ChapterOne
The man brandishing the staff was fast, but Felix was faster. He dodged the blow aimed at his midsection effortlessly, employing all the agility his lithe twenty-three-year-old frame possessed, but as he watched his opponent circle round again and saw the determined glint in the other man’s eye, he knew that the time for finesse was past if he wanted to win. He ducked low and charged forward without warning, wrapping his arms around his opponent’s waist and knocking him down before he had a chance to brace himself.
The man let out a grunt as his back hit the hard-packed dirt and his staff clattered to the ground, earning a whistle and a cheer from the members of the Royal Guard who had gathered to watch the pair spar. Felix forced the man’s hands over his head and straddled his waist, pinning him in place. “Do you yield?” he demanded, his breath coming in short pants and the warm afternoon sun beating against the back of his neck.
His victim let out a low chuckle, his own breathing laboured. “I yield. Now for the sake of all that’s holy, let me up. I’m too old to be lying in the dirt.” His light brown hair was threaded with silver and when he smiled, the lines in his face betrayed his age in a way his well-muscled physique didn’t.
Felix grinned back and clambered up, standing and holding out a hand as those watching drifted away, leaving him alone with his father.
Janus Hobson grabbed hold and pulled himself to his feet, dusting himself off. “Good job, son. Any time you want to join the guard, there’s a place for you.”
Felix beamed at his father’s approval. “Thanks, Dad. I still don’t think the Royal Guard is the place for me, though.”
“Are you sure? You’d be an asset.”
Felix shook his head. “I was hired to work as the king’s groom. That’s what I’m trained for. I know you had dreams of me joining the guard and carrying on the family tradition but truly, I’d be terrible at it. I don’t think I’m of the temperament to remain silent and keep watch over the royal arse.”
His father gave a wry smile. “The correct term is His Majesty, King Leopold.”
Felix shrugged. “You know I’ve never been good at observing formalities. Which is why, starting tomorrow, I have a job taking care of the royal horse’s arse instead.”
Janus snorted. “Maybe it’s best if you can only offend the king’s horse instead of the man himself.” He reached up and ruffled Felix’s hair like he was still a boy rather than a grown man, and Felix didn’t begrudge him the gesture. “I’m sure you’ll do very well as the king’s groom, son. And your mother and I are proud of you.”
Felix beamed. Even though he didn’t exactly need his father’s reassurance, he appreciated it. “As long as I remember which end needs the feed bag and which the shovel, I can’t make too big a mess of it, surely?”
His father laughed, their shoulders bumping as they walked from the packed-dirt training grounds together. Their footsteps left little puffs of dust in their wake. “You spent four years in Fortescue apprenticed under their head groom, and then you worked alongside him for another two. You’re more than fit to take the position of the king’s groom here. If you still can’t tell one end of a horse from the other, either you had a terrible teacher or the horses in Fortescue are very different from ours.”
In truth, the years of training in Fortescue had been long and gruelling. When Felix had received the invitation to come back home and work in the castle stables, he’d been glad of the chance, but he wouldn’t trade the experience he’d gained while he was away. He truly did adore working with horses. He loved the magnificence of them—their sheer size and strength, the sleek muscles and glossy flanks, the wide eyes that seemed to stare into his very soul. Getting a horse to trust him and follow his commands always felt like a victory and a conspiracy all at once—he and his mount, joined in silent accord. He’d worked hard to learn as much as he could, and during his time in training, he’d taken every bit of advice given to him by other more experienced grooms, carving out a reputation for himself as an excellent horseman in the process.
An unexpected benefit of leaving Lilleforth had been the freedom of not being pigeonholed as “the captain of the guard’s son” and having his actions reported back to his father. That alone had more than made up for the early mornings, backbreaking labour, and literal mountains of horseshit that he’d dealt with on a daily basis.
It had also meant that when he’d finally acknowledged it wasn’t the cleavage on the kitchen maids that made his heart beat faster but the gentle curve of another stable boy’s arse—which hadn’t beenthatmuch of a revelation—he’d been free to explore the possibilities without worrying that someone would tell tales. Not that he’d thought his parents would mind, at least he’dhopednot, but a young man was entitled to some privacy, after all.
He’d gotten to explore those inclinations in all their glory a few months after he’d arrived in Fortescue as a fresh-faced lad of seventeen. Up until then he’d kept what he liked to himself, unsure how one even went about finding someone with the same desires as him. But that had changed when a visiting stable master had caught Felix’s gaze lingering on the cut of his riding trousers a moment too long. The man had sidled up to him and, with a wink and a smile, invited Felix for what he’d called “a stroll in the meadow.”
There had been a meadow, certainly, but very little strolling. Therehadbeen a lot of rolling, some writhing, and a lot of desperate panting culminating in an absolutely spectacular buggering that had driven any thoughts of ever bedding a maid from Felix’s mind forever.
By the time the stable master left Fortescue at the end of two weeks, Felix had learned a lot of things that had nothing at all to do with equine care, although therehadbeen a riding crop involved one memorable evening. Felix had been both shocked and thrilled to discover that when it was a lover brandishing the crop, it wasnothinglike when his father had put Felix over his knee as a boy, and that in the bedroom, he relished the sweet slap of leather against his skin.
Felix took every opportunity to practice his new skills after that, and by the end of his six years in Fortescue, he was quite the expert when it came to giving and receiving a good rogering—along with a spanking—whenever his favorite stable master came to visit.
One of the stable boys had even shed a tear when he said goodbye, and Felix would have been touched except for the fact that the lad had been cradling Felix’s spit-damp cock when he’d whispered, “I’ll miss you.”
Yes, one could say his education in Fortescue had been thorough on all fronts.
As he walked now, shoulder to shoulder with his father as they crossed the cobbled courtyard of the castle, Felix found himself wondering if he’d be able to have the same kind of adventures here. Surely now that he was a grown man, there was no need for stories to be carried back to his father? It was part of the reason he hadn’t joined the Royal Guard in the first place. He knew himself well enough to know that he’d itch and chafe under the weight of his father’s benevolent supervision, no matter how well intentioned it was. At least working in the stables, he’d have a measure of freedom—unless the king was prowling around, of course.
Felix still had no idea whether the king rode or not. He didn’t know whether he ever made his way to the stables or even what the man looked like up close. By design, Felix hadn’t seen the then-crown prince, except in passing, since he’d been a boy of twelve and his father had still called him Flick. Felix’s mouth had always run to trouble, and his parents had thought it wise for him to steer clear of all persons royal and potentially offendable after the time he’d failed to recognise the prince and inadvertently called him a stuck-up little tit. There had been a grudging apology and some grovelling, but after that, throughout his teenage years and beyond, Felix had made himself largely invisible where Prince Leopold was concerned.
Oddly enough, that hadn’t prevented him from forging a kind of friendship with the prince’s closest confidant, Mattias—Chancellor Allingdon—which was how he’d come to land the job as the king’s groom. Felix was fairly certain that Mattias had forgotten that he had insulted Leopold long ago, although it was also possible that he remembered and had hired Felix because of it.
Still, Felix had no clue what kind of man he’d be dealing with. He hoped that the king wasn’t a man who was cruel to his horses, or Felix might not be able to hold his tongue if he encountered it.
“Does Leo ride,” he asked his father, “or does he only have a horse for the look of the thing?”
“It’sKing Leopold,” his father said with a sigh, “or Your Majesty or sire, and you’d best not forget it.”
“Well, obviously I’m not calling him Leo to his face, am I? If he’s like any of the other royals I met while I was away, he’s probably got a stick fair up the royal arse.”
