The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London

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      Damien

      “DO YOU KNOW the story of this place?” I ask her as we both stare straight ahead. The sun has set now, and before us lies nothing but a black abyss.

      She shakes her head sheepishly, and I try to wrap my head around how sheltered this young woman truly is.

      “Centuries ago, a Nightgardin prince—Maximus—fell ass over elbow for Calista, an Edenvale princess.”

      She scoffs. “You’re so eloquent.”

      I shrug. “You didn’t come to me for eloquence, Princess.” She quiets, so I continue. “The princess was here with her father as the two kings tried to negotiate a peace treaty. Of course, no such thing happened. But when Maximus was charged with showing Calista the royal grounds while the two kings attempted to negotiate terms, it was love at first sight.”

      She snorts, and her hand immediately flies to her mouth as her pale cheeks grow pink.

      I raise a brow, and she crosses her arms, defiant. It’s a good look on her.

      “Love at first sight? Please. Despite my future being mapped out for me without any say in the matter, I don’t daydream about something better. About what could be. I’m not naive enough to believe in fairy tales.”

      I shrug. “Believe what you want, Highness. I don’t need to finish the story.”

      She grabs my bare forearm, the tips of her fingers branding me with their heat.

      “Please,” she says. “Keep going.”

      I remove her hand from my skin and place it in her lap, needing the distance.

      “I’m not looking to spend the next couple decades in a Nightgardin cell. But—as you wish. I will continue the tale.” I take a steadying breath, wondering for a moment if she felt the same searing touch of her skin on mine. Then I shake my head, banishing the ridiculous notion, and continue. “When the kings emerged from the negotiation chamber, neither Maximus nor Calista was anywhere to be found. But the princess’s lady in waiting was discovered bound to a tree in the woods, gagged so she could not call for help. She’s the one who revealed that the young lovers had escaped on horseback hours before, riding up the winding path of this very mountain.”

      I watch her chest rise and fall, watch patches of pink flush the skin on her neck, her cheeks. The same hue as the panties I know she’s got on under that tiny dress.

      She swallows, and something about this moment and the silence—seeing the Princess of Nightgardin rapt from nothing other than my words—it’s the most intimate thing I’ve experienced in a good, long while.

      “They came—here?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

      I nod, one single, slow movement.

      “Long before the roads were paved, this whole lookout was lush and green, the perfect spot for two young royals to...” She swallows again, and I hold off on giving her the satisfaction of knowing. Instead, I lean toward her, bold and reckless, my lips stopping short of grazing her earlobe. She smells sweet like vanilla, which makes me long to taste her. “And Princess,” I whisper, “there is nothing like the joining of two people in pure, undiluted love.”

      Her breath catches—a tiny yet dangerous sound.

      “Calista’s lady in waiting led the palace guards and those the King of Edenvale brought with him right to this spot. It is said the king raised his own hand to his dishonored daughter, but Maximus put himself in harm’s way instead. They didn’t get a chance to plead for their lives. Swords were raised on either side, a declaration of war. Either way, they were already dead. So the two joined hands and backed away from the skirmish until no ground was left to tread.”

      I straighten and see a tear leak from the corner of the princess’s eye.

      “I will never have a love such as they did,” she says, voice trembling.

      I let out a bitter laugh. “You want a love that will send you to your grave? If that’s the case, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

      She raises her hand, but I catch her wrist midslap.

      “How dare you judge me?” she asks through gritted teeth. “You roam the continents taking anything and everything that your heart desires, yet I will never have such a luxury. Don’t you get it? You may be banished, but you are free.”

      My grip tightens on her wrist, yet she does not struggle to free herself.

      Everything my heart desires. What a fucking joke.

      “My heart,” I snap, “died in the wreck that killed the only person I was stupid enough to love. So don’t you speak to me of freedom. I am a prisoner, just like you.”

      And if I give her what she came looking for tonight, I’ll likely rot away in Nightgardin’s highest-security prison—if the king doesn’t kill me first. It would be reckless as hell to assume anything less.

      But I stopped playing it safe the second I bedded my own brother’s fiancée. I have nothing—nothing—left to lose.

      “Are you refusing my request?” she asks, jutting out her chin.

      I bait her. “What you’re asking for is an act of treason. I may be a man without a country, but yours has tolerated my presence for some time now. It’s the closest thing I have to a—” I bite my tongue before uttering the word home. I am not foolish enough to think I belong anywhere, let alone here. But an act against Nightgardin, even by a banished Edenvale prince, would put the rest of my family at risk. “I will need some sort of...insurance...that you won’t have your way with me and then immediately report me. Or...if that is your endgame...at least something that will work in my defense in a Nightgardin court. Though I doubt I’d even be given a trial.” I’m mostly joking, because I know this night can end in only one way—with me behind bars and my family none the wiser. But she clears her throat.

      “Very well,” she says. “What do you truly know about Nightgardin law?”

      I chuckle. “Enough that I understand a night with you could cost me my life, but I’ve already admitted as much. What are you playing at, Princess?”

      She dips her head. “If they find out I lied—that I came to the city to consort with an Edenvale prince instead of cloistering myself in prayer—you will not be the only one guilty of treason.”

      My throat goes bone dry. “They would hang you in the palace square.”

      “Perhaps,” she says. “Or worse. It would be justified. That would be up to the king and queen to decide.”

      It would be up to her parents to decide whether or not to kill their only child for the crime of fucking me.

      “This is the only time in my life that I get to decide, Damien. Let me choose who gets to take the most precious gift I have to offer. Because I choose you.”

      She reaches beneath the skirt of her barely there dress and tugs her panties down her thighs, over her knees and ankles until they lie in a ball on the Alfa Romeo’s floor.

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