Forced To Kill The Prince

by Hollie Hutchins

  My kidneys were certainly going to be unhappy with me, right along with my bladder, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was staying awake. I had to resist the pull of sleep.

  I looked to my phone to see that it was just after six am. Normally my alarms would be going off in just a few minutes and I would be eating breakfast as the sun rose. And yet, I was quickly growing more tired than I had been before I had fallen asleep the first time.

  I needed to act quickly; the coffee clearly wasn’t going to be enough. I rushed right back to the bathroom and jumped into the shower, turning the water to as cold as possible.

  My heart certainly got a jolt and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. I was beginning to worry I might have an apoplexy from the shock of it all, but after a few minutes of shivering everything seemed to level out.

  The sleepiness rolled back from my mind and I felt a brief moment of success. I would stay in the shower forever if I had to, water bill be damned. It was the only thing that had worked so far.

  Oh my God! Work! What was I going to do? I had to go in today; there was so much to do! And yet… I couldn’t. The very thought of leaving my house terrified me to my core. What if whatever was manipulating me found me at work? Out in the open and in front of other people? What if these were full on delusions and I started humping the air or screaming my head off between the shelves?

  Either way, I couldn’t do it.

  Dammit, if it was already past six, I was getting real close to the deadline for calling in for the day and not having it count against me.

  Without thinking, I stumbled out of the shower, completely soaking wet, and rushed back to my room. Quickly, I grabbed my phone and dialed the automated call in line that all the libraries in the three closest counties used. It took about thirty seconds, but when I hung up in relief and set my phone down, I finally realized my mistake.

  “No…” I gasped, trying to stumble towards, back to the bathroom and the safety of my icy shower. I got about maybe one step before my leg gave out, and I collapsed to the floor of my bedroom.

  I couldn’t give up. I hadn’t done so much just to be foiled by my dedication to following work rules. I army crawled forward, moving one gap, and then another, and then another. But each time I went forward, I felt another wave of warm comfort wash over me. As much as I tried to resist, I felt my eyelids growing heavy and my muscles all become loose and relaxed.

  With the last of my energy, I rolled onto my back to look out my duct tape window. As the first rays of sunlight shone through, I felt myself slip into unwelcome slumber.

  Chapter Six

  I woke up terrified, sitting up so fast that my stomach rolled violently. It took me a second to recover, and when I looked around I found that I wasn’t in the box, as I had feared, but right back in that beautiful room I had first met both of the men in.

  I felt something move on the mattress next to me and my head jerked to the side. The dark-haired stranger was with me again, looking at me with concern evident across his face.

  He was so beautiful. It seemed impossible, but he was somehow even more attractive than before. Suddenly all that desire I was suppressing before welled up over the mental barriers I had constructed around it, and I was drowning in it. The air was thick with his musk and my body was on high alert. It wanted to be touched. It wanted to feel pleasure; pleasure that only this strange abductor could provide.

  “It’s you…” I murmured, reaching up to caress his face.

  He pressed into my palm, flesh so warm and rugged in my hand. His stubble was almost like an anchor point, rooting me in my desire to feel him against all of me.

  “Reina,” He murmured, voice as low and gruff as ever. I would have asked him how he even knew my name, but it didn’t seem to matter. My whole existence was narrowing down to the need between my legs that only he could quench. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Later,” I murmured, leaning forward to catch his lips in my own.

  Who cared about my harebrained theories or whether I was mad or not? They all seemed so silly now. Why did waste time questioning the circumstances when I could devour the delicious man before me again and again.

  To my utter dismay, he pulled away. “Not now. Listen, Rei-”

  But I wouldn’t be discouraged so easily. The room seemed to pulsate around me, reiterating that I had worked so hard and had been so stressed. I deserved the release. I craved it and the man who could give it to me more than anything. Gripping his wrists, I pulled his hands to my breasts, pressing them into me.

  I was still wearing the clothes I had put on for my walk that never happened, which frustrated me to no end. I wanted to be bare and writhing under the man, not sit around and talk about our possible feelings.

  “Don’t you want me?” I whispered. “I want you.”

  “No, Reina, it’s not that.” He broke free from my grip, his fingers going to my face. He shook me gently, and that brought a bit of reality back to me. “I need you to listen to me, alright?”

  I blinked at him, trying to parse out his words. Slowly, the simmering fire raging throughout me dimmed and I was able to nod my head quietly.

  “Good.” Without another word, he pulled something from his pocket and pressed it into my palm. Looking down, I saw that it was a perfect silver spear, reflecting the iridescent light filtering in through the canopy.

  “What’s this I asked?” The aching need had almost subsided entirely and I could feel myself coming back from the strange, euphoric high this place gave me. But before the dark-haired man could answer, the metal turned to liquid, disappearing into my palm. “What the hell!?” I screamed, waving my arm and jerking backwards. It was the box all over again, and I knew that soon arms were going to descend from the ceiling and start tearing me open again.

