Page 5 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

My energy is so volatile that a stranger thinks that I would harm —

Shifting his hands from my upper arms, he presses his forearm across my chest, leaning into me and finally switching to slightly accented English.

“What the fuck were you thinking? Trying to ride him in the dark? Do you want to die? Do you want him to kill you? Do you want to be responsible for his death when he breaks a fucking leg?”

That’s too many questions to answer. Even if I had the answers.

“Look at him! The ears, the eyes!” the enraged figure spits madly. “He’s scared of whatever the fuck you’re trying to do in the middle of the fucking night.”

Realizing that my arms are free to move and that the ground is once again solid under my feet — as if my mind is still checked out, still expecting the death blow I saw coming and did nothing to thwart — I finally shove my hair out of my face.

I look at Perseus in the ring.

I look and see everything I’ve willfully ignored.

My rescuer eases back, slowly removing his arm from across my upper chest and muttering a disconcerted, “Fuck, fuck …” under his breath.

I stay pressed up against the side of the stable, knowing I’ve fucked up and not really wanting to face it. Cowardly, yes. Except …

I’m no longer coming out of my skin.

As stupid and reckless as my actions might be, I feel invigorated for the first time in months.

So I meet the stranger’s gaze.

He’s fucking gorgeous. In that way that only a pretty boy transitioning into a grown man can be.

Sharp jawed, wide green eyes, slashes of prominent cheekbones, medium-brown skin flushed with health. Full lips. Straight teeth. A shifter of some sort.

He’s holding his hands up now, his gaze flicking between my eyes and my left shoulder .

Because he can’t remember if it’s okay to look royalty in the eyes? Or because he’s noticed the purple hue to my gaze?

His palms face forward placatingly. No, pleadingly.

He’s just realized who I am.

Who he’s pinned up against the side of a stable.

Putting unwanted hands on me is technically punishable by death. As in, there’s an actual archaic law covering that, still logged in some ancient tome in my father’s study.

“Your Highness …” he murmurs, his tone gentle as if waiting for me to bite back. To lash out with whatever my purple eyes declare I can do.

I am, however, not my father’s child in essence. Not like Armin was.

“Have I …” He stammers as he continues, “I didn’t know … I would never hurt …”

A slow, wide grin spreads across my face. I’m all riled up, but invigorated rather than desperate now— and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so struck by someone in my life. Attraction is usually a slow sort of burn for me.

Confusion mars his perfect fucking brow, and he swallows hard.

Maybe he’ll be less pretty in the daylight. But as inappropriate as the impulse is, I’m moments away from asking him to press me against the side of the stable again. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere sexual, just being … dominated? No, that isn’t the right word, not the right feeling.

Just being out of control of my own body, my own choices, even for just a moment was … freeing? But not in a destructive way.

His hands and guidance are forceful, but not —

A soft smile finally overtakes his confusion, possibly because he’s noticed I’m still just staring at him and still smiling myself. As if I’m shocked dumb by his beauty, by our abrupt … introduction.

And maybe I am.

I playfully blow a lingering piece of my sure-to-be-crazy hair out of my face. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I’ve … not been myself.”

That wipes the smile from his face. He nods, hands falling to his sides. “Understandably.”

The chasm of grief instantly tries to crack through the thrum of heady anticipation I’m luxuriating in. I shut it down, roughly. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

He glances over his shoulder to check on Perseus.

The horse has stilled but continues to watch me. Warily? Regret etches itself through my chest, taking the same path that the grief tried to break through.

“How do you prefer to be addressed?” I ask, all formal because apparently I default to my protocol training when confronted with so much male beauty. At least while also trying to behave as if I’m still capable of functioning.

I don’t know him by sight, but I know who he must be. I would recognize the regular stable trainers or grooms. He’s the horse breeder whose reputation triggered the bidding war my father won. I know his actual name, of course.

I’m also achingly aware of a strange coincidence unfolding before me.

I just inked that name on a list.

Or I hallucinated it.

“Rian,” he says, pronouncing it with the Irish intonation. REE-ann. “Rian Callaghan.”

“I needed to ride,” I say, still acting like an idiot because that much is likely more than obvious to him.

He bobs his head, a bit of his smile easing back. “We can go the moment the sun rises, Your Highness. I can accompany you. If you’ll be so kind as to show me the trails?”

