by Jessa Kane
Will he, though?
He called me his.
How far is he willing to go to make that a reality?
With sleep closing in on me, I decide to set aside my worry for tomorrow.
Rex will come through. He’ll hold on to me at all costs.
I know he will.
7
Rex
Heart in my throat, I stare down at the tiny queen curled up among the blankets.
Pre-dawn light spills in from the slats of the stables, kissing her porcelain skin, highlighting hidden hints of blue in her midnight hair. The abrasions I left on her nude body.
Lord, she is a wonder. A sweet, beautiful wonder.
I look down at my own hands, scarred and misshapen.
Did I really have the fortune of a night with this girl? Did I really dare touch her perfect skin with these calloused fingers? What the hell am I supposed to do now?
Let her marry a prince?
Gulping, I turn and stomp from the stables, my destination the nearby creek. When I reach the edge, I strip quickly and wade straight into the gurgling water, letting the iciness stab my skin. I resurface only when my lungs begin to burn as painfully as my heart, reaching for the bar of soap always left at the base of the tree. The queen might be able to remain fresh as flowers after a night of rutting, but I can’t, and I won’t be stinking around her on top of being the unworthy bastard that took her virginity.
She’s going to marry someone else.
I look down at the soap in my hand to find it mutilated and drop the useless carcass of suds into the creek, watching it float away with eyes that feel bloodshot.
“You’re up early.”
I glance back over my shoulder to find Katrina taking a seat on the bank. “I’m not in need of any company, thank you.”
“You’re in a foul mood for someone who spent the night tupping the queen.”
“Don’t you say another word about that. Not to anyone.” I point at the cottage where my other sisters are no doubt eating breakfast. “That goes for them, too.”
Katrina looks hurt. “Do you think we wish to see our only brother hanged?”
Regretting my outburst, I lower my voice. “No, of course I don’t.”
“What are you thinking, Rex?” She pauses. “Do you love her?”
“Yes. God, yes.” Every ounce of the longing and misery inside of me seems to be packed into those three words. “Deeply.”
“Is she the reason you took the position at the palace?”
“Of course. I’d do it again, too. And again. Because I’m a fool.”
My sister shakes her head. “You’re not a fool.”
“Oh, I promise, I am.” I swallow but can’t seem to rid myself of the sharp lodgment in my throat. “I knew what was coming. Knew they were bringing two princes—two qualified men—to come meet her today and I allowed us to—” I break off and close my eyes. “She will likely marry another man before the sun sets this eve.”
“But…” Katrina’s brow furrows. “I don’t understand. She does not seem the wishy-washy type. She would give you her affection, then turn to another?”
“She will marry to build an alliance, put a new king in the throne and protect the kingdom, but…” I sigh, forcing myself to say the painful truth out loud. In front of a witness. So maybe I’ll finally get it through my thick skull and stop fantasizing about a life that will never be. “She only turned to me for comfort after the loss of the king and queen. It has been my privilege to give her that. She will soon realize there are far better options, though.”
“You’re wrong. I know you faced a fair bit of ridicule growing up. Maybe even still. But brother, hear me, there are no better options than you.”
“I am not a royal,” I point out. “I am a low born blacksmith playing at being a guard so I can moon over the queen. And I can’t…do that anymore.”
As soon as I say the words out loud, I realize how true they are.
Yesterday was my first day as the queen’s private guard and today is my last.
There is no way I can stand around and watch her marry another. Birth him children.
The best I could hope for is to be her lover—and I refuse to share.
All I can do is return her to the safety of the palace walls and go back to being a blacksmith. I’ll live off the memory of our magical time together, but I’ll have to do it from the real world. I have to get my head out of the clouds.
I wait for my sister to return to the cottage before climbing out of the creek and hastily redressing. When I reach the stables a few minutes later, I find Britta pacing back and forth, wringing her shawl in her hands. She sees me and stops, examining my face with a hopeful expression, but whatever she sees there causes her shoulders to slump. The sight of her disappointment slays me, blackening my already dark mood.
