I scowled at Maksim, perturbed by his apparent amusement over this whole situation. Talking to him was like playing a game where I didn’t know the rules. It seemed I could never say the right thing. Never. And every time I opened my mouth, it seemed like I made him hate me more.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Of course. Thank you for saving me.”
My gratitude didn’t make him soften. Just the opposite. He drew his dagger from the big one, glanced around for suitable fallen branches and started sharpening the ends. “Look away,” he said, his voice gruff and intimidating.
I shook my head.
“Look the fuck away,” he growled. I’d felt like prey earlier, but that was nothing compared to this.
This is how animals get killed, and I knew it; I’d had deer stare at me in just the way I was watching him now. Helpless. Mesmerized.
Finally, I did shut my eyes; there was something about him that made me obey him, even when I didn’t want to. I didn’t close them fully, though; I couldn’t.
Through the slit between my lashes, I watched him move from thief to thief on the ground, watched his biceps flex and ripple, and watched transfixed as he moved from one body to the next, removing their heads and mounting them on the makeshift spikes. Not exactly a subtle warning, but I don’t think my brother was aware of such things as subtlety.
“I’m going to let you live,” he said to the one I’d taken out with my knife. “Be sure any of your other brotherhood knows, stay the fuck away from here.”
He moved behind me. I couldn’t turn to watch him without giving myself away. So I stood still, listening. The sound of him cleaning his blade on his pants, the sound of him slipping it back into its sheath. And then the sound of dry pine needles, crunching behind me. And the feeling of his breath, on my bare shoulder. He was right behind me. Close enough now for me to feel the heat from his body radiating into my own.
Then I heard the sound of rustling fabric. A shirt being untucked, buttons being undone. He was undressing.
You monster. My entire body tightened, and this time I did shut my eyes, trying to calm myself. I’d heard he was a brute, a beast. A savage animal when it came to girls. But to take advantage of me now, vulnerable and exposed as I was?
I’d never imagined that he could be so horrible. So utterly vile.
Bound as my hands were, and huge as he was, I knew I was at his complete mercy. No matter how quick or cunning I was, he was and would always be bigger and stronger, and far more powerful than me. I also knew that he was a skilled fighter, both with knives and bare-handed. He’d be able to do anything he wanted to me. And there was nothing, I realized, that I could do to stop him.
Swallowing hard, I was caught between what I thought I wanted and what I actually wanted. Stuck between my brain and my body. Everything rational told me he was a terrible man.
Every rumor, every innuendo, every whispered hush of castle gossip. Prince Maksim was depraved to his very core. Everybody said so. And yet, deep inside me, at the root of my deepest self, I wanted him. And the rushing trickle between my legs was more powerful than any rational thought.
The gentle touch of warm fabric over my shoulders yanked me out of my tangled web of desires. Opening my eyes, I realized he’d draped his huge shirt over my bare skin to cover my nakedness, except for the bare valley of flesh between my breasts and down to my belly button. I could smell his scent on the fabric—dark, rich, and musky. Like a forest after a soaking rain.
With surprising speed and gentleness, he unfastened the bindings on my wrists, pulling them forward in front of me and soothing the place where I was bound with his thumbs and fingers. His touch wasn’t rough or angry. It was tender and concerned.
Almost… I thought, with a gasp… almost loving. Almost wanting.
Now he took me by the shoulders, and turned me around to face him. I had never seen him shirtless before. He was magnificent, every muscle bulging with strength and intensity. I let out a little hushed whimper as I looked down at the ridges of his abdominal muscles, at the tight, tanned skin of his belly button, running down into the deep valleys of his groin muscles.
Dragging my eyes back up every perfect inch of his stomach and body, I saw a lacework of old scars. Knife wounds, the star-shaped pucker of a healed arrow puncture. He didn’t look like my brother.
He looked like a warrior. Like a living god.