After that day, I was done. Everything I thought I knew? Yeah, forget it. I’d walked into the wrong woods. I’d locked eyes with, gotten too close to, and put my hands all over the wrong girl. And now I was fuckin’ cursed. Because I was damned either way.

Princess Adele.

I’d ask myself how the fuck I hadn’t recognized her, but it’s not like I’d have immediately realized the gorgeous, curvy, naked vixen in the woods was the damned Princess of the whole country.

Yeah the lack of crown — that’s how I’d not recognized her.

I could have rolled my eyes.

Touching her had been wrong, but she hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t run away. Hell, she’d moaned when I’d put my hands on her. She’s opened her mouth for me. She’d willingly spread her legs for me, whimpering as I’d stroked my finger up and down her sweet, soft, untouched pussy.

But that was something that’d never be. Not her, and not with me. Not with some grunt from the service. Oh, I was a Captain?

What a joke.

The rank was well and good when you were at my level. But for someone at her level? No, for her, a captain didn’t mean shit. I wasn’t a prince, or a king, or duke or fuckin lord, or whatever.

Except, I’d had a taste, and I wasn’t quite sure how I’d function without the girl who’d wrecked who I was in one damn second.

It’d been three years since the divorce. Well, divorce is a funny word when you can barely call what it was before a marriage. Shana married me thinking I was going to go into politics, like my father and his father, who’d been members of parliament and respected heads of local houses — the works. That shit wasn’t for me though, and I’d told her that from the start.

Some women just don’t listen though.

I’d joined the Royal Guard because I’d wanted to make a difference. Back then when I’d first enlisted, Berne wasn’t at war or anything, but the guard also acted as disaster relief, and helped with state building projects. We did go to battle, though. With all the turmoil in the middle east, and after the heads of the armed forces signed a unanimous letter to King Lorne, we’d volunteered for duty in Afghanistan. Berne was a country that mostly kept to itself of course, being so small. But tyranny is tyranny, and I was proud to have served in that desert hell.

Shit, I was glad to go.

Shana’d thrown a fit when I enlisted. When she found out where I was going, she’d been livid. I didn’t leave for war on a happy note, let’s say that. But I thought I’d loved her, so I’d tried to make it work. I’d called a lot when I was overseas, wrote every day, all of it.

I even surprised her with an early trip home, skipping the last month of duty to make it home and try and work things out with the woman I’d once loved enough to marry.

The surprise was on me, though, when I’d walked in on her on her hands and knees in our bed with our neighbor, balls deep inside of her.

Yeah, that’d sucked, even if “balls deep” wasn’t exactly saying much with that douche.

Another man might have made a scene. Or killed even. Me? I just decided I was done. That was it; case closed. I’d ignored her yells and shrieks, grabbed whatever shit of mine I could fit into a bag, and left.

End of scene.

And honestly, I was happier after that.

There wasn’t the constant nagging to be something I wasn’t. The ink was dry on the divorce a week later, and after that, I threw everything I had into the guard. I moved rank fast, because, well, I didn’t really do anything else. I was still living in the city, but I spent every weekend working on the house on ten acres I’d bought out in the woods, building it from the ground up with my own two hands.

Soon after, of course, the insurgency had started — separatists from a rogue political party within Berne that wanted to secede from the country. That was one thing, but when they’d started raiding farmlands and trying to plant bombs on busses, it was time to act, and the guard stepped in.

We had them out in the woods now, basically confined to the hills on the very edge of the country borders, which is where I’d been that day. We were camped out near the base of the hills, and since I was always good for a long hike through the woods, I’d told my junior patrolman I’d take his shift for a long patrol south of camp.

It was hot as fuck that day, and it wasn’t long until the heat of the forest and the sun coming through the trees had me soaking with sweat. I’d stripped my shirt off, cause I could.

That was the beauty of rank.

I also knew about a mountain spring a few clicks away that no one knew about, which is where I’d been going when, well, when my life had changed. When I’d bumped into my porcelain skinned, dark-haired goddess. With lips like red blood and eyes like blue diamonds.

The perfect swell of her breasts, the rosy pink of her nipples, the sweet curve of her hips, and the honeyed opening between them.

Fuck.

The Princess of Berne. That’s who’s she was.

And I’d fucking fingered her. If she told anyone, I was dead — literally dead. She was so off limits, and shit, so much younger. I mean Jesus, eighteen to my thirty-five was all sorts of wrong, and I knew it.

A lesser man might have thought seriously of deserting, and running from Berne after what’d happened today. But fuck that. I’d barely made it back to camp before my mind was set.

Run away from the girl of my dreams?

Run away from the woman I’d been in love with in my head before I’d even ever met her?

Not a chance.

Damn the consequences. I hadn’t fought in a war, and then fought insurgency back home to be a pussy. I hadn’t ranked up the fastest in Berne Royal Guard history to run away from something I wanted.

If there were consequences to the insanity in my head — and I had no doubt there would be — then so be it. Running from this, and running from her? I’d never be able to live with myself. Because I’d seen what I wanted in life. I’d seen the woman who’d be mine.

And there was no way I was going to shy away from that.

My blood was pounding as I put in my request — a week back at the main barracks in the capital. I was a good, loyal soldier, and I was already a month past my rotation out of the insurgency zone anyway, because that’s just who I was. And the Major in charge had faith in me. Of course the request was approved.

The road was quiet as I took a guard jeep back to the capital surrounding King Lorne’s castle. My heart roared. Blood pounded in my ears. My cock was hard enough to dent steel between my legs.

Fuck the rules. Fuck the consequences. Fuck this being inappropriate or “not okay.”

I’d tasted Princess Adele, and now I’d have more.