Chapter 8

8

Rex

My breath turns to ice in my lungs at the sight of her on the arm of a man who couldn’t be mistaken for anything but royalty. He is wealth, where I am poor. He is fair and handsome, where I am rough and ugly. They suit perfectly—and I would like to knock every one of his perfect teeth out and string them onto a necklace.

I pace to the right and left at the entrance of the great hall, agony splitting my bones apart. Perhaps I should have resigned my post as soon as we arrived back to the palace, but none of the men they would replace me with are good enough to protect her.

And so it will be me for a while longer. This torture will have to be endured.

I take a wheezing breath and set after Britta and Prince Corwin.

Her scent carries on the air and curls in my nose—wild flowers—and I groan brokenly, my hands aching for the feel of her. She’s had a bath since I left her, changed into a light, cream-colored gown, her hair up in a twisted braid on her head. So different from last night, but equally stunning. She looked so forlorn up there on her throne. Lonely. It took every ounce of my restraint not to go to her. Hold her, rock her in my arms and tell her everything will be all right. Because I have no right to tell her that when I won’t be here to make it so. I won’t be here. Hell, I had no right in the beginning to insert myself into her life, to put my filthy hands on her, to call her mine when such a thing could never be real.

Up ahead, Britta and Corwin enter the gardens and take the southern path toward the dense crop of trees, which I don’t like. I would have suggested north, where they could remain in the light. In view of the palace. I don’t like the way Britta holds herself so stiffly, either, and does that fucker have to lean over near her face every time he makes a comment? She can hear him just fine without the closer proximity.

They turn and dip out of sight on the path and my heart rams up into my throat. I pick up my pace to bring them back into view—and when I do, my blood turns the consistency of fire, the world tilting around me.

Corwin has his hands locked around Britta’s neck and she’s struggling.

For a moment, I swear I’m seeing things.

My brain is giving me an excuse to kill this man who could marry my love.

But the image remains and I think no longer, I simply run, red bleeding into my vision, fear turning my skin clammy. I don’t draw my blade on the slight chance they might reverse positions at the last moment and I maim Britta instead. I’m the much larger man and I use that to my advantage, plowing into the man who would dare touch the queen, tackling him to the ground in my full armor. Pinning him there by the neck. Behind me, I hear Britta suck in a choking breath and rage descends on me like vultures.

I draw my sword and hold it high above my head—

“No!” Britta wheezes, her hand circling my wrist. “I don’t know who he is, but he’s not the prince. We need to question him.”

I’m shaking with the need to commit violence. To avenge her.

The vermin squirms underneath me, demanding to be punished. But I am not built to go against the queen’s wishes. It’s as though I’m incapable. So instead, I flip my sword over and bring the hilt down hard on his head, rendering the man deeply unconscious.

He won’t wake for hours.

I squeeze my eyes closed. Fearing her answer, I ask raggedly, “Are you hurt badly?”

“N-no.”

Still shaking with residual anger and fear, I slide my sword back into place and stand to face Britta. When I see the tears in her eyes, there is nothing on earth that could stop me from stripping off my armor, tossing it to the ground, and holding her. Wrapping my arms around her trembling form and hauling her against my chest. “You’re safe now, love. He can’t harm you now.”

Her arms loop around my neck, making me feel sane for the first time today. We’re both breathing hard, hands roaming. And it seems like the most natural thing in the world to lift her higher off the ground so she can burrow her face into my neck. With my last bit of awareness of our surroundings, I walk us off the path and into the shadows, gritting a curse when my cock begins to stiffen against the fastenings of my pants. Her breath bathes my neck, followed by hesitant grazes of her lips that grow bolder when I tilt my head, asking for more without words. She kisses and sucks a line up the side of my throat, and then we’re just clawing at each other, shamelessly, frantically.

My hands roam down over her backside, massaging those tight little mounds of flesh, riding her up and down in my lap, listening to her moan of approval in my ear.

We can’t do this, though.

It’s inexcusable.