  “Sh, shh, it’s alright,” The stranger breathed, his hands finding me again and pulling me closer. “It’s going to help you, okay? I just need you to breathe.”

  I obeyed, although it was hard, and let him hold me. I took comfort in his grasp, feeling assured instead of terrified. When I found my words again, I leaned back and wiped my face. Had I been sweating? I felt like it.

  “When the time comes, I need you to press into your palm.”

  I looked at him, seeming to see him clearly for the first time without the haze over my mind. He was still devastatingly handsome, but there was a kindness in his face that I had never taken the time to notice before. Like he actually cared about my state of being and what all of this was going to me.

  …whatever this was.

  “Why?” I asked, voice nearly shaking.

  “To save your life.”

  Oh. That seemed like a pretty great reason.

  “Who are you?” I asked finally, the last of my wits coming back to me. “What is this place? What’s happening?”

  “My name is Gabriel,” He answered, leaning down to press his forehead gently to mine. “I will answer all your questions in time, but I have to get you back before he returns.”

  “Who’s he?” I continued. “You can’t just start a sentence with a random pronoun and expect me to just roll with that.”

  “Shh,” He urged again. “I will keep you safe, I promise. But for now, you must go back to sleep.”

  “Back to sleep?” I argued? “How the hell am I supposed to be able to sleep when my life is falling apart? All I’ve been doing is sleeping and what I see in my dreams varies between unbelievable sex and some scene out of a torture porn movie!”

  “I know,” He murmured, his hands stroking my shoulders comfortingly. “I know this is a selfish thing to ask of you, but I need you to lie down and trust me.”

  “Trust you? I don’t even know you.”

  “But you do.” He answered, the smallest of smiles at the corner of his mouth. “You know me in the most intimate way a man can know a woman.”

  I blushed at that, thinking about the time that we had spent together as well as the fantasies
my brain had cooked up during my waking hours. “I mean true, but-”

  “There is no but.” Ever so gently he pulled away, only to press the gentlest of kisses to the top of my head. “Trust me. Please.”

  Against all logic, I did as he asked, leaning back on my bed and willing my heart to calm down. His calloused palm gently brushed against my face then I felt myself being pulled down back into the wonderful warm sleepiness that I had fallen into so many times before. His worried expression was the last thing I saw as I slid once more into temporary oblivion.

  Chapter Seven

  I woke up to the sound of my alarm going off. Confused, I groggily sat up and tried to figure out what was up and what was down.

  I was in my bed again, and I supposed I should be grateful that the dark hair- no, Gabriel- hadn’t left me on the floor. Rubbing my eyes, I grabbed my phone and pressed the button to illuminate the screen.

  Sure enough, it was six-forty-five, my usual wake up time. Had Gabriel really managed to take me away then return me to my bed with fresh nightclothes?

  It was only then that I noticed the date.

  “Shit!” I cried, scrambling out of bed.

  Somehow a full twenty-four hours had passed since I had collapsed onto my floor. The entire day off that I had called in for was gone, which meant I had to go right back into work.

  No. No. It wasn’t fair. Even though I was sleeping so much, I was exhausted right down to my bones. It was clear that all this mental panic was doing my systems no favors and I really just needed a day to decompress.

  But taking two days off in a row was more unfathomable to me than a strange man named Gabriel giving me silver spheres that disappeared into my hand, so I got up and got ready.

  It was raining when I went out again, perfectly reflecting my mood. Then the bus was late and overcrowded, leaving me to stand in my sensible heels, with someone else’s armpit right in my face.

  Naturally, when I finally stepped into the doorway, I was in a less than pleasant mood. My limbs felt heavy, like they were moving through molasses, and my head couldn’t seem to shake the fuzziness of sleep like the previous times I had been knocked out.

  “Oh Reina! You’re here, how are you feeling?”

  I blearily looked to the reception desk to see Edna. She was a precious older woman with hair dyed a brilliant green and who wore about a dozen different necklaces every day. She was one of those kind, sweet grandmas, not the judgmental, preachy ones that needed to be avoided.

  “Uh, yeah… I’m fine.”

  “Oh, you don’t look it at all. Why don’t you go ahead and sit down here, let me get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No,” I nearly barked. “No more coffee.”

  “Right. Well water then. I’m not going to let you walk around looking like that; you’ll scare the children. Come. Sit.”

  I did as she asked, there was really no fighting with a little old lady that had decided she was going to grandmother someone, and set myself down. As soon as I was settled, I felt those same dreaded waves of sleep wash over me. I was just going to have to power through it.

  …as if that had ever worked before.

  “Here you are darling. Are you sure that you should come back so soon? You know, if you have something contagious, you could end up spreading it to some of us on accident, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, would it?”

  “I have thing I have to do.”

  “To me it looks like the only thing you have to do is rest.”

  I sipped at the water she handed me, and while it was both cool and refreshing, almost nothing was quelling the urge to sleep rising in me. “Thanks, Edna. I’m going to head to my office now.”

  “You do that, and if you decide to catch a few winks in there, I won’t tell anybody.”

