Page 5 of Royal Crush
And it wasn’t like I didn’t have bad days. I had a trusted team now that allowed me to be angry, but one must always smile in public if one is representing the Crown.
If I had a throne to abdicate, I would have done it by now.
In reality, the only reason I didn’t abandon my title was because I could do more with the family behind me than with them against me. My parents took me aside about a year and a half after my accident and told me they wouldn’t blame me if I wanted to retire from all my duties. They’d have to follow protocol and could gift me land, but I’d lose access to the protections my position as second-born prince offered me.
At the time, it had been tempting.
I was sick of cameras, sick of people staring, sick of them pointing and whispering and blaming me somehow even thoughI hadn’t been driving and the bastard that hit us had done it to try and spin our car out so he could get a better shot of me.
I don’t even think anyone remembered the scandal by the time I showed my face in public for the first time. The dickhead with the camera had followed me because I’d just been caught, the first royal with potential access to the throne, kissing a boy.
That was my own fault, of course. I’d snuck out after convincing myself I was falling in love with the captain of the upper-secondary rugby team. His name was Beckett. He was every gay teenager’s dream. Tall, muscular, that glorious mix of tan skin, black hair, and hazel eyes.
He was a walking stereotype with a pretty blonde girlfriend and an offer to go pro the moment he was finished with school. Then, one afternoon, he winked at me as I was collecting cones on the pitch. The wink turned into a lingering shower after all the other guys had gone.
That lingering shower turned into us touching ourselves.
Then he moaned my name.
In that moment, it was over for me.
We could never be public, of course. He had a career to chase, and I was, well, me. Prince Camillo Soriano, second-born son of King Brynn and Queen Jacenta Soriano of Caverna—one of the smallest countries that still had a monarchy.
Most of the world didn’t even know we existed, let alone had a king and queen, but our paparazzi cared a great deal about us when they spotted me pinned to a bookcase through a library window. The first worst thing had been the photo they took. The second worst thing was when Beckett punched me and then escaped out of a bathroom window.
The media never did get ahold of his face or his name. I had a vague memory of him sneaking into my hospital room after midnight three weeks after I’d come out of my coma. I think hepaid off the guards, which should have alarmed me, but I was in too much pain to give a shit.
At first, I thought he was there to make sure I was okay. It turned out he’d come to beg.
“No one can know about this, Cam. No one. I will do anything if you swear it won’t get out.”
“Suck my flaccid dick,” I’d told him.
He thought I was serious and yanked down my hospital sheets, revealing the mess I was down below. I had a catheter that drained into a piss bag and a horrific wound from the four surgeries to save my life.
He recoiled at the sight, and in that moment, I wanted that to be the first and last time anyone ever looked at me naked again.
That resolve hadn’t lasted.
And now, here I was, doing baby crawls for cardio, and it was working because my heart waspounding. Never mind half the reason I was all worked up was that the god-awful television series was about to begin shooting.
I’d just come from the set to talk to the producers about what they expected from me. I’d had a run-in with a rude man who very clearly recognized me, though the way he spoke to me was off-putting.
I didn’t like him. But…I did like that he treated me the way he’d treat any other average person.
Being a prince and a disabled man, I had bullshit twofold, and it was no wonder I had zero intention of ever dating long term or getting married, which was something that was starting to really piss off my parents.
I think their breaking point with me was the last argument we had after I’d sabotaged a blind date my mother had set up with some random duchess I’d never heard of. But what was I supposed to do? They ambushed me with the whole event, andit happened to fall on the day I’d just learned that they’d signed the rights to my memoir away without even consulting me.
And that was the other joy about being a fucking prince. The Crown had more say-so about my life than I did.
One more in the column for abandon ship and leave this all behind.
But I wasn’t ready for that yet. Just like they weren’t ready to accept the fact that I was gay, always would be, and no blonde duchess with a kink for paralyzed legs was going to change that. Okay, that last bit was exaggerated. Probably.
Though I’d been through my fair share of people with weird kinks, and they always came from the people I least expected.
“Alright,” Janae said, leaning up on their knees. “You good?”
