I run through the darkened hallways of the palace, wind rushing in my ears and bare feet slapping against the marble. The sounds of my frenzied run echo through the vast hallways and chambers, but no one comes. Was that man really telling the truth?

He showed up at my door after the servants left for the night and gave me the strangest message: Prince Roark will clear a path for me to escape, but I can only earn my freedom if I manage to make it out without him catching me. I wrote it off immediately as a lie, but when I tried to sleep, I could think of nothing else. If he told the truth, it meant two things.

One was that my only real opportunity to escape this place might be tonight. The other implication was that Prince Roark wants me badly enough to risk what I have to imagine are dire consequences. If I were to actually escape, I’m sure one of the guards he must have bribed into leaving these halls will talk, and then Titus will find out. Little brother or not, my time here has already taught me that Prince Titus is not a man to be crossed, and neither is his mother, who wears her loyalty to her youngest son so plainly that even a blind dog could see it.

Another possibility occurs to me as my pace slows and I move through the final stretch of my flight more slowly. Maybe Prince Roark knew there was no risk in letting me escape, because he knew he would catch me. This could have just been a ploy to get me alone at a time he could have me again without anyone finding out. The idea should terrify me, especially as I creep through nearly pitch-black rooms and stairwells with the hairs on the back of my neck prickling like I’m being watched. Instead of frightening me though, the idea sets my stomach on fire, and it’s not long before the heat spreads between my legs, leaving no doubt to what my body wants.

After what feels like ages, I reach the front gate. As promised, it stands wide open, giving me a view of the sparkling city ahead and the distant hills that lead to my freedom. I take a step forward, but hesitate. The life I lived up to this point in the outside world was far from good. My parents acted like I didn’t exist most of the time, and my sisters made sure the existence I did have was as miserable as possible. But turning eighteen was going to be the start of something new. I was going to leave home and go off to college, even if it meant taking on debt and working my ass off.

I was going to make a new me. A better me. Except nothing I ever dreamed of making for myself came close to what life could be like here. Even if I’m tied up with a sociopathic maniac like Prince Titus. This is the place where Prince Roark exists, where people walk the city streets on foot instead of behind steering wheels, and where ghosts of simpler times are everywhere, giving day-to-day life a fairytale charm. It’s also a place where I’m a princess. A princess. What girl hasn’t dreamed of this? What would all the little girls out there say to me if they knew I was running from a life that might as well be spun from a dream? Especially if they knew what I was running back to?

I sigh. More than anything else, Prince Roark looms in my mind. I’ll never forget what it was like being in his hands in that dungeon, or the rush of pure adrenaline that came when I gave myself over to him to do as he pleased.

If I stay, it’s for him. I know that now. Maybe other people would call me a slut, and not just for what I’ve already done when I’m promised to Titus. If I do decide to stay, it will be for Roark, who I know so little about except for the way I feel under his control. Screw other people though. This is the first time in my life I’ve had a chance to make a real decision for myself, and right now, the only person’s opinion I care about is my own.

Roark holds the promise of something I want more than freedom, more than the life I thought I would build for myself outside this place. He promises me the knowledge that I’m wanted. I don’t care if it’s selfish to need that so much or childish. I need to be wanted, and his hunger for me is written on every inch of his face when he looks at me.

So I don’t take another step toward the door. I take a step back, shake my head, and turn to walk back to my room.

I’ve only taken a few steps when Roark emerges from a shadowy alcove in front of me with a predatory grin. “You decided not to leave,” he notes.

My breath catches at the sight of him--at the sound of his deep, gravely voice. “I did,” I say.

“Inquiring minds want to know why,” he says, moving closer, circling me slowly.

I lower my head. “I don’t think I’m done here. There’s someone. Someone I don’t want to leave behind.”

“Should I be jealous?” he asks.

My heartbeat quickens. “Jealous?” I ask. Even though I can see in his body language that he wants me, it’s another thing entirely to hear him openly admit it. “Why would you be jealous?”

“You want to hear it for yourself?” he asks.

