I cup my breasts, pushing them forward and step my legs apart. Ben’s frozen, watching, so I do it again, not caring what he thinks of me or how I’m acting. This is all based on instinct and need.
Lust.
Want.
All the base things I’m not meant to feel because I’m a princess. I’m refined.
I’m a woman.
I slip a hand between my legs and cup my sex, pressing a finger inside and then he moves, his hand dropping to his fatigues, between his legs and I know he’s hard. For me.
There’s a knock at my door and the call of ‘breakfast’. I ignore it, slowly closing back the curtains and leaving him standing there, alone. With the image of me naked and touching myself burned into his retinas.
I won’t be ashamed later. I won’t avoid his eyes when he looks at me. It was risky and wild, but now I feel alive although my body still yearns for his.
Finish what he started more than a decade ago.
Let me find out what it’s like to be with him.
* * *
The stables are quiet, most of the horses out in the field nearby, some of them being trained. Ellidh, my favourite, is peering over the fence as if she’s waiting for me to find her and take her out for a ride. Time is poor as my father’s insisting on a family meal before I head off to Jumby Bay and three weeks of sun and beaches at a private resort on a private island. I’ve been before and it was my wish to go again, to be able to sunbathe by the pool in a bikini that was almost indecent.
There’s the sound of galloping hooves and flicker of mud as a horse turns and heads towards me. Ben’s the rider, his head without a helmet and his body without a top. He’s wearing the same army fatigues as before and I vaguely remember to feel some sort of embarrassment that’ve I’ve stood at a window naked and let him see me.
“You’re going out for a ride?”
“Hence the jodhpurs. I opted to keep the nakedness to the indoors.” Embarrassment wasn’t my shade.
He grins and I feel a sense of achievement.
“As your head of security, I’d rather you didn’t expose yourself in public.”
“You didn’t like the view?”
“I’d need a closer look.”
My smile is victorious. “Maybe by the pool in a few hours.”
He shakes his head but I can tell he’s amused.
“I’m taking Ellidh out around the loch. Do you want to join us?” It was private land, secure. Somewhere I had my freedom. I’d never asked Micky to join me, or even Lennox or Elise, unless it was a planned ride.
This should be about me and my last time with my horse for a few weeks but I wanted Ben there. Every summer, he’d hung around the stables, learned to ride, and like with everything else he’d done, he’d become a master at it.
“For an hour or so. I have to go through the security detail for the airport again.” He rolls his eyes.
“I thought that was done?”
“It is.”
I laugh. Micky being protective was to be expected. “Give me five to get her saddled up.”
* * *
I see him ten minutes later, this time wearing a T-shirt that’s too fitted. There’s still no helmet, but then, I’m not wearing one either.
We head off to the track that rises quickly, taking us up between the dense pines and follows the loch. He knows the route, which doesn’t surprise me; I’m aware that every step I make out of the castle even in a place where I think of myself as being safe, is tracked.
