But brutish though he may appear, he didn’t touch me there, though in my haze I dreamed he desperately wanted to.
Instead, he slid his hands up my waist, drawing my plain shift tight. I felt tiny in his arms, as his thumbs glided beneath the curves of my breasts, making my nipples tighten against the rough, scratchy linen of my dress.
As if trying to wake myself from a dream, I took a deep breath and pinched my eyes closed, then opened them again. I was being swept away in his presence and my own desire. But there was so much I needed to know.
Once he rose to his full height, one hand still on my waist as I looked up into his eyes, and finally I seemed to find my voice again. “Why are you here? Why did you come to Angelica’s house?” I best I tried, I could not keep the hint of jealousy from each clipped word.
“For a bed and a meal,” he said, without hesitation. “And, if I’m honest, for a place to collect myself after first laying eyes on you.”
“The washerwomen told me about you,” I said narrowing my eyes trying to assess the legitimacy of her earlier comments.
“I’m sure they did.” He answered, his tongue coming out to trace along his bottom lip as he drew a deep breath flaring his nostrils.
“They said you’re a warrior.”
“I was.” He nodded his eyes tracing from my eyes to my chest then back.
“A dangerous man.”
“Perhaps.”
“A legendary lover.”
“Not for me to say,” he growled running a massive hand over his head, his fingers spread, dark hair running between them. “I’ve heard talk about you, as well. Angelica says your people don’t honor you.” With this, his grip on my waist tightened. “They don’t treat you as you deserve.”
My breath caught in my throat before I answered. “It is my life.” I shrugged. “I know no better.”
“You deserve to know better. You deserve to be worshiped.” The muscles in his clenched jaw fluttered as he delicately ran his thumb over my lips, dragging down my lower lip ever-so-gently before letting me go as a shudder shook me from my core. “But it’s time to get you away from here. You’ve got no business being this far from home.”
He picked up my basket for me, taking me firmly—though not unkindly—by the upper arm, and began marching me out of the garden toward the King’s Highway.
“What if I don’t want to go? Besides, how is it you know how far I am from home?”
His expression was firm, unyielding. “I just do. Girls who spy through windows need other ways to pass their time.”
I was unswayed. All my life I’d felt invisible… until he looked at me. And I wasn’t about to go back into the shadows so soon. “Then I’ll just have to tell the washerwomen that you’re no man at all.” I cringed even as I spoke knowing I sounded like a petulant child.
Bors stopped short and turned to look down at me. “Excuse me?”
His flash of anger gave me life and a new boldness was born inside of me as the other flash I saw behind his nearly black eyes. “A true man keeps his word. You owe me a kiss. You promised me a kiss today, by the well.”
“Bullshit. I promised you nothing. I said nothing to you.”
Emboldened by how beautiful and alluring he made me feel, I rose up on my tiptoes. “You didn’t promise me with your words. You promised me with your eyes.”
His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head as my eyes fell on the deep, thick silver scar across his face. “Again, bullshit.” But his body gave him away as he slipped his massive hand into the small of my back, tight, close, possessive.
“Please,” I said softly. “I’ll beg if you want me to.”
His nostrils flared slightly, and he swallowed hard I felt the power of my words watching how he was affected. “Fuck, Sara.” He lowered his eyes, I saw his jaw tighten and a flexing of a strained muscle in his temples and a vein in his forehead before he returned my gaze and finished. “I want to make you beg…Beg to be kissed. Bet to beg to be...” He trailed off, lips tight on his teeth a protruding vein now in his forehead.
I looked up at him, holding his eyes, urging him to tell me and he did.
“Beg to be fucked.”
Oh lord, yes. “Please. Please. Kiss me.”
“If I start, I can’t tell you I’ll stop until I take what I want. Need.”
“Good. Kiss me. Show me what it’s like.”
A moment of stunned shock flickered across his hard features, and he let loose a pained, feral sounding groan that banked a whimper in my throat.
