“Oh, you’ll repay me.” His voice rumbled, and I felt my body tremble before such power. “Submit, Iris.”
“What? I don’t—”
“Submit to me. I will take it all, all the responsibilities, all the pain, all the decisions. Tell me you want me to do that.”
“Yes…” I muttered, my voice echoing in the bedroom and coming back to me in the dream. “Please, I am so tired.”
“Mind, body and soul, you must submit to me.”
“I submit.” My breathing was shallow, frightened, but exhilarated. “I submit to you, only to you.”
“Good girl.”
With his words, I felt a trickle of need run out between my legs, unsure if it was just inside the dream or also in the waking world.
The dream confused me, yet I felt a sense of calm in an unfamiliar way. I’d worked so hard, kept things together so long. The thought of giving up, being the vessel for Randal with his strength and oddly nurturing spirit felt like heaven to me.
I knew it was just a dream. Things like that don’t happen in real life. But oh, how I wished they would.
Over the next few days, Randal and I were hardly apart at all, except when he left each evening to get some sleep. He told me he rented a room in town; I ached to see it, ached to spend the night with him, but didn’t have the courage to ask. So, I settled for being with him each day. It was enough.
Almost.
Each day, he helped me with all the chores I would have taken care of on my own, and a great deal more.
He not only did the everyday things, like milking and mucking, but also took care of the things that I’d only ever dreamed of being able to get done on my own. He moved all the old rocks from the horse paddocks and leveled the footing, so it wasn’t so uneven and dangerous.
He mended the fences and sank new posts to replace the ones that had rotted through. He rebuilt the broken doors of the chicken coop, replaced a wobbly board on the floor of the hayloft, and fixed the irrigation ditch. I helped with whatever I could, but mostly he just seemed happy to be near me as he worked. And I was so very happy to be with him, too.
The farm had never looked better or cleaner, the cows had never been happier. Though I knew little of courtship, it was hard for me to imagine a situation in which a man and a woman could get to know each other better than they would working together on a farm, laboring away, solving problems, and enjoying the fruits of all that hard work.
At first, on the first day and the second, he maintained a respectful distance from me, except for any time he had a chance to carry me, which he did without even asking if he could lift me up. He said he disliked the idea of me walking through muddy paddocks and preferred to carry me through those, and when we walked down to the river together to fetch water, he said he didn’t care one bit for the unevenness of the path or how slippery the moss could be, and so carried me there as well.
I got very used to it, to being in his arms, and every time he set me down, I felt a little pang of sadness. Yet I knew I wasn’t exactly a bag of feathers; I couldn’t be easy to carry around everywhere. Even so, he seemed to take such pleasure in doing it that I didn’t object, not even once.
As the days passed, he took every opportunity to get closer to me, and I to him, every chance we got. We stopped every afternoon to enjoy some cider, which he brought for us himself, saying he didn’t want to dip into my secret supply. I noticed that he brought the finest cider in all the land, made by the royal orchard itself. It even had the king’s seal on the label.
“Where on earth did you get these?” I asked.
He looked at the bottle and paused. “At the market?”
No market I had ever been to, that was for sure. He didn’t even sound particularly sure himself. Why did he ask it like it was a question? But cider was one of my few secret pleasures and I was determined to know where it came from. “In Aramoor City? Which stall?”
He shrugged absentmindedly, and grinned in this boyish, charming way he had. “Can’t even remember. I was too busy thinking about you.”
I nearly swooned.
And yet, whenever I tried to send a hint to him that my heart actually ached when I looked at him, that I was falling for him, he didn’t seem to notice. I was like an archer with awful aim. But I found I was too modest and inexperienced to actually pluck up my courage to say exactly what I felt.
Over those days together, we fell into an easy, happy rhythm. I would bring lunch and he would bring a mid-afternoon snack of all manner of exotic and interesting things. I got to sample raisins for the first time, and dates, and dried apricots too, as well as the most delicious pears I’d ever tasted.
“You don’t have to do all of this for me,” I said, as I bit into a juicy ripe pear, and caught a trickle of juice on my chin before it ran down onto my chest.
He didn’t answer right away, but smiled at me in a way that I don’t think anybody ever looked at me before. In his eyes, I saw such adoration—and so much affection—that it made my cheeks bloom with an embarrassed blush.
He groaned and my cheeks got even hotter. It felt like a sunburn, sudden and intense.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Iris. You know that, don’t you?”
I wasn’t so sure. I was sticky with pear juice and sweaty with work, and whenever I was around him, I felt so topsy-turvy that I didn’t feel very beautiful at all. He reached out and swept my hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. I offered him my pear. He took a modest bite, eyeing me all the time.
Suddenly I was overcome with the desire to feel his lips on mine, to know what it was like for this kindly beast of a man to kiss me. I had been kissed just once before, by a boy at the village fair, years earlier.
I’d never been kissed as a woman; and I’d certainly never been kissed by such an incredibly strong, sexy man. But yet again, my courage failed me, and I didn’t know how to make the first move. I blinked several times in rapid, flustered succession.
“Something in your eye?” He asked, looking at me with concern.
