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The best I could do would be to watch her. Keep her safe. Again, this is what I told myself but I knew, if any other man tried to take what was mine, I could kill him without a shred of guilt or regret.
I’d been to Millstone Farm so often that my spot in the shade of the large oak overlooking her cowshed almost felt like home, a groove cut in the earth where I’d paced back and forth in my obsession.
Slipping from the castle in the dark hours before sunrise, I headed down into Aramoor City, past the houses and businesses still shut against the night. This was one of the few times I left my mask hanging by the door. The hours when I prowled dusk and dawn and darkness. I was a beast of the forest, not a man hiding his history behind an intricate steel facade.
It was quiet as I moved silently along back alleys and out onto the old Kingsway. The walk out to the farm was the better part of an hour on foot, but I didn’t care. I would have walked the earth for her.
My fingers twitched at the thought of touching that silken dark hair, caressing her pale skin, feeling the wetness of her sweet cunt drench my palm as her dark eyes begged me for more.
By the time I reached the farm, I was already rock hard which made it a damn sight harder to walk and had me craving relief. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d crept down to her window in the early hours to fuck my fist while watching her sleep. I knew exactly where her bedroom was located in the drafty stone cottage, and my cum had coated the wall outside more than once.
The dawn light was just turning the sky a salmon pink when I vaulted the gate at the end of the farm track, passing between high hedges on either side. My footsteps hardly made a sound on the potted dirt that led to the cottage, and I felt like I could already smell her scent, could already feel her presence in the air. But as I rounded the corner, I pulled up short.
The planked wooden door to the front of the cottage stood open.
All the times I’d visited in the early hours, there was never any movement. The door always secured. The chickens were only beginning to cluck in their enclosure, the cows still asleep. No, this was something different. It felt wrong…
It was then that I heard her scream.
Chapter 3
Iris
“Get out!” My scream burned my throat, the shriek of fear hot on my lips.
The low flicker of one candle illuminating the stranger standing inside my bedroom as he turned, the purse taken from my drawer dangling from his hand. He looked surprised, even shocked to see me there in bed. Which meant they thought the house was empty. Damn that good-for-nothing father of mine! No doubt drunk in some pub in Aramoor City, collapsed over a table after telling these men exactly where his home was.
Springing from the bed, dressed in nothing but my nightgown, I grabbed the nearest weapon—a poker from the long-dead fire—and swung it at the intruder, missing by a good foot or more but still driving him back toward the wall. His dark eyes went wide and he dropped the purse with a clatter of small coins. Nothing worth stealing, but thieves will as thieves do.
“Who are you?” I demanded, jabbing the wrought iron in his direction.
“Who the fuck are you?” he replied, sidestepping along the wall, keeping away from the pointy end of my improvised weapon. “Carmichel, there’s a girl…in here.”
He stepped out into the hall between my bedroom and my father’s. There was barely any light except the flicker of the candle from my bedroom and the hint of morning sun just cresting the horizon that came through the open front door. As I shuffled behind him into the hall, there was another man exiting my father’s room, carrying a pewter candlestick and an armful of tattered shirts as my heart thundered in my chest.
“Nothing worth stealing anyway—” he began, then stopped short, staring at me. “Well, well, what do we have here? Thought he said his wife were dead?”
“Carmichel, I don’t want no trouble. You said it would be empty…”
“Look at this one…” He sneered and I held the poker straight out, aiming toward his face. “Ooh, like ‘em feisty, I do. What are you? Daughter? Maid? Strumpet?”
Carmichel lunged forward as I yelped and seized the poker from my hand as I tumbled back. There was a creak, and I realized too late that my father still hadn’t mended the loose floorboard I’d been asking about for weeks. As it shifted beneath my foot, with a screech, my ankle twisted, my body gave way and I fell with a thud to the floor, doing my best to right myself before one of them put their hands on me.
