His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,27

it to be.

So it was so much easier to pretend she didn’t care.

And in many ways she didn’t.

But part of her yearned for an acceptance she would never have.

And even now it made her chest ache.

But Alex wants you.

Even thinking it made her nipples go tight, even as she scrubbed that punishing mixture over her skin.

She finished quickly, touching herself only creating more problems. Then she submerged herself in the water again, rinsing it all away.

She swam forward, the warm water a pleasant glide now over her skin as she went. As she tried to school her mind into something blank.

The pool wound on, and she could sense the many feet of the palace above her, all stone and stark and intimidating. And now she would never not know that this was here underneath.

This enchanted river that was something so different than the enchanted wood that stood all around.

For this place did not offer certain death. But a strange kind of pleasure that seemed absent from everywhere else on these grounds.

She came around another bend, and stopped.

For there he was.

She knew it was him. It took only a glance for her body to react in the most violent fashion. Her stomach seizing tight, her heart slamming against her breastbone. He was facing away from her, and he lifted his arms, running his fingers over his hair, water sluicing down his back. His every muscle moved and flexed as he did so. And she was enthralled.

His shoulders and back were so broad, his waist narrow. He was like a god.

Or a wolf.

The moment she had thought it might all be safe.

She had forgotten.

That the deadliest predator was in the palace walls, not beyond them.

She could slip away. She could. She should. But she was frozen.

Just as she had been on the edge of the Dark Wood.

So close to danger and unwilling to turn away from it.

Your heart lacks courage.

Her heart lacked courage and it was why she lived in a tiny cottage. Her heart lacked courage and it was why she was here. Moving toward a future that she wasn’t sure she wanted.

It was why she had never gone to see her mother, not since college, and asked her why she never seemed to think she was enough. Not as a princess, not as a student, not as the head of a charity.

Why her hair was so wrong, and why her laugh was so loud, and why everything she seemed to do held them at further and further distance.

She was suddenly so very tired of herself.

And whatever happened at the ball tomorrow night, it needed to happen because there was conviction in her heart, and not simply fear of what might happen if she didn’t do as Alex bid her.

And she...

She wanted something. She wanted something she didn’t have a name for. She wanted more of what he’d made her feel yesterday. Desired. For what she was. As she was before any makeovers or scrubs or whatever else was going to become of her before tomorrow night. All the comportment was certainly leading up to a fair amount of oil masks and waxed body parts and scrubbings and makeup.

And here she was, in this grand bath washed clean of anything. She had on no clothes, nothing that signified her as the former future Princess, the woman who had arrived at the palace in leggings. And he had on no suit. Nothing that made him King.

Except all the everything about him.

She was a virgin.

What had surprised her most about going to college was the fact that it wasn’t all that rare. Even a lot of the boys she knew hadn’t actually been with anyone yet. Though, by the end of the four years there, almost everyone had dealt with it. She was in the minority, but not alone, and none of her friends had ever mocked her for it. They had all known about Dionysus. And while they could certainly all relate to feeling awkward, or not finding the right person, the grief of losing someone they were in love with was unique to her, and as a result, no one had ever pressed her. But she knew plenty about sex.

She had one roommate in particular who had been quite active and comfortable with her sex drive, and she brought a fair amount of men back to the dorm. Her other roommate had been a bit more reserved, but by the end of school even she’d had a boyfriend who’d spent the