Killer Queens (5 page)

‘Can I tell you later?’ he said. ‘Over a drink?’

‘I’d rather know now who I’m going for a drink with,’ she said honestly.

‘You have to
promise
to come if I do,’ he said nervously.

‘All right,’ she said.
How bad can it be?
she thought.
It’s just a drink! And I don’t see anyone else asking me out right now . . .

Hugo bent down and whispered his name in her ear.

It took all she had not to drop her cappuccino all down her Boden dress. But as soon as he’d told her, she knew it was the truth: she could see the press photos of him, slot the face looking down at her above the Navy dress uniform or polo outfit in which he was usually pictured. You just never thought you would bump into a royal prince in Freedom of Espresso; how could she possibly have anticipated this?

She was goggling at him. Briefly, he pushed his sunglasses up, showing her his face, just in case she had any doubt about his identity. His entire face by now was bright red with embarrassment and doubt as to her response.

‘You
will
still come?’ he asked, his voice just as anxious as his expression.

She nodded wordlessly and turned away in the direction of her office.

‘See you at six!’ he called after her, pushing down his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose again.

She nodded again and kept going blindly; she didn’t remember anything about the rest of the day at all. Not a single thing. Until about five, when she went on a panicked rampage round the office scavenging for makeup, dry shampoo, hair straighteners, earrings to borrow; she was scared of popping out to buy anything in case he’d turned up early and was waiting outside. Who knew if his bodyguards had insisted on sweeping the area beforehand, or whatever it was they did?

‘I never even drank that cappuccino,’ Chloe said to him now. ‘I told you that, didn’t I? It sat there on my desk all afternoon till it went stone cold.’

‘I honestly think I fell in love with you outside the coffee shop,’ Hugo said simply. ‘You were so pretty and funny and lively, and meeting you like that felt so . . .
normal
. It was just like – what
normal
people do.’ He looked abashed. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘I do,’ she said, stroking his leg.

That he used the ‘love’ word was no surprise: they had already said they loved each other, after a split four years ago when Chloe had been struggling with not only the attention that came with dating a prince, but a prince who went away on seven-month deployments off the coast of Somalia, chasing pirates. No matter how much Hugo assured her that, as a Captain of the Watch, all he did was ‘drive the ship’ and that the Royal Marines did all the daredevil stuff like boarding pirate boats, Chloe worried about him constantly, missed him horribly. And the drip-drip torture of paparazzi photos combined with the nasty little captions the tabloid press slapped on them had driven her to distraction. She had told him as soon as he came back on post-deployment leave that she couldn’t bear it; they had broken up, then got back together on his last day of leave in floods of tears and declarations of love.

But Chloe couldn’t wait any longer for the next stage.

‘Sometimes,’ she said brilliantly, ‘I
so
miss being normal.’

‘Oh Chloe!’ Hugo enfolded her in his arms. ‘That’s the one thing I can’t give you – I’d give you anything I could, but I can never ever give you that—’

‘I want
you
,’ she said, hugging him back tightly. ‘I’ve always wanted you, from the moment I saw you in that coffee shop.’

‘You don’t know how grateful I’ve been ever since that I barely had any dosh on me!’

‘I love you so much, Hugo!’

‘I love you!
So
much!’

She thought swiftly.

‘I’m going to get a lovely cold banana now,’ she said, pulling away a little. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Hugo drew in his breath in excitement, settling back on the sofa in anticipation. Chloe returned almost immediately with a nicely firm banana, and he exhaled with a long, deep sigh of sexual anticipation.

‘God, all those times at school,’ he said with deep contentment as she started to unpeel it, his erection tenting his jeans for the third time that night. ‘All those times I used to get a cold banana out of the fridge in my room and mush it up in my hand and go at myself with it . . . I used to dream of a lovely girl doing that for me, a lovely girl who looked just like you . . . I used to come and come and just feel lonely afterwards . . .’ He reached out his hand for her. ‘Ladies first.’

