The VIP (18+ Only) [COMPLETED] [Winner of a Wattys 2014 Instant Addiction Award]

2: In Which She Gets Made

“Just because you're in your twenties, doesn’t mean I’m not opposed to adult corporal punishment.”

“I think that’s just called assault and battery, Dad,” I retorted, rolling my eyes as I plucked my phone out again. The next time I chanced a look out the window, we were at the intricately-detailed iron-wrought gates at the castle entrance.

Sweat prickled at my brow despite the chill and I cursed under my breath. This was ridiculous. After six long years, Nikolai – Prince Nikolai – had probably forgotten all about me and if he hadn’t, he was a sad old man who rarely got pussy. Hell, I hadn’t even told him my name. I was worrying for nothing. All I had to do was get through this week without remembering how I’d slept with the groom’s uncle.

Not that difficult, right?

 

***

My suite was the size of my apartment and my neighbour’s combined – absolutely unnecessary on the eighteenth-century architect’s part and ostentatious on the twenty-first-century decorator’s one – and so far, I’d only seen the living area. Ivory-coloured walls dotted with what certainly looked like authentic waterworks cocooned the living area-slash-mini library. Seriously, on closer inspection, bookshelf after bookshelf against one wall held thickly-bound tomes in a language I guessed was Ruslavian; extensive poetry collections of Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe and Cummings; and well-thumbed first edition Stephen King’s – a bookworm’s wet dream.

At least I know what I’ll be doing at night, I thought, already unseating Carrie from its perch.

I turned on my heel and set it on the glass coffee table that was flanked by two chocolate-brown wingback chairs directly opposite the TV. It was at least four times the size of mine and hung on the wall like a painting, my travel-worn reflection in the dark glass reminding me that a shower was in order.

Kicking off my ballet flats, I pulled my suitcase through the high archway adjacent to the living room and into the bedroom, once again struck by the excess. The entire room was centred around the humongous four-poster bed. Flimsy netting slinked around all four columns, hanging over the mattress like fog. The duvet was a crimson-and-black affair and the pillows were thick, white marshmallows that practically beckoned to me to test their softness. Antique furniture encircled the bed, worshipping it. Thick, blood-red drapes hung from the panoramic window directly opposite it, offsetting the plush, stark-white carpeting that ran throughout the entire suite.

The bathroom wasn’t any simpler; all stark-white enamel and mottled glass, coal-and-ivory tiling and a Jacuzzi in the centre. My skin ached to sink into a tub of boiling-hot water but maybe a nap would feel better first? I had never been able to sleep on a plane (something about the fear of sleeping and never waking up because the plane had taken a nosedive into the ocean) so I was pretty bushed. Considering that it was daybreak here and nightfall elsewhere, I should’ve forced myself to stay awake to get used to local time but once my head hit those pillows, it was lights out and when I woke up again, it was to the delicious smell of breakfast. Someone had pushed a trolley of cooked food into my room and left it at my bedside. Stomach growling, I uncovered the silver platter, revealing steaming bacon, sausages and toast carefully arranged into a masterpiece.

“Sweet Jesus,” I murmured appreciatively, unbuttoning my jacket and shrugging it off, “they know me already.”

After breakfast and the slowest soak in a tub in history, I felt refreshed enough to…do whatever it was wedding guests were supposed to do upon arrival. Someone had unpacked my entire suitcase while I slept – something I wasn’t completely comfortable with – and when I reappeared from the bathroom, the trolley of empty dishes had been cleared out. Talk about invasion of privacy.