I wake up before dawn, as always, but I suddenly realize there’s no reason to get up. I’m on leave.

I could go see if Jane is awake, but I doubt she wants to wake up at the crack of dawn while she’s on vacation.

I consider going back to sleep, but it feels too lazy and slovenly, so I jump out of bed and do some pushups to get my blood pumping.

There’s a knock on my door. Without stopping my pushups, I shout out, “Come in.”

I look up to see Magnus. He’s in uniform and grinning down at me.

“Come to gloat?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I came to work out with you. Looks like you started without me.”

I finish my set of pushups and jump to my feet. “”Ekdahl won’t like that.”

“Fuck him,” Magnus says. “You may be on leave, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work out with you. I don’t have to report until eight o’clock.”

I grin. “Alright, then let’s hit the weights.”

* * *

I see Jane walk into the weight room when I’m ducked down with seven hundred pounds of iron on my back. I pull my shoulders back, drive in with my heels, and press the huge weight up until I’m standing straight. I feel all my muscles tingling as blood flows through them, and I throw the bar onto the squat rack.

“Fuck!” I grunt, partially because I’m completely spent, but mostly because it feels damn good to have lifted so much.

I can see Jane from the mirror in front of me. She’s grinning, looking refreshed and beautiful in a body-hugging pair of jeans and a sweater. I turn to face her.

“Jane,” I say. “How’d you know I was in here?”

“Your cousin Siegfried told me,” she says.

“You ran into him?” I ask.

She nods. “I asked if I could eat breakfast downstairs, and I saw him there.”

My stomach starts to churn at the mention of breakfast. Squatting seven hundred pounds burns a lot of calories.

I notice Jane’s eyes are wandering, and I look down to see that my white workout shirt is soaked through with sweat. It’s clinging to my body, and showcasing my cut abs, which are bulging out from all the weight I lifted.

“So,” I say. “I guess you want to lift some weights?”

“No, no,” she says, putting her hands up and waving them at me. “Not at all. I’m on vacation.”

“I think she wants to,” Magnus says, laughing.

“Come on,” I say. “I can teach you.”

“I’m wearing a sweater and jeans,” she says.

I snap my fingers, and the footman dashes toward me.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Can you bring some women’s workout clothes for Jane to change into?”

The footman takes a look at Jane to figure out her size, nods, and rushes off.

“You have a guy standing in the gym just in case you need women’s workout clothes?” she asks.

“Donovan!” I shout.

He digs his feet in and stops. “Yes?”

“And a wild berry smoothie, too. With whey.”

He nods and races off.

“He’s mostly there to get me smoothies,” I say.

“Does he know then?” she asks. “That you’re…”

I nod. “He knows. This is the royal weight room. No outsiders can get in. It’s just for me, my sister, and our cousins.”

“I see,” she says.

“And today, you can, too.”

I smile at her, and she blushes.

I wonder if she’s given any thought to what I said. I know it’s a lot to spring onto someone, and I do barely know her. I think I like her―I mean, I do like her―but it’s a hell of a thing to ask someone. “If my father kicks the bucket in the next few days, will you be willing to marry me and become the Queen of Nordia?”

It would be one thing if Papa were in good health, and I could all but guarantee that Jane could “court” me for as long as she needed.

“Magnus,” I say, looking at my watch. “You need to report in soon.”

He nods. “Yeah, I’ll leave you two to it.”

I’m still panting from the squats, and Jane nervously eyes the bar.

“I can’t lift that much weight,” she says.

I laugh. “Of course you can’t. You’ll start with just the bar. Unless you’ve squatted before?”

She shakes her head. “I’m more of a cardio person...running and spin classes. I leave the squat rack to the meatheads. No offense.”

“You calling me a meathead?” I ask, leaning into her.

“I said ‘no offense!’” she defends herself.

I laugh. “I know, but I was just joking with you.”

Donovan rushes back in with my smoothie in one hand and a bag in the other.

He hands me the smoothie, and I all but inhale it.

He hands the bag over to Jane and points her in the direction of the locker room.

She looks at the bag of clothes and sighs. “Do you really want me to lift weights?”

I grin. “It will be fun.”

She heads toward the locker room with the clothes, and I suck down the last of the smoothie as I wait for her. I’m starting to feel recovered―and I almost want to lift another set―but I know I shouldn’t. I’ve lifted enough already, so now I just need to rest and let the muscles rebuild themselves.

Jane returns wearing skin-tight black yoga pants and an equally tight-fitting top.

I try not to stare at her, but damn, she looks good.

Her face is red, and she looks up at me. “This is kind of...not what I’d usually wear.”

“Well,” I say, forcing my eyes not to gawk. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” she mutters. “So what do I do?”

I look over at the squat rack, and it still holds seven hundred pounds. I should have been removing the plates while she got changed, but I forgot.

I remove the pin and start pulling off the plates.

Jane grabs the pin off on the other side. She’s going to try to help me, but the plates are too heavy.

“Wait,” I say, rushing toward her.

“It’s fine,” she says, pulling off the plate.

I get right behind her as the one hundred-pound plate slides off the bar, plummeting toward her feet.

Standing behind her, I grab the plate and catch it before it crushes her toes. My body is pressed hard against her, and I can feel her thick ass through the yoga pants on my thigh. I go hard as steel in an instant, and I back up from her, prying the plate out of her hands and holding it over my shorts so that she can’t see my bulging dick.

“It said forty-five on it,” she says.

“Forty-five kilograms,” I say. “That’s one hundred pounds.”

“Oh,” she says, her face turning pale. “I’m an idiot.”

I count backward from ten and don’t look at her, hoping my raging hard cock will soften. It finally does, and I slide the plate back onto the rack. I remove the rest of the plates on my own until the bar is bare.

