The Stolen Princess (Fated Royals 1)

She slipped her arm in mine and skipped the first few steps, making my dick grow another inch and my heart lurch.

Together we made our way down the King’s Highway, meeting only a few passersby, to whom Sara waved and smiled, chirping a ‘hello’ or ‘good day’ to each one as they gave us—or more so, me—wary, sidelong glances and barely muttered in return.

I’d walked this road hundreds of times, but never before had it felt this way. I noticed every rock, every flower off to the sides of the dirt. I noticed the birds chirping in the trees, the way she made each step feel new.

Being with her, being at her side, it made me feel whole. Like I had found my home.

We walked in a comfortable silence for a time, then I asked, “Tell me about you” I had to shorten my stride to meet hers, and every few steps she’d skip again making my heart do the same.

I was never one for much idle talk, and I admired that she didn’t fill the silences with empty chatter, but I needed to know her. To know her thoughts, dreams, trials, pains…I wanted it all—or at least as much as I could gather from here to her home. Enough to last me the rest of my life.

Again, there was that innocent flash in her eyes, that hopeful glance. It was childlike, almost. Uncomplicated and pure. It made me all the hungrier to show her what it meant to be a woman. My woman. But, I shook away the thought as she answered, “What do you want to know?”

Fucking everything. “Let’s start with…your favorite flower,” I blurted without thinking.

She laughed. “Flowers? Really? I love all of them, Bors.”

“If you had to pick one. If someone promised to fill your home with one flower forever, what would it be?”

“Mmm…” She glanced away. “Hellebore, surely. Do you know them? Some people call them Lenten roses.”

I shook my head, hesitating. “Might surprise you to know I don’t know much about the finer things in life. But I’m willing to learn.”

She lifted one finger. “I’ll show you.” She strayed from the path, still with her arm in mine tugging me along with her. Her tiny body half my size yet I followed her with an ease I struggled to understand. “Here.” As she knelt into the wild grass and flowers at the edge of the road, her breasts pressed together in a tantalizing line of creamy cleavage. When she rose again, she held a single delicate, deep purple flower between her fingers. “I like them because they’re a little shy.” She smiled. “They aren’t boastful like daisies or roses. They’re happy enough in the shade, out of view.”

She offered the flower to me and I took it from her, trying my hardest to be delicate with the stem, something my fingers found foreign. I tucked her ink-black hair behind her ear and nestled the flower there nearly doubling over at the touch of her hair.

Visions of the raven strands tangled in my fists as I set her on all fours and ravage her until she is soaked and dripping with me filled my mind. I shook my head, trying to quell the crazed lust and urged her to continue trying to settle the desire that gripped my throat. “Tell me something else about you.”

She held my gaze and blinked, a stammer of her own frustration only making her more endearing before she found her words. “When I look at you, Bors, it’s hard for me to remember anything at all. I’m sure in your eyes you just see a stupid girl.” She shrugged a shoulder to her ear, pressing her lips together, making me want to taste them all over again.

“Not stupid. Never call yourself stupid. I know how you feel.” I wanted to tell her I was the stupid one, but my pride kept those thoughts banked in my throat.

She answered with a breathy giggle, and I wanted to hear that happy sound in my days and my dreams until the end of time.

As we walked and talked, she asked me things as well.

To my surprise, I told her of my plans—of the livery stable, of my hopes to buy a bit of land. “That sounds like a wonderful life,” she said.

“And you? What kind of wonderful life do you envision?”

A bashful blush crested her cheeks as she looked away. The sun catching the otherworldly green of her eyes shaking my knees before she answered. “I think I’m destined to look after my family. Seems to be the role I was born to fill. I am lucky in many ways. To have a family. So many don’t.”

The resignation in her voice bit into me like angry fangs, but I didn’t want to press her to speak ill of her family. I wanted to make her do a lot of things, but betraying her kin wasn’t one of them. “But if that wasn’t the role you had to fill, then what?”