Killer Queens Read Online Free PDF Page A

eagerly.
    ‘As cold as you’re all lovely and wet and hot,’ he sighed into her ear. ‘Jesus, Chlo, I can’t wait, I’ve got the most massive stiffie—’
    ‘Mmn,’ she observed enthusiastically, reaching down to stroke it. ‘It really
is
massive—’
    The car turned onto Palace Green, slowing down, and came to a halt outside Kensington Palace, where Hugo had his London quarters. From Piccadilly, around Hyde Park Corner down South Carriage Drive, along Hyde Park Gate took a bare ten minutes. The driver tapped on the partition, and Chloe slid her legs off Hugo’s lap, taking her time, giving him a few moments to calm his breathing and settle down the royal erection before she reached for the door handle. This was the protocol that had evolved for this kind of situation. Chloe didn’t actually open the door herself, but the movement of the handle was the signal that the security officer waiting outside could open the car door without exposing the Prince and his girlfriend
in flagrante delicto.
    Kensington Palace, despite its name, was actually a series of large, interconnected houses arranged around several wide courtyards; Hugo, as a bachelor, occupied a suite of rooms that did not, unfortunately, have its own front door, as many of the houses did. Usually, Chloe secretly lamented this arrangement, which meant that she and Hugo could never have a makeout session coming home, work themselves up to a happy heated state, then tumble out, unlock a front door, shut it behind them and fall to the hallway carpet to fuck each other’s brains out.
    Instead, they had to bid goodnight to the security team, greet the waiting footman, exchange a polite few words, walk down miles of corridor and up two flights of stairs to Hugo’s suite of rooms, greet the second footman waiting there for them, go through the same routine . . . it might have been specifically designed as a very effective passion-killer. Hugo’s erection, she could tell at a glance at his crotch, was long gone.
    It wouldn’t take long to get it back. Not at all. But that wasn’t actually what Chloe wanted, not quite yet . . .
    ‘Toby’s such a sweetheart,’ she observed as the footman left. She sank down onto one of the two chintz sofas that faced each other, very conventionally, in the living room. You would never know that a young man lived here. The apartment was decorated in classic Sloane style, from the yellow walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings to the Chinoiserie vases on the mantelpiece and the unavoidable Colefax and Fowler fabric prints of oversized red and pink flowers called plumbagos exploding all over the cream background of every sofa, armchair, cushion and window treatment.
    It was about as manly as a bikini wax, and Chloe had been taken aback by the décor on her first visit, imagining that Hugo must feel suffocated by it. All her male friends wanted stripped-down lines, modular sofas, dark wood, stripy sheets. But then, her male friends had to buy their own furniture. Aristocrats inherited, they didn’t buy. And Hugo was perfectly comfy and cosy in this chintzy nest, because it signified something much more important than masculinity: it said that People Like Us lived here.
    ‘I do love him madly,’ Chloe added, watching Hugo’s reaction as she praised Toby.
    As she had learned, this was standard upper-class terminology for ‘I like him a lot’, but it was enough to get Hugo – who had always been a little jealous of his more handsome, more charming cousin – on edge.
    ‘Ginger pubes, remember?’ he said sharply, perching on the arm of the sofa. ‘They match his freckles
exactly
. He looks bloody ridiculous naked.’
    Chloe giggled, just as she was supposed to.
    ‘That
does
sound awful!’ she said, smiling at him sweetly. Actually, she thought Toby’s Titian hair was very attractive, a fire burning warm and lively, a perfect reflection of his personality. But Hugo was the one she loved, the one she wanted to be with