“This bar only weighs like fifty pounds,” I say. “I’ll show you how to lift it properly. There will be no risk that it will hurt you or be too heavy, I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding.

“You’re going to get under the bar like this,” I say, gripping the bar with both hands and sliding my body under it. “I’ll lower it for your height, of course, but you get under it like this, and then pull your shoulders back and rest the bar on your back just like this.”

I show her, and she mimics the motion.

“From there,” I say, “it’s all footwork. You get a good center of balance, and you drive the bar up with your body.”

I make sure the bar is tight on my shoulders. “Then you take one step back, widen your stance, and squat.”

I do one squat to show her, then I put the bar back. “Think you got it?”

“I think so,” she says, nodding.

I lower the bar four notches to compensate for her height, and then I gesture for her to go into the rack, and I step out.

“I’ll stay behind you,” I say. “Just in case.”

She goes under the bar, just like I showed her, and she tries to get the bar onto her shoulders.

“No,” I say. “Here.”

I put a hand on her back and run it up along her shoulder. I feel myself getting hard again, and I’m half tempted to just push my rock-hard cock against her, and cup her breasts―

“Like this?” she says, pulling her shoulders back.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s perfect.”

She grips the bar, and I adjust her hands so they are wider out.

“Now stand up straight,” I say.

She gets the bar up, and I grip her waist. “One step back.”

She steps back, and I regretfully let go of her body. “Now go down as deep as you can.”

“What if I can’t stand back up?” she asks.

“Then I’ll help you.”

She nods, wobbles a little bit, and squats down.

“Up,” I say. “Flex your muscles.”

She stands up. “Woah, that was way lighter than I thought. Can I add some weight?”

I laugh. “Look at you. Here a minute ago, you didn’t even want to do this at all, and now you’re asking for more weight?”

She pouts at me. “It looks so pathetic when the bar is empty, I at least want to look like I’m lifting something.”

“Hmm,” I say, stroking my chin. “How heavy did it feel to you?”

“Not heavy at all,” she says.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s up you to around a hundred pounds.”

I slide some plates onto the bar, and Jane bites her lip.

“What?” I ask.

“One hundred pounds sounds like a lot,” she says. “The plate I dropped was a hundred.”

“Right,” I say. “But now you’ll have the weight distributed out over your entire body, so it will be a cakewalk.”

“If you say so,” she says.

I snap the pins on, and Jane steps forward. She gets under the bar like I instructed her to do before, but she stalls nervously once she’s under it.

“What now?” she asks.

“Just like before,” I say. “I’m right behind you.”

“It feels a lot heavier,” she says.

“It’s about fifty pounds heavier,” I say. “The weight of a heavy grocery bag.”

“Since when does a prince go grocery shopping?”

She’s got me there. I’ve never held a grocery bag in my life, but for basic training we had to haul twenty-kilogram bags of rice.

“Up,” I say.

She pushes the bar up and stands there. “It’s heavy.”

“Step back,” I say, gripping her waist.

She takes the step back, and she shifts her feet around until her stance is balanced and symmetrical. I find myself staring at her ass in those tight yoga pants.

“You look stable,” I say. “Now squat down, then as soon as you’re down, push back up with all your strength.”

She squats down, but she just sits there.

“Up,” I say.

She starts to move up, but falls back down.

“I’m stuck! Rikard, I can’t get back up!”

I look down and notice that she somehow pulled her feet in together, and her stance is no longer wide enough. She’ll have a hell of a time getting back up now.

“Just fall down,” I say, knowing that the safety latches will hold the bar.

“I’m scared,” she says.

“I can get you back up, iIf you don’t want to go down.”

“Please,” she says, her voice wavering. Her body is starting to wobble, and the bar is looking like it might tip.

I squat down behind her, wrap my hands tightly around her waist until my palms dig into her stomach, and I press up against her back. Once I’m pressed tight up against her, I drive my hips forward and stand up, bringing Jane’s body and the weight on her back up effortlessly with me. After squatting seven hundred pounds, this two hundred pounds and change is nothing.

Once we’re both up, I realize that I’m up, meaning my dick is at attention. And it’s pressing right up into her ass. There’s no way she can’t feel it either through those thing yoga pants, but I don’t back away―I can’t yet, the weight is still resting on her.

I let go of her hips and bring my hands up to the bar, then I lift the bar up above my head. I expect Jane to step forward, but she basically just leans back into me.

“You’re warm,” she says.

“I was lifting for over an hour before you got here,” I say.

“Really warm,” she says.

I notice the warmest spot is where my cock is pressing into her thick ass. It’s impossibly warm, and I can feel it pulsing with impatience.

She slides her ass down along my cock, and my eyes roll back into my head. I’m still holding the one hundred pounds above both of our heads, but there’s no way I’d lose my grip on such light weight.

“Sir,” Donovan’s voice breaks in.

Shit, he’s standing right there while Jane grinds against me.

She jumps away from me and looks over at Donovan with a beet-red face.

“Uh,” I say.

“It’s Magnus,” he says, holding up my phone.

Jane looks at me and locks eyes. “Was he there the whole time?” she whispers.

“He’s good at being invisible,” I say. “At least until he talks.”

I grab the phone from Donovan.

“Magnus?” I say. “Weren’t you on duty?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But something’s up. I shouldn’t really tell you, I don’t think, but…―”

Suddenly the connection cuts off.

“Magnus?” I say, but I can tell by the way no sound hits my ear that the call has been totally cut out. He can’t hear me.

I try to call him back, but there’s no service.

“What is it?” Jane asks.

“I got a bad feeling. Come with me.”