Dirty Royal: A Bad Boy Royal Romance
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Authors: Amelia Wilde
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Dirty Royal
A Bad Boy Royal Romance
by Amelia Wilde
Hello! My name is Amelia Wilde, and I can’t get enough of romance…especially those bad boys. Since you’re here reading my book, I’d like to offer you another free read by yours truly.
Hate Loving You
is another story from the same world as
Dirty Royal
, with a small-town flavor. This title is
exclusively available
to members of my mailing list.
Interested? Just let me know where to send it by following this link:
http://tiny.cc/awilderomance
.
In addition to your complimentary book, you’ll also be the first to know when my new releases drop as well as giveaways and other perks…like the extended epilogue to
Dirty Royal
that will be released exclusively to my mailing list members.
See you there!
~
Amelia
Chapter 1
Jessica
The Purple Swan is on fire tonight.
Not literally, of course. But there’s clearly a heated kind of energy zipping through the ultra-exclusive dining and dancing club in the heart of New York City tonight. It’s evident everywhere—radiating from the couples swaying on the dance floor, emanating from the groups of twenty-somethings laughing raucously at the white linen–covered tables, and even projecting through the waiters who move double-time across the room in their spotless Swan uniforms, black jackets with crisp white shirts, with trays filled with glasses of sparkling drinks and plates of Michelin-star quality food so meticulously arranged it’s almost a shame to eat it.
That fire embodies everyone, the drinks and the food and the wild purposeless celebration of the night filling my friends to the brim. Their laughter is loud as they order delicacy after delicacy and send away piles of empty plates, their drinks never running dry.
It touches me, too.
Just not like it touches them.
It’s like my friends are out splashing and having fun playing in the ocean while I’m left standing on the shore, the waves lapping at my toes but never coming up over my ankles.
My friends love me—I seldom if ever doubt that—but there’s a barrier existing between us that I’ll never quite cross, no matter how often I get invited to the Purple Swan, no matter how often I borrow a new couture dress from my roommate, no matter how loudly I laugh along with them to their stories and jokes.
Everyone sitting at the table around me tonight, including my date—a nervous guy named Rick who has a pleasant enough face but absolutely no charisma—belongs to the top one percent of the wealthiest people in the country, if not the world.
Except me. I just know how to play the part.
“Jessica!” calls Christian Pierce from across the table, cheeks flushed pink and eyes glistening from the numerous drinks he’s downed over the course of the evening. This version of him is, if you can believe it, mellower than when I first met him. “Where are you, sweet thing?”
I can’t help but laugh. Christian can get away with saying that shit, but it’s only because we were part of a close group of friends at boarding school. That makes me sound upper crust, but don’t let it fool you. A scholarship put me through school. Christian’s father could have bankrolled the whole place.
“In my head, Chris. I can’t help it.”
“Tell me,” says Rick, leaning hesitantly toward me from his seat. “What entertains you, Jessica?”
It’s a bizarre question, and as I glance back over at Rick, giving him as much of a smile as I can muster, I feel so fatigued from spending time with him that I want to lay my head down on the table right there in front of everyone.
“I have my hobbies,” I say coyly before turning back to my friends.
Rick can’t let it go.
“Like what?”
The rest of the people sitting around the table are talking about a new
Star Trek
movie that’s due out this summer, and even that’s preferable to enduring stilted first-date conversation with a man I’m never going to go out with again.
I knew
that
within the first five minutes. Now I’m regretting being so polite.
“Um…” I’ve had several drinks myself, and suddenly I can’t think of a single thing I like to do in my spare time. I’m usually up for going out with friends after spending another draining day in the office, but what the hell do I like to do? Maybe this city, this club scene, is sapping me of my adventurous spirit.
Maybe I’ve just had too much to drink.
I see movement in the corner of my eye, and then Jax Hunter—
the
richest man in the city—is coming toward the table. My heart flutters. Christian set me up with him once. He would have been quite the conquest in bed if it hadn’t been for the faraway look he had in his eyes that night.
