At the first gas station we passed, I pulled over and called Barney in New York. We hadn’t spoken in over a year and it took a while to convince him I wasn’t kidding about the Princess. But he agreed to help. He had a cargo flight going to Austria that he could sneak the Princess onto, and it could make a stop in Lakovia. Only problem was, it was leaving at ten the next morning. That gave us only twenty-four hours to get from Texas to New York.

So I drove, for hour after hour. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad. I called the hospital from each gas station we passed but each time, he was still in surgery. Finally, around noon, I managed to get one of the surgeons on the phone. Hunched over a payphone, trying to shut out the roar of passing trucks behind me, I closed my eyes and focused on his voice.

“We got the bullet,” he said. The poor guy sounded as exhausted as me. “But it really tore him up inside. Heart, one lung, nicked a kidney. Whoever shot him knew exactly where to aim for maximum damage. He’d be dead, if he wasn’t such a tough old coot. It’s going to be touch-and-go for the next few days.”

I thanked him and hung up. I had to resist the urge to smash the handset to pieces against the side of the payphone. Silvas Lukin. That son of a bitch. If I ever got my hands on him….

Footsteps behind me. I whirled around and the Princess was there, hands nervously twisting in front of her. “How is he?”

That glass-smooth voice was like a cool palm placed on my forehead. I drew in a shuddering breath. “Alive,” I said.

“I’m sorry. Not just for what happened with Caroline but...everything.” She looked down at her feet. “You must wish you’d taken a different flight.”

It felt like my chest contracted into a tiny black hole. I closed the distance between us with one big stride. “Hey!” I growled. “Hey!” I took her chin between thumb and forefinger and tipped it so she had to look at me. “No. Don’t say that.”

She nodded but her eyes were shining with tears. I had to show her I wasn’t mad at her. And then I remembered something, something I’d been meaning to ask her since that very first day.

“That Rans Tagaka stuff,” I said. “When you took out that guy on the highway. Can you teach me?”

She squinted through the tears: Really? Then she sniffed and looked away, blinking. Her chin was still in my hand and a few warm tears fell in my palm. “You were a marine,” she said. “You know much more about fighting than I do.”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “And my squad leader always said, when you stop learning, you start dying.”

She bit her lip and, instantly, that deep pull towards her took over. God, don’t do that! Not when your chin’s in my hand. Not when I could just lean down and kiss you—

Her breathing went tight and I realized I was staring at her lips. We both looked away.

“Alright,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Stand behind me.”

I ambled around behind her. Emerik had lent her his suit jacket to wear over the nightgown. It meant she was halfway decent but her long legs were still tantalizingly visible through the gown’s gauzy fabric.

“Put an arm around my neck,” she ordered.

I stepped closer and the scent of her filled my senses. I hooked my arm around her neck. My sleeve was rolled up so it was skin on skin, her touch like silk.

“Like you’re going to hurt me,” she said, her voice trembling a little.

I could never hurt you. I cinched my arm tighter and felt her swallow. Her body was in contact with mine all the way from neck to ankle, her ass just grazing my crotch. There was a lull in the passing traffic and suddenly it was very quiet, the only sound the wind whipping our clothes.

“You have to form your hand into a point, like this,” She pressed her fingers together into an arrowhead. “And then with your middle finger you have to strike just the right point….”—she reached up under my armpit—”...here. It’s only about the size of a...what are those coins you have? The tiny ones? Nickels! So you have to be precise.” She pressed very gently, then twisted around to check I’d understood.

I nodded, but...when she’d turned, it had made one cheek of her ass press right against my crotch. And now my arm had half-dropped from around her neck and the underside was just kissing the top of her breast. Every time she inhaled, I could feel its soft warmth pressing against me. “That’s it?” I asked. I was trying not to get lost in her eyes again. “It doesn’t feel very dangerous.”

I glimpsed something I’d never seen before: a wicked little smile. Her hand pulled back and then flashed up, faster than I could follow, and—

My fingers twitched and then went loose and floppy: I couldn’t have closed my hand if my life depended on it. The feeling traveled up my arm in the time it took me to blink. It slid from around the Princess’s neck and just hung, dead weight. I couldn’t even stop it swinging back and hitting me on the leg and, when it did, I couldn’t feel it. It felt like a side of goddamn beef hanging in a meat locker. “What the hell?!” I grunted.

She giggled. It was the first time I’d heard it: a beautiful, musical sound like water flowing over jewels. “I didn’t do it very hard,” she said. “The feeling’ll come back in a few minutes.”

I gave her a mock-scowl and she grinned, and my heart just lifted. I was so relieved that I’d made her feel better. I did that. Me. Just for a second, it was like we were a couple.

And then I remembered this was our last day together. Tomorrow, she’d remember she was really a princess. And I’d remember I was really a burned-out jarhead who was lucky to get a job tumbling drunk assholes out of clubs.

It didn’t matter how good she made me feel. Tomorrow, she’d be gone.