Page 53 of The Princess Tied

She sat on the driver’s bench next to John and after only a few minutes edged nearer, until their bodies rocked against each other. He drew her to him, kissed her hair, her lips, and kept his arm around her.

She sighed and leaned into him. There was a warmth in this. Companionship, attraction, and a new kind of happiness.

Only now that she had recovered from the blissful climax of sex, the reverberations of her behavior were bothering her again.

What if…

“I admit,” she began, “That my behavior bothers me.” She was used to advisors, but the only person she had available to ask was John, and he was certainly not innocent or impartial when it came to the subject. “Now that we have done it, properly.” It? Oh my, this was not coming out well. “I wonder if Xander would approve.”

John had been listening, but she couldn’t tell his thoughts and he was silent for a while.

“I admit I too have wondered. I think it best we wait until Xander can answer. It is done. I have taken you to bed, tied you up, spread your legs…” She poked him in the back and cleared her throat. His next words reeked of amusement. “Made you squeal in orgasmic delight, which was entirely fun, fucked you—” She poked him harder, and felt herself blushing, even though no other person could have heard. “And you agreed to it all. We will wait. Keep poking me, and I will upend you and spank your naked butt here, on this seat in full view of anyone who looks.”

Muttering small curses a princess was allowed, she desisted, and yet also felt an indecent pleasure at his threat. She really must figure out why that attracted her.

“Good.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I will rein in my princess slowly. Maybe spank you later in private? Hmmm?” He pulled away to look at her.

“No!”

His chuckle made her smile also. There was an allure to such banter.

“You are awful,” she whispered, and still no one else was within earshot.

“Yes. However, as you agreed only this morning, I will do whatever I wish to you, and your butt.”

Oh. Po squeezed her thighs together. She had said that. She sat, staring ahead and wondering at how even his quite menacing statement aroused her.

Was she a deviant princess, or just a naughty one? Po chewed her lip. Perhaps the palace library needed a few volumes added to it, to be kept shelved in a corner inside a locked cabinet. With blank spines and warnings on the front…

Do not enter. The Joys of Deviant Kinky Sex within.

At the midday stop, she watched Ruth set up her portable shop using her foldable rucksack. A sign: THERAPY was also hung, and she watched a guard, Shades, and even their floof machine, Ruff, sit on the stool before it. Children arrived and enticed the bunny away, probably with food. They ended up plucking flowers and grass to offer the poor critter then doing a dance around him.

Seeing it all from a distance, with the sun beating down on her back and hair, made her feel terribly lazy.

She munched a sandwich sourced from another trader and wondered at how Shades had become Ruth’s assistant. He seemed to enjoy the whole situation—the taking of money, the sales pitch, the showing of wares. The two of them were not lovers as far as she knew.

Ruff wandered from the shop to where she and John sat beside the wagon, and she fed him pieces of vegetable from the sandwich. Never-ending munchers—rabbits. Dragonflies and various other insects drifted above the seeding grass. The sun was now behind the wagon. The grass around her was dry and sometimes smelled of lemon when she shifted position, and little blue flowers dotted the field. This life could be a fulfilling one, though the guards riding past warned there were threats also.

The invitation to a second banquet, that night, came as they packed up to move on again. The rider handed it down to John and galloped on, without saying a word to either of them. Though she was a slave, she remembered, and so was not worthy of conversation.

No special garment had been sent this time, just the invitation. They would have to go. One did not refuse a royal command.

She eyed John. Unless it was her command, and you were John.

Knowing what had happened yesterday and wondering what the prince had in mind for tonight made her anxious. It was a novel feeling, to fear the future.

Clearly, he had chosen them especially, singled them out. The reason was obvious.

He must have an inkling as to who she was. Yet they needed more time. If he continued to seem unsure, she would have to continue to pretend to be a slave.

“When can we leave?” she asked John. “I fear the prince knows more than he has said.”

“Not yet. Rocky is far less lame, but not yet. If we run, I may have to kill.”

“Hmmm.”

She hadn’t seen him kill anything, yet. It seemed, somehow… preposterous.