The Stolen Princess (Fated Royals Book 1) Read online

  Sara

  His hands and lips were magic.

  The pressure of his cock had me seeing stars and angels and whispering words I’d only heard on rare occasions, drifting outside from the slurry voices of the pub.

  He pushed forward, so thick, impossibly so, but as I winced and moaned very soon part of him was inside me as my body opened to welcome him. He was attentive to my every moan and whine.

  Though it was all unknown to me, I wanted him to take my virginity like nothing else I’d ever wanted. I wanted to give myself wholly and fully to this man, who treated me like I was his most valued possession. A stranger in nearly every way, yet the most familiar person I’d ever known.

  I knew it was wrong. Or was it?

  No one had ever told me to hold on to this part of me. To keep it for marriage.

  No, my family provided nothing but the idea this part of me didn’t exist. As though I was born different, that no many would want me but with Bors I finally understood how untrue that was.

  He pressed forward, his body hard like his manhood that stretched me, and I gasped to catch my breath, gripping his massive biceps to tell him to go slowly, slowly.

  He waited there, just like that, trembling over me until I was ready for more, then he gazed down at me with such true adoration in his eyes that I felt I might melt into a pool of nothingness. “This? What you are giving me…is the greatest honor of my life.” His words sounding as painful as what I felt between my legs.

  The pressure increased and I felt my body stretch even further to accommodate him. His cock was thick and massive. Though I had no point of comparison, I had to wonder if other men were endowed as amply as he was. It seemed unlikely. Surely, I would have heard wedding night horror stories of cocks so big they split a woman in two.

  “Are you okay, my angel? A little pain is good. But I don’t want you in agony.”

  It did hurt, but in a way that gave me so much pleasure I could barely speak. I had no idea that pain could fuse into pleasure that way. “Please don’t stop…”

  “I told you once already. I will never stop.” He seethed as his lips tightened against barred teeth. “This is where I want to be. Where I need to be.” With those words, he drove himself deeper inside me.

  I felt resistance inside me and knew he felt it too, as he raised his face to me, giving me a smile.

  “You’re going to bleed.” He whetted his lips and took a deep breath that made his abdominal muscles ripple and flex. “I want no apologies for making a mess of the sheets. Your maiden blood is gold to me.”

  I knew so little of the world, but I trusted him completely to guide me through this. I was scared but exhilarated. I swallowed and gazed up at him. “Okay.”

  “Good girl,” he said. He reached down, his cock still halfway inside me, and took my hands in his on either side of my head, our fingers interlaced and his face above mine. With one quick gesture, he flipped us over so that I was sitting on top of him with my knees on the mattress. “Take it slow. Don’t take your eyes off me. Got that?”

  I nodded and felt the pressure increase. I breathed through the discomfort and slowly lowered myself further onto his thick, pulsing cock.

  He arched his head back, making his Adam’s apple ripple, and growled with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Fuuuuuuck yes.”

  Taking strength from his pleasure, as well as my own, I took a deep breath and lowered myself further, further, further. He gripped my hips hard and I watched his abdominal muscles tighten into a rippling board of eight rows.

  Once again, I breathed hard, lowering myself just a little further, and he growled in response as I took him deeper. A quick sting of pain made me cry out, just for a second, before succumbing to the pleasure fully.

  Whatever it had been inside me that was keeping him at bay finally gave way. As he entered me nearly to the base of his cock, I felt a hot rush of liquid spill from inside me and onto the two of us, and he plunged all the way into me, until we were one.

  Everything inside me felt like it was exploding at once—the pleasure, oh, my sweet Lord, the pleasure—it caused me to grip him so hard that I felt him hiss. That pleasure was so intense I believed sincerely that I would faint.

  Then just as soon as I began to get comfortable riding him, he flipped me again and slid all the way into me—as far as my body could take his massive cock. With every drive forward, bringing us together as one, I heard the squelching of my wetness as he stretched me.