“We have to get you back before the first morning guard rotation,” I say, going to the stable and guiding out my horse. Forcing myself to be cold. “You have a busy day ahead.”
Britta
I stare down at the two garishly dressed, visibly arrogant men in front of my throne.
Richard holds a scroll and reads from it, proudly listing the myriad titles held by each prince, but I can barely hear anything over the buzzing in my ears.
Rex didn’t come through. He didn’t ask me to be with him.
Not just for one night, but always.
He’s actually going to let me choose between two other men.
One is blond and can’t seem to stop admiring the rubies on his hand.
The other is bald with ironically full eyebrows.
I regard them as one might a couple of odd bugs.
My heart is shattered on the stone floors of the grand hall, yet no one seems to acknowledge it. I haven’t said a word since arriving for this meeting. Doesn’t anyone wonder why? Can’t everyone see I’m bereft and heartsick?
Rex stands just inside the door of the great hall, head and shoulders above everyone else. It’s little consolation that he looks like he’s strapped into a torture device. Or that his hand is curled and shaking around the hilt of his sword, as if he might draw it at any moment and slay the two princes. No, that does nothing to comfort me.
On the ride back to the palace, he spoke to me only once—and it was to inform me he would be resigning his post as soon as I chose the future king.
Did last night mean nothing? Have I been completely naïve?
“Queen Britta,” Richard prompts me in a way that suggests he’s been calling my name for a while. “We think it might be best if you spend a little time with each of our lovely guests. Perhaps a walk around the gardens? Or a picnic near the river?”
He might as well be suggesting we lie down in front of a stampede.
I’m not in the right mind for this. I’m barely coherent.
My gaze strays to Rex. His jaw appears on the verge of cracking, eyes red rimmed. I can’t imagine a life without him. How can he imagine one without me?
“Queen Britta?” Richard says, more firmly this time.
I become aware that I’m humiliating myself in front of the court. What to do, though? Go along with the proceedings as if nothing is amiss? I am not attracted to either of these men and they do not strike me as men I could grow to love. The greed and ambition in their eyes is enough to tell me that. But I can’t just dismiss the entire process out of hand.
I could go along with it. Humor Richard and the court.
And then marry no one.
But that might jeopardize the kingdom. People like Katrina and Priscilla and the rest of Rex’s sisters, who I grew to love in just one night.
I don’t know what to do…and I have no one to talk to. My only confidant has barely spoken a word to me all morning and is planning on leaving at the earliest opportunity.
I swallow hard. “A walk in the gardens sounds lovely.”
The blond man—Prince Corwin—steps forward and offers his hand. “It would be an honor, Your
Majesty.”
The other prince seems annoyed that he didn’t get a chance to offer first, blustering to Richard in spittle-soaked whispers. Seeing no other choice, I place my hand in Corwin’s, nearly recoiling at the softness of his palm when all I want is a hard, calloused one.
A low rumble fills the great hall and everyone glances around for the source. Everyone but me. I know it came from a certain giant and I’m done acknowledging him.
Corwin guides me out of the great hall, his chest puffed up, nodding at members of the court. I don’t look right or left—or at my former lover—keeping my attention squarely ahead. My chin high. We walk in silence to the gardens, before Corwin seems to realize this parade isn’t only for show. That we’re actually supposed to converse.
“Now, Queen Britta. Are you a lover of rubies, as I am?”
Kill me now.
8
Rex
My breath turns to ice in my lungs at the sight of her on the arm of a man who couldn’t be mistaken for anything but royalty. He is wealth, where I am poor. He is fair and handsome, where I am rough and ugly. They suit perfectly—and I would like to knock every one of his perfect teeth out and string them onto a necklace.
I pace to the right and left at the entrance of the great hall, agony splitting my bones apart. Perhaps I should have resigned my post as soon as we arrived back to the palace, but none of the men they would replace me with are good enough to protect her.