I say nothing, holding my breath as I follow his gorgeous face through the shadows.

“You’ll have to earn that,” he says. “I caught you trying to escape, after all. I think you know what that means?”

The heat already flooding my body grows more intense. “The dungeon?”

“The dungeon,” he says, gripping my arm almost hard enough to hurt and leading me down the familiar hallway and down the stairs.

He doesn’t speak again until the door to the dungeon is closed behind us and we’re completely alone. He turns a key in the door and slides it in the pocket of his jacket before turning to face me. There’s not much light in the room, and the way the shadows fall over his face makes him seem dark and dangerous.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” he says finally, stepping closer to me.

“You have?” I ask. My voice sounds too shrill and grating in the intensity that hangs between us.

“It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

“Me?” I ask, mentally pinching myself for asking stupid question after stupid question. Get with it, Elizabeth. He’s going to think you’re a brainless idiot!

His lips twitch just slightly upward at one corner. “Like I said, you need to earn answers, even if you should already be able to figure them out for yourself.”

Should I be able to? Maybe. But with a man like Prince Roark, it seems foolish to assume. How can I even begin to guess what is going on inside that gorgeous head of his? Or do I even want to know?

“Should I be frightened of you, Prince Roark?” I ask.

My question makes him pause for a heartbeat, almost so subtly that I could’ve missed it. “What makes a man good?” he asks.

“You’re going to answer my questions with questions, too?” I ask.

“You want answers so badly? Fine. You can have them. But you’re going to pay for every last one. Take off your dress,” he says.

“My dress? But--”

“Is that one of your questions?” he asks.

I glare, bracing myself for what I know I’m going to do. It feels even more wrong now. Even though I’ve never given Prince Titus reason to think I have any feelings for him or that I was planning to go through with this wedding, he seems to think otherwise. But he must know I’m being forced into this. He hasn’t even talked to me in days I’ve been here--not really. He has talked at me, and all of that has been about himself. He has told me story upon story about how accomplished of a dueler he is or of how many men he has bested at fielding.

Every word from Prince Titus’ mouth has only further convinced me that he’s the last man on this Earth I’d want to marry.

Yet, I still feel a paralyzing guilt that keeps me from lifting my dress up. It would be wrong, wouldn’t it? Not only am I to marry another, but if I do this there will be consequences that could end in bloodshed.

“I can’t,” I say finally, letting my hands fall lifelessly to my side. “He’s your brother. And he believes we will marry. This--what we’re doing--it’s wrong.”

Roark takes a step closer until we’re nearly nose to nose as he looks down to me. “My brother will ruin you. He will use you up and discard what’s left. You’re a tool to him, just a pathway to the throne. Will you really remain loyal to a man like that?”

“Loyal to him? No. But I have my own standards. I need to be able to live with myself every day. I have to look at myself in the mirror, and I’d like to be able to do that with a clear conscience.”

“What would you do then?” asks Roark through gritted teeth. “You’ll just walk the path everyone has laid out for you without your consent? You’ll march down the aisle, let him stick his tongue down your throat, fuck you and put one of his twisted offspring inside your--”

My palm stings. I just slapped him, didn’t I? I didn’t decide to or plan on it, but my hand whipped out. I just had to make him stop. I raised my hand against a Prince, the heir to the kingdom, and I’m alone with him in a dungeon where no one knows to look for me. I look down in confusion at my own hand. I know I shouldn’t have hit him, but I’m not sorry.

“Don’t talk to me that way,” I say, chest heaving.

He watches me through dark eyes for a long time, not bringing a hand to the reddening spot on his cheek, not even moving at all. “I’m within my rights to talk to you any way I like, Princess,” he says. His voice dangerous. It’s low and full of violence, but a stubbornness borne out of years of mistreatment rises up in me.

“No one has a right to make assumptions about me. You barely know me. You have no right to guess at my future like that.” My eyes are watering. My stupid, traitorous eyes are watering and my voice is breaking. “You have no right,” I say quietly.

