Asteria In Love with the Prince by Tanya Korval Page A

it, I was almost panting, my face flushed and the rising heat inside me beginning to turn to hot, slick moisture. Without the covering of clothes, being turned on like that was itself a turn-on: I could feel myself throbbing, practically in the open air.
    I finally saw the bar and pushed through the double doors. Jagor was standing beside a table at the end, forcing me to walk down the entire length of the crowded room. I had a feeling that was intentional. I could feel heads turning as I walked, my heels clicking loudly on the wooden floor. It was an upmarket place, filled with people in suits sheltering from the rain.
    Jagor smiled as I walked up. “Did you get very wet?”
    I looked behind him. Four bodyguards were standing within earshot.
    “Yes,” I said simply, laying down the umbrella. Not for the first time, I didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him.
    “Would you be so good as to get a drink for yourself, and for me?” he asked. “Wine, I think. Ask them to recommend something: they have an excellent wine list.”
    The bar hadn’t cleared an area for us as the hotel restaurant had. Jagor had gone low-key, I realized: the bar didn’t know who he was, other than some rich man with guards, and there are plenty of those in Monaco.
    I glanced around. Thanks to the storm outside, the crush at the bar was five deep, the bar staff struggling to cope. Jagor smiled. “You don’t mind, do you, Lucy?”
    I smiled sweetly. “Of course not.” I nearly added “Your Highness”, but stopped myself in time: if he wanted to keep it low key, I’d be low key. He nodded his approval.
    As I looked at the crush around the bar, I realized the low key approach wasn’t coincidence. He hadn’t told the bar who was visiting to ensure the place was heaving. He wanted me to be surrounded by people, knowing I was next-to-naked under the coat. He was putting us – or at least our sex games – ahead of his own safety.
    It also occurred to me that I didn’t have any Euros. I know that seems ridiculous, but we’d swept out of New York in an afternoon, then breezed straight through the airport in Nice, the heliport and then the hotel. I had Jagor’s credit card, but I couldn’t use that if we wanted to remain anonymous.
    Jagor stepped closer and pressed something into my hand. A 100 Euro note. It should have been a simple thing, but all I could think about was Asteria. I was standing in a bar, in lingerie, with not a usable cent to my name except what he’d just given me, about to fetch him a drink. I looked into his eyes and he wasn’t just thinking the same thing: he was checking that I was.
    Plunging into the crowd was like pushing off from the side of a swimming pool. I was immersed in flesh, people pushing up against me from every side. Europeans are very relaxed about personal space – French men on the Riviera especially. Only with the other women, they were brushing up against layers: coat, suit, blouse and bra. With me, every brush of an arm or back against my chest was brushing the bare upper curves of my breasts under the thin coat. Every groin that rubbed me from behind was essentially against my naked ass.
    By the time I got to the bar I was twice as flustered and aroused as when I arrived. And thanks to Jagor’s insistence that I ask for advice, I had to stand against the bar for a good few minutes while cursing, frustrated patrons piled up behind me, their bodies molding to mine.
    Even the 100 Euro note and the vast amount of change it required had been designed to prolong my torture, I realized. Then, when I returned to Jagor’s table, a glass of wine in each hand, Jagor suddenly said to one of the guards, “Arno, take Lucy’s coat for her, will you?”
    The bodyguard sprang up to unfasten my coat. For two terrifying seconds as his hands approached, every word of Asterian I’d ever learned vanished from my head. When I managed to speak, I snapped out “ I’m fine, thank you!” so fast and violently