Chapter One
In the forest, it’s reached that point of perfect darkness. The tree branches no longer provide a visible tracery against the gathering gloom, just a sighing canopy above my head and I have to reach out to avoid stepping into a bramble bush or hitting a trunk. Much as I want to stop moving, to crawl into my bivouac and wrap myself in my blankets, I know I can’t. The steady dry crunch of distant leaves tells me I am being followed.
I hear it now and then, sometimes coming from my left, sometimes my right, or my rear or ahead, never in the same place twice. I know I can’t elude the stalker because my own feet, tiptoed as they are, inevitably disturb the brushwood forest floor. Tiny snaps and crackles accompany every hesitant step. North, south, east or west? It doesn’t matter. He, she or it will be on my tail.
I crouch against a tree and everything goes quiet. I concentrate on training my eyes and ears to pick up every single piece of information that they can, but all they process is that mournful branch chorus and a faraway neighing from one of the many wild ponies in the forest. That, and a load of looming dark shapes that don’t help me one little bit.
Once I can no longer hold my breath, I creep forwards, my sense of direction pulling me in a north-easterly direction, further into the depths. There is a sudden, sharp crack of twigs and a heat, a human male smell that cuts through the piny forest scent, and I am lost. Taken.
Of course, I put up a fight, but he is much taller and stronger than I am, spare-framed but steely. My stupid dress doesn’t help either. If only I’d had time to organise my escape from the palace I’d have sourced buckskins and stout boots, but circumstances were sprung on me and I had to flee in what I stood in. Stained, torn satin slippers don’t pack much of a kick.
Although there is nobody to hear us, his hand clamps straight away over my mouth.
‘Easy,’ he says, and his voice is incongruously soft and gentle. ‘You know you can’t fight me. Hold still and I won’t hurt you.’
He is right. I might as well preserve my energy.
I let him pin my wrists together behind my back and nudge me, hand still covering my lower face, forwards to some unspecified location.
When I hear the sound of a zip, I have to bite my cheeks to squash down the smile. Of course, it would have been too much to expect him to construct an authentic woodsman’s hut out of branches and tree roots and whatnot just for the sake of one night’s entertainment, but a tent will have to substitute. At least it’ll be much more comfortable. Less risk of creepy-crawlies in the nooks and crannies.
With his hands on my shoulders, he pushes me down to my knees on the pile of sleeping bags and attends to tying my wrists together above my head.
‘That’s a good girl, Princess, nice and quietly,’ he says, approving of my compliance. ‘Now lie down and I’ll get you something to drink. You must be thirsty and hungry – you didn’t stop to grab any provisions, by all accounts.’
I let him manoeuvre me into a supine position, arms arched over my head. He brings a hip flask to my lips and water trickles around my mouth and, occasionally, into it. Yes, I hadn’t realised it, but I am thirsty, my throat parched by panic and exertion. I probably couldn’t have screamed much even if I’d been allowed to.
The air mattress shifts as he lengthens out beside me, propped on one elbow. I can make out the shape of a face looking down at me in the dark. Suddenly there is light and I squint and turn away from it for a moment, but he steers the back of my head round to face him.
There he is, my captor, pale and intent, full lips curling in pleasurable triumph.
How dare he smile at me?
‘When my father hears about this,’ I tell him, ‘he’ll have your head on a pike.’
He puts a long finger on my lips and shakes his head, tutting, still smirking.
‘Princess, your father is paying me for this.’
I try to toss my head, but his finger remains at its station, sealing my mouth.
‘He won’t suffer the dishonour of having to tell the Dark Prince that the deal is off. Do you really think your father would just sit back and let you ruin his historic accord? He is going to have you delivered to the Dark Prince whether you like it or not – but first, I’m taking you back to the palace.’
‘You’re a bounty hunter?’ I manage to drive the words past his gate-keeping digit.
‘I prefer “personnel retrieval operative” myself,’ he says.
‘How about “mercenary scumbag”?’ I try to bite his finger but, quick as a whip, he silences me with an alternative method, one that involves the hard pressure of lips against lips.
This low-down piece of peasant flotsam thinks he can kiss a princess of the blood royal! It is not to be borne.
But my struggles lead only to capitulation and heaving of the bosom, because this low-down piece of peasant flotsam kisses like no man I have ever known. His lips are skilled, his tongue firm in its probing. Against my will, against every noble instinct I possess, I yield to the pleasure it brings.
Or rather, I forget my role and slide, so easily, so sweetly, into my lover’s kiss, pushing my tongue against his, tasting and scouring him, greedier than ever for him.
But this isn’t the game. The game is about resistance, about dubious consent that turns, eventually, to desire.
So I try to shake him off, working against the craving in the pit of my stomach, the blossoming in my crotch.
‘You’re passionate,’ he says. ‘Feisty, yes, but what a little firecracker you’d be in my bed. I’d like to take you, but the Dark Prince …’
‘Fuck the Dark Prince and fuck you, peasant. How dare you kiss me!’
His hand smacks down on my hip and he yanks me around on to my side. ‘It seemed the best way to shut you up,’ he hisses into my ear. ‘Besides –’ he pulls back, makes sure he has my full attention ‘– I have licence to do more than that.’
A warning flare shoots from solar plexus to groin.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Lie back down, Princess. I’m going to clean you up. And don’t argue – I’ll gag you if you swear at me again. Consider your rank and station, for heaven’s sake.’
I nearly laugh out loud at his tone of schoolmasterly disappointment. He’s got so good at this lately, not that he was ever bad.
‘That’s exactly what I am doing,’ I grumble, watching him retrieve a bottle of soapy water from a backpack and pour it into a mess tin. ‘That’s why I object to your … familiarity.’
‘The familiarity’s only going to get more … familiar,’ he warns me. He’s looking in the backpack again. This time he draws out an odd thing, a small round sponge attached to the end of a wooden handle. ‘I’m instructed to clean you up.’
‘What?’ I try to lift my spine, but the best I can manage is a tilt of the neck.