means I'm stuck.

  I swallow a sigh and turn around to talk to Rita. She’s wearing a sequined gown that somehow manages to cling to the lower halves of her breasts while leaving the upper halves exposed. It’s a gravity-defying feat of engineering. The rest of the dress clings tightly to every curve. She poses for maximum effect—hand on her hip, chest thrust out.

  When she's sure she has my attention, she flips her dark hair to the front as if making sure I see the thick extensions. Rita is a beautiful female specimen, no doubt about that. She works hard to look the way she does. I appreciate hard work, and that’s the reason I was interested in her at all, even briefly. The problem is that nobody has a higher opinion of Rita than Rita does. It's difficult to spend much time around someone with that kind of attitude.

  "It is good to see you, Rita," I murmur, taking her offered hand and bending over it, making sure my lips don’t quite touch the back of it.

  She smiles with satisfaction, her enhanced lips slick with gloss. She sets a proprietary hand on my forearm as I straighten, staking her claim.

  I never should have accepted her offer before. I'm usually pretty good at spotting bed partners that may cause potential problems, but I missed this one. She knows the score. I was clear about my lack of commitment to her, or to anyone. But her type often believes they can change someone like me.

  That’s her mistake.

  She’s my mistake, at least for the moment.

  "Why haven't you called me?" she demands, trying to disguise the question as playful flirting by slapping my arm.

  There's a hint of steel in the question that lets me know she's more serious than she wants to let on. S
he isn't the kind of woman who is accustomed to getting the brush off.

  "I've been busy," I say. I don't owe her an explanation. Not when I was honest about my intentions. And I have been busy, so it isn't a lie. Overseeing multiple corporations and business ventures takes a lot of my time. I enjoy the wheeling and dealing, the market forecasts, the creativity and steady hand needed to roll with the punches. Outside of business, my life is simple. Uncomplicated. And I like it that way. If I feel a pang of emptiness now and then, well, perfection doesn't exist. My life is full enough.

  "Oh?" she says, arching one slim, perfectly shaped brow in warning. "Busy with other women?" she asks, giving me a hard look.

  I firmly curb my impatience. If she thinks she has any claim on me after one night of sex, she is sadly mistaken. Perhaps she feels betrayed or misled but that’s not my problem. I was nothing but honest and upfront.

  However, it isn't entirely her fault that she believes partying has me busy. I'm careful to present myself as the perfect Singarti playboy. It's not completely off the mark, though it isn't the whole picture either. Women are my weakness and I indulge that weakness as often as I can.

  I keep my beast on a tight leash by making sure it is the only indulgence I have.

  My almost-human appearance proves how much control I have over myself, so Singarti society at large looks the other way, assuming I'm mostly harmless. Because of our inner beasts, we are taught to live in strict moderation, for fear that hedonistic pursuits will feed the beast too much.

  It happens. It's happening with my friend Adir right now. His appearance is becoming more and more animalistic—increased body hair, the beginnings of a snout, elongated ears…I worry his beast may consume who he is.

  That fear has our people always pushing monk-like lifestyles. I do not believe such an extreme solution is necessary, however. What is the point of living if one cannot enjoy oneself, after all?