Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(64)

I regarded Aleksey thoughtfully after he told me this. It had clearly taken some courage to admit, for no man wants to tell of such an experience—and especially not with a five-year-old child. I think it affected Aleksey’s view of himself, knocked a little of that sense of entitlement from him. He looked so thin, so defeated.

“He wasted his time then, did he not?”

“Huh?” Aleksey raised his eyes from contemplation of the fire.

“Attempting that with you—for that stick was very thin. You happily take a far greater thickness up your—”

He hit me in outrage and toppled upon me.

Light then sparkled once more in his brilliant green eyes, and he hit me again, then mounted me, and he came back to that sense of himself and knew again all his entitlement, for he was very entitled to my arse and all the rest of my body whenever he wanted it.

He swelled quickly, naturally, easily, and the entry was painful, for it had been some days, and although I had few outward marks upon my body, I felt as though I had fallen over a vast fall of water for some reason. But the familiarity of Aleksey’s cock pushing into me made me arch and know once more the pleasure a man’s body can feel in all its glory, instead of pain, which is all I had endured for so many days.

Lean, hungry, urgent, we did not last long, and I welcomed his wash deep inside me as mine released between us, and he fell upon it as he sometimes did, hunger adding urgency to his tongue and lips. I sank back upon the cold earth and spread my limbs with the weight of his warm body upon me and watched a bird circling overhead.

All I could hear was the noise of the river and the falls in the distance, but the vibration I could feel now was Aleksey’s heart beating against my chest and the occasional twitch of him deep inside me still, reviving, as was his wont, being still so young and so fine.




ALEKSEY IS always my care and my charge, but that night a deep sense of pride came over me as I watched him eating the turkey I had snared and roasted upon the fire for him. Not that there was anything particularly attractive about either of us eating, I must say. Starving, we ripped and tore, grease upon fingers and faces, but the taste of that hot, fresh meat after so many days was wondrous.

We ate until we felt sick, and then we took the hot water we had prepared and shaved each other. Still naked, I think we would have turned this activity into something else, but we were too full and too tired to do so. It was delightful to have him so close as I sat upon a rock, his fingers spread upon my bearded cheek, his face screwed up with concentration. He told me I would have a new scar on my forehead where I had been kicked and then hit with a musket. I told him in that case I might paint it with fearsome designs to scare the next devil we encountered. He crossed himself, and I laughed at him. Which, as you can probably guess by now, got me some more punishment.

When I was done—face scraped smooth, hair washed and golden, skin sanded lightly and clean—it was his turn.

All we had been through had been unwittingly precipitated by the flawless beauty of the body in my hands. Even the dark beard could not disguise the seductive good looks beneath. People had died for this….

“Stop it.”

“What?”

Aleksey gave me a miserable look. “I think it would be better for all concerned if I fell in that fire and lost this face.”

I pulled his head to my chest, straddling his thighs. I kissed his hair. For one moment my head reeled—the effects of the huge meal perhaps on an empty stomach, the letting go of the stress I had been under, but I saw the whole place as if seeing it from the eye of the bird I had been watching: the deep, seductive green of the river; the purity of the white crests; the smooth, long pull of the waves; the multicolored rocks and pebbles, each unique in their own shape and form; the trees with their abundance of game; and the cleanliness of the air with its smell of pine resin and woodsmoke… Aleksey’s kingdom.

I ruffled his hair. “You are part of a greater design, little one. Do not question your God. He has made all things to please himself—and I have to say that I agree with his intent.”




I WOKE early the next morning and murmured to Aleksey that I was going hunting. He grunted, pulled his coat over his head, and went back to sleep.

If he wondered why I was wet when I returned, or why I had caught no game, he did not have opportunity to question it. He had been still asleep and had needed waking up, and I did not do this gently or prepare him in any way.

It was my turn, after all.

We stayed there a week, and I was similarly wet every morning, and he similarly woken when I returned to our tent.




WE WERE, therefore, in some ways lighter, despite good hunting, upon our return, but in other ways heavier. Quite a bit heavier. Freedom seemed to appreciate being a packhorse now, as if he comprehended the import of what he carried.

I did not tell Aleksey that I had taken the weight of a small child in gold from the pool alongside the river. He was a scrupulous man, reared in the highest traditions of honor and observance of correct ownership and title.

I say finders keepers.

The dead had no need of it, and it amused me no end as we rode home through the woods that not only was I sleeping with a king, I was now possibly the wealthiest man in the New World.

Life is strange, is it not?

But levity aside, we are changed. I cannot deny that. I hope the roar in my ears will fade, the tremor of my hand cease. They are both slightly better than when I first got home.