He wraps his strong arms around me. One moment we were apart, and then he’s surrounding me like a warm mist, filling my senses and refusing to let me go. I fight at first, pounding my fists against his chest and struggling to be free of him, but he’s too strong. “You say I don’t know you?” he asks, breath tickling my ear. “Show me who you are, then. Show me I’m wrong.”

He lets me go suddenly, pushing me back a fraction so that I can see his full frame. So I can see as his hands move to the buttons of his jacket and then his shirt, peeling away his clothes so that nothing is between my eyes and his chiseled body. The air around us turns electric. My gaze skates over his broad chest and shoulders, down the tapered muscles leading to his waist. I take in the way every jagged line is carved into his sculpted torso leading my eye inevitably and irresistibly down, down to the bulge in his pants that my instincts are clawing to reach for.

Show me I’m wrong.

The woman he thinks I am would let this work. She would get on her knees and do exactly what he wanted right now, and she’d say to hell with her honor. But I’ve lived my whole life letting others write their own version of me and stamp it on my forehead like it was gospel. I’ve lived with the consequences of that for as long as I can remember. Well, I said I wanted to start a new life after my eighteenth birthday, didn’t I?

“Stop,” I say. “I don’t know what this thing between us is--if it’s even a thing. But it can’t happen. I’m promised to Titus. I may not like it, and you may not like it, but that’s reality. I should have never did what I did with you that first night, and I’ll have to live with that, but at least I can know I resisted this time and all the times after.”

I expect him to wear a stung expression or to at least look angry. Instead, he steps forward, bringing that sinfully perfect body within arm’s reach. He flashes a half-grin. “So you do want me, then,” he says.

“I didn’t say that,” I say, taking a step back, but my retreat is halted when I bump into the wall.

He advances again, closer now. “You said you resisted. It wouldn’t be resistance if you didn’t want it.”

“That’s beside the point,” I say, licking my lips.

“No, Princess. That’s the only point there is. Me. You. Two bodies and a lot of potential. That shit between you and my brother? That is beside the point. You say you’re promised to him. Fuck that. Did you ever promise to marry him? Your parents--your biological parents--made the arrangement before they died. Your foster parents knew when they accepted you into their home that this would be your future and treated you like shit because of it. The way I see it, you didn’t promise him anything. You don’t owe him a thing.”

“It doesn’t feel right,” I say, shaking my head but finding nowhere to look that doesn’t push the fire inside me toward the breaking point. He does have a point, I think, but I don’t know if that’s the heat between my legs talking or my good sense.

“Be with me now. Here. We can deal with this arrangement together. Your body is telling you what you want. Stop fighting it. You want this as much as I do.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. His words wash over me like sweet poison, carrying so much promise and yet so much deadly potential. Giving in to Roark now is what I want. I can’t trust myself to make the right decision, not while my nose is filled with the pure masculine scent of his skin and the heat of his breath, but my body is sending a very clear message. Kiss him. Let him take you. Be his.

“I don’t do things like this,” I say. “I stick to my promises. I’m a good person.” The words come out of me in a hurry, tumbling over each other in one confused jumble.

“You didn’t do things like this because you let the people with power over you take advantage until now. They made promises for you and because you wanted to be a good girl, you obeyed. It’s not about good or bad. It’s about strength. Be a strong person. Follow your passion.”

I suck in a deep breath through my nose to try to calm myself, but that’s a mistake. The air that comes in is full of his scent, and there’s manly power to it that ignites desire like I’ve never felt before.

His hand is on my neck, thumb drawing a tingling line across my jaw. “You will be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘there… there is a woman who knew what she wanted and took it. She didn’t wait around until it was too late. She acted. There is a woman with strength.’”

The last of my reservations melt away, blasted by the unbearable heat of his closeness and the fire in his voice. I let my head come closer to his, lips parted just slightly. I was a fool to think I could resist him. A complete, utter fool.

I reach for him, reveling in the warmth and smoothness of his body, running my fingers down the lines of muscle that draw my touch down to his waistline.

