Chapter 15

Ari

T he following night, I came to my bedroom deliberately late. During the day, I had stayed busy, occupying my thoughts with enough activity to keep them away from Salas. The moment I set my foot in my bedroom, however, the memories of him rushed me anew.

Bringing him here had been a huge mistake. Now, everything in my bedroom reminded me of him. Every piece of furniture he’d touched held an image of him imprinted on my mind. The couch where he had placed his cloak. The table where he’d served me tea. Even the damn sword on the wall over the fireplace that he’d spoken about. And my bed where we’d slept together... I couldn’t even go behind the screen to look at the bed now.

Longing tightened around my heart like a chain, pulling it toward the man I shouldn’t want.

I opened the patio doors wide, poured myself a glass of ice water from the carafe on the table, and sat on the couch, staring at the gaping mouth of the dark fireplace.

A sudden noise from the patio behind me sent me to my feet.

“Who’s there?” I whipped around to face the open glass doors.

“Evening, Princess.” Salas stood on the patio, his large frame backlit by the evening sky.

In the sepia light of the dying sunset, he looked like the embodiment of all my thoughts and longing—a wish come true.

Speechless, I carefully set my glass on the table by the couch.

“You need to get someone to remove that lattice from the side there.” He gestured at the parapet behind him with the climbing jasmine vines. “It makes it way too easy to climb up.”

I exhaled an incredulous laugh, taking him in. He certainly was real, not just an apparition conjured by my lonely mind. He was wearing the shirt I’d given him, and it looked even better on him than I’d imagined.

“You’d mentioned unfinished business between us,” he said.

“Is that why you’re here?” I finally found my voice, sauntering toward him with a wide grin on my face.

My heart beat faster, my skin flushed. I barely felt my feet carrying me toward him, moving as if I was floating. All because he came to see me again.

It was insane. The effect this man had on me was incredible. It also proved incredibly addictive, and I had no strength and no desire to fight it. I needed his kiss more than I needed my next breath.

He lifted both hands between us, however, halting my advance.

“We do have unfinished business that I’m dying to finish, Princess. But you need to know what kind of a man you allowed into your bed.”

“What do you mean?” I kept smiling. “I know who you are.”

“No, you don’t. I never told you. I never told anyone.” He rolled his shoulders back, his broad chest rising with a deep breath as if he was about to jump off a cliff. “I’m a fallen man, Princess. Before I signed my very first slave contract seven years ago, I worked in a fun house. I was a man for hire, Your Highness. Even slaves look down at men like me.”

Air rushed out of my lungs. Shock sent me stumbling backwards until my legs hit the back of the couch and I propped my butt on it to stay upright.

I’d never been to a fun house myself. But everything I’d ever heard about “those men” rushed into my mind now.

The men who sold their affections for money were weak, wanton creatures who’d fallen victims to their base instincts, unable to control their physical urges.

They had to work in those places because they had willfully ruined their chances for anything better.

They took their pants off and spilled their seed for every fun-loving playgirl who came along, so no decent woman would marry them now.

They were unintelligent and irresponsible, good-for-nothing drunkards and therefore unable to secure any other form of employment to begin with.

In other words, they were nothing like Salas.

“It’s not true.” I frowned, waiting for an explanation.

“I wish it wasn’t.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned with his shoulder against the frame of the patio doors, not leaving but not entering the room either.

“You’re an intelligent man,” I argued, folding down a finger for every point I made. “I could tell from the very first words you said to me that you’re educated, even though you try to hide it sometimes. You have a stellar self-control. I can personally attest to that. I’ve had you in my bed more than once, but I’m still very much a virgin. You’ve kept your clothes on every night we spent together. You’re nothing like the men who work in those places.”

The look in his eyes hardened.

“How many of the men from ‘those places’ have you met, Your Highness? ”

I hated when he used the formal honorific to address me. Right now, he made the respectful “Your Highness’ sound like a mockery. It made my blood boil, knocking me off-kilter, which undoubtedly was his intent all along.

“Well, I haven’t—”

“Of course, you have not. Princesses don’t visit dirty bawdy houses, do they?”

