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I wish I’d paid more attention when the nicer foster family put me in swim lessons when I was a chubby ten-year-old. The best I could do was dog paddle. I stopped going when the lifeguard I admired—a beautiful teenage boy—told me I was a “floater and not a sinker” and pointed out my rail-thin foster sister to illustrate his comment. “She sinks to the bottom like a lot of thin people do. You have the good fortune of being a floater. It’s just biology.”
He may not have meant any offense, but I took it to heart. I never continued my lessons.
How ironic that this trip was intended, in part, to help me be more confident in the water.
Finally, the cold water jolts my rational brain. I’m a floater. I can just float to the top!
The second I stop flailing about, it happens. I stretch my arms out and begin to float to the surface. I hope. At least until a huge tree branch gets in my way.
Most alarmingly, this branch is attached to what must be a dead tree or something under the water because I am fully wedged now. Another bout of panic sets in, and I kick and shove against the branch, only to realize it’s not a branch after all.
That’s an arm.
Before it registers that the arm belongs to the man I saw on the dock, I’ve broken the water’s surface, and I’m expelling a bucket full of lake water from my nose.
“Don’t…struggle.” commands the deep voice against my neck. “Relax against me.”
It’s not as if I have a choice.
I’m being hauled onto the steady surface of the weather-beaten dock, where the big arm sets me down gently on my side.
Air…wonderful, delicious oxygen. I’m safe. Although I’m still coughing and struggling to breathe, I manage to rasp, “The…boat…I lost the boat…”
“Taken care of,” he says gruffly.
As oxygen returns to my brain, I remember the prince.
Prince Sigurd was the one standing on the dock, glaring at me.
Behind me, there’s a clatter of wood, a straining grunt, and a swish of water over the dock. I rotate to my opposite side, shielding my eyes from the sun, and watch as a shirtless, sopping-wet prince secures the righted rowboat to the dock pole.
A waterlogged white shirt sits in a lump on the deck. I swallow with guilt as I watch the tanned back work, muscles and tendons bunching with the effort of tying off the boat. His cotton trousers are so soaked that the waistband is slung low on his hips, revealing twin depressions just above his rump.
I should not be staring at those things. What are they called? Hip dimples? Pelvic caves? Divots the perfect size and shape for licking?
Well, that tracks. I nearly drowned a second ago, and now I’m staring at a man’s body like I’m entitled to stare.
At a fucking royal.
The royal family’s youngest son and middle child is the burliest of all of them.
Sigurd, the one they call the Wild Prince, just pulled me out of the water.
All the Haart men are ruggedly handsome, but Sigurd? Sigurd is in a class of his own as he towers above everyone, with his unkempt hair, untrimmed beard, and limbs tanned from working out of doors.
I am more of an indoor girl, but maybe that makes Sigurd all the more fascinating.
I have occasionally wondered whether he’d be hairy, too.
Just then, he turns to face me and answers that question. Water drips from the whorls of soft-looking hair accenting his chest, and droplets find their way down, down, and down the fuzzy stomach to the vee lines and lower still. My cheeks heat as I look away. I should not be seeing this much royal skin, especially not one as nice to look at as Sigurd, whose movements are so stimulating to look at.
Look at me. Almost drowned and still having horny thoughts. Well, as soon as this Sasquatch skedaddles, I can handle that problem using a toy I brought.
But he doesn’t leave. In fact, he does the opposite. Before I can say another word, this man is scooping me up and carrying me, one arm hooked under my knees and the other supporting my back.
Then it hits me. Did he come here to get his money back? Has he just realized how huge of a tip he gave me and will now force me to give it back?
“What are you doing?” I ask. It’s more of a shout than a question.