And so it will be me for a while longer. This torture will have to be endured.
I take a wheezing breath and set after Britta and Prince Corwin.
Her scent carries on the air and curls in my nose—wild flowers—and I groan brokenly, my hands aching for the feel of her. She’s had a bath since I left her, changed into a light, cream-colored gown, her hair up in a twisted braid on her head. So different from last night, but equally stunning. She looked so forlorn up there on her throne. Lonely. It took every ounce of my restraint not to go to her. Hold her, rock her in my arms and tell her everything will be all right. Because I have no right to tell her that when I won’t be here to make it so. I won’t be here. Hell, I had no right in the beginning to insert myself into her life, to put my filthy hands on her, to call her mine when such a thing could never be real.
Up ahead, Britta and Corwin enter the gardens and take the southern path toward the dense crop of trees, which I don’t like. I would have suggested north, where they could remain in the light. In view of the palace. I don’t like the way Britta holds herself so stiffly, either, and does that fucker have to lean over near her face every time he makes a comment? She can hear him just fine without the closer proximity.
They turn and dip out of sight on the path and my heart rams up into my throat. I pick up my pace to bring them back into view—and when I do, my blood turns the consistency of fire, the world tilting around me.
Corwin has his hands locked around Britta’s neck and she’s struggling.
For a moment, I swear I’m seeing things.
My brain is giving me an excuse to kill this man who could marry my love.
But the image remains and I think no longer, I simply run, red bleeding into my vision, fear turning my skin clammy. I don’t draw my blade on the slight chance they might reverse positions at the last moment and I maim Britta instead. I’m the much larger man and I use that to my advantage, plowing into the man who would dare touch the queen, tackling him to the ground in my full armor. Pinning him there by the neck. Behind me, I hear Britta suck in a choking breath and rage descends on me like vultures.
I draw my sword and hold it high above my head—
“No!” Britta wheezes, her hand circling my wrist. “I don’t know who he is, but he’s not the prince. We need to question him.”
I’m shaking with the need to commit violence. To avenge her.
The vermin squirms underneath me, demanding to be punished. But I am not built to go against the queen’s wishes. It’s as though I’m incapable. So instead, I flip my sword over and bring the hilt down hard on his head, rendering the man deeply unconscious.
He won’t wake for hours.
I squeeze my eyes closed. Fearing her answer, I ask raggedly, “Are you hurt badly?”
“N-no.”
Still shaking with residual anger and fear, I slide my sword back into place and stand to face Britta. When I see the tears in her eyes, there is nothing on earth that could stop me from stripping off my armor, tossing it to the ground, and holding her. Wrapping my arms around her trembling form and hauling her against my chest. “You’re safe now, love. He can’t harm you now.”
Her arms loop around my neck, making me feel sane for the first time today. We’re both breathing hard, hands roaming. And it seems like the most natural thing in the world to lift her higher off the ground so she can burrow her face into my neck. With my last bit of awareness of our surroundings, I walk us off the path and into the shadows, gritting a curse when my cock begins to stiffen against the fastenings of my pants. Her breath bathes my neck, followed by hesitant grazes of her lips that grow bolder when I tilt my head, asking for more without words. She kisses and sucks a line up the side of my throat, and then we’re just clawing at each other, shamelessly, frantically.
My hands roam down over her backside, massaging those tight little mounds of flesh, riding her up and down in my lap, listening to her moan of approval in my ear.
We can’t do this, though.
It’s inexcusable.
I told her I’m resigning my post and I meant it. This man who attacked her was obviously some kind of an imposter. But it changes nothing between Britta and I. We can never be together in the open.
We’re not in the open now, though, are we?
No. We’re hidden. Alone. My body won’t let me forget that fact. Especially when she wraps her legs around my waist and seeks my mouth, offering me soft lips and an eager tongue, which I accept greedily, growling into the kiss. I almost lost her. I almost lost her.
