The Stolen Princess (Fated Royals Book 1)

by Nikolai Andrew

  It was a start, but it wasn’t enough. Those beautiful emerald eyes would be the ruin of us both—given the chance, there were a shitload of lot of men who would take her for ransom or reward, and kill me in the bargain. “Eyes down. No eye contact with anyone except me from here on.”

  She lowered her lids so that her onyx lashes kissed her cheeks. “Like this?”

  “Like that,” I answered, then tied her mount to mine and took the lead.

  We took four days to make the entire journey. I could’ve done it in less than three, riding alone. But those days with her weren’t nearly enough to satisfy me, not even close. The longer we spent together, the greedier I got for a lifetime by her side. Each moment with her was more valuable than a thousand weight of gold.

  Each night I tried hard to resist her, but each night I failed. I made love to her as my possession but also as my princess.

  Sometimes we went slowly. Sometimes we were frenzied and bestial. I fucked her until my cock and balls ached and then I made love to her until the break of dawn.

  I taught her to take me in her mouth and to stroke me with her hands, on her knees before me. But no matter how she drew my pleasure out of me, I made sure every orgasm was inside her. My seed belonged in her womb and I vowed that not a drop would ever be spilled outside the temple of her body. This was more than dangerous.

  We didn’t speak of it, both of us knowing what we were doing could be the end of us and maybe that was exactly the point. All I knew, deep in my core, the battle between who she was to the world and who she was to me could never find balance.

  But for now, I lived in my fantasy as dangerous as it may be.

  Each time we fucked, I discovered new aspects of her pleasure. She came hardest when I was behind her, with my fingers on her clit and my cock deep inside her pussy. When she came that way, I’d slip the fingers of my other hand into her mouth and she’d bite down hard as she growled out her orgasm. I fucking loved to see my princess unleashed.

  In taking care of her and looking after her, I found new purpose and peace. I bathed her in clear streams and warm springs. I made her safe and looked after her. I spoiled her fucking rotten with my attention.

  At long last, I knew where I belonged. In those beautiful, borrowed days, I let her see more of me than I had ever shown anyone, perhaps even myself.

  On our last night, I made our camp on the far side of a meadow, next to a crystal-clear pond. If I could have drawn out the next day’s ride into another week or a month, I would have. But I knew that would be impossible.

  So instead, I took special care to make that final night together one that we would both remember, as if every fucking second with her wasn’t memorable enough already. Though I didn’t know what was to come the next day, I did know that things were about to change for both of us, forever. For that night, I wanted to pretend as much as we possibly could that nothing would ever change.

  We made a simple dinner of fish that I caught from the pond, along with roasted potatoes that we had bought at a roadside stand we passed earlier in the day. Sara picked blackberries from wild bushes nearby, and we sat tangled up together after dinner, feeding them to each other, one after another.

  I laid her down on her back and unfastened the buttons of her low-cut blouse, pulling my own shirt off and tossing it aside. She loosened my pants then, and I pulled them down off my ass before hiking her skirt up to reveal her magnificent pussy. The light was low but I could see a row of bite marks along her thigh, and I soared with the knowledge that they were mine, that I had given them to her the night before and they would remain for days.

  Damn, how I loved the way my teeth marks looked on her flesh. “I marked you,” I said, tracing the scalloped edge of the marks on her creamy thigh.

  She leaned up to get a better look. She looked so fucking beautiful—her innocent face and those womanly curves. “I love having your marks on me. I wish you could mark me all over.”

  I took one of her hands in mine and held it back against the blanket, next to her face. Then with my other hand, I slid down through her wet pussy and gently rubbed the flesh just in front of her puckered ass entrance, listening to her purr as I teased her sensitive flesh.

  I pressed forward, penetrating her with my finger first. We’d fucked so much that her pussy lips were swollen, even now. Made me so fucking proud to know that I’d done that to her. And that I was about to make them swell even more.

  She gripped one of my thighs as I fingered her, always keeping my thumb on her clit. I leaned down and sucked hard on the side of her neck, where she was most sensitive, giving her plenty of tongue. It never mattered if we’d had a long, hot day of riding or if she were freshly bathed—she always tasted so fucking sweet. Always.

  Once her pussy was warm, soaked, and ready, I drew her knees up and pushed them slightly to one side in order to give me maximum access to the deepest parts of her body. With her knees bent against my chest, I slid my cock inside her, right where I belonged.

  “You always feel so fucking good,” I growled as I entered her. “So tight, so wet, so fucking perfect.”

  She laughed a little and nibbled my ear. She still had blackberry juice on her lips. Double-sweet. “You feel perfect too,” she said, her breath catching a little as I hit her cervix.

  I fucked her as slowly as I could, savoring every withdrawal and entry as if it would be the last, knowing that very well it might. I let her legs come down on either side of me, grabbing her ass, one cheek in each hand, and tucked my head beside her. I felt her pussy tighten as she began to hold her breath. She was getting close.

  “Breathe,” I whispered. “Relax. Let it come.”

  She embraced me tighter and I could tell she was about to cry. I knew why; of course I did. But fuck me. If she started to cry, I’d start to cry. And I couldn’t let her see me break.