Removing any remaining space between us, he set down my basket and took me in both arms, slightly parting my legs with the hard muscle of his thigh. “You’ve never been kissed before.”
I shook my head, answering truthfully, “Never.” I said softly, the boldness that had strengthened me fading. Instead, a feeling of vulnerability lit up in its place as he eyed me as a cat does a mouse. “You will be my first...” I finished, letting hope fill every word as the last bit drifted from my lips praying it would find home. “First…everything.”
His rough palm came to my check, firm yet kind as he eyes slipped closed for a long moment. He caressed me with gentle strokes of his thumb, while his other hand slid down my hip, his fingers finding their way to the crease where my bottom met my thigh.
“Everything about you is perfect.” He gritted out, gruff and strained, so close to me that the breath from each of his words warmed my lips.
“Please. Kiss. Me.” I begged, realizing I didn’t simply want his kiss.
I needed it.
His mouth crushed my lips and his greedy tongue pushed mine aside as he kissed me with an intensity that seemed to shift the ground under my feet. The rough scratch of his unshaven face prickled on my skin.
The kiss was the most pleasure I had ever felt. As though I were slipping into a hot spring, the wetness gathered between my legs freely. Driven by instinct and need, I pressed myself into him as he did to me and I felt his manhood grow harder and harder against my body. Fear and fascination were a frantic fury battling inside of me.
I had never known passion until that moment. I had never known love. But now I knew it with my whole body.
Every inch of my soul and self was his, to do with as he pleased.
Lord, I prayed, please, let him.
Bors
I will never kiss another woman as long as I live.
As our lips met, those words were seared into my brain.
My heart.
My soul.
She was the one. I was her first kiss and she would be my last.
Her body responded like a forest on fire. She inhaled long and slow as I kissed her, and I felt her breasts soft against my chest. What I wouldn’t give to rip her dress right off her and roll her nipple between my teeth. She was a fucking dream, knowing no other man had done what I was doing, knowing I was her first.
Fuck, I wanted to be her first in everything.
But no matter what I wanted, it didn’t make her mine. I had no right to defile her innocence, no claim on her skin. I wasn’t entitled to either her or her body. But the longer I kissed her, the more danger I was in of losing control. With each deep exploration of her mouth with my tongue, the more I wanted to spin her around, lift up her dress, and breed her, hard and deep, right here over the garden wall.
But years of warring had given me the strength of will. Sacrifice takes strength. Discipline is agony. I pulled away from her knowing it was the right thing.
For her.
Her heated, flushed cheeks made the brilliance of her green eyes glow brighter yet. Arousal looked damned good on her.
I broke her gaze and ran my hand over my stubble as I looked away, remembering all the brutality of my life. The things I’d done. How I’d lived. I would never be a man for a girl like her. She was just beginning her life.
I felt I was running down the end of mine.
In a sudden burst of anger and realization, I did the unthinkable, gritting out
the words that pierced my heart like rusty daggers. “Get the fuck out of here. You need to get away from me, Sara. I’m the last thing you need.”
She didn’t flinch. Instead, she reached up, soft, warm hands on my cheeks making me look at her again. There was a wisdom…an understanding in her too young eyes, and it wounded me deeper than any blade I’d taken. I’d give her anything that would make her life better.
Unfortunately, I knew that wasn’t me.
But her sweet, full lips opened and my knees shook as she asked, “Walk me home? Please? It’s the least you could do after that kiss.”
Angry red blushes had crept down her throat and onto her chest. The heaping soft flesh of her breasts seeming to be fuller than just moments ago and I wanted to sink my teeth into her, leaving her marked for the world to see.
I was losing this fucking battle. “Your home is by the old forge, yes?”
She nodded and swept her hair aside in the breeze. “Yes.”
Yes, I’ll walk you home. Of course, I will.