Princesses stay in their pretty palace bedrooms, having men delivered directly to them.

He didn’t say that last part out loud. But he probably thought it. Which riled me up even more. Instead of lashing out, however, I did what I normally would during a heated debate in the council. I slowed down my breath and started counting to ten in my mind.

I’d only made it to five before Salas spoke again.

“No boy is born to do what I did.” His voice was somber. “I had a good family, born as a son of a blacksmith. My mother owned the shop of course, but my father did most of the work in it. That sword over there,” he tipped his chin at my father’s present hanging over the fireplace, “it’s his work.”

“It is?” I spun around to look at the weapon.

“My mother’s guild crest is on the blade. But I’d recognize Father’s work even without it.”

He didn’t have to tell me any of it. He didn’t need to come here at all tonight, and he could leave anytime. But he stayed, though still not entering the room, just leaning against the doorframe in the threshold.

Maybe Salas needed his story to be heard, and he wanted me to be the one to hear it.

“What happened to your parents?” I asked.

He shot me a look from under his thick eyebrows, as if trying to guess the reasons for my asking. I waited, giving him the chance to walk away and take his secrets with him if he wished.

Once again, he stayed.

“Mother died from a sickness when I was twelve,” he said. “Her sister inherited the shop and kicked us out.”

“Why did she do that?”

“She and Father never got along. She didn’t want to have two extra mouths to feed and another dowry to pay in addition to her own sons. Her husband also hated the idea of having another man his age in the house.”

“We have charity houses for widowers,” I said. “Your father had options.”

My father was especially proud of the widower houses in Egami. He said no honorable husband or his children should fall into poverty because of his wife’s passing. The crown paid to maintain the houses, and Father personally visited quite a few of them.

Salas gave me a skeptical look.

“I take it you haven’t been to one of those either, Princess.”

“But I have.” I jerked my chin up. “I visited one just last year with my father. The men have spacious, airy rooms for them and their children. They’re given options for honest employment while their children go to school. They’re fed well and get assistance for clothing and medicine if needed.”

His chest rose with a heavy sigh.

“I wish you could visit them all, then. Maybe the conditions in all of them would improve if you did. Either way, a charity house was the last resort for us. The better ones are always full. The others... Well, let’s just say they aren’t a good place to grow up or to grow old in.” He moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “My father could’ve gotten a job as a blacksmith helper. No one knew his name outside of our village, of course, but Mother’s shop did well, and his work was good. This one even made it all the way to the royal palace.” He tipped his head at the sword over my fireplace. “But then, the lady who owned the land where we lived offered to take us in. Father got the job of a general laborer on her estate, and I was supposed to be a companion for her son who was only a year younger than me. Father did it for me. He hoped the lady would eventually help me find a good wife and ensure my future.”

“That sounds like a great opportunity,” I agreed, but he winced. “Was it not?”

“Well, it certainly improved my education. I attended the lessons with the lady’s son and learned everything he did. But instead of finding me a wife, the lady set her eyes on me herself. Shortly after I turned fourteen, we became lovers, with little consent on my part.”

I gasped in a painful breath. My spine went stiff, my stomach sinking. The darkness of my past brushed over me again with its worn filthy wings. It was a different world, a different life, a different person, yet somehow, I knew exactly how Salas must’ve felt, and it made me nauseous all the same.

“Did your father know?” I asked, my voice hollow like an echo in an empty cave.

“No. By then, she had sent him away from the estate to work on a distant farm. The hard work ruined his health. He passed away shortly after.” His free shoulder jerked once. But he remained in the same casual position, leaning against the frame. “I was seventeen when the lady died too. Her daughter inherited the estate. She knew what was going on between her mother and me and ordered me to leave, afraid that my ‘wicked ways’ might rub off on her younger brother and ruin his good name along with his chances for an advantageous marriage. As the word about my tattered reputation got out, no one would hire me. I was too young to even sign a contract with a slave owner then.” He shrugged, trying to downplay his sufferings. “I knocked on many doors that winter when it got too cold to beg on the street. Few of the doors opened. No one let me in. Except for one establishment.”