He crashes his lips to mine and I groan as his tongue slicks against mine. I can taste the sweet wine he must have had for dinner on his lips and tongue. He pins me to the wall with his body, pressing into me until all I can do is hold on and return his kiss while I ride a wave of adrenaline and pleasure.

He pushes away after a time--seconds, minutes, half an hour, I can’t say. “Take your dress off for me now. Slowly.”

His voice cracks through the silence as harshly as a whip, and it might as well be for how it compels me to move, making my hands grip the silky hem of my dress and pull it up.

“Slower,” he commands.

I obey, lifting the dress inch by inch. The air is cold against my bare skin, and I’m self-conscious of the wet patch on my panties that I have no way to hide. I fling the dress aside, standing before him in nothing but my panties and bra--which I opted to wear when I thought I might actually be escaping, even though it seems like no one here wears them.

He paces in front of me, not taking his eyes from my body. His expression is unreadable for a time, but eventually his lips curl into a small, satisfied smirk when he looks between my legs. “I see I’m not the only one who was looking forward to this.”

I press my thighs together, willing the embarrassment to pass and knowing it won’t.

“Don’t be ashamed of it, Princess,” he says, lifting my chin until our eyes meet. “Your arousal is beautiful to me. In fact, I won’t be satisfied until you’ve let me enjoy it. On your hands and knees. Now.”

My knees go weak before I have time to consider his request. Enjoy it? He wants to look at the wet spot on my panties? I should be mortified, but there’s something in the acceptance of his request that makes my skin tingle from my toes to my head. I go on my hands and knees, pointing my ass toward him, feeling so incredibly vulnerable but at the same time feeling a sort of safeness unlike I’ve never known. It’s as if I’m in a protective bubble of his approval and dominance, and so long as I maintain it, nothing can touch me.

He sighs with satisfaction, moving slowly around me as if he is an art connoisseur appreciating a particularly fine piece. The way his eyes are feeding on me feels good. Really good. More than that, the way he demands instead of asks is so hot I can barely stand it. Everything about him exudes power, manliness, and sexuality.

“What I want to do to you will feel good,” he says. “It will feel better than anything you’ve ever felt or dreamed of feeling. But you have to earn it. And you, my Princess, have been bad tonight. Before we continue, I need to be sure you’re clear about what this is.”

I shake my head, still on my hands and knees but turning to face him. “I don’t think I have any idea what this is,” I say.

“I don’t have regular appetites. The things I want--the things I need sexually would frighten most women.”

“Would you hurt me?” I ask.

“Not in any meaningful way,” he says.

“That’s not reassuring.”

He gets down on one knee, lowering his voice. “What I want is a unique kind of relationship. My life is an endless barrage of posturing and pretending. Relationships are as fake as the alliances they form. None of it is real beyond first glance. I want more. I want something deeper.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“I’ve been with women before--not officially, because officially, a prince is supposed to be chaste on his wedding day, though I doubt that has ever happened. Still, the women before were meaningless to me. I went through the motions, nothing more. When I was here with you the first night you tried to escape though, it was like I woke up for the first time. I can’t explain it. Hell, I don’t even understand it. But I know what I need now. Will you trust me?”

I should say no. I should stand up, gather my dress--and what’s left of my dignity--and run. Instead, I nod my head. No matter how stupid it may be, I want this. I want the life he promises, whether he realizes it or not. I want the trust and the acceptance that he holds in his eyes.

“Good. If you change your mind, or if I ask you to do something you don’t wish to do, just say ‘Red’. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Like a safe word.”

He nods. “Go to the chest beneath the whips.” When I make a move to stand, he stops me. “No, stay on your hands and knees. Crawl.”

I crawl away from him, toward the box, all the while hoping he isn’t fixating on some imperfection in my body, wondering how my ass must look and how a man like him must be used to women who are the image of perfection. Yet he says nothing, and when I glance back over my shoulder, his face is full of lust and desire.

“Faster,” he says.

I increase my pace even though it stings my knees to move quickly on the rough stone floor. When I reach the chest, I put my hand on the clasp and start to lift it.