Grateful for the excuse, I nodded. “Must be a little piece of hay.” I blinked again and again. “Do you see anything?”
He peered at me—close, but not nearly close enough. So I leaned in closer to him. He inhaled quickly as I closed the gap between us. He was still shy about my looking at him too closely, and clearly even getting too close caused the same response.
“It really hurts,” I said, grimacing a little.
Now all his self-consciousness seemed to vanish, same as when he’d helped me when I was stuck underneath Nellie. He leaned down so that his beautiful eyes were level with mine. They were the most beautiful, crystal clear blue-green, like emeralds dropped into the ocean, with a darker edge.
“Let’s see.”
He was so close that I could feel his breath on my cheek. His scent was like a forest, dark and alluring. I wanted him so badly that I was growing wet between my legs. He placed his thumb beneath my eye, gently drawing my eyelid lower, while cupping my jaw and cheek with the rest of his massive hand.
Kiss me, please just kiss me. I couldn’t keep up this nonsense of something stuck in my eye any longer, staring at him with lips trembling.
He narrowed his eyes, smiling a little.
“There’s nothing in your eye, is there?”
I shook my head, never breaking his gaze and the words tumbled from my lips like a child taking their first steps. “I was hoping you’d kiss me.”
He groaned, a lion-like purr from deep within his throat. It was a softer version of what I’d heard him do when some physical effort took all his strength. “Kissing is just the fucking beginning of what I want to do to you.”
Oh lord. I couldn’t take this anymore. I just couldn’t.
Dizzy with desire, I reached up and pulled his face to mine, kissing him first.
I felt him pull back, ever so slightly, as if in surprise…but then he took over, driving me up against the side of the milking shed with a thump
, and ravaging my mouth. With one hand he held my face, and with the other he began to explore my body. I inhaled hard against his cheek, realizing I had hardly breathed since he leaned into me. He tasted so good, and he smelled musky and sexy and delicious.
He was a powerful, aggressive kisser and it took my breath away. He kissed me with all he had. Before long, his hand was sliding down between my legs. He cupped me there, like my body was his and his alone.
With the heel of his hand, he ground against my most sensitive area, and I felt myself being swept away with the need to let him do whatever he desired—I wanted to feel everything.
But I withdrew with a gasp, planting my hand on his chest to push him back. To create distance where I wanted none.
“You should know,” I said, with my chest heaving, “I’m…. I’ve never...” Now it was my turn to search his face for something like shock or horror.
I saw no such thing. Instead, I found nothing but respect and more adoration. His eyebrows lifted and he smiled “You’re a virgin?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. My eyes were open so wide that they actually stung. “Yes,” I gasped.
Instantly, he changed from an animal going after his prey to a perfect gentleman. The bulge in his pants pressed against my thigh, an alluring, rock-hard mass, but he gave no signal of how turned on he was—which was surely just as turned on as I was.
He ran his hand down his dark stubble, and then slid his palm through his thick hair. “We better get back to work.”
Gripping his forearm, I looked up at him. “I want you so much. You have no idea.”
He looked me up and down, with this greedy sparkle in his eye, as if to say, I most definitely do have an idea.
Once again he pushed me up against the barn wall, this time firmer and more slowly. “We’re going to fucking take it slow, Iris. We will get there. But not until I say so.”
He had a simmering, powerful fury, that made me so, so wet. As long as he wasn’t pushing me away, I could be as patient as he needed me to be. I would follow his lead without question. The idea of allowing myself to be controlled by him was powerful, and somehow it felt like I was able to control myself because of it.
I looked up at him and nodded. “I understand.”
He took my face in his hand once more, as if to kiss me. But this time he didn’t. Instead, he pressed his forehead to mine, gripped my cheek in his hand, looked me in the eye and said, “You are fucking perfect.”
As that day went on, he was as gentlemanly as ever. I still heard his words in my ears, the way he’d growled out my name, and it drove me wild with anticipation for what might be in store for me in the future.
The future. Those words felt strange in my head. I don’t think until then I’d really ever thought beyond the next harvest, or the next calving season. And I did want a future with him, so very much.
So I wracked my brain for a way to introduce him to my father, to present him as a genuine suitor, without revealing that I’d spent the last handful of days all by myself with him. I could hear the words already. You shameless little slut. And Randal would’ve been banned from the farm for good.
It didn’t feel right asking Randal to pretend not to know me in order to placate my father, either, but I didn’t see any other way. Though I hadn’t known Randal long, it seemed unlikely to me that he’d be a willing or happy liar. He was kind and genuine but he also put me in my place when he thought I was out of line.
Not in a cruel or overbearing manner, more as if he wanted the best for me and would not let anyone get in the way of that, including me.
Maybe he could tell almost the whole truth, that he’d been sent by the master of coin to do some maintenance on the barns, but just leave out the last few days…nothing but a sin of omission. And all, I hoped, for the very best cause.
I was just about to propose the plan when hoofbeats rumbled fast and hard up the road. My heart dropped. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. I’d seen old maps that identified the road that ran alongside our farm as The King’s Road, but these days it was little more than a track through the woodland, with thick roots ready to trip a horse and deep mud to halt the progress of a cart. We were far from the beaten path and there would be no good reason for a group of horses to be thundering our way. Unless maybe, finally, the crown had decided to take the farm back.
