BRIDE OF THE EXILED PRINCE

Bruce’s POV

They drag her into the lounge by her arms, heels scraping the polished floor, and she’s shaking. Not because of me- people like her learn to ignore fear when desperation is chewing at their bones. She’s trembling because she’s already traded her dignity for a number she hasn’t even seen yet.

Pathetic. Or admirable. Hard to tell these days.

Her eyes lift, wide and glossy, hope clinging to them like a dying animal- hopeful in the way only the damned can be.

“My father…” her voice trembles, “the surgery costs-”

Sniffing deeply, I smirk, my eyes to the high ceiling. Okay, maybe she does fear me now, at this moment. She’s been working under my nose for two months, batting her lashes and smiling like she understood what kind of man I am, and it’s because of this flirting that I took an interest in her.

This is how I heard about her situation from the accounting department. “I know what it costs.” My voice comes out flat. Dead.

Mata flinches at the sound. Good. My guards shove her forward, and her knees hit the rug, the breath punching out of her. She doesn’t spare even a flicker of resentment toward them, knowing the blame sits fully on her shoulders because of her desperation.

Almost, I almost feel something like sympathy. But she chose the stilettos, the tiny skirt hugging the curve of her ass, the crisp white blouse with a neckline that dips too low for anyone who isn’t selling something. The push-up bra is laughable. The whole outfit is some bargain-bin fantasy of a seductress.

This girl knows exactly the performance she came to deliver.

Tch.

Mata knows what she’s doing, she came prepared. Hah, she thinks so anyway.

“I’ll do anything,” she whispers. “Anything you want. Just… please.”

That word again. Please. Mortals waste breath on it.

Resting my neat whisky down on the coffee table, I push up from the couch, the shadows shifting the moment I rise, darkening the room without me needing to move a single muscle. Outside, the night presses against the glass, thick as ink.

No one comes here.

My estate sits miles outside the city- dirt roads, dead ends, the kind of rural silence that swallows screams before they reach a throat. Guards patrol the perimeter, more for convenience than necessity. I could tear a man apart faster than most people blink, but in this age of digital leashes- cameras, databases, fingerprints, missing persons reports, even monsters have to play pretend and abide by the rules.

The woman crawls closer, she’s frightened because she knows I’m more than what she sees. Her hair, trembling around her shoulders, lets in on that. Maybe she thinks I am a demon- yet she’s willing to fuck me for money. Her perfume is cheap, her natural scent mingled in fear, yet she looks up at me like I’m salvation.

I’m not, and I have never been. But maybe for her I am.

“Stand,” I say, unbuckling my belt, and my men stand with their backs straighter, but eyes averted. They know the drill.

She obeys instantly, swaying on her feet. Mata’s pretty, in the disposable way humans often are. Not special. Not memorable. Not anything that would linger in my mind after tonight.

“Five hundred thousand,” I tell her. It’s hundreds of thousands more than she needed for her father.

Eyes bulging at the figure, her breath catches. “You… you’ll give me-?”

“I said the number,” I cut in, loosening my tie and dropping it over her neck. I pull it taut, not enough to choke, just enough to remind her what she’s agreed to. What I want is all that matters. “Kneel.”

Instantly, she’s on her knees looking up at me with teary, wide eyes. Her hair is loose, and I command her to part it into two and plait it on both sides of her shoulders. What an attractive sight- hmm.

Lighting a cigarette, I inhale deeply and blow the smoke into her face, waiting for her reaction- she merely bends her head. Hmm, she must really love her father. The money tonight is for his surgery.

She knows exactly what she’s agreeing to. I don’t sugarcoat it. I don’t pretend it’s romantic. I don’t whisper sweet lies that will rot her heart. Mata is not here for me to soothe her, or worship her, or touch her like she matters.

She's here with her body on display for me to fuck as I please, to do as I wished to her, for a price.

Feeling myself rising to the occasion, I motion with a head nod at her to get to work, and she gives it willingly. Within minutes, I am spilling into her innocent mouth. Knowing she was innocent in this act only amplified me more.

Motioning for privacy now, my men leave us alone.

Mata looks scared again- lol, did she think a blowjob was worth that figure I offered her?

Sheathing myself, I take her brutally and efficiently to suit me, after all, it’s about me, not her. Without warmth and maybe a bit of cruelty, and mostly the mechanical boredom of a man who has lived too long and feels nothing anymore.

She’s trembling when we’re done, barely able to stand, let alone walk, and it pleases me. Money well spent.

I don’t apologize. I don’t soothe. I don’t give a damn.

Getting up from the rug, I leave to go to my office and return, tossing the envelope onto her bare stomach- thick, fat, stuffed to bursting. It hits her with a dull slap. The sound is louder than her gasp. “Five hundred thousand,” I say. “Crawl home if you have to, just get the fuck out, now.” In my other hand is a non-disclosure agreement for her.

She chokes on a sob. “Th-thank you-”

Her gratefulness irritates me. “Don’t thank me.” My voice is cold enough to crack stone. “I don’t pay out of kindness, I paid for services.” I hold a legal document up, “Sign this.”

Her head bends again as if she’s ashamed. Why should she feel this way? Kneeling, I grab her chin, raising her head so she looks at me. “I would never give a slut four hundred and ninety-nine thousand to sleep with me.”

My words were supposed to make her feel better, because a slut would have gotten maybe five hundred, but her face crumples. She clutches the envelope like it's life itself, and more tears flow. I would think she is grateful that she did not have to beg for the money or have debtors coming her way for the old man’s surgery.

This here- I don’t do this, and so I turn away when she begins crying again.

“Get out,” I sneer at her. I despise crying women so much. I have seen men crumple at their feet with this show of emotion, and to soothe my mood, the room also darkens more.

“Get her out of here!” I behold and two men come in, as Mata struggles to stand. “Get her a fucking robe,” I add, and one of the men leaves to do that. She has to be stupid if she thinks wearing that messy, tiny skirt is a good idea right now. My men will not touch her- or they will face my wrath, but the skirt is unfit to wear again, let alone return home in.

No, she is not allowed the dignity of a shower to clean herself up.

“See you on Monday,” I mutter when the guard returns and opens the robe for her to get into, his eyes averted from her nakedness. Hobbling for the document on the coffee table, she scribbles her name on it and grabs the envelope, and the guards escort her out. They’ll make sure she gets home alive, and it saves me the paperwork if something were to happen to her, from here.

This world worships screens and numbers and boasts data trails now. They think it makes them safer- maybe it does to them, but to me, it only makes them easier to control.

I walk back to the window, to the dark rolling fields of my vineyard outside, to the quiet night that never speaks back.

In daylight, they call me a CEO. A billionaire. A man who came from old money. Hah. Old money, yes, but not from my ancestors- from me. I am my ancestors and have been for centuries.

If you’ve lived a thousand years and you aren’t ruling the world, then you’re wasting the time the gods cursed you with. On cue, the hollow inside me yawns wider, and everything goes blank- this is why I live secluded from human eyes. My emotions control the elements around me.

I feel nothing. Not lust, and I’d been full of it minutes before. Not satisfaction. Not even disgust in my behavior of how I treated Mata.

Just the endless, echoing boredom of a monster wearing a mortal’s skin.