I told her I’m resigning my post and I meant it. This man who attacked her was obviously some kind of an imposter. But it changes nothing between Britta and I. We can never be together in the open.

We’re not in the open now, though, are we?

No. We’re hidden. Alone. My body won’t let me forget that fact. Especially when she wraps her legs around my waist and seeks my mouth, offering me soft lips and an eager tongue, which I accept greedily, growling into the kiss. I almost lost her. I almost lost her.

You never had her.

Not really.

“I need you,” she breathes against my mouth, reaching down between us to unfasten my pants. “I was so scared, Rex, and I need you.”

Those words doom me.

Stagger me.

Britta needs reassurance, and the fastest way to give it to her is that closest connection. The one where our souls join and our bodies press so tight, until we’re one. Sharing everything. Fear, pleasure, hope.

“Yes, my queen,” I groan, gathering the hem of her dress in my hands, lifting it to her waist and ripping away her underthings with aggressive twists of my wrists. The fine, delicate layers of material give way easily and bare her spread cunt, showing off its beauty to me in the light for the first time. It glistens with wetness. “Your fear was not enough to rob you of cream.”

Her green eyes are wide, emotion packed. “I need you even in my dark moments.”

Britta’s admission humbles me and makes me desperate to pleasure her at the same time. Suctioning our mouths together, I lift her onto my cock, pressing her down, down, burying myself between her drenched folds until I’m home. Locked inside the tightest place on earth. “And your fucking legs are already shaking around me, aren’t they?” I rasp, resting our foreheads together. “Of course they are, because crown or no crown, you’re just my horny little girl once you’re sitting on my dick.”

“Yes,” she gasps.

“How do you want it, Your Majesty?” I whisper against her mouth. “Fast and hard?”

“Fast and hard,” she repeats, nodding unevenly, her eyes glassy—and I look right into them when I start to fuck her, bouncing her sweet, forbidden pussy up and down my pole, watching her love it, enjoy it, her neck losing power after five thrusts.

God, she’s so beautiful, she breaks my heart.

I was doomed for a life of pining after last night.

Now I don’t know how I’ll survive at all.

Because she clings to me, whispering my name with such joy and longing—and for the first time, I allow myself to wonder if…if Britta really does need me. Maybe I’m not just a means of comfort or a distraction from her grief. If she didn’t have deep feelings for me, would she have looked upon me with such relief when I arrived to save her? Would she be gripping the lapels of my uniform jacket, leaning back and riding me with such trust, not an ounce of shame or hesitance? Would she have given herself to me so freely in the first place?

“Rex,” she moans, her hips writhing on top of my cock, and already I know that tone of voice. The queen is close to orgasm and as her eager servant, I am hungry to deliver satisfaction.

“My Britta wants to come?”

“Make me come,” she whines, nodding vigorously. “N-now.”

My cock almost blows her full of seed. Orders as such from this girl are my weakness. Or perhaps they are my strength, because I’m able to hold off my own pressing climax and tunnel my hands up the back of her dress, massaging her bare ass roughly. Then I gather wetness from the place where our bodies join and use it to slowly tuck my pinkie finger into her little pink asshole, making her eyes go wide. “You’re allowed to like it,” I say.

Her breath stutters out. “Rex,” she moans, clenching around my dick. “Don’t stop.”

I thrust up into her sweet body with quick snaps of my hips, milking my finger in and out of her virgin asshole in the same rhythm, and I marvel over the sight of her coming apart. Her eyes lose focus, her pussy growing damper and damper around me until I’m gritting myself to keep my climax at bay.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me,” she gasps, her fingertips digging into my shoulders. “I knew you would realize…”

Alarm trickles in at the back of my mind, but it’s too late. She calls my name one final time and grinds down on the orgasm, rubbing her clit on the base of my dick. And those little, rippling contractions of her pussy grip me by the loins and squeeze the seed from my balls. “Britta,” I pant, in an animal state of absorbing sensation, grunting every time my cock jerks in her tight channel, bathing it in my spend, possibly impregnating my sweet, little queen—and just like last night, that possibility rips more come up my pulsing stalk of flesh, filling her past the brim until I hear it splashing down onto the leaves below. “Britta,” I groan raggedly. “You honor me, Britta.”