  Every pump made my eyes roll back into my head. I wanted desperately to close my eyes and be swept away—but he was what grounded me. He was what guided me. He stayed true to his word and, forcing my eyes to stay open and locked on his, I let him take me, show me, teach me.

  His face was a study in raw tension. His eyes bore into me, his jaw locked and set as that vein I saw in his forehead earlier pulsed and bulged as if to burst and I wanted to tell it I understood how it felt.

  He put his elbows on each side of me and kissed me as he ravished me—savage, intense, aggressive kisses that made my cheeks sting with the roughness of his stubble. There was no distance between our bodies; we were one in every way. From time to time, the pleasure would overcome me and the room would start to twinkle and shift, as if I had spent too long looking into a candle flame.

  In those moments, I lost myself and gave into the pleasure of his strength and desire. It felt so good, I thought it must be a dream. But it wasn’t. It was him, in all his glory. My pleasure belonged to him forever.

  “Fuck, Sara...” His voice was gruff, heady with exertion. “Come for me again. Let me hear you again. Your sounds… I’m so fucking drunk on you.” He doubled down with intensity, lingering inside me for one second, two, three, until I felt my body respond to him with throbs and flutters, and then the candle-flame blurriness overtook me again.

  My spine rolled and I lifted myself right up off the sheets, only to come back down against his huge hands, gripping both of my butt cheeks, digging into the flesh, almost painfully yet the pleasure was what drove me on. Again and again he took me, and again and again I screamed his name into his shoulder as he grunted and growled and I felt possessed by a primal beast of a man I’d only met earlier this day.

  I never imagined that anything could feel as good as having sex with Bors did. I surrendered wholly to his experience and expertise, and he ravaged me again and again that night, until I was a panting, messy, sated pile of sweat and cum.

  Once he sensed my exhaustion, he pulled back slightly, still inside me but again on his knees. Caging me in with his massive arms, he changed his rhythm and his eyes got serious and darkly alluring. Wherever he had taken me with all that bliss, I could tell he too was heading there. It was crazy to think that he had the self-control to resist the inhuman pull of that pleasure, all for my sake. Though my hips were sore and my body tired, I opened my legs even wider for him as I ran my fingertips down his chest. With each thrust into me, my body responded by clenching tight around him. The tighter I clenched, the more his eyes grew glassy with desire.

  “Oh fuck, fuck, Sara,” he said. He lowered his head and rammed into me with pounding thrusts that made the bed slam against the wall. “Fuck, yes. Tell me you’re ready to take my seed.”

  I wasn’t. Ready wasn’t even a word in my vocabulary at that moment. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t describe how I felt about him, how I felt about his seed, and he needed to know that. “I was born for you. For this. It’s my only purpose, now and always.”

  With a bestial roar, he unleashed his power into me. And as he did, I was taken to the brink of bliss and beyond.

  Afterwards, he embraced me from behind, with his arms wrapped around my chest so that my bosom spilled out onto his forearm. His chin rested on my shoulder and my hips nestled in the cradle of his huge, solid body. “Marry me,” he said.

  At first I thought he was joking, but when the silence stretched in the moments that followed I felt my heart clutch at the possibility. Me? S
ara? Nobody wanted that of me. I tried to turn to look at him, but he held me so securely that I couldn’t turn at all.

  “Just say yes. Don’t think about it. I’m not sophisticated or educated. I have no high ambitions. But I promise you, Sara, with all my heart, I will give you everything that is mine. I don’t deserve you. I’m in a drunken haze right now which gives me the courage to ask. Marry me, Sara.”

  “Bors…”

  “I promise to do my best, every day, to give you the joy you deserve and be the best man I can be for you. I know, we don’t go together. You’re so young, sent from heaven and I’m road worn, scarred and have visited hell. But, you will be my everything, I’ll be the man I always wanted to be because of you. I know I can.”