  “Everything is fine,” I told her. “I’ve got you. I will always have you.”

  She let go then, surrendering completely. Her orgasm started deep inside and I felt her clench my cock with long, intense, rippling waves of pleasure.

  As she came, I came with her, thrusting my hips one final time so that I ejaculated deep inside her, right at the opening of her womb. Filling her with my baby was my obsession and my only aim. My baby inside her was the only way I could see for me to bind myself to her, for good. But I also knew if I got her pregnant, it might be the death of me.

  The risk was worth it. No fucking doubt about that.

  The moment we had so long dreaded was on us. In a slow descent, the castle drawbridge lowered and the iron portcullis went up. On the battlements of each tower, the King’s archers were ready with arrows drawn.

  “Who goes there?” One of the guards called out.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “Bors, of clan Mackay. I have a visitor for King Rowan.”

  Reaching out for Sara’s hand, I clasped it hard in mine. She turned to me. “I don’t want to let go,” she said. Her eyes were damp with tears and her grip tightened with all her strength. “I’m afraid I’ll never see you again.”

  I didn’t want to let go either—not now, not ever. I fought every impulse I had to scoop her up in my arms and make a run for it. I imagined us across the sea, somewhere warm and remote, somewhere that we could make a life just for the two of us—fuck the kingdom, fuck the king. But now that word had spread that she was alive, I knew it was a fool’s game to keep her hidden. We would never be able to stop running if we started now. “Remember what I said, about a life on the run.”

  “I know,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But I would run with you. Anywhere, everywhere. Until my dying day.”

  Fuck, my aching heart. But running would be a hard and exhausting life, and one day we would be found out. I loved her too much to let that be her fate.

  The drawbridge thumped down, and three guards in leather and mail came out to meet us. They were old and weathered—old enough to have known the first queen, old enou
gh to be able to spot any family resemblance. As soon as Sara pulled off her shawl and they saw her face, the oldest of the three said, “Take her.”

  Though I had tried to mentally ready myself for this moment, I was totally unprepared for the fucking horror of feeling her hand grip mine until they yanked her away from me. I flung myself off my horse to go to her as she shrieked my name.

  “Get your fucking hands off of her,” I snarled.

  All three of them, though, were battle-ready and used to working as a group. Two of them seized her and dropped back, while the third moved forward, with his long sword at the ready, creating more and more distance between me and Sara. My horses felt my fury and started to whinny and rear.

  “Step back! In the name of King Rowan, step back!” Said the long swordsman, driving me backwards until he was on the drawbridge, but I was not. I caught a glimpse of Sara’s face over one of his armored shoulders. I’d never seen her look so scared or so uncertain.

  I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this goddamned heart wrenching goodbye. And yet, as I had known all along, I wasn’t worthy of even being in her presence and this proved it.

  As the drawbridge started to rise, the long swordsman tossed me a sack of coin as his companions ushered her into the castle. As I watched her go, it felt like every one of the archers in the towers had loosed their arrows straight into my chest.

  I had wanted to do the right thing. But now she was lost to me. And it was all my own fucking fault.

  Sara

  Once the guards carried me into the castle, everything became a fast-moving blur of stone stairways and gargoyle faces. I had seen such carved stone faces before, on the corners of our chapel in the village, but these faces were angry and menacing, like the stuff of nightmares. They streaked past, grotesque and unkind, mocking me in their imitation: screaming as I screamed, crying as I cried.

  I tried desperately to keep track of where we were going, in case I had a chance to find my way out to Bors, but one hallway turned into another and one spiral staircase twisted into the next until I didn’t know north from south or east from west, but only had the sensation of moving down, down, down.

  I fought the guards with all my might, but they were too powerful and too experienced for my panicked fury to have any effect. I had the feeling this was certainly not the first time they had carried an unwilling person through these many hallways and secret corridors, nor would it be the last.

  “Please,” I begged in a brief pause while the guards opened yet another massive oak door and locked it behind us as we went. “I’m simply here to see the king. I wish no one any harm!”

  They gave no reply. They never made eye contact with me, nor gave any indication that they knew who I was or wasn’t. As they dragged me along, it was strange to think that I had, perhaps, been somewhere in this massive castle once before. But I had been too little to remember, of course.

  If any of what Bors had said were true, it was a lifetime away, as if it had happened to a fairytale version of me, and not the real me at all. And I wondered how many young women had been seized as the missing royal in the years since then, each one around my own age at the time, perhaps never to leave this castle alive.

  The guards came to a halt in front of a curved doorway, with huge iron bars locking it in place. The oldest guard, gray in the beard and temples, took hold of the huge latch by its handle and tried to wrench it free, working against years of scaly orange rust. Wherever we were, it had been an age since anybody had passed through this door. And that realization filled me with terror.

  The second guard made as if to help him, but with one quick maneuver, the oldest guard dropped to his knees with a gurgle. I looked down in horror to see a gaping, hemorrhaging wound at his throat.

  The guard who had done the killing wiped his blade off on the sleeve of his shirt, with no more emotion than a butcher dispatching a hog. The smell of human blood cut through the mildew of damp stones and turned my stomach. “Mark my words. That’s what loyalty to King Rowan will get you, girl,” he said.