“Stop!” shouts Roark. His voice booms in the quiet room, nearly giving me a heart attack. “If you’re going to be my Princess, you’re going to need to learn to follow orders better. What did I ask you to do?”

“To go open the chest but crawl there on my hands and knees?” I ask.

“No. I never told you to open it. You must do exactly as I say. No more and no less. If you obey me, I’ll give you more pleasure than you can imagine. Disobey me, and you’ll have to face the punishment. Now open the chest. Your punishment is inside.”

I place a shaking hand on the clasp and raise the lid. My eyebrows lift when cold condensed air puffs out of the chest. It’s actually a freezer, and inside…

It takes me a few seconds to realize what I’m looking at. There’s a single, long piece of ice that’s long and smooth. It looks like a cock made out of ice.

I turn to Roark, eyebrows drawn in confusion. “Are you going to hit me with this?” I ask.

He grins. “No. I’m going to make you cum with it.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a black glove, slipping it onto his right hand. “Hand it to me. Stay on your knees.”

I pick it up, already feeling a quick rush of panic at how cold it is against the palm of my hand. Imagining it inside me is a whole different story. I’d never admit this to Roark in a million years, but the biggest thing I’ve ever had inside me is a tampon. It’s not like I chose to still be a virgin at eighteen because of some moral obligation, it just never happened. I guess being the sad, withdrawn girl doesn’t get guys beating down your door.

That’s all changing now though, even if it might be changing a little too fast.

I watch Roark as he takes the dildo made out of ice and he hefts it, eying me as he does. I’m not sure this is what I want my first time to be like. I consider telling him I’m a virgin before he can put it inside me, but what will he think of me? Will he still be interested in me if he knows I have no experience at all?

I turn my head away, closing my eyes and frantically thinking of what to do, but before I can, he presses the tip of the dildo against my panty covered pussy. I’m so hot and wet that the cold transfers immediately through the material of my panties, making me jump. “Not inside me, please,” I say quickly.

He pauses, and I think he’s going to ask why or tell me I don’t get to make demands, but he doesn’t. He just resumes rubbing the frozen object against my panties, making me shiver with pleasure and cold. “As you wish,” he says.

Relief floods me. Maybe I can still enjoy the demanding, domineering side of him and still feel safe. For what seems like the first time in my life, someone has put my happiness before their own, and it’s an amazing feeling. It might still be beyond crazy that I’m in the dungeon in a hidden kingdom with a prince behind me whose holding a frozen dildo, but hey, I always wished for something different, and it doesn’t get much more different than this.

I hear him pull something from his pocket and a second later he’s tying a black cloth over my eyes. His strong hand presses between my shoulder blades, encouraging me to lay my torso against the stone floor.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he commands. He engulfs my wrists, turning them so my hands are palm to palm. The angle arches my back, causing my nipples to rub against the floor sending shards of pleasure through me. He ties something soft around my wrists, tight enough that I can’t escape, but not so tight as to hurt. “It’s time for your punishment. You need to cum before the cold becomes too intense, so don’t hold back, Princess.”

With my vision taken away, my world is sensation and sound. I feel the icy touch of the dildo against my pussy, making my panties even more wet as he drags a path of pleasure between my legs. I want his lips on me, his skin on my skin, but he doesn’t give me that. He only gives me the frozen touch of the dildo, and while it’s not what I want, I know it’s his hand that holds it and his mind willing me to climax, which ignites a tingling sensation in my belly that swirls through my body, making my hairs stand on end and goosebumps appear on my skin.

Just when the cold is almost too much to handle and the pleasure starts to fade into discomfort and pain, the warmth of his fingers against my hip hits me like an explosion. Even the innocent touch feels magnified into something sensual and reactive after the ice cold touch between my legs. Then he hooks his hand around the waistband of my panties and yanks hard. The elastic waistband pops and he tears the panties away, leaving me shuddering.

Jesus. Roark isn’t like the men I’ve known. He doesn’t hesitate or do anything in half-measures. It’s full-speed, maximum intensity with him. There’s a vulnerability and a blinding kind of excitement to having a man like that completely focused on me, like being on a rollercoaster and not being able to see the tracks, just knowing the wind is rushing in my face and ears and we’re not slowing down.

