Page 19 of His Princess Brat
Chapter Seven
Azid
Holy crap. Here comes that woman again.
I had tried with all my might to avoid her all day, but it was no use. I was starting to wonder if she had snuck a tracker into my clothes when I wasn’t looking. She touched me enough. Every time I turned around, there she was, brushing up against me, touching my chest, petting my biceps, simpering and treating me like a piece of meat. I tried to be polite about it, but I’d gotten enough of this kind of treatment during my time as a stripper. She was worse even than Lisa.
But worse, I couldn’t seem to get away from her. From the moment I ran into her ass on the veranda this morning, everywhere I went, there she was. If I took a walk on the grounds, she was by the roses. When I went to the library, she nonchalantly strolled up the same book aisles. I even went to Mazi’s private chambers. To visit my friends, sure, but mostly to get away from Bethany, and who should be waiting for me the minute I left?
“Yoo-hoo,” her saccharine-sweet voice called from across the entire length of the damn corridor. “Azid!”
I pretended not to hear and took off at a brisk pace toward my room, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t try to follow me. I don’t know if she knew which of these palace suites I was staying in, but if she didn’t I sure as hell didn’t want to lead her to the door. And yet, for all that this place was a maze of corridors, I couldn’t seem to lose her down any of them. We must have passed my room three times by the time she gave up on subtle and just yelled my name.
“Azid!”
She was going to cause a scene, forcing me to just stop running and deal with her. I could practically see her running her hands all over me, pressing her anaconda body up to mine while I valiantly struggled to find a way to tell her to knock it the fuck off without upsetting her ambassador father or starting a diplomatic incident for Mazi.
Did the Dutch even have bombs?
Did Mazi?
Crap.
I ducked a corner, breaking into a run in the hopes of getting distance between us again. Oh, crap, I was back in my corridor.
“Azid, wait!”
My room was another thirty feet up the hall, but any minute now Bethany was going to come speed walking around the corner behind me and the race would be on again.
Or I was going to have to confront her.
Or I was going to have to hide, I suddenly realized when I spotted the massive sculpture hanging out in the hallway between my room and my royal neighbor, Pita.
Crap, Jax and some woman I didn’t recognize were just hanging out by Pita’s door. I immediately stopped running when they looked at me—I smiled as I passed him and waved; nothing remotely suspicious going on here—and just as fast as they looked away, ducked my ass behind the sculpture.
Promptly colliding with another person. This hiding place was already occupied. By a woman, I recognized, first by the sheer slightness of her body as mine crushed it up to the wall at her back. By Pita, my startled brain supplied. Her eyes were huge, her back tense, and her mouth just now dropping open.
Don’t cover her mouth...
Too late: my hand clapped over her lips and I knew exactly how tomorrow’s newspaper headline was going to read: American Gigolo Attempts Kidnapping of African Princess.
My eyes had to be every bit as wide as hers. But when one found one’s self in a situation as effed up as this one, sometimes one just had to roll with it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this hiding spot was taken,” I whispered as softly as I could. “Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t make a sound.”
She went almost cross-eyed trying to look at my hand over her mouth, but to my utter relief, she nodded.
I’ve got to admit, she looked a whole lot better today than the first time I’d seen her, all wet and bedraggled from getting caught in the rain. She looked better right now than she had this morning too, but mostly because now she was right up against me instead of separated by the distance between our balconies.
Now look who’s being the anaconda.
Embarrassed at myself, as soon as I knew she wouldn’t scream, I pulled my hand away, just in time to hear Bethany coming down the hall, calling out my name. She sounded annoyed.
“Pita, isn’t it?” I asked, cupping my hands around her chin to position myself for what I was about to do.
Wordlessly, she nodded.
