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My gratitude didn’t make him soften. Just the opposite. He drew his dagger from the big one, glanced around for suitable fallen branches and started sharpening the ends. “Look away,” he said, his voice gruff and intimidating.

I shook my head.

“Look the fuck away,” he growled.

If I’d felt like prey earlier, it was nothing compared to this. This was how animals got killed, and I knew it; I’d had deer stare at me in just the way I was watching him now. Helpless. Mesmerized.

Finally, I did shut my eyes; there was something about him that made me obey him, even when I didn’t want to. I didn’t close them fully, though; I couldn’t.

Through the slit between my lashes, I watched him move from thief to thief on the ground, watched his biceps flex and ripple, and watched, transfixed, as he removed their heads, mounting them on the makeshift spikes. Not exactly a subtle warning, but I don’t think my brother was aware of such things as subtlety.

“I’m going to let you live,” he said to the one I’d taken out with my knife. “If you survive the night, be sure any of your other brotherhood knows to stay the fuck away from here.”

He moved behind me. I couldn’t turn to watch him without giving myself away. So I stood still, listening. The sound of him slipping his blade back into its sheath, followed by the sound of dry pine needles, crunching behind me. And the feeling of his breath, on my bare shoulder. He was right behind me. Close enough now for me to feel the heat from his body radiating into my own.

Then I heard the sound of rustling fabric. A shirt being untucked, buttons being undone. He was undressing.

Oh, God. I’m stood here with my breasts unclad, for all to see, and he’s undressing.

My entire body tightened, my mouth dry with anticipation. I’d heard he was a brute, a beast. A savage animal. How would it feel to be wrapped in his enormous arms? To be held immobile as he…as he…

A little mewl slipped from my lips at the thought of his huge, heavy member entering where I’d only ever had my fingers.

“Are you going to…” I cleared my throat. “Untie me at once, brother!”

I heard him inhale, felt his face against my hair. “I’m not your brother. You’re just the brat my uncle’s wife came with.”

Why did I shiver at his words, as if he’d just whispered poetry at me, not harsh insults that should have cut deep? Something about the tone, something made me believe he didn’t mean them, that it was just a reflex, or perhaps his way of keeping me under control.

Control…

Bound as my hands were, and huge as he was, I knew I was at his complete mercy. No matter how quick or cunning I was, he was and would always be bigger and stronger, and far more powerful than me. I also knew that he was an accomplished fighter. Not skilled, as such, but brutally efficient with either knives or his bare hands.

He could do anything he wanted to me. There was nothing I could do to stop him.

Swallowing hard, I was caught between what I thought I wanted and what I actually wanted. Stuck between my brain and my body. Everything rational told me he was a terrible man.

Every rumor, every innuendo, every whispered hush of castle gossip. Prince Maksim was depraved to his very core. Everybody said so. And yet, deep inside me, at the root of my deepest self, I wanted him. And the rushing trickle between my legs was more powerful than any rational thought.

The gentle touch of warm fabric over my shoulders yanked me out of my tangled web of desires. Opening my eyes, I realized he’d draped his huge shirt over my bare skin to cover my nakedness, except for the bare valley of flesh between my small breasts and down to my belly button. I could smell his scent on the fabric—dark, rich, and musky. Like a forest after a soaking rain.

With surprising speed and gentleness, he unfastened the bindings on my wrists, pulling them forward in front of me and soothing the rope burn with his thumbs and fingers. His touch wasn’t rough or angry. It was tender and concerned.

Almost… I thought, with a gasp… almost loving. Almost wanting.

Now he took me by the shoulders, and turned me around to face him. I had never seen him shirtless before. He was magnificent, every muscle bulging with strength and intensity. I let out a little hushed whimper as I looked down at the ridges of his abdominal muscles, at the tight, tanned skin of his belly button, running down into the deep valleys of his groin muscles.

Dragging my eyes back up every perfect inch of his stomach and body, I saw a lacework of old scars. Knife wounds, the star-shaped pucker of a healed arrow puncture. He didn’t look like any man of the court.

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