Shame of Thrones Read online

  Table of Contents

  What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books:

  Shame of Thrones

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ~The End~

  THRONE FOR A LOOP

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Throne for a Loop

  About the Author

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  What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books:

  "A fun, sassy read! A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a chocolate cupcake...you just want more."

  —Meg Cabot, NY Times bestselling author of Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble and more, on Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

  "With a strong yet delightfully vulnerable voice, food critic Abbie Jennings embarks on a soulful journey where her love for banana cream pie and disdain for ill-fitting Spanx clash in hilarious and heartbreaking ways. As her body balloons and her personal life crumbles, Abbie must face the pain and secret fears she's held inside for far too long. I cheered for her the entire way."

  —Beth Hoffman, NY Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt on Slim to None

  "Jenny Gardiner has done it again—this fun, fast-paced book is a great summer read."

  —Sarah Pekkanen, NY Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Me, on Slim to None

  "As Sweet as a song and sharp as a beak, Bite Me really soars as a memoir about family—children and husbands, feathers and fur—and our capacity to keep loving though life may occasionally bite."

  —Wade Rouse, bestselling author of At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream

  Shame of Thrones

  (book five of the Royals of Monaforte series)

  by Jenny Gardiner

  Copyright © 2015 by Jenny Gardiner

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  http://jennygardiner.net/

  Chapter One

  Clementine Squires-Thornton knew her mother would absolutely kill her if she found out what her daughter was about to do. And if her mother didn’t manage to finish her off, her brothers Darcy or the hot-tempered Eduoardo, certainly would.

  But she had no intention of letting an attack of conscience or even a little familial-induced fear stop her now, which she repeatedly told herself in mantra-like fashion. She climbed atop the sticky bar on the legendary party boat, the Willy-T, and lay down on her back, wearing only a floral-print string bikini bottom and a broad smile. That she tried to cover her exposed breasts with her long, wavy blonde hair was completely ridiculous. After all, she was clad just about as far opposite of how she’d dress for the Trooping of the Colors or the Queen’s birthday or any other royal occasion as she could ever imagine. Modesty at this point was futile.

  She’d already far exceeded her usual behavior, when she ditched that bikini top and jumped off the upper deck of the steel sailboat into the warm water below, buckling to a little self-induced peer pressure. It was a tradition for revelers at the famed sailboat-cum-bar anchored in the Bight at Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands. Everyone else was doing it, and she figured when in Rome...

  Clementine wasn’t the type to readily disrobe in public. Probably not one to do so quite willingly in private either for that matter, unless of course with the right person. As the daughter of a marquess, a nobleman in the small European principality of Monaforte, she was raised to observe strict protocol, and being bare-breasted with a bunch of drunken revelers—strangers, at that—just wasn’t part of the program.

  As it was, her best friend Pippa Grimaldi would about die if she knew what Clem was up to. But Clementine rationalized that it was partly Pippa’s fault she found herself in this predicament. After all, Clem had hastened her good friend off to the Caribbean for a last-minute surprise reunion with Prince Christopher—Topher for short—with whom Pippa had a brief fling at his brother Prince Adrian’s wedding. The two had a falling out, and Clementine took it upon herself to fix that, deciding that playing matchmaker was a great way to get her mind off the recent loss of her beloved father. But once she got Pippa to the tropical paradise, she’d resolved that she was all for playing the Vegas card during this little getaway: what happened in the BVI was simply going to stay in the BVI, and maybe a little less-than-regal behavior was just what she needed to shake up her life a bit.

  Which meant she’d be stepping way, way out of her comfort zone because, well, why the hell not? If there was one thing she took away from her father’s sudden passing, it was that life was short, and sometimes you just had to throw caution to the wind and live a little.

  So it was most convenient when she hit it off with Topher’s skipper Sebastian Chevalier, who happened to be his cousin as well. And Sebastian, it seemed—with his wind-tousled light brown hair and sun-kissed highlights that framed a gorgeous tanned face and warm, brown eyes—was just what the therapist ordered. Or at least the therapist would have done so, had he realized how much Sebastian’s presence set Clementine’s pulse on overload and got her mind off her woes.

  The two readily conspired to ensure that Pippa and Topher would be alone as much as possible, which meant they, too, got plenty of alone time right from the start. After spending the afternoon snorkeling in the aquamarine Caribbean waters, they’d had great fun fixing a meal for the four of them in the boat’s galley kitchen.

  Following dinner, Clementine and Sebastian had removed themselves for the evening from the sailboat they were sharing with Pippa and Topher in the hopes of helping to rejuvenate the couple’s stalled romance, which had fizzled after Adrian’s wedding. Which is how Clementine inadvertently found herself nearly naked atop a bar in a total dive party boat permanently anchored in the British Virgin Islands.