Their sexual life had settled into a very happy pattern by now. The banana was definitely for special occasions, rather than being a necessary fetish, but although Hugo had initiated it, shyly, years ago, Chloe had taken to it with great enthusiasm. The usual pattern was that the peeled banana would first be drawn down Chloe’s naked body and slipped slowly inside her, alternating with Hugo enthusiastically eating her out; once she had come a satisfactory number of times, Hugo would replace the banana with his cock, and when things were getting close to the point of no return, he would pull out, Chloe would quickly chew up some banana and finish him off in her mouth.

But now Chloe shook her head.

‘Darling, I’m pretty shattered,’ she said, a phrase she would never have used before meeting Hugo. ‘I’m just going to do you.’

‘Are you
sure
?’ Hugo said, to be polite, but he was already unzipping his jeans and shifting his bottom to pull them and his boxers down in one go.

‘Totally,’ Chloe said, hiking up her skirt to make it easier for her to kneel down on the carpet. ‘I love sucking you off.’

‘You do it the
best,
’ Hugo sighed ecstatically, closing his eyes, throwing out his arms, letting himself go completely in anticipation, his royal penis, sprung free of its coverings, large, red, inflamed, and clearly in need of urgent attention. ‘
No one
does banana blowjobs like you.’

It was the opening Chloe had been waiting for. She gasped so loudly that Hugo’s eyes snapped open again in time to see her throwing the banana down to the coffee table. He whined like a dog in protest.

‘How many girls have given you banana blowjobs?’ she shouted furiously. ‘
Honestly,
Hugo, you’re so bloody insensitive! I’m being stalked by paps all day and all night shouting horrible things at me, you barely danced with me all evening –
Toby
danced with me more than you,
and
he said nicer things to me as well! – and I offer to suck you off even though I’m knackered, because I love doing it and I can tell you’re absolutely gagging for it, and then you go and make me feel that I’m just one in a long line of your girls! God, I could scream!’

Poor Hugo, blindsided by this sudden stream of consciousness, stared at her, his rose-pink lips flapping goldfish-like without making a sound.

‘I’m going home,’ she declared. ‘I don’t care how late it is. I just want to cry and be alone – maybe they’re
right
to call me Lonely Chlo! It’s
just
how I feel at the moment!’

Too much?
she wondered frantically as she turned away and strode across the room.

But behind her she heard Hugo tumbling off the sofa and staggering towards her, hopping along as he struggled to pull up his jeans.

‘Chloe, wait! Don’t go! Darling, don’t be like this! What’s wrong?’

‘I just
told
you what was wrong!’ she wailed. ‘You made me feel like—’

‘You’re
not
one in a long line! Not at all!’

Hugo had caught up with her. She thought of something else her mum had said: clever women run away and let men catch them. He grabbed her shoulder with the one hand he had free; the other was bunched around his jeans, his engorged cock still bobbing in the air.

‘I love you!’ he shouted. ‘You’re the only one for me, the only one ever! You’re the
last
one in line! I mean—’

He caught himself, desperately searching for better words, but Chloe was already reacting in a way he hadn’t expected; she threw himself against him, kissing him so passionately that both his hands rose to tangle in her hair and kiss her back.

‘You mean it?’ she was saying between kisses. ‘You really mean it? You want me to marry you? I’m the only one ever? Really, you want me to
marry
you?’

The rest of Hugo’s body briefly imitated his cock and went stiff as a pole. This was it, the moment of truth. Now or never. Shit or get off the pot, as Lauren had said pithily to Chloe just a few days ago. He pulled back, looked down at Chloe’s tearful face, opened his mouth and said, simply: ‘Yes.’

It wasn’t the most romantic proposal in the world, but Chloe was light years past caring about how it had happened; all that mattered was that it
had
. Hugo loved her, and she loved him, and she was the right girl for him. Even Toby had told her that. And now she was no longer, would never again be Lonely Chlo.

Bliss flooded through her. Still kissing her brand-new fiancé, she backed him up until his thighs hit an armchair, and then she pushed him down to sit. The banana on the coffee table wasn’t as cold as he’d like it, but sod that, his cock must be so desperate by now that it’d be past caring about anything but getting off.

