Page 32

Claiming His Mountain Bride Page 32

by Madison Faye


The masks.

The sharing.

A tingling heat began to pulse between my legs, slowly teasing out to every bit of my body.

“Wait, where exactly did you see this tattoo?” Emma suddenly gasped. “Oh my God, did those guys from last night have triple crown tattoos?!”

“What? No!” I said quickly, almost choking on my coffee. “No, of course not! I just— I heard someone talking about it.”

“It’s the mark of member,” She said quietly. “You know, allegedly.” She snorted. “Did you happen to go home with a couple of princes last night?”

“Yeah, right,” I laughed nervously, trying to brush it off.

Or did I?

“No, they probably just got the tattoos for some kind of sports team thin—”

“Wait, wait, wait, they did have the tattoos?!”

I should have lied.

I froze instead.

Emma picked up on it.

“Juliana Carlson!” She gasped loudly. “Now you have to give me details!”

“Uh, I have to go!” I sputtered out, my face burning bright red. “Gonna be late!”

“Dude, this could be a HUGE story for me if it’s real!”

“Emma! It’s nothing, seriously. I probably didn’t see the tattoos right. I’m sure it’s for something else.”

She gave me a look before she sighed, giving up, even if it was just for then.

“I supposed you might have been distracted. You know, what with the two dicks to think about.”

I blushed furiously as I whirled to grab my keys and bag.

“Hey, Jules.”

I turned, my face still beet red.

“I’m just teasing you, you know.”

I grinned. “I know.”

“Hey, good luck today with your hot new boss.” She giggled. “See if he’s got a crown tattoo!”

I bolted from the apartment before Emma had my face permanently a shade of red.

My pulse raced, my body trembled. My breath came stuttered.

What had I done last night?

…And with who?

* * *

I was still buzzing — my mind still racing and my body still tingling as I grabbed a cab to the office address the hiring manager had given me. The whole way, I was of course replaying the night before. The whole way there, when I should have been mentally preparing for my first day at a tough new job working for a damn prince, I was instead thinking of the unbelievably hot night of toe-curling sex I’d had with two gorgeous, incredible men.

…The added flavoring of secret royal sex clubs and members-only tattoos only made my blood pump a little faster, even if I told myself that was all silliness.

After all, Anya had said it was just an urban legend.

The cab stopped, and I blinked my way out of the daydreams and looked up. We were stopped at a massive gate, with a guard post next to us and multiple men in the color and uniform of the North Revania royal guard.

I froze, suddenly jerking my gaze up past the gate to the office building I’d been expecting.

My jaw dropped.

Remember that thing about princes not being in castles?

I’d been wrong.

* * *

“His Highness will see you now.”

The stern looking, scowling older man in the crisp uniform barked the words across the waiting room to me. I stood quickly, shivering in anticipation.

I was about to meet the royal Prince of North Revania, face-to-face.

My new boss.

Powerful. Rich. Gorgeous.

Single.

I mentally rolled my eyes at myself for the thought. This was my new boss, not some “royal” episode of The Bachelor. And even if Prince Snow was notoriously secretive and pretty much invisible to the tabloids, I was sure it was just because he was good at hiding his personal life, not because he didn’t have one.

He was, after all, a young, hot, wealthy prince. I’m sure I couldn’t even begin to imagine the sordid details of the private life he kept hidden.

I followed the stern man in uniform down a hallway to a set to double doors — solid wood with the crest of North Revania carved into them and inlaid with gold. Armed guard in formal dress stood on either side of it. The stern man moved to sit behind a desk beside the door, and spoke quietly into an intercom.

“Send her in.”

The voice was deep, rich, and powerful sounding, and it sent a shiver up my back.

Deep breaths. You can do this.

The stern man nodded at the guards before turning to me. “A word of advice. Do not keep His Highness waiting. On anything.”

The guards opened the doors, I took a deep breath, and I stepped into the room. The doors clicked shut behind me.

“Ms. Carlson, I presume.”

I took one last deep breath, forcing the nervousness from my system before I raised my head.

Good lord.

It was his eyes that shot lighting through my body — his dark, storm-blue eyes that rooted me to the spot and sent something throbbing deep into my body. My breath caught, and for a moment, as I locked eyes with the Prince himself, I was lost.

He smiled — a darkly wicked, smug, and downright panty-melting grin — as he stood from his huge desk. He walked around it, and as he moved towards me, I felt my pulse beating faster and faster. I knew I was standing frozen to the spot not saying a freaking word like a total wierdo, but I also knew there was no way I could help that.

Not there, in that office, with that man.

He was hot in pictures, or on the news. In person, he was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Thick dark hair, those piercing dark-blue eyes, and a body that screamed power and dominance, even clothed in an Armani suit. He oozed sexual energy, and I realized I was practically panting, my thighs squeezing together under my pencil skirt as he moved closer.

“Is everything alright, Ms. Carlson?”

His voice teased over me like a lover’s touch, pulsing through me and melting over my skin.

