“Is this the house where you grew up?” I ask Rex, watching as he ducks to avoid a hanging paper lantern.
“It is.” He nods toward the back of the house. “But there are stables out back. That’s where I made my bed most nights.” He tweaks the nose of one of his sisters—a young, dark-haired girl who shares Rex’s brown eyes. “To escape the squabbling.”
Another girl, one who appears to be the oldest, gasps, waving her hands. “Do not malign us in front of the queen!”
Rex snorts. “That ship has sailed.”
“Incorrigible, you are,” she says, coming forward. “I’m Katrina, Your Majesty. The oldest daughter and the one with the most decorum. Please come sit down and I’ll get you a drink.”
“I will be getting her the drink,” Rex says, his eyes heating.
He’s turned on. Because he’s serving me.
I’m suddenly breathless in a room full of potential new friends. This can’t be the correct way to get off on the right foot—lusting for their brother. “I, um…” Deep breath. My eyes seek out the youngest-looking sister and I notice for the first time that she’s wearing a pink paper crown. “It must be your birthday. You’re…Priscilla?”
“She knows my name,” breathes the girl. “Yes, Your Majesty. I’m sixteen today.”
“A very important birthday,” I say, smiling as an idea occurs to me. Reaching down, I unclasp the jeweled cuff bracelet around my wrist and hand it to the girl. “Please accept this as my gift to you.”
Priscilla looks like she’s going to faint, so I reach out to steady her. “Oh no, Queen Britta, I couldn’t.”
“I insist. It will look lovely on you.” I smile again to reassure her. “Try it on.”
While the sisters crowd around Priscilla to get a better look, Rex comes up behind me, putting what appears to be mulled wine in my hand—and he slowly plants a kiss on my shoulder. “She’ll never forget that, love.”
And I’ll never forget this night. It numbs me to the grief that has been on a low boil inside me since yesterday. Takes me away, forces me to see the humor in the world.
We sit in front of the fire for hours while the sisters tell me stories about growing up in a household with six siblings. How Rex suffered through Katrina learning to braid hair by using him as the test subject. They swap memories of the pranks they played on each other, including quite a few buckets of water left on top of the stable door. I laugh more during those stories than I’ve laughed in my entire life. At some point, I’m pulled into Rex’s lap, his thumb finding a spot on the base of my spine that I didn’t even realize was aching until he called attention to it, rubbing the twinge in circles, and I sigh into his protective hold, no one seeming to find it odd that I’m being attended to by their brother in such an intimate manner.
Or at least, choosing not to comment on it.
Rex’s sisters poke at him endlessly, mostly about his fearsomeness, but their jokes clearly come from a place of love. They recognize what a treasure he is and it makes me love all five of them in return.
“Rex!” Priscilla trills now. “What did you bring me?”
He smiles against my temple. “I wrote you a song. Fetch my lute.”
A few minutes later, I’m staring in awe as Rex whips through an opening tune, his singing voice deep and resounding in the small house. “Priscilla, Priscilla, smells like a gorilla. After sixteen years, a bath wouldn’t kill ya…”
Rex’s youngest sister’s giggles and clear adoration of her brother are infectious and I’m wiping tears of mirth from my cheeks by the time he’s done singing the song.
“We have to dance,” announces Katrina, pulling me off Rex’s lap. “Come on, Queen Britta. The night isn’t complete until we’ve cut a rug.”
Rex starts another tune on his lute and I’m suddenly being swung around the living room, passed between sisters, twirled around and dipped. One song bleeds into the next until I lose track of how long we’ve been dancing. It’s not until the final song pinches out the final note that I notice how Rex is watching me. With desire. Urgency.
My body responds to his visible need, liquid heat trickling down to my loins, my breasts seeming to swell within the confines of my dress. I go to him, framing his face in my hands and he shudders at my touch, leaning into my palm. “Might we pass the night here?” I whisper. “I’m not ready to go back to the palace.”
“We will have to rise early, so I can bring you back before the palace wakes.”
I nod. “I understand.”
Rex starts to stand. “I will ask my sisters to share a room—”
“What about the stables?”
My guard stares at me like I’ve suggested we travel to the moon. “My queen is not sleeping in the stables.”
“But the queen wishes to sleep in the stables.”
“Britta…”
“Please? I’m enjoying being…normal. For once.” I slide my fingers into his hair, scraping his scalp with my fingernails, loving the way his eyes almost roll back in his head. “And Rex?”
His fingers curl in the hem of my dress, as if battling the need to pull me closer. “Yes, love.”
“I’d very much like you to join me in the stables.”
6
Rex
Has a man ever so eagerly approached his doom?
I arrange the blankets in the stall full of fresh hay, Britta leaning against the entrance, watching me. Watching me build the place that she’ll sleep. The honor of doing this for her feeds the new hunger inside me. A hunger that is specific to Britta. She wants something done and I make it happen, whether I like it or not. And I definitely don’t love the idea of her sleeping in hay on blankets unworthy of her soft skin, but I give the queen what she wants.
Doing so makes me hard.
Unbearably hard.
Just as watching her dance and laugh made me realize how much I love her.
I’ll love her until the day I leave this earth.
She is grace and kindness and light.
I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that things will change tomorrow. Of course they will. Two princes will arrive and no doubt vie for my beauty’s hand. Knowing what the morning will bring, it is going to be very difficult not to lay a claim tonight. My entire being is growling with jealousy and protectiveness and need. How am I going to make it these next several hours without making love to her? Just once. Just once to remember and replay endlessly forever.
“That looks perfect,” she says, her praise making my dick throb.
I glance back to find the queen disrobing.
Off comes the dress and slippers and stockings until she’s down to her slip.
That flimsy little slip that clings to her body, telling all of her secrets. Her nipples are in juicy points against the paper-thin fabric, the shadow of her pussy making my mouth water.
And Christ, her legs. Her legs should have poetry written about them, they’re so long and lithe. Perfect for wrapping around my hips.
I’m fucked. I’m so terribly fucked.
“I thought we were banishing our worries until tomorrow,” Britta murmurs, sitting down in front of me. In nothing but a slip. How easy it would be to get the girl on her back and—