Stolen (Royally Hot 1)

I made mental notes of what I’d need to fix in the next few days. Still, blossoms of pink and purple showed their tenacity, lining the aging stones where the structure met the rock soil, and it made me think how something so delicate and beautiful can co-exist with something so hard and inhospitable.

I wondered if it might be the same for me and the emerald eyed goddess. Could we co-exist? Could we thrive? My ugliness alongside her unnatural beauty?

I needed to find out all about her. Fuck, I didn’t even know her name. Where she lived. Who I would need to threaten, beg or kill to have her beside me.

Surely she was taken. Spoken for…or pledged to someone already.

All I knew was, whatever it took, I’d ruin kingdoms to have her. Because she was my world now.

I called out to Angelica as I dismounted and untacked, giving my horse a bucket of grain, two small bricks of hay and a drink of water, and then headed toward the cottage.

“Angelica! Where are ye, lady?”

She and I had a long history. I’d known her since we were both brushing up on adulthood, and she was like a sister to me. People assumed thing of course, but I gave them no credence.

She, older than me by two years, had already been through a lot before we met, and my lack of a common sort of man’s interest in the pursuit of my base needs had folks whispering that I preferred the company of men, or that she had me under her spell.

Neither one was true, but she didn’t care what they said and nor did I. Angelica had been a good friend to me and vice versa, and I wouldn’t have done anything to change that.

I’d protected her from over-zealous customers in her early brothel-running days, and even wiped the floor with some of them. I didn’t like what had happened to bring her into that life, but I understood why she stayed. The girls were better off with her as their madam than they’d ever been with piece of shit that used to own both them and their place of business. In any case, the world went red when I saw customers mistreating her or the other girls. In my opinion, men who disrespected women deserved all the pain in the world no matter what the woman’s profession.

And over the years I’d dished out plenty in their defense. In return, Angelica had always given me a place to stay, a warm meal, trusted friendship and good advice.

As I approached the house, I was proud to see the life she’d made for herself. After she’d secured an education for the girls who worked for her, found them alternative employment and, in more than one case, good marriages to men that would treat them right, she’d retired from that life and started as a healer, the one skill her no-good family had given her before they sold her to the brothel keeper on their way through our small town.

Of course, some suspected it was Angelica herself that had murdered the man who owned her, but suspicions were all they had. She was too clever, and the law too lazy, for anything to ever come of it, but she once showed me the spot where she’d put the body into the loch. According to Angelica, he’d still been wearing a look of surprise when he sank under the water, never to resurface.

No more than he deserved. Abusers like that get what’s coming to them in the end.

As I walked up the front path, admiring the lush garden she’d managed to cultivate, full of medicinal herbs and plants, the door squeaked open and there she was. Before I knew it, she was in my arms, squealing and laying a big kiss on my cheek.

“You’re back!” She grinned. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, my dear friend.”

I embraced her and tried to smile back, but my heart wasn’t in it. “I’m back,” I agreed, simply, my mind still preoccupied with the raven-haired beauty that had my dick hard and my heart about to erupt from my chest.

Angelica slid out of my arms, back to her feet, and looked up at me. Her crow’s feet were deeper than the last time I’d seen her just like the crack in the cottage foundation, and there was even more wisdom and kindness in her eyes than I remembered.

“The years are always good to you,” I told her, my smile tight as I tried to keep my errant dick under control.

She giggled a little and slipped her arm into mine. “As they are to you.” She lifted her shoulder and her eyebrow in unison as I worked my belt so the sheath of my sword covered the evidence of my heated thoughts over the temptress near the well.