“The fun house?”

“The fun house,” he echoed with a sigh. “I wish I could say my story is unique, Princess, but it isn’t. During my years in the brothel, I met men from all walks of life. Actors and musicians down on their luck. Lady’s favorites who have fallen out of favor. Widowers. Run-away husbands who’d given up on trying to please their moody, abusive wives and found it easier to please many different women instead. I made friends. I felt safer there than in the lady’s manor where I lived before.”

“Why did you leave the fun house?” I asked, striving to understand.

He stared past my shoulder, as if peering straight back into his past. “Once again, I had little choice when it happened. As popular as our services were, the town folks hated our establishment. Even those who visited us in private would call the house all kinds of names in public. One fine night, they went even further and set it on fire.”

“They burned it? Were there people inside?”

His nod sent chills down my spine.

“We were all inside. A few clients too.”

“That’s murder,” I spat out the accusation, furious at the injustice of it all.

“I’m afraid murder was the point, Princess. They wished us all gone, along with the house.”

“Did people die?”

“Thankfully, no. Not that night. The owner woke up. Her husband shook me awake, then woke up many others. Everyone managed to get out. Some got burns and injuries, but all survived that night.” He paused, slowly rubbing his right thigh. “The place burned to the ground, however, and the owner chose not to rebuild it.”

“Were those who burned it ever held accountable?”

He looked at me as if I’d just said total nonsense.

“For what? For getting rid of a ‘sinful place?’ They were heralded as heroes by the local folks.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. The visions of a roaring fire in the dead of the night assaulted my mind. People running through the flames in panic, screaming, their clothes smoldering. Even imagining it was hard. I couldn’t fathom what it’d be like to live through a night like that.

“What did you do then?” I asked softly.

“All I could legally do at that point was to find a similar kind of employment in a different location. But by a stroke of luck, I came into possession of a reference letter that vouched for the bearer’s character. It enabled me to enter into a contract with a slave owner, and... well, here I am now.”

Salas and I were born and raised worlds apart. His story was different from mine. Yet it resonated with me deeply, reflecting my own experiences in some ways and echoing my emotions.

I remembered what it was like to have no choice. I knew first-hand what a hopeless situation felt like. The feeling of being all alone in the world with no place to go and no one to ask for help was also way too familiar to me.

But my story had a happy ending when his did not.

“Tell me something, please. Did that fight you ended up being flogged for have something to do with your past?”

He frowned, scratching his chest. “I ran into the owner of the fun house that day. The men I worked with insulted her behind her back. So, I threw a punch, and it escalated from there.”

“You stood up for the woman who exploited you?”

“Yes. But she was also the one who took me in from the cold when no one else would. She gave me a job that helped me survive until something better came along.”

Something better was the slave contract.

“So, you call becoming a slave your lucky strike?”

He nodded firmly. “The meaning of either luck or misfortune is different for everyone. You know what they say? For some, a hardship means their tears are too big, for others it’s when their diamonds are too small. In my situation at least, becoming a slave was an improvement. Unlike in a fun house, I don’t have to touch or be touched by anyone. I do my work through the day, and I’m left alone at night. My bed is my own even if it’s just a bunk with a straw mattress.”

What he must’ve felt when I had the guards drag him to my bedroom, especially after being put through all that invasive grooming and being locked in chains by Gem too.

Guilt gripped me.

“Salas, I...” I got off the couch, clutching my hands together. “I’m so sorry for everything you had to go through because of me. I let others handle our arrangement when I should’ve just found a way to talk to you first.”

He shook his head at that.

“You know as well as I do that there is no chance for a princess and a slave to simply get together and talk.” His features softened as he gazed at me. “Unless the slave climbs the wall up to the princess’s bedroom.”

I kept wringing my hands in front of me, racking my brain about how to right so many wrongs. Where could I even begin? And how could I avoid possibly making it even worse?

“Please, tell me how I can help? What can I do to make it better?”