  If loyalty to the man that might be my father could get a guard killed, then what fate awaited me? With sudden realization, I knew I had to get out of here; my present and my future depended on it.

  “Help me! I am the lost princess!” I screamed as loud as I could, hoping against hope that Bors, or any other sympathetic ear, would hear me. The killing guard clapped his chain mailed hand over my mouth—the chain grated against my teeth and pinched my lips so hard that tears sprung to my eyes.

  “Stop your screaming, you little bitch,” he said, and then maneuvered my face down to the dead guard at our feet, “Or else your blood will be pooling with his.”

  I shook as terror silenced me. There was a time, not so long ago, when my life was of far less value to me than it was now. Bors had changed that. He had shown me another possible future, a future about which I had begun to dream. And now I was watching that future turn cold and dead, just like that first guard.

  As I tried to keep control of my senses, the third man held me captive while his companion finally unlatched the ancient wooden door. Then, with a kick and a shove, I landed on the wet stone floor. The impact winded me and I gasped for air. As I struggled to get my breath, the door slammed shut and handful of rats scampered up the walls of my dungeon.

  The last thing I heard, was their voices. One seething to the other.

  “We need to find the queen. Before the king gets word.”

  The old oak door was the only way in or out of my prison. I yanked on the handle until my palm was raw, but it didn’t budge; the door didn’t even rattle. The only light came from a tiny window near the ceiling, where two bricks were replaced with a thick iron grating that allowed a small amount of fresh air inside.

  Once I calmed myself and slowed my breathing, I listened for any sign of life outside the hole in the bricks. I heard no human voices, but far in the distance I heard the sound of crashing waves and seagulls. Though I knew little of life in the capital—and still less of the layout of the castle itself—I had once seen a drawing of it at a traveling magic lantern show that came to our village when I was very small.

  I remembered the castle was built up against the sheer, steep cliffs that ran down into the sea. “No man can scale those walls,” the magic lantern man had said. “Not if he wishes to come out alive.”

  I slumped down on the wet stones and rested my forehead on my knees. Part of me felt like screaming until I was hoarse, but the guards had made my fate clear if I chose to scream and holler. They’d return to kill me, I was positive. It was up to me to find another way to freedom and back into Bors’ arms where I belonged.

  Crawling on my hands and knees, I searched for any loose rocks, either as a way to escape or as a weapon to defend myself should they return. But I had hardly begun my search before the noisy hinges of the old door creaked and it swung open again.

  Now there were three guards, different from the ones that had seized me and placed me in this hole. These men were younger, and dressed differently. Both of them wore matching leather belts, emblazoned with three flowers, and I knew that symbol at once—I remembered it vividly from the coronation festival. It was the Rose of Beatrice. These were the Queen’s Guard.

  All became much clearer. Loyalty to the King, my father, had gotten the old guard killed. The Queen was behind this, I was sure of it.

  They seized me like they were inspecting a mare to be bred. Two of them grabbed me from either side, the other tore open my blouse. He had dark eyes and a dangerous gaze. He handled my left breast roughly as he leaned in close to see my birthmark. Then he wetted his fingertips with saliva and tried to rub it away. The friction of his fingers against my flesh made my skin burn.

  My skirt had worked its way up my legs, and now, nearly naked before them, I knew what would come next and I began to plead for mercy. “If I am who they I say I am, raping me will get you killed.”

  The one who had checke
d my birthmark scoffed and shook his head as the other two let me fall to the floor. “Make yourself decent if you can, whore,” he said, and the three of them left without another word.

  In spite of myself, half-naked there on the dungeon floor, I began to cry. All of this, every gaze and every touch, felt like such a terrible violation. I didn’t know how much more of it I could bear. When the door swung open minutes later, I met the sound of the creaking hinges with a stifled sob.

  This time, however, it wasn’t yet another set of lusty guards as I had expected, perhaps four this time, or five.

  Instead, I saw the weaselly minstrel that my father had said was his go-between. Bardo. And beside him stood a woman I had never seen before, but who I recognized at once, both by her manner and her crown.

  She was tall and shockingly thin. Though she had once surely been beautiful, her looks had faded now, leaving her with a bitter coldness. Her graying hair jewel pinned together elaborate braids, and she wore fresh buds of the Rose of Beatrice gathered into her locks. It was Queen Beatrice herself, I was sure of it, it could be nobody else.

  Just as I had in the tavern with the barmaid, I sought some sort of kinship and help from her, since she too was a woman in this world of rough and unkind men. But in her eyes, I found neither comfort nor warmth. “Are you sure it is her?” She asked Bardo.

  “That’s the stolen princess, my Queen.”

  “Guard,” she snapped. “Come here.”

  From behind the door came the guard who had slit his companion’s throat. “Yes, my queen?”

  “Who saw you with her?”

  “I don’t think anyone saw—”

  “I didn’t ask what you think, I asked who saw you. Can you be certain only those loyal to me know she’s here?”

  He hesitated, then lowered his eyes. “No, my queen.”