Chapter Eleven
The bed didn’t so much welcome Allegra as ambush her. She hit the mattress with a groan. Through the threadbare fabric, something metal dug into her spine.
No. I can’t.
Nate’s voice echoed in her skull. Not teasing. Not even a maybe if you beg. Just an unyielding nuh-uh. Like she’d asked him to solve world hunger instead of—
She stared at the ceiling, following a water stain shaped like a continent she’d once holidayed in expensively. Her eyes burned hot, her throat itching as if she’d swallowed sand.
This was unprecedented. Princess Allegra of Valenstadt had been patronized, underestimated, and micromanaged into oblivion.
Never flat-out rejected. She was used to men throwing attention at her feet like it was confetti.
Because of her name, her title, her bank account. Strip all that away, and what was left?
A girl with hair that refused to behave, a grin that leaned more lopsided than charming, and a laugh that apparently wasn’t the universal cure-all she’d assumed.
Ugh. Men were allowed to say no. Of course they were. She’d literally written think pieces about enthusiastic consent. But knowing it in her brain and feeling it in her chest were two very different animals.
She grunted again and smothered herself with a pillow. “Get a grip, Allegra.” But her brain had latched onto the ugliest takeaway and was swinging it like a weapon. If Nate didn’t want her, what did that say? That without a tax haven sweetening the deal, she was forgettable?
She ripped the pillow away and flung it across the room. It hit the wall with a useless thud. Since when did she measure her value in erections? Since when did one man’s disinterest get to bulldoze her self-esteem?
This was ridiculous. And yet…
She couldn’t sit there another second, letting her thoughts gnaw at her like rats. What she needed was distraction. Strobe lights. Music so loud it rattled her teeth. A cocktail that tasted like fruit but punched rum straight to the brain.
Allegra hauled open her suitcase and dug out the black Dior slip, the one from her engagement interview in Paris. She held it up, the fabric shimmering under the dim hotel lights.
“Yeah,” she declared to the empty room. “You’ll do.”
***
Lights sliced through the darkness in jagged bursts of violet and white, carving out fragments of bodies—an arched back here, a smirk there—before swallowing them whole again.
Whumm. Whumm. Whumm.
Allegra leaned against the bar, eyes half-lidded, nodding in time with the bassline.
She was already four drinks deep, her memory of ordering them as hazy as the edges of her vision.
Every time she shifted, her heels peeled off the floor with a schlick, like the club itself was clinging to her, unwilling to let go.
A man materialized at her side. Dark hair tied back, a hint of stubble, his face the kind that would be handsome in a lineup but forgettable in a crowd—until it turned fully on her. Then it was suddenly very hard to look away.
“Bonsoir!” he shouted over the music. “Francaise? English?”
“Either,” she replied, nudging up her reading glasses.
He nodded. “You look—how you say?—lonely.”
Allegra barked a laugh. “That’s a wild opener.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “Michel,” he said, tapping his chest. “And you?”
“Ella.”
He squinted at her. “We’ve met, uh?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’d remember.”
Michel shrugged. “Well, enchanté, Ella.” His gaze dropped to her glass, his fingers tapping the polished wood of the bar. “What’s this?”
She swirled the liquid. “No idea. Something with rum.”
“Ah.” His eyes lit up. “A strong woman.”
She snorted, lifting her drink for another sip. Michel shifted closer, bracing his hand on the bar behind her. Close enough that his warmth seeped through the thin silk of her dress.
“So, you never answered,” he said, his voice pitched just for her. “You came here to be by yourself?”
Ella traced the rim of her glass, watching the liquid tremble with the bass. She could say yes. Even sound convincing. But what was the point? “I came here to forget some shit.”
Michel’s smile turned dangerous, like a man who’d just been handed a challenge he was absolutely equipped to meet. His fingers lifted, flagging down the bartender. Two shots appeared moments later.
“à l’oubli,” he said, sliding the glass toward her. “To forgetting.”
Allegra didn’t hesitate. She threw the shot back, the liquor searing a path down her throat, her eyes watering as she gasped. Then she snatched the second glass from Michel’s fingers and downed it too.
***
Allegra’s keycard missed the lock. Then it missed again.
Michel’s chest rumbled with laughter against her back as he reached around her. “Here. Let me—”
“Nope, I’ve got this,” she slurred, jabbing it against the box under the handle with exaggerated precision.
The lock clicked. The door swung open, and suddenly they were tumbling into the room, the world tilting like a ship in a storm.
She didn’t bother with the light. As if it mattered whether he saw the plasticky bedspread or the crooked fruit painting.
She kicked off her heels, one skidding left, the other vanishing somewhere to the right, before she was on him, fingers twisting in his jacket, her mouth crashing into his as if she meant to brand him.
They broke apart, gasping. She let him push her toward the bed. Let him shove her down onto the mattress. Good. She didn’t want sweet. She wanted this. The way he touched her like he was angry about it, like he’d been holding back for too long.
“Putain, tu es magnifique,” he growled, his accent wrapping around the words. His hands slid up her thighs, pushing her dress to her waist before his fingers hooked into the lace of her panties. “Lift,” he ordered, and the second she obeyed, he tugged them down.
Then his mouth was there, his tongue parting her, and oh God—
Her back bowed off the bed, her fingers tangling in his hair, her other hand slapping over her own mouth to stifle a moan.
The room swam, lights bleeding into streaks of gold and shadow, but she couldn’t close her eyes.
Wouldn’t. Because then she’d have to feel it, the way her thoughts were still heckling beneath the buzz.
Michel’s tongue flicked faster, his stubble burning against her inner thighs as she wound tight. Her teeth clenched. Every muscle locked, every nerve screaming.
And then she broke.
“Ngh!” The orgasm hit like a blade between her ribs, stealing her breath. A ragged sob tore from her chest as the tension unraveled, leaving her trembling, her mind blessedly, beautifully blank for one stolen second. Then the world came rushing back.
Allegra hauled herself up on her elbows. Her fingers fumbled with his belt, yanking it free with a snap that echoed through the room like a starting pistol. Michel didn’t waste a second. Trousers and boxers hit the floor in a pooled heap, shoes kicked aside.
“Condom,” she barked.
He fished one from his wallet, and she snatched it from his hand. The wrapper tore between her teeth, her hands shaking as she rolled it on. Michel watched, lips curled in a smirk. “Impatient, ma belle?”
“Shut up,” she snapped, yanking him down on top of her. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her nails sinking into his back. “Fuck me. Hard.”
And he did.
It was a mess. Her dress still hitched around her hips, his shirt half-trapped behind his head, the bed frame slamming into the wall so violently the fruit painting slid sideways. So what if the whole hotel heard? So what if the front desk called to complain?
Michel’s hands seized her wrists, pinning them above her head as he surged into her—again and again—his breath hot and uneven against her ear. “Like this, chérie?” he rasped, his voice thick with effort, his control fraying at the edges.
“Yes—like that,” she breathed, her body arching into his, muscles coiled so tight she was practically vibrating.
His rhythm hitched, his grip on her wrists turning iron-clad as his body locked up, buried deep inside her.
A hoarse, guttural groan tore from his throat, his forehead dropping to her shoulder as he came with a shudder that reverberated through them both.
Then he collapsed beside her, chest heaving as if he’d just sprinted up a mountain.
Allegra’s gaze fixed on the ceiling, her breath still coming in uneven gasps.
Michel shifted onto his side, his thumb drawing slow, absent circles on her hip. “That was amazing, uh?”
She didn’t answer.
Because the moment the euphoria drained away and her skin stopped singing, reality rushed back in.
She didn’t feel sated.
Or even regret.
Just… nothing.