“For me?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Princess. I’ve lived a life, and I’ve made what I have with it. I’m content with what it is now. Hard work has been both my retribution and my salvation. But if you really want to make a difference, don’t just free one slave, make changes that would improve life for all. You can do so much more than I ever could. Look outside of the palace and even outside of the Egami City. You are our future queen. Just think about all the good you could do.”

“But how? Where do I begin?”

He gazed at me kindly.

“You’re the crown princess. I believe you have the brains to figure it out.”

Silence stretched between us as I pondered his words. He remained by the door, waiting.

“Forget what I said about the unfinished business, Salas. There is no contract between us anymore. You owe me nothing. You don’t have to be here—”

“But what if I want to?”

“Why? After everything that you’ve been through.” I gripped my hands tighter. “You said you don’t like being touched, which I can understand completely.”

“Not all touch is the same.” His voice dipped with a velvety note running through it. It stroked my hearing, sending a warm shiver down my body. “You have nothing to apologize to me for, Princess. With you, the choice has always been mine. From the very first night.”

I released my hands, only for my fingers to immediately clutch my skirts. “Why did you agree to come here that first night?”

“The first time? I just wanted to see if I was right.”

“About what?”

“About what I saw in your eyes when you looked at me for the very first time. I was on the scaffold, being whipped. And you arrived on your white horse, wearing your shiny crown—every bit the princess that you are.”

I glanced aside, my hand mechanically going up to the crown on my head.

“Except that when our eyes connected,” he continued, “I didn’t see a princess, or even a woman. I saw someone who noticed the person in me for the first time in many years.” His gaze drifted past me, a frown creasing his forehead as he recalled his punishment. “I didn’t care about the two lashes that you spared me from that day. Two or twenty—at some point of torture, the number just becomes irrelevant. What shocked me was that you cared enough to intervene. That first night, I came here to make sure I simply imagined things that didn’t exist. I had to make sure you were what I always thought you had been—a spoiled little princess, cherished by the queen and worshiped by the entire queendom for coming from another world to save us all.”

“You really think that’s who I am?”

“That’s what many think you are.” He moved a hand before resting it on his forearm again with his arms folded across his chest. “I hadn’t touched a woman in seven years. I thought I was done with it. I even looked forward to telling it to your face. Such is the freedom of a slave who has nothing to lose. I was going to refuse the princess, consequences be damned. But I couldn’t do it outright. Spending time with you proved too enjoyable to end it too quickly. And then, it was too late. I realized it hadn’t been just my imagination. You’re not just some miracle dropped into the lap of luxury. You’re a real person, hiding pain of your own and making it through life the best you can. For a princess and a slave, as it turned out, we have a lot in common.”

That we did. I sensed it from the very beginning. And now, he knew it too.

“You’ve been poignantly honest with me, Princess. All I can do is to be honest with you in return.”

“Is that why you’re here? To tell me the truth?”

“What else can there be between us now that the truth is out? I want to touch you again. I ache to learn what it feels like to be inside you, and it kills me that I’ll never find out now. But you had to know that your first time would’ve been with a whore, not even a slave.”

A “whore” who, by his own admission, hadn’t touched a woman for seven years before he touched me. His passion and tenderness had robbed me of breath and stole my peace. It was hard to reconcile all these things into one person. Yet there he was in front of me, with his dark, intense eyes focused on me.

I took another step toward him, which brought me close enough to touch him, but I kept my hands to myself.

“Salas, I’m not going to pay you even a single dented copper coin for tonight. No matter what happens between us, you’ll leave this room no better off than when you came here. Am I still your client in any way?”

His beard moved with a smirk.

“No, Princess. You can’t hire a working man without paying him for his services.”

“Then I’m asking you—not as your client, not as a princess, but as a woman who likes you and appreciates you just the way you are—would you spend another night with me, please?”

He pushed away from the door frame. His arms unfolded and dropped to his sides, exposing his chest to me.

I splayed my hand on it, just over the little horn buttons and the cross-stitch embroidery of his new shirt. His heart thundered under my palm, strong and desperate.