Somehow — somehow — I managed to find myself. I quickly snapped my mouth shut and clenched my hands tight at my sides, forcing the smile to my face and trying to bury the illicit feelings deep inside.

“Your Highness.” I bowed quickly, my pulse still racing as I tried to swallow the heat from my face. “A pleasure to meet you, and it will be an honor to serve you.”

To serve you.

The blush crept back into my face as I imagined all sorts of ways I’d be happy to “serve” him.

God, what is wrong with me?

I’d had one night of the best sex of my life — with two men — and the next day I was soaking through my panties as I fantasized about my new boss.

Apparently, I’d taken “getting wild” to another level entirely.

“Mr. Snow will do, Ms. Carlson.” His eyes smirked, his whole body exuding power. “Your Highness seems a bit…antiquated, wouldn’t you say?”

“As you wish, Your High—” I caught myself, wincing as I shook my head. “Absolutely, Mr. Snow.”

He smiled cooly, and I swear his eyes lingered as they slowly moved over my body — up my legs, over my pencil skirt, and teasingly up my blouse to hold my eyes with his gaze and let it simmer. I trembled under that gaze, my entire body feeling flushed before he slowly pulled his eyes away from me and turned.

“You’ll be hitting the ground running today. It’s a busy one, so copy my schedule to yours from Leon outside and memorize it quickly. Meetings, more meetings, a board room round-table, and then I’m having lunch with some friends from out of town.”

He glanced up at me, a smirk on his face. “You’ll like them.”

He moved behind his desk and shrugged his jacket off. I swallowed as I watched him fold it precisely and drape it over the back of his big chair before he rolled the sleeves up on his dress shirt.

Those forearms…

I quickly looked away, desperate to get ahold of myself and my apparently raging hormon
es.

“Ms. Carlson.”

I quickly glanced back to see him eying me curiously. “My schedule?”

I blushed, nodding quickly. “Absolutely, Your Highness.”

I froze, cringing again at my faux pas. But he only grinned, his brows arched as if amused as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“We’ll work on that. Now, let’s get to work, shall we?”

* * *

The rest of the morning was a blur of meetings, schedule syncing, and dealing with grouchy Leon — the stern man who’d led me down the hall. I was mostly in the Prince’s office itself, doing everything in my power to concentrate on work and not him — the guy who had to be using some sort of magic pheromones as cologne, since I could not keep myself from staring at him, or thinking all sorts of highly inappropriate thoughts about us.

One meeting blurred into the next as the day progressed, until it was quickly approaching lunch. I was in a side office off of the Prince’s main office — a gorgeous room of all glass that’d be set aside as my own office while managing his affairs — when my intercom buzzed.

“Ms. Carlson.”

His crisp, velvety voice purred through the speaker, and for the hundredth time that day, I wanted to slap myself for getting so damn flustered over my boss.

Get your head together.

I didn’t know who was more to blame: him for being so insanely gorgeous and sinfully attractive, or me, for still being on this sex-fueled high from my downright x-rated experience the night before.

Whichever the case, if this kept up, I was going to have to bring changes of underwear to work.

I cleared my throat.

“Yes, Mr. Snow?”

“Would you come in here?”

There was something so captivatingly demanding in something phrased as a question that my whole body tingled as I quickly rose from my desk. I opened the door from my office to his and stepped in to see him speaking with two other men in rich, expensive suits with their backs to me.

Prince Snow looked up and smiled that searingly hot, smug smile at me.

“Ms. Carlson, would you please hold my calls while I’m out to lunch with my friends?”

I smiled and half-bowed.

“Absolutely, sir—”

The words caught, choking in my throat.

Because right then, his two friends turned towards me, and my whole world exploded.

It all came rushing back — the kisses, the hands, the gasping moans, the growled demands for more. The way they’d made my body feel things I’d never felt before, and how they’d made me come like I’d never imagined I could come.

Because right there, in Prince Luke Snow’s office, I locked eyes with his two friends — friends who weren’t wearing masks this time, and who I now obviously recognized from the news.

Friends who weren’t putting their lips and tongues and hands all over me. Friends who weren’t making my body crumble from both ends with their two thick, gorgeous cocks.

…Friends who were otherwise known to me as Matthew and Van.

My one-night, two-man stand was standing right in front of me, and the floor dropped out beneath me.

Prince Snow kept talking, like I wasn’t in total free-fall, and like his two friends weren’t staring at me with a mixture of total shock and lingering hunger. He nodded at “Matthew.”

“This is…”

He introduced them, but I didn’t need it.

I knew who they were then. There, in that office, I suddenly knew exactly who the two men were who’d rocked my body until I was begging for more the night before.

“Matthew and Van,” aka, Prince Micah Anders of West Revania, and Prince Victor Swell, of South Revania.

My night of getting wild had just gotten a whole lot wilder. I’d had a threesome with two of the three most powerful men in the three kingdoms.

This was a royal catastrophe.