The words I wanted to say remained silent and what I knew I should say replaced them before I could talk myself out of them. “It’s hardly a mile off. You can make it without me.” Tightness banded around my chest. The war of my own desire and the truth of who I could never be to her fought to the death around my heart.
I could see her thinking, almost like a child trying to figure out how to get what they want. “I need your protection, Bors. What if that man comes back? What will I do?” She batted her lashes, her manipulation clear, but my nerve held firm.
I could handle a lot of things from her, but lies weren’t one of them. “Don’t play games with me, little one,” I growled.
Her eyes widened. She was so new to the world. She didn’t know anything yet, and she was too young to know even that. “It’s true!” The blush rose on her cheeks. “Well, I’m not especially afraid of him. But I do want you with me. Please.” Her smile pulled her full lips upward and my resolve weakened. “Pretty please? You like when I beg, don’t you?”
The pleases and begging hit me deep in my soul, in a place I’d not known before I met her.
It took all my strength not to have my way with her right there in the garden, and my defenses were too weak to deny her a simple walk home. My cock ached, seeping cum as my balls pulsed with the need to give all they held.
A man could only resist so much. And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t want to say goodbye to her. Ever. “Come on, then,” I grunted, and picked up her basket.
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?”
“A modest house full of laughter and warmth. Freshly baked bread,” she said, beaming. “A farmyard with a miniature donkey. No, two miniature donkeys and goats for milking, a flock of bantam chickens like my own at home…” Her wistful look turned excited. “Oh! And a garden. With every kind of flower in the land.”
“And a man? What about that?”
She gasped a little, looking up at me. Pressing her hand to her collarbone, she said, “Oh yes, a husband. And children.”
“How many children?” I asked, and watched her cheeks flush crimson at the thought. I found myself biting my lip as I watched her. I’d be lying if I wasn’t already thinking of putting a baby inside her belly; her hips made it hard to think about anything else.
“Lots and lots and lots,” she said. “As many as possible.”
Shit. She’s going to kill me before I even get her home.
As the old forge came into view, I looked down the road and my chest
tightened and my fists balled at my sides. The bastard who’d ambushed Sara at Angelica’s was closing the front gate of the house close to the now derelict forge.
With his back to us, I still knew him straight off by his gait and the pig shit all over him. My guess was that he’d gone directly here from Angelica’s, to tell some bullshit tale about what Sara had been doing there.
“Oh no,” Sara said her eyes down the way seeing the man as well she squeezed my arm. The tension I felt did not feel like affection. It felt like fear. “I thought he’d been familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He must have recognized me. Known my father.”
Seems she was right to bring me along. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Not now, not ever.”
The shit covered man took a quarter turn, looked at me and made the wise decision to turn back the other direction and even with his wobbling run, he took a turn through the woods on the other side of the road and disappeared.
Sara drew a jagged breath through her nose. “My father, he will be so angry.”
Her words shook and my heart thumped vowing somehow, to have her never be fearful again. I did my best to soothe her. “I’m here. No one will harm you. Ever.”
“You don’t know him.”
“It’ll be fine. I fucking swear.”
But it wasn’t. As we came upon the small, ill kept stone house, I unlatched the gate for Sara and held it open as a man I presumed to be her father burst through the front door with rage in his eyes.
“You little slut,” he snarled. “So that’s how you’ve been earning your extra coin, is it? Opening your legs?” Before I could stop him, he grabbed her hard by the face and began to unbuckle his belt for a whipping. “I’ll show you a lesson, you little whore-in-training. I’ll teach you to…”
Motherfucker was too stupid to live.
Red mist enveloped the world. I launched myself at him without a second thought. I was an animal protecting his mate—nothing more, nothing less. I felt my knuckle connect with something that crunched under the force of my blow, and felt the familiar heat of blood on my hands, the scent of iron and salt barely cutting through my rage-fueled haze.
The Stolen Princess (Fated Royals Book 1) Page 3