  Perhaps the two Painkillers she’d consumed in the past hour on top of the wine at dinner had contributed to the diminishing of her standards. But t
hey tasted quite delicious and fed into her overall warm feeling of being in a lovely place with a lovely man drinking downright lovely drinks. Perhaps they were called Painkillers for a reason. So even though she found herself practically nude atop a bar, Clementine was hardly even embarrassed. Well, okay, maybe she was squinting shut her cerulean-blue eyes, because, yeah, there were a lot of people cheering Sebastian on, and really, she was, after all, pretty exposed. But every now and then she’d open them and look into his eyes and it weirdly instilled a confidence in her.

  So when the crowd began cheering for him to peel off her bikini bottoms, she barely flinched. Hell, she’d seen other women do the same thing earlier in the night, so it’s not like she was alone in this behavior. For that matter, there was a line of women waiting for her to finish. It was almost socially acceptable, a veritable cultural norm, right?

  The next thing she knew, Sebastian was catching the string of one side of her bikini bottoms between his beautiful, straight white teeth, and ever so slowly pulling the strand toward him. And before she knew it, one side of her suit gave way as the crowd whooped and hollered loudly. The other side was a little trickier, and Sebastian had to lean across her taut stomach and with his mouth to repeat what he’d done on the other side, which he did with surprising deftness. With great encouragement from the crowd, what happened next was a bit more than Clementine was prepared for—he used his teeth to edge the front part of her bikini bottom down slightly, to the accompanying roar of approval from the audience that had gathered, yet he stopped short of pulling the thing off altogether. Thank goodness for tender mercies.

  Her thoughts raced through her mind: first, thank God she’d gotten a fresh waxing before embarking on her Caribbean adventure, but then, holy crap, here she was just about naked in front of a bunch of extremely drunken revelers (were they snapping off pictures and video on their iPhones?) not to mention the extremely handsome and charming Sebastian. But denial kicked in, which kept her from jumping off the bar and fleeing into the water, away from this scene. Instead, she closed her eyes and let the Painkiller work its magic, as she repeated in her mind again and again: what happens in the BVI...

  Before she knew it, the bartender had poured a shot of the local favorite, Pusser’s rum, into her navel, and Sebastian, who she’d known for roughly, oh, maybe half a day at that point, proceeded to slurp the liquor off her body as if they’d been intimate for ages. Which, bizarrely, felt absolutely perfect to Clementine.

  It was a good thing her family was never going to learn about this.

  Chapter Two

  Sebastian could not believe his good fortune. He was thrilled enough when Clementine had boarded their sailboat earlier in the day. He knew the woman was bringing Topher’s fling down to the BVI to try to buoy up the couple’s nascent romance, but he hadn’t expected her to be so beguiling. Athletic and gorgeous with long, lean legs and a beautifully proportioned body, she was far more than he could have hoped for as a guest on his forty-foot catamaran.

  At the time, he could barely contain fantastical images that kept popping into his mind of her down on her knees, taking him into her mouth, peering up at him with those blue, blue eyes, that long blonde ponytail bobbing as she worked—he was a guy, after all. But he knew there wasn’t much chance of that. After all, he’d never even met her before. Plus, she was here on business of sorts.

  Yet fast-forward a few short hours, and first she shocked him by following protocol on the party boat, the Willy-T, removing her bikini top before jumping into the water below, and now she was spread out before him on top of the Willy-T bar. He’d managed to peel off most of what remained of her bathing suit in a pretty erotic little scene, despite the crowd of cheering partiers surrounding them. It took all the restraint he could muster not to remove the thing altogether. Nevertheless, here he was now, using his tongue to lick a shot of rum from her belly button. Had he been in Vegas, this would be the equivalent of three dollar signs in a row on a slot machine.

  Jackpot, indeed.

  As he leaned over to suck the liquid off her body, he glanced up, his eyes making contact with hers just past those spectacular breasts he’d tried not to overtly ogle since she’d removed her top before taking the plunge. He’d spent many a night at the Willy-T, but never had he had the great pleasure of accompanying the most beautiful woman on board, let alone being the one to partake in extremely sexy body shots with her.

  Sebastian couldn’t exactly hide his pleasure, what with him still wearing his swim trunks from earlier that had tented up on the front. At least he was facing the bar, so it was a little less obvious. Plus he was grateful they were somewhat loose, as opposed to the usual European-style teeny, weeny root suits, which he was not a big fan of.

  As he finished the long, slow sensual lapping of the first shot, he fought all of his brain’s urging to just keep moving that tongue to even more interesting spots on her body, just to be respectful of his newfound friend. But then the bartender did the damnedest thing: he drizzled rum across Clementine’s breasts and the gauntlet was thrown.