‘Oh
yes
!’ Hugo repeated, now on a groan of infinite relief as Chloe took a bite of banana, chewed it up and sank her mouth over the bulging head of his cock. Hot wet mouth, cold squishy banana. He was, to his great surprise, in heaven, and not just because he was finally getting his cock sucked. He had finally committed, finally done what he knew he had been putting off longer than he should. Chloe had been The One for years, the one he would get around to proposing to one day. The girl who had fallen for him without knowing who he was, who had looked up at him, outside that coffee shop, with that particular dancing brightness in her eyes. Not Prince Hugo, second in line to the throne. Just him.

It was just that, before he’d done it, proposing had seemed so . . . final. Prison doors closing behind the growing boy, like a poem they’d made him learn at school. As if all the fun would be over, and now they’d have to be seriously married people. No more larks, no more . . . fun.

Well, that was pretty thick of me,
he thought, gripping onto the padded arms of the chair, throwing his head back, groaning even louder as his fiancée sucked him off with a snug tight grip of her lips that frankly – though obviously he wouldn’t dream of telling her that – no other girl he’d been with before her had ever come close to achieving. Chloe pulled back, swallowed the banana in her mouth, took another bite, chewed it and resumed sucking Hugo off. Every time her lips left him, he moaned in anticipation, waiting eagerly for the resumption of activity; every time she sank back onto him, the immediate contrast of colder banana and warm wet tongue made him groan even louder.

I ask her to marry me and I get one of the best b-js I’ve ever had in my life! I’m a bloody idiot! Why didn’t I do this before?

Hugo had already convinced himself that the proposal had been his own idea. He was the man;
he
was the one to decide. That was how it worked when you asked a woman to marry you. Prince Hugo, Earl of Albion, Baron Llantrisant, Knight of the Garter, etc etc, had made his own decision, had not been swayed by the media or his family, had waited until he was ready, and had eventually, triumphantly, proposed to his long-term girlfriend, sure that she could cope with the demands of being the Countess of Albion and then a Royal Princess and then a Queen, confident that—

‘
Aaah!
’ he groaned, his brain switching off completely as his cock swelled and butted even further inside his fiancée’s mouth, teased and excited beyond endurance. He wanted to hold out for ever, to stay in the sheer ecstasy of this moment, the suspended anticipation of extreme pleasure; but as soon as he told himself not to come yet, his cock let go, shooting a hot stream to the back of Chloe’s throat.

She swallowed it down happily. The banana technique made giving blowjobs fantastically pleasurable for her too; she’d always enjoyed them, but the pauses that taking fresh bites of banana afforded her spun out the experience, stopped her jaw locking, and the groans of delight every time she took Hugo’s cock in her mouth again were fantastically satisfying. Plus, Hugo, being rich enough to afford it, ate a great deal of asparagus, which made his come taste of it, and Chloe really didn’t like asparagus; the banana, however, masked it with great success.

She raised her head, licking the last traces of banana from her lips and smiling at him with starry eyes.

‘God,’ Hugo sighed, ‘I do love you so
very
much, Chloe!’

‘Oh darling,’ she said, filled with triumph and royal sperm, ‘I love you too!’

Present day

Has Joachim actually ever told me he loves me?

Lori Makarwicz, fiancée of King Joachim of Herzoslovakia, stood on a dressmaker’s stool, three Herzoslovakian seamstresses kneeling around her and pinning the hem of her duchesse satin wedding dress. She had been told to hold herself absolutely still, but since, as an Olympic athlete, she had perfect muscle control, this wasn’t hard. Every so often Frau Klertzner, the principal seamstress, would pat her approvingly on the waist and mutter something in Herzoslovakian that Lori thought meant ‘good girl’; Lori’s waist was about as high as little old Frau Klertzner could reach, as Lori was five foot ten in her bare feet, and with her two-inch heels and the extra height from the stool, she towered like a blonde Juno over the little Herzoslovakian women.

He must have done.

Lori tried to play back his proposal in her head. It had been so unexpected, so breathtaking, so romantic, that it was hard to remember every single moment, every word Joachim had said: she knew that she had kept repeating: ‘This is so sudden!’ like some dumb heroine from an operetta or one of those really old movies her grandmother had grown up on – Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, him trying to hold her hands and her singing straight to camera about love and moonlight and being a Ruritanian queen or something.