The object of his affections, another outsider named Catherine Schaffer, is on his arm. She’s wearing a short pink dress that attracts the lustful eye of every guy in the room and more than a few envious glances from the women.
“Hey, guys!” she says brightly, as Jax and Christian pound each other on the back in greeting. The two of them together is a study in contrasts. Jax is tall, dark, and handsome times a thousand, the sex appeal just radiating off of him, whereas Christian is his perfect foil, blond, blue-eyed and so All-American. But only one of them is on the market now. There are two other women at the table Catherine seems to know fairly well, and I take the opportunity to fall in with their chatter as Jax and Christian whisper to each other a few steps away from the table.
I understand what Jax sees in Cate.
She lights up the goddamned room.
They’re only there for a few minutes before Jax breaks away from Christian, coming back to the table where he slips his arms snuggly around Cate’s waist. “We’d join you, but it’s date night,” he says, cobalt eyes glowing.
Cate blushes and gives a little wave, the two of them disappearing quickly into the crowd.
I have to get out of here.
Rick doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve mentally checked out.
“Kayaking,” he says.
“What?” I say, my forehead wrinkling. What the hell is this strange little man talking about now?
“That’s one of my hobbies.”
“Oh,” I say lamely, picking up my drink and taking another sip. “Yeah, kayaking is good.”
“Don’t be so shy, Jess!” Christian’s voice booms across the table. “Tell the man about your hobbies. I know you have some.”
“I know you have
one
, Chris,” I shoot back, smiling at him. “It’s something you can do all by yourself, once your date goes home…”
“My dates never want to go home,” he says, wrapping his arm tightly around his current flavor of the week. She cuddles into him, eyes shining with awe and delight.
“Oh, but they always do,” I tease. “And then, when you’re all alone in that fancy apartment of yours, your
hobby
is all you can think about…”
Christian raises one hand in the air. “Is that so bad? Huh? Is that
so bad
, Jess?”
How is it possible that I’m getting more banter out of my old friend Chris than the date he set me up with who he swore was going to be interesting? At the very least, he was supposed to be “smoking hot.”
We laugh along with the rest of the table, but my mind has already wandered, over to where Jax and Cate are seated at one of the best tables in the place, a two-person affair on the second tier of seating. Jax is leaning toward her across the table, his hand on hers, saying something that must be amusing because she smiles and laughs, her face lit with love.
I want
that
. How do I get
that
?
Not by chatting awkwardly with Rick, that’s for damn sure.
Inside of ten minutes, I’ve worked up an excuse to leave and slipped out the back entrance, heading off alone into the night.
Chapter 2
Alec
My father slams his fist down onto the hardwood table in the private council chamber situated behind the throne room, his cheeks burning beet red with frustration.
“Damn it, Alexander, get your head out of your ass.”
He’d never use this kind of language in public, but I’ve pissed him off enough that he’ll say it to me freely behind closed doors.
“I’m seeing perfectly,” I spit back at him, so angry that what little self-control I’ve built up over the years is beginning to slip away. “You’re not going to barter my time like I’m some fucking princess from the sixteenth century.”
His eyes flash in fury at my language, but it’s not like his mouth has been pristine.
My older brother—perfect in every possible way—chooses this moment to interject. “It’s a few dates, Alec. You’re blowing this completely out of proportion.”
“Is there something I’m missing, Marcus? Maybe you can explain it again so we can be absolutely certain that your idiot brother Alec understands.”
Marcus, infinitely calm and forever infuriating me, holds up his hands. “There’s no need to be so volatile—”
“I just don’t see,” I scowl, my voice remaining deadly calm, “how the two of you can decide to set me up with not one but
a series
of dates for political gain. What’s the end game? That I marry the girl so you can trade intelligence information with her father at the wedding brunch? I don’t think so.”
My father, the reigning kind of Saintland—a job that, if I’m being completely honest, has aged him thirty years since he took the throne a decade ago—lets out an exasperated sigh.
“We’re simply trying to leverage our available assets to make international connections.”