  Sebastian looked at her rack, then looked into her eyes and she gave a small nod, which he took as permission enough. He leaned forward and first licked the rum that had trickled down toward the base of her neck, beginning a trail along her cleavage. The crowd went nuts in the background, but he managed to tune them out quite readily as his tongue worked its way across first one nipple, then the other, lapping and circling and making sure he got every last drop of liquid. After all, he didn’t want to leave behind a sticky mess. As much as he wanted to settle his mouth over one of her breasts and while away the evening, he thought that would be going a little overboard, considering they’d just met that afternoon, so he opted out.

  He glanced up at Clementine who smiled as if she was actually enjoying herself, which made him grin back at her with a sly wink.

  Of course, the bartender wouldn’t stop there. In between pours he and his fellow bartenders were refilling drinks in record time, with a crowd that wanted more, more, more. And he clearly planned to give it to them, because before Sebastian could blink, the bottle of rum was hovering just above her pelvis. Sebastian gulped. Now this was nothing he’d ever expected to be doing in front of a crowd.

  He leaned over and whispered into Clementine’s ear.

  “I’m okay if you’re ready to call it a night.”

  Clem turned her head to him. “Kiss me,” she said so that only he could hear her.

  Sebastian wasted no time pressing his lips to hers as his tongue reached out, searching for entry. As much as he wanted his idle hands to reach out to explore her exposed parts, he didn’t want to grope her in front of all of those people. Which was a little weird considering he’d already licked around the better half of her body, so go figure. Instead, he threaded his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp with his nails as their mouths met.

  When they both came up for air, Clementine whispered to him, “You swear to God no one will ever know about this?”

  Sebastian shrugged. “Neither of us knows anyone in this place, right? I can’t imagine how it would get out. These people are all random visitors on holiday: just ships passing in the night, never to be seen again. Besides, people do this all the time here. It’s not as if it’s something outrageous or unusual.”

  They laughed at that one. Sebastian knew this was so beyond scandalous for someone like Clementine, it was almost socially acceptable. She’d been repeating aloud all evening that life was short and sometimes it was okay to just do stupid things.

  They looked at the bartender and finally, Clementine gave another barely discernable nod, and he began to pour.

  Chapter Three

  Clementine was pretty sure she didn’t have exhibitionist tendencies, but then again, maybe she did because she was enjoying the hell out of this verboten escapade. When Sebastian’s warm tongue made contact with her belly, she shivered with the erotic pleasure that sparked through her body. And when his lip
s joined in to navigate the surface of her stomach, making sure to lap up every last drop of rum the bartender had drizzled into her navel, she thought she would die, it felt so incredible.

  She’d managed to tune out the din of the many fellow bar-goers who’d surrounded them. Somehow, she rationalized, they weren’t a part of what they were partaking in. Which was easier to do than one would think, what with the bare-chested hunk of man who was before her.

  Sure she’d started out this trip with pure philanthropy in mind. All she wanted to do was bring Pippa right to Topher’s doorstep, in order to give them a second chance to be together after Pippa had chickened out on pursuing a relationship with him. But when she boarded the sailboat The Royal Blue and took one look at Toph’s gorgeous cousin, she couldn’t help but project a little of her long-dormant horniness onto the situation. After all, he was a beautiful specimen of manhood: tall, muscular, and suntanned, with those mocha-brown eyes that danced when he smiled. Which he seemed to do a lot, she learned quite readily.

  The two of them had spent the afternoon snorkeling amidst the reefs, laughing and horsing around, culminating in a diving contest off the starboard-side railing. Clem was certain she’d win with a handstand into the water, but Sebastian trumped her with a one-and-a-half backflip and she conceded the victory to him.

  “So what’s the prize?” she asked him.

  “Prize?”

  “You beat me fair and square,” she said. “There must be a prize for that.”

  “What say you and I slip out after dinner to a floating bar. You can buy me a drink there.”

  Clementine shrugged and agreed: it seemed a harmless enough plan.

  While preparing dinner, they continued to laugh and play. At one point, Clementine chased Sebastian around the boat with a spiny rock lobster, aiming those spidery legs at him. When he returned the favor, dangling the antennae over her head and into her line of vision while she stirred a pot of rice on the stove, she about jumped out of her skin.

  And now, here she was at the Willy-T, where the bartender had just dripped more rum across her chest, and she shivered from the chill of the liquid. But soon she warmed up as Sebastian worked his magical tongue, catching the trails of liquid everywhere before wending his way toward her breasts. Clementine felt a shiver run through her as he blew lightly on her nipple before flattening his tongue there, swirling it around to lap up whatever liquor remained.