  “Thanks, Edna.” As cranky as I was, it was impossible not to smile at the sweet lady.

  She didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, but she didn’t argue with me either, so I sidled past her to my tiny little refuge.

  I nearly collapsed into my desk and booted it up. I was running on sheer determination at this point and it seemed to be working at least a little bit.

  I sank into my work, setting up schedules, replying to emails and updating the library event calendar. I lasted a good couple of hours before a very familiar bloom of pain erupted in my forehead.

  “Dammit!” I cried, rubbing my forehead where I had faceplanted onto my desk yet again. Doing that once in a lifetime was embarrassing enough, and yet here I was, red cheeked and sore foreheaded.

  “Language, Reina.”

  I looked up from my hands that had previously been busy rubbing my face to see Tilde sitting on the other side of my desk. Tilde was something else; a nineteen year old that used the library as a part time job after her college classes, she was an international student with a thick accent I could never place. She was as serious as they came and I didn’t want to be stereotypical, but she reminded me of some sort of old fashioned, KGB spy.

  “Apologies, Tilde.” I sighed and reached for the bottle of water I had shoved into my purse. “What are you doing in here? Did you need something?”

  “No, I just came in for my shift.”

  “And you just decided to hang out in my office?”

  “Not exactly. Edna told me her concerns about you and asked me to… encourage you to go home.”

  I smiled through the quizzical look I gave her. “And how exactly is a teenager supposed to convince me to abandon my work unnecessarily?”

  “That part is very simple. You see, I don’t really need this job. I have it because I like it, but I find that I like you even better. So, if you refuse to go home and take care of yourself as you obviously need, I suppose I could make a… what is the English word for an accident that’s very clearly on purpose?” She shrugged. “Well whatever that is. I will make it happen.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come now, there are so many things here that could go wrong. The young adult fiction bookshelves could be knocked over. The adult warnings could be taken off the romance novels. Someone could accidentally put an ‘O’ into the accounting spreadsheet again instead of a zero. Surely nothing that would permanently damage the library, but they certainly would make your day much more shit than it need be.”

  “Language, Tilde.”

  “Apologies, Reina.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly. Trust my silly, loving coworkers to try to blackmail/strong arm me into going home.

  But as much as I wanted to resist, and as terrified as I was to return there, I couldn’t resist the sleep burrowing into every fiber of my being. I needed to be someplace warm and familiar where I could curl up and not have to worry for a while.

  “Fine,” I said, grabbing my purse and standing carefully. “I’m heading home. But only because I want to. Not because I’m scared of cleaning up a little mess.”

  “That is a good choice, miss. You are very responsible individual.”

  I would have normally had a much snappier reply, but normally I wasn’t nearly intoxicated with sleepiness. I somehow maintained my composure as I walked out of the library, waving as I went, and then on the bus as I sat in my seat, patiently waiting to reach my stop.

  But the moment I was inside of my apartment, I practically melted into the floor. Nothing felt more comfortable than the thin rug on her floor, the smell of coffee still rife in the air. A part of me wanted to make it to my bed, but another part of me knew that it didn’t matter because I was going to be deposited there by a strange man anyways.

  The last of my thoughts before I slept drifted to Gabriel. There was now absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was real, as were my experience in whatever place I was being taken too. I could only hope that I could trust him, and the mysterious sphere that had melted into my hands. Otherwise, I was very, very alone in a world that suddenly didn’t make sense.

  I supposed I wouldn’t find any answers while I was still co
nscious and in whatever reality it was I normally lived in, so I closed my eyes, and let myself fall.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up in the same room I always had, but this time my clothes weren’t changed. Groaning, I sat up and tried to get my bearings. I was alone, for the moment, but that didn’t mean much as I usually was when I woke up and then one of two men would join me later. Gabriel, or-

  As if on cue, the door at the end of the room slid open and the blond man -the first one I had encountered- stepped in. He was even taller than I remembered, and still looked as if he was chiseled from flesh colored stone.

  Unlike before, he wasn’t dressed in highly artificial pants and pants only. Instead, he was wearing some sort of elaborate, almost royal robe.

  “Come,” He said, offering me his large hand.

  I looked from his hand to his face to his hand again before tentatively taking it. His strong fingers wrapped around my slender ones, and then he was leading me out of the room. It was the first time I had ever seen beyond the four walls and my heart started to pick up speed.

  However, I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t say I was scared of him exactly, but that something in my body was warning me that he wasn’t someone I could trust. And after everything that had happened lately, I was definitely going to trust my instincts.

  We kept going through several dark, twisting hallways that looked like they belonged in some sort of very high-tech ship. My mind proposed all sorts of theories, but I kept them at bay until I got some real answers. Spending too much energy on them now would just be a waste of energy, and something was telling me that I needed to conserve as much as I could.

  Finally, the tall, blond man lead me into a richly decorated room. The walls were covered in lush, elaborate tapestries that displayed art unlike anything that I had ever seen before. It was amazing, if not completely intimidating.