6

Micah

“Tell me you’re fucking with me.”

Vic and I were silent, glancing at each other and then back across the white linen-draped table at Luke. His fist crashed onto the tabletop, sending silverware scattering and threatening to spill all three of our drinks.

“Don’t make a scene,” Victor growled quietly as one of the waitstaff stuck his head into the private dining room we were having lunch in.

“Fuck making a scene!” Luke roared, his fist crashing into the table again before he violently shook his head, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We obviously didn’t know, man,” I hissed at him, leaning my elbows on the table and shooting him a look. “How the fuck could we have?”

He said nothing, the three of us silent for a long minute or two.

“You both had her. Together.”

I glanced at Vic, and we both nodded.

Luke swore, standing abruptly and whirling. He stalked across the room to the big windows overlooking the capital of his kingdom of North Revania, leaning against it and muttering furiously.

Fuck.

I knew Vic and I both felt bad, but then, not that bad. Not after the night before, with her. Because the night before had been perfect.

She’d been perfect.

Sexy, gorgeous, fun, challenging. Willing to step outside her comfort zone. And more than that, too. Sure she was drop dead beautiful, but she’d stirred something in me — in both of us.

And now shit was about to get way complicated.

The thing was, it shouldn’t have been complicated — not with us, and not when there was a place where the three of us had “not argued” over girls before.

The club, of course.

Three crowns, one woman, one night. No names, no pictures, no nothing except anonymous fun. The whole point was blowing off steam, for rich, privileged men like us.

Men who liked to share.

And we did.

Hell, the three of us had grown up together. We were brothers in everything but blood, coming up together as the sons of the Trio of Kings that had ruled Revania of old. That was of course before the trade agreements that had started the fracturing of what had once been one country. Then it was the provincial local governments and “senators” our fathers had allowed to slowly take more and more control, until finally, about twenty years before, the unthinkable had happened.

The senators had forced a vote, and with money stuffing enough pockets, the election had been sealed — Revania would now be three countries rather than one. Three fractured states being run into the ground by bloated, thieving politicians hellbent on their own agendas. The three of us were still princes, of course — still royals and still the de-facto “leaders” of our own parts of Revania. But we had chokeholds on us now — politicians we had to “report to.”

So instead, the three of us had focused on our business acumen, putting our efforts into running what had become three of the most profitable financial institutions in the world instead of the countries we rightfully should have been running.

But that was all neither here nor there at that lunch.

What mattered right there was that Luke was pissed. Normally, there wasn’t any jealousy between us. Being rich, young, and powerful, we’d of course had women throwing themselves at us from an early age. But none of us had ever gotten “stuck” on a woman. None of us had ever individually found someone we couldn’t get out of our heads, or hearts.

Instead, we shared, and mostly at the Club.

And that was the secondary problem here — the one none of us was addressing yet.

She knew who we were.

I’d seen the look on her face when we’d turned to meet Luke’s new personal assistant — the one he’d been obsessing over for weeks. The one girl who’d ever turned his damn head and stopped him in his tracks, and she was the very girl Vic and I had shared the night before.

Without him.

And that look on her face was a dead giveaway. Fuck the fact that we’d been wearing masks —
that girl knew exactly who we were the second she’d locked eyes with us.

And that was a big fucking problem.

The club was anonymous. I mean, fuck, of course it was. Can you fucking imagine the scandal of a girl knowing who the men at that place were? Sure, a lot of them could put two and two together — or, hell, three and three together — what with the name of the club and all.

But there it lived in rumors.

Hearsay.

An urban legend.

And that’s exactly how the members — ourselves included — preferred it.

A sex club where royals took a woman to bed three at once? I mean c’mon, it sounds fake even saying it. But it was real.

It was very real.

Now, granted, Julia didn’t know us from the club, but she was a smart girl. Sooner or later, she was going to get stuck on the matching tattoos of ours I knew she’d seen, and she was going to put the pieces together.

“Luke— fuck, man,” Vic growled, rubbing his temples. “Dude if we’d had any fucking idea it was the girl you’d been telling us—”

“It’s fine,” our friend snapped, still turned away from us.

But it wasn’t. None of this was. Not the fact that she knew who we were, and not the fact that our girl was Luke’s new PA, and the girl he’d been obsessing over.

Because even knowing that Julia was “the girl” Luke had been stuck on didn’t change what I knew Vic and I were both thinking — that she was without a doubt the girl that we were now stuck on. Because the night before had been more than just the single best sex of both of our lives.

The night before, we’d connected with her on a level that scared the shit out of me. Out of him too.

So beyond everything, what wasn’t “fine” the most was the fact that for the first time in our lives, a girl was about to come between us all.

And more than anything, that was a fucking problem.

7

Luke

Yeah, I was fucking pissed.

I’ll admit, my intentions were, well, suspect when it came to my new personal assistant. Yes, I’d hired Julia because of her qualifications — her way over qualifications, actually. But one look — one fucking look at her — and I was done.