“Tristan,” Gwendolyn said, her doe-like eyes somehow growing even wider. “You’re… pierced? Down there?” She touched the surgical steel embedded in the head of my cock.
“Do you want to see it?” I asked her, shivering as she stroked it. Oh, God, I wanted her to keep going, and to never stop.
“I…” She looked up at me through her lashes, her gaze so curious, so full of wonder. “Um…”
“Come on, Gwennie. Live a little.”
“I can’t,” she said, pushing me away by my chest. My dick slipped from her hand and I groaned. “Not like this, Tristan. Not… here. When you’re only doing it to make your father… our father… mad.”
I leaned against the pantry shelves and rubbed my face, trying to scrub away the frustration boiling in my nuts. When I looked at Gwen again, there was such sadness on her face. I thought that, even in the darkness, I could see the glint of tears in her eyes.
I realized then that, for her, this was so much more than youthful desires. I realized that she might even have feelings for me—genuine feelings, ones that transcended a mere compulsion to be naughty. For me, this was just a passing interest, one of many I’d had since I realized girls didn’t actually have cooties—well, most of them, anyway.
I wanted to fuck Gwen and get her out of my system. She wanted to fuck me, too, but then she wanted to live happily ever after. I was not the man to do that with. She needed to lower her expectations.
And why not? Everyone else had.
“I see,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Bloody hell, Gwennie. I thought you were an adult now. That you’d grown up a bit. But you’re still clinging to that Mickey Mouse, lovey-dovey horseshit, aren’t you?”
Gwendolyn blushed. “I just want it to… mean something. Is that so wrong?”
I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a Disney movie, Gwennie. You’re not a princess, Gwennie, regardless of who your mother married. And I’m not your Prince Charming, your knight in shining armor, or whatever the hell else you expect me to be. But I am hot, and I am good in bed, and I am willing to teach you a few things you can use to snag a husband later on in life. It’s a good deal, love. You should take it.”
I waited, my cock thrumming to the beat of my heart as Gwendolyn stared at me. Only this time, there wasn’t a war waging behind those pretty eyes. She wasn’t struggling between propriety and desire. This time, she was hurt. Pissed. Shocked that I’d ever speak to her that way.
Good. Somebody had to bring her head down out of the clouds.
“You’re an asshole, Tristan,” she whispered. “A real prick.”
“Royal prick,” I corrected her. Then I shrugged. “Anyway, the offer stands. You know where to find me.”
I opened the pantry door and stepped out, leaving Gwen huffing and puffing behind me. This was exactly why I didn’t go for the innocent types. They always wanted something they couldn’t have, something I couldn’t give. They watched too much TV and read too many books. Real life wasn’t The Princess Diaries. Real life was more like The Bachelor, where you ended up with someone based on prior arrangements and how good they were in the sack—after you’d test-driven all your options, of course.
This was the reality check Gwendolyn needed, and I was confident she’d come after me. After all, I was leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow, a newly enlisted member of Her Majesty’s Royal Army. She wouldn’t let me go off to war without something to remember her by—she was, as I’d said before, a romantic.
I chuckled and shook my head. Virgins…
1
Chapter 1
Four years later…
* * *
It was a well-known fact that driving your own car in London was, above all things, a very poor decision. Even among the aristocracy—who seldom touched the wheel of their own vehicles, save for an odd sense of personal enjoyment—you never drove yourself through the streets of London town. In fact, such a thing was widely accepted as the key to a stress-induced heart attack—or at least, a minor brain aneurysm.
I, thankfully, had never needed to worry much about the perils and stresses of London traffic aside from a slight sense of inconvenience, what with the readily available use of my own driver on hand.
That might have sounded snobbish, but to say that I ever took dear Franklin for granted would have been a gross injustice—I prized that man almost as much as my own family, sometimes even more. In fact, if it were to be put in order of people I could count on more, it would be my beloved Franklin who would have to sit squarely on top, my own parents residing somewhere abysmally lower. It wasn’t uncommon for women such as myself to have a—shall we say—distant affection for their parents, but my feelings about my family often bordered between apathy and sheer disdain—and that was on a good day. I grew up with all of the perks of a wealthy upbringing, as well as the minimal parental appreciation.