“Knowing your past doesn’t change how I feel about you, Salas. You didn’t come here just to talk, did you? You want me, and you know I want you too.”

Covering my hand with his, he leaned over me. His warm breath fanned over the side of my face, his lips hovering just above my ear.

“I hoped. Yes. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did anyway.” Finally, he stepped over the threshold. His arms wrapped around me, drawing me to him. I melted into his embrace, as if my body belonged right there, next to his.

“It has to be me , Princess,” he said in a hot, firm whisper, trailing quick, hungry kisses down the side of my face to my neck. “Sooner or later, you’ll marry another, and there is not one fucking thing I can do about it. But I have to be your first. No one else. You came to me. You wanted me. It has to be me.”

With his finger under my chin, he lifted my face to him.

“I want it to be you,” I echoed, losing myself in the darkness of his eyes.

A soft rumble of approval came from deep inside his throat as he claimed my mouth in a kiss. He held my face between his large hands, and I gripped both of his wrists for support because I needed to hold on to something when he kissed me this deeply, making me weak in my knees.

“Salas...” I exhaled when he let me come up for a breath. His name fluttered from my lips like a gentle puff of breeze. “I’m so glad you climbed that wall tonight.”

I fisted the shirt on his chest. Holding me to him with one hand, he undid the buttons of my dress with the other.

“Nothing could keep me away from you, Princess. Not the fear of being discovered. Not even common sense. Goddess knows I’ve tried.” He skimmed the top of my breast with his fingers. My heart thundered so hard, he must’ve felt it when he pressed his large, warm palm to my chest. “Nothing bad will happen to you when I’m with you, Ari. I promise. If your past starts to haunt you again, I’ll be here to help you deal with it. And if you ever want me to stop, just let me know. A word, a look, a gesture from you, is all I need. Give me a sign, remember?”

I nodded, feeling incredibly grateful for this man and his kindness.

My past was still there. I couldn’t erase it. I’d tried and failed to bury it for good. I hated to remember it. I cringed when the memories popped into my brain. They still made me sick to my stomach. But their power over me had weakened.

Here, I was safe. And with Salas holding me like this, I felt simply invincible.

“I’m not afraid, just a little nervous. But I trust you.”

“Thank you.” He kissed the tip of my nose, then placed his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to take this dress off you now. Ready?”

I nodded, excitement spreading through my body with warm tingles as he slid the dress off my shoulders. Crouching down, he tugged it all the way to the floor, leaving me only in my bra and panties.

“You look gorgeous in the moonlight.” He grinned, looking up at me from his crouch.

My face flushed with pleasure. People usually praised things like my speeches, my knowledge, or my decisions. I thought I knew better than to blush at a compliment of my appearance. Yet there I was, with my cheeks warming and my heart fluttering like a preening bird in my chest.

“Come to me, my princess.” Salas lifted me into his arms, then carried me to bed behind the screen.

I kissed him as he lowered me onto my silk bedspread. Tomorrow, I would have to find a way to live the rest of my life without his kisses. But tonight... Tonight, he was all mine, to hug and kiss to my heart’s content.

“As much as I love seeing this shirt on you,” I tugged at the fabric over his chest. “I really want it off right now.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.” His voice turned light and playful, and I didn’t even mind his use of the honorific this time.

Rising on his knees over me, he pulled the shirt off over his head.

“Just to warn you,” he said, tossing it aside. “It’s been a while since the groomers worked on me last.”

“Good,” I murmured, sliding a hand up his chest against the slight prickle of the new hair growing there. “I finally get a chance to feel the real you.” I pressed my nose to his collarbone, breathing him in. “To learn your true scent.”

Through the mild fragrance of the plain soap he’d used before coming here, I smelled salt and earth of his skin, the musk of the male warmed by the sun, and the fresh air of the fields next to the city wall where he’d been working lately.

“You don’t miss the fancy perfumes?” He helped me take off my crown, then raked his fingers through my hair, freeing it from the bun.

“Not even a little bit.” I nuzzled his chest before sliding a hand down his torso. I stopped my fingers at the waistband of his pants, uncertain. “How are we going to do this?”