Randal had been leveling out the ground in the feed room, but he emerged with his rake in hand, looking towards the sound. The vibrations shivered right up from the soles of my boots. It sounded like a whole battalion was coming at us, full speed.
He glanced at me, narrowing his eyes slightly, and rested his enormous forearm on the rake handle. We looked out the door of the feed room and saw two, four, six mounted men approaching on all-white horses, each of them clad in the royal colors. What in the world?
They had one extra horse with them, tied to the reins of the sixth soldier. The rider-less horse was a hand taller than the rest; a fairytale horse if ever I had seen one.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were doing at Millstone Farm. Though I was not well-versed in sigils and armor, I knew at once they weren’t just any soldiers. They were the palace guards. A royal tenancy we may be, but we were hardly a destination for a royal visit.
The soldier in front dismounted with a clatter of his armor as Randal stepped out into the midst of them. There were no explanations, no introductions. Instead, the captain of the guards flipped up his armor visor, turned to Randal, and said, “You’re wanted.”
Astonished, I stared up at Randal.
None of this made sense, but what made even less sense was that Randal didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see them. Annoyed, but not afraid or shocked. His demeanor hardened instantly—gone was the soft, lovely man who had cared for me over the past few days. In his place was an angry, hulking mass of muscle.
“I’m fucking busy,” he snarled.
“You’re fucking wanted,” the guard snarled back.
For a few tense seconds, nothing was said, but I could feel the air vibrate with anger, like the skies before a thunderstorm. Finally, Randal took a deep breath and turned to me. When he looked at me, his eyes softened, his muscles seemed to untense. “I need to go.”
“What?” I said, stunned. “Go where? Who are they? When will you be back?”
Randal glanced at the guards and ground his teeth together, making the muscles of his temples pulse angrily. A lightning-bolt vein throbbed near the old scar that cut through his eyebrow.
“I don’t know. But I promise I’ll be back as soon as fucking possible.”
Rather than embracing me and kissing me as he had every night when he left, this time he took my hand palm-down in his fingers and kissed the back, bowing slightly, and then he turned to go.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even muster a protest. It was like he didn’t even know me. Or, I realized, like he didn’t want the guards to know how close we had become.
That, at least, I could understand. Randal walked with long, authoritative strides down the path and then mounted the big white stallion in one easy, practiced, effortless movement. And then they were gone, with hoofs pounding.
As the dust settled, I felt both confused and frightened, in addition to shocked and heartbroken. My heart ached with uncertainty and a pinch of embarrassment. I placed my hand over the place where he had kissed the back of my palm, trying to get my bearings, searching my memory of our conversations for any hint of what might have just happened.
Here I’d thought I’d been getting to know him, but I didn’t know him at all. For all our days together, I had babbled away…but what did I really know about him? What had he really told me about himself?
Nothing, I realized. Nothing at all.
Who was he? What kind of man was he, really? And what on earth could he possibly have done to be wanted by the royal guards?
Then I realized. He had been hired as a carpenter by the royal family to repair th
e barns and buildings. Instead? He’d been here. Helping me. Neglecting his duties.
I’d been selfish and now, he was going to pay the price.
Chapter 6
Randal
Goddamn it.
I saw the fear and confusion in her eyes and I fucking hated that I couldn’t explain to her that everything was fine. If I’d explained anything about who the guards were or how they knew where to find me, I would have given myself away.
And I wasn’t even close to ready to tell her that I wasn’t some carpenter who “happened” upon her farm.
Hell no. I was the bastard prince. The heir apparent. The future king. And I was fucking determined to have her as mine, no matter what I had to give up to do it.
The guards that had come for me weren’t my men; they were my father’s. The whole ride back to the castle, I’d been trying to guess what the hell they wanted. But his men were loyal to him, same as mine were to me, and they didn’t tell me a single damned thing.
Bullshit, but not a surprise. As far as I knew, the kingdom was safe… but what the fuck did I know from the last week, other than every freckle on Iris’ cheeks or the way she bit her tongue when she giggled? Or the way she ate raspberries one a time?
When it came to the kingdom, I knew there wasn’t that much that could change in a week. But when it came to how I felt about her, that was another story. In a matter of a week, I’d fallen so fucking in love with her I could hardly think of anything else at all.
Fuck the kingdom, I thought, as I rode hard toward the drawbridge. Fuck it all. All that matters is her.
But at least for the time being, I’d have to focus on something other than Iris and everything I wanted to do with her tits, ass and pussy.
My father’s men and I approached the castle gates and the royal grooms came out to get the horses. The grooms didn’t look at me, but I knew that had everything to do with respect and nothing to do with my scars and burns. I didn’t care about being unmasked right now. The grooms knew me well enough, and they were also loyal to my father and me. As soon as we entered the palace, I hooked a right to go to my quarters—I never walked around within the royal premises unmasked.
Masked Prince (Fated Royals Book 2) Page 4