  I pressed my lips to the inside of his huge, scarred bicep. I wanted so very desperately to say yes, right then and there. I wanted nothing more than to be his and his alone. I envisioned a life for us together in such vivid detail that I almost felt it had happened already. Like it was always meant to be.

  But then my eyes fell on the windowsill, and the world beyond. I knew that right outside where we lay, all knitted up together in the simple glow of our love, loomed the world with all its difficulties, conflicts, and complications. And yet with my whole heart I wanted a fresh start with him, somewhere—anywhere. I was his. He was mine. And I was angry that anything made it more complicated than that. But if there was one thing that I had learned from my family it was that being angry at your situation didn’t change anything.

  “In truth, I want nothing more. But life hasn’t taught me to expect happiness, or that just because I want something it can be so. Can I take some time?” I asked, tracing the veins on his arm with my fingertip, like the tributaries of some vast, powerful river. “Can I let fate guide me?”

  He nodded, and his stubble scraped against my cheek. “As long as you aren’t turning me down right away, I might just be able to sleep,” he said, with a smile in his voice. He gripped me tighter, like I was his most cherished possession, and I felt his breathing deepen and slow as he drifted off to sleep.

  Sleep didn’t come to me that night. He took me again, and again. Filling me with his sticky release until it dripped out of me and I couldn’t fathom life without these feelings.

  Without him.

  In between our lust, I lay awake in his arms, watching the patch of moonlight creep over the bed until dawn found us locked together. The impossibility of marrying him weighed heavily on me. As soon as I felt him stir in the morning light, I whispered his name.

  “Shit, I feared it was all just a wondrous dream. Thank God for you,” he said sleepily. “Have you thought about what I asked?”

  If only it had all been that simple—if only things could be as easy as our dreams. “I’ve thought about nothing else. But my father will never give me to you. He will never consent. You know how things work, I need him to consent or our union will not be legitimate. Nor would our children. I could not bear that shame. Nor shackle them with it.”

  Bors’ muscles tightened at the mention of my father. “He doesn’t fucking deserve you. You know it.”

  “Perhaps not, but he is my father. No matter how much I wish that he weren’t. I want to be yours, but it will never be with his blessing.” I rolled over in his arms to face him. His hair was messy from sleep, his eyes bedroomy and irresistible. Against my thigh, his cock was hard and ready. He pulled me to him for a kiss and I felt the wet rush warm my inner thighs yet again. “So run away with me.” I told him as he released me from the kiss. “Take me away from this place.”

  He searched my face and his expression hardened. In that moment, I felt the distance between our years, but the wisdom and experience of those years drew me even closer to him. “A life on the run is no life at all,” he said. “I refuse to make our love a shameful, secret thing.”

  It made sense, certainly. But I didn’t see any other way. “So then tell me. What do we do?”

  “We hold our ground. We stay here. We make a life here. I make you my bride here.”

  What a dream that was. What a beautiful dream. “But how? What about my father? The church will never marry us without his agreement. The ways of things are as they are…”

  I knew the laws because of my sisters. How a father had the right to decide the fate’s of his daughters I was unsure, but I was sure that the law was the law and I knew no way around it.

  Bors came up on one elbow and I sank down into the pillows, gazing up at him. “Your father might object, but I don’t give a fuck. Men far more powerful than him owe me favors. A day’s ride will get me to the garrison, where I can get permission from the council of the clan. Their approval overrides his claim on you. Then there’s nothing your father can do to stop us.”

  “I will come with you! We will go together.” I declared, but he shook his head.

  “I’ll be faster alone. Besides, the moors are full of dangers, and the thought that I couldn’t protect you...”

  “I’ll be all alone here, without you. I never want to be without you again.”

  He pulled me closer and held me tight. “It’s two days’ sacrifice, three at the most, for a lifetime’s happiness,” he said. “Angelica will keep you safe while I’m gone.”