“In the most delightful way possible.” He chuckled softly, bringing my hand to his mouth to kiss my fingers.

“I heard it hurts the first time,” I worried.

“Not with me. It won’t,” he assured me.

I soaked up his confidence. For once, I was more than happy to relinquish all control and follow someone else’s directions. I trusted Salas to know what to do.

Sliding his hand behind my back, he unclipped my bra, then took it off, along with my underwear. I didn’t hide my nakedness from him this time. Instead, I welcomed the rush of thrill when he kissed my breasts. He sucked the tip of one into his mouth, gently tugging at the bud of my nipple with his teeth. His rough palms glided up and down my sides.

It was easy to trust him. The last memories of anyone touching me were of Salas, and all of those memories were good.

Anticipation fanned my desire. I parted my legs, needing to feel his touch everywhere. He accepted the invitation, gently cupping me between my thighs.

Massaging me gently with just one finger, he trailed his kisses down my body. The prickle of his beard felt invigorating. Hot flushes of desire burst in my lower belly, making me squirm under the caress of both his lips and his hands. Holding my thighs open, he lowered his head between them, then dipped his tongue inside me.

Warmth spread through me. I gripped his hair, rocking my hips against his mouth. There was no apprehension anymore. Nothing impeded the pleasure rolling through me.

He licked gently at first, but gradually increased the speed and pressure. My pleasure grew like a tightly wound spring, ready to burst. When I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, that I might die, lost to this bliss, he pulled back.

“Salas...” I begged in a needy whimper.

“Yes, sweetheart?” His hand replaced his mouth on me.

The change of sensation dropped my arousal from the white-hot melting point to a strong, steady flame.

“I need...” I moaned, lifting my hips into his hand.

“Patience, my darling princess. Patience is everything.”

Shifting back a little, he kissed my chest while slipping the tip of his finger inside me. His thumb gently tapped and rubbed the spot where I needed him most. I moaned. Swells of pleasure rolled through me, slowly building higher under his control.

He shifted just a little more down, then dipped his head between my legs again. The glide of his tongue between my thighs added a new thrilling note to the symphony of sensations he played through my body.

He added another finger inside me, massaging and stretching me. Probing and testing. All the while, his thumb kept playing the tantalizing rhythm on and around my most sensitive spot.

Rising on an outstretched arm, he watched me. I loved seeing him over me like this. His hair framed his face. His eyes glistened in the moonlight. I held his gaze, wishing to remember this moment for as long as I lived. But he pressed his thumb just a little harder, pleasure surged, and my eyelids fluttered closed.

I was only half-aware of his erection pressing against me. The stretch of his invasion synched with the thrill of approaching orgasm that rushed my body. His thumb rubbed harder, and ecstasy flooded me whole.

For a few incredible moments, I was oblivious to the world around me. And when I came back to reality, guided down from the crest of pleasure by Salas’s gentle touch, I realized his hips were flush with mine. He was deep inside me.

“It happened?” I marveled.

“It did.” He held himself up on his elbows above me.

A huge smile stretched my lips.

“My first time...”

And it didn’t even hurt. Or maybe I just was too busy coming to remember any pain?

He kissed my hair with a smile. “You did amazing, sweetheart.”

I did nothing. He was the one who did everything while I just writhed in pleasure. But his praise warmed my chest nevertheless, as if I’d just won a medal for running a marathon.

There had been no pain before. But now, I felt flushed and a little achy, trembling slightly. The sensation of having him inside me was exquisite but so new, it felt almost foreign.

Exposed, open, and vulnerable, I could see how terrible, even traumatizing, this entire experience could’ve been if it happened with the wrong man at the wrong time. Once again, my heart filled with gratitude for Salas.

“How did I get so lucky, finding you?” I wrapped my arms around his neck.

He smiled. “It seems good things can be found on flogging platforms.”

I kissed him as if he were mine, my hands sinking into the hair on the back of his head, my body pressed to his. And he kissed me back, like he was claiming me all for himself. For this one night, we fully belonged to each other.

It was such a beautiful lie.