I don’t offer him my name. Because my birth name is just too much right now, and my common name is a fucking exploded landmine on top of another landmine on top of another landmine.

I grab hold of the playful energy I can sense he’s trying to suppress — and yes, that little bit of talent is something that actually comes naturally to me. Though usually not with near strangers, and not when my own senses are overwhelmed with grief and anger. “Are you trying to manage me, Rian?”

“How am I doing?”

“You are delightfully distracting.”

“Do you need to be distracted, Your Highness?”

Oh, good. He’s ignoring my pitiful and inappropriate attempt to flirt and is just going with it.

“Just … just … Highness is fine.” That’s better than princess , which most people default to. Because technically, commoners aren’t supposed to use my name unless invited.

“Highness,” he murmurs thoughtfully.

I look him dead in the eye and ask, “Does my energy bother you?”

He clears his throat, swallowing again. “No, Highness. The opposite.”

I step away from the stable wall, momentarily feeling unmoored without it holding me up. I step close enough to him that I have to tilt my head back, expose my neck, to keep looking him in the eye.

His gaze rakes across my bare skin.

I swear I can actually feel his intent— and it spurs me forward. I don’t want this moment, this feeling, to end. It’s selfish, and rash, and I’ve never ever been intimate with anyone I didn’t already know well … but the words, the request just spills past my lips.

“Do you … do you want to continue to distract me, Rian?”

He shivers as I utter his name. It’s more of a shift in energy than a shudder. But I’m so focused on him that I catch it.

An answering warmth I haven’t felt even a hint of in months, maybe even a year, ignites between my legs.

“Yes,” he says, biting his lower lip and glancing over at Perseus, who is now watching us quizzically from the ring.

“He’s calmed down enough to follow me to his stall,” I say, momentarily struggling to ignore an intense desire to lift up on my toes and take that lower lip for myself.

“Has he?” Rian asks, mildly amused.

Grinning, I step close enough to feel his heat.

It’s possible I’m just exceedingly cold, but being a shifter, he might also run hot.

I’ve never actually been skin-to-skin with a shifter.

Not in the way I suddenly need to be touching Rian, at least. It’s as if all my grief and anger has refocused on this moment, this energy, this warmth building between us, instead of just radiating from me unhindered and helpless.

“Please tell me you’re at least eighteen,” I say.

“Well, I’d have to be to legally enter into a contract, wouldn’t I?” he says, arch but playful. Also not directly answering my question.

“With my father? Who the fuck knows what laws he’d bend to get you on his payroll.”

Rian laughs, low and husky. “What would my age matter to you in this moment, Highness?”

Slightly stymied, I don’t answer him for long enough that I feel the moment start to slip away from us.

I don’t do this sort of thing .

I don’t indulge.

I don’t play.

Not like this.

He’s too young. I’m too …

I’m in too much pain.

Rian reaches up, slowly, slowly, as I track his hand. He threads his fingers through the elastic barely holding half my mess of hair back. Then he tugs it free. The rest of my hair tumbles around my upturned face.

He tilts his head, still holding my gaze, but now close enough for me to feel his breath across my lips. “Do you still need a ride?”

My heart thunders in my chest. For all the right reasons now. I have to quietly clear my throat to speak. “Are you offering?”

“Yes.”

“Then … yes, please.”

I expect him to kiss me.

He doesn’t. He simply straightens, then gestures toward Perseus. He watches me with the intense focus that only a shifter can pull off without coming off as creepy, as I lead the horse back into the stables and tuck him into his stall with an apology apple to chew on.

Then I turn back to Rian questioningly, contemplating leading him into an empty stall and onto a pile of fresh hay.

I don’t mind that idea at all, actually.

I catch the white of his teeth in the filtered moonlight as he flashes me a knowing grin, along with the shift in his essence.

“I took the upstairs apartment,” he says. “To be near the horses, rather than one of the outer cottages.”

“Convenient,” I murmur. Clearly, that’s also how he noticed me trying to saddle Perseus in the middle of the night .

I lead the way to the apartment instead, pausing at the base of the interior stairs as he resets the alarm. Then I ascend slowly even though I want to dash up the stairs. Because Rian is watching my ass intently.

No one has ever looked at me as if they want me naked and underneath them. And I suddenly want to savor the moment.

I want my brain this empty, yet completely focused, for as long as I can maintain it.