You never had her.
Not really.
“I need you,” she breathes against my mouth, reaching down between us to unfasten my pants. “I was so scared, Rex, and I need you.”
Those words doom me.
Stagger me.
Britta needs reassurance, and the fastest way to give it to her is that closest connection. The one where our souls join and our bodies press so tight, until we’re one. Sharing everything. Fear, pleasure, hope.
“Yes, my queen,” I groan, gathering the hem of her dress in my hands, lifting it to her waist and ripping away her underthings with aggressive twists of my wrists. The fine, delicate layers of material give way easily and bare her spread cunt, showing off its beauty to me in the light for the first time. It glistens with wetness. “Your fear was not enough to rob you of cream.”
Her green eyes are wide, emotion packed. “I need you even in my dark moments.”
Britta’s admission humbles me and makes me desperate to pleasure her at the same time. Suctioning our mouths together, I lift her onto my cock, pressing her down, down, burying myself between her drenched folds until I’m home. Locked inside the tightest place on earth. “And your fucking legs are already shaking around me, aren’t they?” I rasp, resting our foreheads together. “Of course they are, because crown or no crown, you’re just my horny little girl once you’re sitting on my dick.”
“Yes,” she gasps.
“How do you want it, Your Majesty?” I whisper against her mouth. “Fast and hard?”
“Fast and hard,” she repeats, nodding unevenly, her eyes glassy—and I look right into them when I start to fuck her, bouncing her sweet, forbidden pussy up and down my pole, watching her love it, enjoy it, her neck losing power after five thrusts.
God, she’s so beautiful, she breaks my heart.
I was doomed for a life of pining after last night.
Now I don’t know how I’ll survive at all.
Because she clings to me, whispering my n
ame with such joy and longing—and for the first time, I allow myself to wonder if…if Britta really does need me. Maybe I’m not just a means of comfort or a distraction from her grief. If she didn’t have deep feelings for me, would she have looked upon me with such relief when I arrived to save her? Would she be gripping the lapels of my uniform jacket, leaning back and riding me with such trust, not an ounce of shame or hesitance? Would she have given herself to me so freely in the first place?
“Rex,” she moans, her hips writhing on top of my cock, and already I know that tone of voice. The queen is close to orgasm and as her eager servant, I am hungry to deliver satisfaction.
“My Britta wants to come?”
“Make me come,” she whines, nodding vigorously. “N-now.”
My cock almost blows her full of seed. Orders as such from this girl are my weakness. Or perhaps they are my strength, because I’m able to hold off my own pressing climax and tunnel my hands up the back of her dress, massaging her bare ass roughly. Then I gather wetness from the place where our bodies join and use it to slowly tuck my pinkie finger into her little pink asshole, making her eyes go wide. “You’re allowed to like it,” I say.
Her breath stutters out. “Rex,” she moans, clenching around my dick. “Don’t stop.”
I thrust up into her sweet body with quick snaps of my hips, milking my finger in and out of her virgin asshole in the same rhythm, and I marvel over the sight of her coming apart. Her eyes lose focus, her pussy growing damper and damper around me until I’m gritting myself to keep my climax at bay.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave me,” she gasps, her fingertips digging into my shoulders. “I knew you would realize…”
Alarm trickles in at the back of my mind, but it’s too late. She calls my name one final time and grinds down on the orgasm, rubbing her clit on the base of my dick. And those little, rippling contractions of her pussy grip me by the loins and squeeze the seed from my balls. “Britta,” I pant, in an animal state of absorbing sensation, grunting every time my cock jerks in her tight channel, bathing it in my spend, possibly impregnating my sweet, little queen—and just like last night, that possibility rips more come up my pulsing stalk of flesh, filling her past the brim until I hear it splashing down onto the leaves below. “Britta,” I groan raggedly. “You honor me, Britta.”