Page 25 of Seven Princes: A Very Dirty Fairtytale

She made her way to the bureau and grabbed a tissue and pressed it hard to her lips. The unexpectedly mundane gesture reminded her of her father. An English doctor who had a love for classic novels, cigars and old black and white movies. At first glance, he seemed oddly mismatched with her mum who was a designer in Paris and kept up with all the latest movies. Their eyes met across the room at a party one day, and somehow it didn’t seem to matter that they came from two totally different worlds.

Growing up, Claudia believed in their love, and her little sister used to make fun of her whenever she would say that she wanted a marriage like that. She supposed that at her age, Elizabeth was too young to understand, but she still tried to teach her. That a love like theirs was rare, that them meeting each other like that was meant to happen.

Claudia frowned as she stared at herself in the mirror and watched as she touched her honey blonde hair. She had her mother’s hair, defined cheekbones, and her shapely thighs, but she had dad’s caramel colored eyes, lips, and his forehead. Whenever she looked at herself in the mirror, she was reminded of them in a way that was almost too painful to contemplate.

She shook her head as she turned away from the mirror and headed towards her closet. She smiled for no particular reason thinking that she really did quite enjoy the buzz that came after enjoying one too many drinks. She put her shoes back where they belonged, and managed to fumble into a pair of sweatpants and a shirt.

She huffed as she tried to pull the shirt down only to realize that she was trying to put it on upside down. She began to giggle hysterically, the sounds of her laughter echoing in her empty chambers until her laughter died down, and she seemed to sober up almost instantly.

“I miss you, all of you,” she said under her breath. “It’s not fair what happened, I know, and I know I could’ve dealt with things a lot better, but I can’t change that now. All I know is, I can’t go back. I hope you understand.”

She flopped onto the bed without bothering to fix her shirt, and with one hand splayed across the bed, and the other across her face, she drifted off into a deep nostalgic sleep.

Chapter Two

Claudia tried not to scowl as she made it through the usual morning check up with the girls. They usually spent the morning off, doing whatever their heart desires so long as they were back on time. Usually, Claudia and Sauri would check and make sure that everything was in order before they do. They had to make sure the girls were properly fed, well clothed, and groomed at all times.

They had very few rules at La Chambre De Plaisir, and what rules they did have, were meant to keep them and the women who lived here safe, and to make sure everyone got what they wanted out of the deal. It was, after all, a business, at the end of the day.

Her head felt like it was being nailed to the wall with a jack hammer while little people rummaged around for diamonds inside her skill, and she tried to ignore that as she focused on the task at hand. She had to make sure the last girl was good to go before she sent them off on the way. She sighed as she realized everything was good, and she dismissed the girls.

At 26, Claudia still kept in shape, and her French genes definitely helped her maintain that willowy figure that she was sure she would lose once she gave up tennis. Somehow, though she hadn’t. She still moved with the grace and finesse of an athlete which often drew the attention of many men in the room, but she never paid attention to them. Not even to flirt.

She was very conscious of the way she acted around men, lest she encouraged them, and in a place like this, you didn’t want to be misunderstood. There were times when she was tempted to break her vow to herself, her parents, and Andrew, but every time she thought about it, she would come down hard on that little voice inside her head and ignore it.

She was cursed, so she knew it was better to just keep her distance rather than risk going through even half of the pain she went through all over again.

Her refusal didn’t make the men ask any less, but it sure did make them more intrigued. They all wondered about the 26-year old beauty who was half French, half English, and seemed not to have the slightest bit of interest in men. What fueled the fire even more was that she was a virgin.

A wry smile made its way to her face as she grabbed a book from her room, and made her way to the roof where she could get some peace and quiet for the next few hours as she lost herself in a book. She knew the rumors that circulated around her. That she was secretly a lesbian.

She found the rumors amusing if she were being honest, and it did keep some of the more vigorous clientele off her back, but most of them didn’t seem to care. They renewed their efforts all the time, and found new ways to pester her with their offers. It wasn’t that she wasn’t flattered. She truly was, but she just didn’t want to, and not because she wasn’t interested in men.

She was very interested, and the reason she was a virgin wasn’t for lack of trying either. It had nothing to do with that. It had to do with a secret that she had kept close to her heart for many years. A secret that felt like poison unfurling in her veins, shooting throughout her system and taking hold as it seeped through into her core.

She stopped in front of the heavy wooden door and grunted as the door creaked with the weight of being pushed open. She smiled as the first blast of fresh air hit her squarely in the face, and she inhaled deeply and sighed. She liked the smell of New York.

She knew a lot of people were bothered by it, the way it didn’t have a distinct smell like a lot of places, but she loved all the many different smells that intermingled together to form something else entirely. A smell that embodied everything her beloved New York represented.

She felt the sun beat on her back, and she rolled her arms back, attempting to let the tension slide off of her in waves as she headed towards the small hammock she kept up here for moments like this.

She kicked off her flip flops and hopped onto the hammock and shut her eyes. She felt the sun shine on her face, and she allowed it to warm every inch of her being as she allowed the stress of the previous week to simply melt away.

She began to swing herself back and forth on the hammock, the rhythmic movement helped lull her into a trance-like state as all the chatter in her brain finally died down. Her eyes fluttered open a while later, and she rummaged through her bag for a book. She produced it a while later, set the water with a straw inside of it next to her, and flipped open the book.

She allowed herself a moment to admire the smooth texture of the book, and the way the words felt in her hands. As if they had a life of their own, something that could not be contained within a certain amount of pages. She smiled, a secret, content sort of smile as she allowed her eyes to travel over the expanse of the page until she remembered what part she had stopped it.

Soon, Claudia was lost in the immersive world that Diana Gabaldon had created for her characters in Outlander, and everything else faded into mere background noise.

***

Claudia sighed as she realized that she had to leave behind 17th century Scotland and get back to reality. She stared into the distance for a few minutes allowing her mind to wander as she let it reel and mull over the events of the book.

She swung her legs over the side of the hammock and slipped her flip flops back on. The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon, bathing the world in a halo of pink and orange. Claudia stood for a moment to admire the view, wondering how it was that the sun could paint the sky which such vivid strokes of color, yet it couldn’t infuse their mundane lives with such color. She supposed that it wasn’t so much about the actual blending of color than it was about what it represented: beauty and hope.

Those were two things that Claudia sorely lacked in her life. Not that she wasn’t surrounded by beauty day in and day out. Sure, the girls at the club were gorgeous in their own way, but she was thinking of a different kind of beauty. The kind of beauty that made you lay on your back at the beach and stare up at a night that was filled with a smattering of crystalline stars winking at you from an existence that had long since passed.

Claudia smiled ruefully to herself as she climbed down the stairs and back into the real world. She stopped by her room to drop off her book, and change into something a bit more daring for the night. She didn’t mind performing for the guys, it could actually be fun.

---