She collapses into my arms a moment later and I hold her, stroking a hand down her hair and rocking her, our bodies still joined.

I knew you wouldn’t leave me. I knew you would realize…

The words she said echo in my skull, filing me with a sense of trepidation.

She thinks I’m staying.

Why wouldn’t she?

I’ve just rutted her once again after making a vow to leave. I haven’t been true to my own word. Have I…have I led her on?

That implies she has genuine feelings for me.

And I’m slowly beginning to believe she might. Impossible as it seems, I’m more than just security to her. My heart wants to rejoice. It orders me to kneel and beg her to be mine until the sun burns out of the sky. But is that what’s best for her?

No.

No, I’m not a king.

That is not in debate.

I’m unqualified. Unroyal. Unsightly.

Beneath her.

I have to help her see that. I have to do what’s best for Britta.

“What you said before, love…about me not leaving…”

She lifts her head and smiles at me, turning my throat crowded. “You are staying, right?” Her voice is so hopeful, it rends me in two. “You wouldn’t have…I mean…” Her face is starting to turn pink. “You wouldn’t have made love to me again if you were really going. You will be my king, Rex. Of course you will.”

Her king?

Oh God, I’ve been a selfish bastard. I’ve behaved atrociously.

“Will you be my king, Rex?” she asks haltingly, doubt already dancing in her eyes.

“Britta…” I begin unevenly, at a loss for words. There’s no way to explain myself. She was scared, she needed me, so I provided. I didn’t see this far in the future.

I’ve made her think the impossible was possible.

When I fail to continue, she pushes out of my hold, her feet settling on the earth for the first time since our embrace began. “You slept beside me that first night. You held me so tightly. A-and…you’ve kissed me, touched me, been inside of me. Did those moments mean nothing?”

Each one was a fucking gift from God.

But if I say that out loud, I’m leading her on further, aren’t I?

Worse than I’ve already done beneath the cover of these trees?

Me being king of Downsriver is a laughable idea and I’ve already established, I’m not standing by and watching her wed another.

All I can do here is let her go.

She will thank me one day. She will.

“All of those things, Your Majesty…” I swallow a handful of razor blades. “You ordered me to do them.”

Her face turns pale and for one horrible moment, I think she’s going to pass out.

“Rex…” she breathes, her voice dull, ghost-like. “You have broken my heart and it will never, ever be repaired.”

And then she turns and walks away.

“Britta,” I choke out, almost dropping to my knees. I’ve been shot full of arrows. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t glance back once on her way back to the palace.

What have I done?

Why doesn’t this feel like the right thing?

Blindly, I stumble toward the passed out imposter, searching him for weapons before stooping down and throwing him over my shoulder. Just get him to the authorities and go. That’s all I can do. I have hurt the queen and I should not be allowed within the palace walls.

I’m aching head to toe as I haul the unconscious man to the tower beside the palace, where the dungeons are located. I throw him down inside a cell and order it to be locked until the queen herself orders him set free, no exceptions, and then I start for the stables to collect my horse, my longing eyes on the queen’s bedchamber window all the while.

Is she in there? Crying?

Did I really break her heart? How is that I was capable of doing so?

I’m preparing to mount my horse when I hear the commotion.

It’s not the typical commotion heard within the palace walls.

This is much louder. There is shouting, men racing pasts on their mounts, guards firing arrows from the towers of the palace.

“We’re under attack!” someone shouts. “Soldiers from Northstream.”

My soul leaves my fucking body.

Under attack?

Britta.

Britta is in danger.

Who else is the biggest target but the queen?

With a bellow lodged in my throat, I sprint for the palace, sword drawn.

I realize in that split second that I’ve been an utter fool. I might have left, allowed her to marry another, but I would have come back again and again, every time she was in danger or facing difficulty. Staying away would have been impossible. But I’ve lost her now. I’ve lost her.

And now she could very well die before I reach her.