Masked Prince (Fated Royals 2)

“Aren’t you the carpenter that helped out old Flannery when his cart got stuck in the muck?” He asked me.

Here we go with this bullshit again. The roads around Aramoor were calf-high with mud most of the year. One stuck cart was exactly like the next.

“Probably.”

“And the man who helped divert the ditches during the floods? Carried those big stones down from the forest for the job?”

“Nobody else was going to move them.”

“And the man who single-handedly raised the barn out at the freehold near the rye fields? And the same man who…”

Come on. This list of “good deeds” wasn’t going to catch the motherfuckers that assaulted him, now was it?

“Listen, man. You’re sure you’re good?”

“Indeed, I am, lad!” Said the old man, with a friendly slap of my shoulder. Reminded me of a child patting a bear.

“Good. Watch yourself in the future. Market day brings out all the assholes,” I said, and then booked it down the alley toward where the muggers had gone, pulling my hood up as I ran.

I rounded the corner and tore off down a towpath that ran parallel to one of the canals. The spring grass was still damp from the morning showers, and it was easy enough to track them. As muggers, they were pretty shitty. As escape artists, though, they had my respect. I chased them for miles, all the way out of town and into the sprawling countryside that surrounded Aramoor. In my rage, I’d not been paying attention to how far I’d run until I saw the old mill up ahead and realized where I was—out by the old dairy and stables.

Holy fuck. I was at her farm.

Like a vision, she appeared in the field up ahead of me. She stood in the farmyard, wearing heavy boots, with her skirt drawn up away from the ground, allowing me a tantalizing glimpse of her bare calf. The wind caught the hem of her skirt and smoothed the fabric around the curves and valleys of her hips. I pressed my clenched fist to my mouth and growled.

I wanted that body, I wanted that pussy, I wanted her to be mine forever and fucking ever.

As soon as I saw her, I forgot all about the damned muggers. She was all that mattered. I’d been fucking obsessed with her for over a year. But she had no idea I even existed.

Iris.

The first time I laid eyes on her was at the harvest festival two winters prior. She seemed hardly more than a girl, just on that cusp of change, but I knew she was too young for a brute like me. Legitimately forbidden fruit. But, even then, she took hold of something deep inside me and never let go. Over the year between, as she turned from a girl into a young woman, things changed.

An obsession turned rabid. I fought it, but lost at every turn. I wanted to love her, fuck her, take her and keep her. She was the single most beautiful thing in the entire goddamned world.

She wore a dark green dress that first day I saw her, and the same at the next year’s harvest festival. Green suited her, it brought out the dark of her eyes. I remember the way she blossomed as womanhood took hold. The way the fabric pulled taut against her hips, her breasts, her ass… Incredible the changes a year could bring.

Where she had worn her blonde hair loose the year before, the next festival she kept it in a long braid, down over one shoulder, and in one hand, she held a bright red apple. Like Eve. A honeypot to sinners. She bit into it and wiped the juice away from her pink lips with the sleeve of her dress.

So many women were so fucking polite—never ate in public, even. But she didn’t give a shit about that. She ate that apple with pleasure and I fucking loved watching her. Especially her throat as she swallowed. The way she ate that apple was a small thing, but it showed me so goddamned much.

Around her were other young women from the village. To me, they looked like nothing but maids waiting on a goddess. When she smiled and laughed, I felt bone-deep desire to own her, body and soul. From that day to this, she was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and the last thing I thought of when I went to sleep…usually with my hand on my cock, thinking about her cunt. Without ever showing her my face or letting her hear my voice, I swore my loyalty to her forever. I was hers and she was fucking mine.

Simple as that.

But part of me also knew it was impossible.

Goddesses and monsters? That shit is for myths.

And my life was not a fucking myth.