He gives my ass a quick slap that makes me jump. The sound rings out like a firecracker going off.

“Ow!” I say a little crossly.

“Say what you want,” he growls. “Unless it’s the safe word, your punishment isn’t finished, Princess.”

I squeeze my hands together, mostly because the way my wrists are tied gives me nothing else to hold on to--and right now I feel like I need to hold on to something as tight as I can.

He slides the icy member between my legs again and my mouth falls open in a silent gasp of surprise. The few moments of warmth from his hands make the ice feel even colder now, but the way he’s moving it, sliding it across me and using the head of the dildo to massage my clit… It’s almost enough to make me forget the cold. Instead, the discomfort and pleasure swirl together in a confusing storm I don’t want to end. Each time my pleasure nearly reaches a breaking point, the discomfort from the cold overcomes everything else and pushes down the climax that’s waiting to explode.

“You’re doing well, Princess. You’ve earned a reward, but only a temporary one.”

I’m about to turn and ask him what kind of reward I’ve earned when I feel heat between my legs that’s so blissfully good it nearly takes my knees out from under me. It isn’t long before I realize what is so wonderfully warm.

It’s his mouth. Prince Roark’s mouth. On my pussy. His tongue, swirling inside my entrance.

The climax that has been struggling to erupt comes roaring to the brink now. My body quivers in anticipation and I know it’s going to happen, but then it’s gone. The soft kisses, the gentle warmth of his tongue sliding between my folds and exploring every inch of me, the way his strong hands gripped my ass as he buried his face in my most private place… It’s gone, and the absence is nearly enough to take the breath from me.

“You didn’t think you would get to cum before you’ve finished your punishment. Did you?”

“No,” I say.

“You’ll address me properly, as your prince.”

“No, Prince,” I say, feeling my skin tingle at the submissiveness in the phrase.

“Now, you’ll cum this time. If I have to give you another break, there will be more consequences.”

I nod my head, still blindfolded and feeling dizzy from the overwhelming emotions I’ve experienced since stepping into this room.

The icy dildo presses against me again, and it’s as if every near-orgasm I’ve had has built up and formed something frighteningly powerful inside me, like a white light that is about to burst free at any moment. I grind myself shamelessly into him, completely forgetting to be embarrassed of how exposed I am or the moans spilling from my lips.

“Oh God,” I gasp.

The pleasure mounts but so does the pain of contact with the ice. My skin begins to numb, but the pleasure is so intense now that it runs deeper than the surface of my skin and I still feel something growing ever stronger deep in my belly.

His strong hand slips around my neck, putting pressure on my throat until I have to strain to breathe. The word “Red” starts to bounce around in my mind, and I nearly say it as my breaths grow more and more shallow and the intensity of the ice against my bare pussy starts to feel like hot, unbearable pain.

Roark leans over me from behind, still working the dildo against me and gripping my throat. “You’re strong, Princess. Cum for me. Fucking cum all over this dildo and scream for me. Take the pain and make it your pleasure. Use every bit of it.”

The sound of his voice is an anchor for me, something to focus on as my world dissolves into a storm of indescribable pleasure and pain. As if his words unlock something deep inside me, all the sensations blur together into an experience of pure, unadulterated pleasure that explodes through me and unleashes an orgasm that dwarfs anything I’ve ever felt.

My knees slide out from under me and collapse to the ground, shuddering from the strength of my orgasm. Wave after wave of pleasure rips through me. It’s almost too much, but Roark’s warm hands soothe me, rubbing over my skin, providing comfort, grounding me in the here and now. He releases my hands and rubs them gently to ensure they aren’t harmed.

When he finally removes the blindfold, I roll over and sit up. I’m covered in sweat and feel like I just ran a marathon. I look to Roark, who watches me proudly, as if I’ve done everything he hoped and more. Maybe it’s stupid, but his pride in me makes me glow. It makes me want to do more, to please him again. To even go above and beyond what he thinks I can do for him.