  Even one day away from him seemed absolutely unbearable. I placed my palm to his chest and gazed up at him, admiring the strong angle of his jaw. “Let me come with you, please.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t risk your safety out there. And there’s no way I’m going to make it look like I’ve kidnapped you more than I already have.” He took a step into me, sliding his hand down my hip. “No matter how badly I’d like to.”

  I wanted to be his, lawfully or otherwise, and yet it was a debate I knew I couldn’t win—there was so much I didn’t know about the world and I deferred to his judgment, lacking any experience of my own.

  With a heavy heart and full of worry, I washed his skin using the warm basin that Angelica had left outside the bedroom door. Then I helped him pack his things and saddle his horse, and as he kissed me goodbye on the front porch of the little cottage, he slipped his hunting knife into my hand. “For your protection while I’m gone,” he said.

  “Come back to me.”.

  “You’re my home,” he said, gazing down at me, making me almost woozy with need. “You are where I belong.”

  After one more long, lingering kiss, he mounted his chestnut stallion, and I watched him ride down the King’s Highway, tears prickling my eyes, terrified that I would never see him again.

  Sara

  I stayed behind at Angelica’s, waiting for Bors to return as he promised. The moments were slow to pass, and I found myself checking the window over and over again to see if, by some strange miracle, he’d changed his mind and returned to me already.

  “I promise you, he’s riding hell-for-leather to get back to you,” Angelica said. She sat at the big pine table in the center of the kitchen, with bundles of dried herbs and plants around her, ready to be made into poultices and other medicinal potions and salves. On the hob above the fire simmered something in an iron pot, bubbling up with steam, making the room smell of lavender and sage. “I’ve known him many years and I’ve never seen the look in his eyes I see when he looks at you.”

  Though I wanted to believe what Angelica said, these feelings were so new and overwhelming that I didn’t know what to think. I sat down across from her and took a sprig of dried sage from the pile, plucking the tiny leaves off the stem. I was lost in my thoughts and found myself drawn back in time to the long summer afternoons when my sister Eden’s now husband was courting her, and she’d spend hours plucking daisy petals.

  He loves me, he loves me not…

  A noise from the garden startled both of us, lost as we were in our simple work. The crash of an overturning grain bucket was followed by the nervous clucks and warbles of her hens outside. Angelica raised her eyes to mine. “Are you expecting anyone?” She asked softly, in a barel
y audible whisper.

  I shook my head and swallowed hard.

  Angelica rose from her chair, careful not to let it squeak as she stood to look outside.

  A flat-handed thumping on her door made my heart jump into my throat. And then I heard it—the awful sound of my father’s voice. “Open this door, whore! You’ve no right to keep my daughter. She’s my property!” He sounded enraged with drink and I was terrified of what he might do. I heard other male voices, too, and knew he wasn’t alone.

  I pressed my hands to my face for a quick second, praying against hope that this was all just a nightmare. But I knew in my heart it wasn’t.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow, moving quickly. A moment later, a fist-sized stone crashed through the window over the wash basin and landed with an ominous thud on the floor. “Open the fuck up,” my father roared again. “I’ve come to take back what’s mine, you wizened old crone. I won’t let you defile her with your morals, or your dark magic.”

  Angelica pushed aside the rough woolen rug on the floor. She crouched low and wiggled two of the old pine floorboards free to create a space that was just large enough for a person to pass through. She pointed at the opening and I did as she’d signaled. As I lowered myself down into the crawl space below the house, I reached up and extended a hand for her to join me. But as soon as I’d suggested it, I knew it was foolish; Angelica clearly wasn’t even willing to abide such naivete, and within seconds the floorboards had been secured back in their place with the rug blocking the light from the knot holes in the floor. I crouched low on the cold, damp soil, listening to her footsteps and then the creak of the front door.

  “Afternoon, lads,” she said. “So, the fresh mead at the tavern has gotten your blood up, has it? It’ll be six schillings each. But ten for you, Milo. Even a woman like me has her standards.” A pause. “And you’ll each have to wait your turn, I’m not as young as I once was.”