“I love you,” she said as she leaned back on her bent toes, shifting to his desired position.
After he’d opened her shirt-dress, he looked down to her spread legs. “Are you wet, my queen?”
“Yes.”
“What will you do to earn the right to come?”
Her heart hammered within her chest as her thighs glistened. “Like everything else, that decision is yours. I willing give you control. As always, my answer is anything.”
“Forever and always.”
*
For More…
If you haven’t read the beginning of this story…if this was your first introduction to Tony and Claire Rawlings or maybe you began their story, but didn’t complete it, it’s not too late.
The Consequences series is five full-length books: Consequences, Truth, Convicted, Revealed, and Beyond the Consequences. For more insight into Tony Rawlings, after the series has been read, there are two companions: Behind His Eyes Consequences and Behind His Eyes Truth. Book one, Consequences, is free on all channels.
Thank you for reading Natalie and Dexter’s Prince and the Pauper story, Ripples, a story where physical chains are more freeing than figurative ones, and in finding a new life, the princess becomes the queen.
I hope you enjoyed the consequences…
LINK to Consequences series on all platforms:
www.aleatharomig.com/consequences-series
ROYAL MATTRESS
A Princess and the Pea Story
Nicola Rendell
“True story.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Princess and the Pea
1
Dave
Before I start, I need to put one thing out there: I was born Ivan Alexander Hallsett Ratislav Stefanik IV, Exiled Prince of Greater Moravia and Lower Bohemia. But for fuck’s sake, call me Dave.
Five years ago, I was living just far enough outside Newark that it didn’t feel like I was anywhere near Newark. I’d bought and renovated an estate halfway between Montclair and Falls River. It was ten acres, with a long driveway and rolling hills. When I first saw it, the real estate agent called it palatial. Exactly.
But the house and name aside, I was otherwise pretty much an ordinary guy from New Jersey. I liked my coffee black and my Jets games close until the second half of the fourth quarter. I paid for my Beemer in cash, and I had all my bills on autopay. I mowed my own lawn, because who the hell doesn’t like riding a John Deere, but I had a service do my laundry because doing laundry is dead-ass in the middle of the category of life is too goddamned short.
Not to be an ass about it, but for a guy in my late thirties, I felt like I was a pretty good catch. I could hang with those militant fanatics at CrossFit if I had to. I could run a half marathon without getting totally winded. I took a lot of hard looks in the mirror and thought, Solid. Not like some fairy-tale prince or whatever, but not bad. Good head of hair, strong jaw, respectable abs.
And doing just fine on the money front.
Unlike the Ivan Alexanders I through III, who burned through the family “fortune” like a god-awful Fourth of July mishap in a bone-dry national forest, I had no choice but to make my own way in the world. So I did. After I got my MBA, I decided I’d focus on what I’d decided was the only sure thing after death and taxes.
Mattresses.
Yeah, yeah, I know. You thought I was going to say food-delivery apps or drones or some shit. But no, mattresses. Everybody needs a mattress. A good mattress, though. Not one of those cheap, springy pieces of shit that jabs you in the spleen all night long. I got into the game before Tempur-Pedic and Posturepedic and the rest. Royal Mattress was the first: I zeroed in on the luxury mattress market, and wouldn’t you know it? It worked. Like pennies from pillow-top heaven, the money rolled in. I had everything I could ever want. Cars, houses, vacations, a killer stock portfolio. A regulation-sized pool table. I was thinking about buying a yacht. But there was one thing I didn’t have: the most important thing of all.
Someone to share it with.
I had shit luck with women, and I always had. Truly, epically, comically bad luck. The kind of shit luck that my buddies laughed about until they cried into their beers. Fuck, remember the time that woman put a flaming empty popcorn bag of dog shit on your porch? Hideously bad. The thing was, I had an old-fashioned belief in the one. I really believed, in my gut, that somewhere out there, there was a woman who needed me as much as I needed her. I really thought that when I met her, I’d know. I believed we would be two parts of a whole. I once knew a guy from Mexico who said that down there they say two halves of the same orange. I felt it in my bones. I was waiting for her, the other half of my orange. She’d make everything fall into place.
I looked for her everywhere. I kept my mind open. I didn’t pull some douchebag move about only liking skinny blondes or some shit. No way. I figured she could be anybody—the sparkle had to be inside someone, and all I had to do was keep looking. So I became a serial first-dater. I went out with a kind-hearted nurse. A red-lipped gold digger. Two different socialist vegans. Women with rhinestones stuck into their nail polish and who said things like, “Totes awesome!” A librarian. A preschool teacher. A lady who specialized in some rare fern fossil found only on the eastern slope of Colorado. I ran the whole gamut. But the one wasn’t anywhere to be found.
Part of it, of course, was totally my fault. Who the fuck walks into the ocean and says, “I’m looking for a fish, but I don’t know what kind of fish. All I know is, not that fish.” Or maybe only idiots believe in orange halves. But what I did know was it wasn’t all my fault. The other part had nothing to do with me, but it was something I’d inherited. And no, I’m not talking about my name.
I’m talking about Grandma Katrina.