And of course, no fairy tale prince ever said what Colchester uttered next.

“It’s a shame I’ve already shot you,” he said softly. “I would have so liked to hear you beg.”

All around us, soldiers were stirring, chafing at their new bruises or laughing or playfully shoving the brothers who’d just “killed” them moments earlier, but Colchester and I were worlds apart from them, existing in a bubble of time that had been frozen in that forest for centuries.

I was too apart from myself to be anything other than truly honest. “You’d have to hurt me much worse than this if you want to hear me beg.”

I expected bluster, I expected a snappy, aggressive response where he’d promise to hurt me the next time he had the chance. Hell, I almost wanted it. But he didn’t do that. Something in my words seemed to turn him inward, upon himself. He blinked, bit his lip. It was the first time I ever saw him uncertain and without answers.

“I want to do more than hurt you,” he finally said, looking troubled as he said it. And then he stood up and walked away, leaving me to puzzle over what he meant by those words…and what I wanted them to mean.

I went straight to the showers. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. I went straight to the showers and stripped off all the sweaty, muddy clothes, stood under the spray turned up as hot as it could go, and tried to rinse off the smell of pine needles and gunpowder. Tried to rinse away the feeling of Colchester’s boot on my wrist.

I would have so liked to hear you beg.

Make me, I should have said. Or maybe that would have been the wrong answer too. But I didn’t know the right answer.

And the problem wasn’t that I had a certain kind of appetite that excluded Colchester—I had every appetite. I went to an all-boys boarding school and had sex with the boys there; I came home and slept with the rich girls summering on the coast. I was lucky with my parents, lucky in the Northwest—no one seemed to mind. Once or twice there had been the insinuation that I wasn’t able to “make up my mind” about who I liked to fuck, but that was ridiculous. I knew exactly who I liked to fuck, and it was everybody.

So it wasn’t that I found Colchester attractive that bothered me. No.

It bothered me that he was perfect.

It bothered me that I hated him.

It bothered me that I hated him and he still made me feel itchy and out of control.

It bothered me that he put his boot on my wrist and I liked it.

Curtained stalls lined the shower room and I heard more men come in, joking and complaining about the mud and chill, and I couldn’t bear to think about Colchester while surrounded by other people. I finished up and went back to my room to be alone.

But there was no solitude to be had. When I opened the door, there was a woman sitting on my bed.

I dumped my dirty clothes on the floor and walked over to the cheap wooden dresser where my clean clothes were stored, tugging the towel off my waist so I was completely naked.

“Really?” Morgan asked with distaste.

“This is my room,” I reminded my stepsister. “If you don’t like it, don’t look.”

She rolled her eyes, but ended up turning around. “I don’t even get a hello? A ‘how was your trip?’”

“Hello, how was your trip, why are you here? We agreed to meet tomorrow at the train station.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Wanted to see the other soldiers more like,” I said, pulling on a pair of pants and a sand-colored T-shirt.

“Can’t blame a girl for being interested.”

“We’re going to the party capitol of Europe. I can blame a girl for being impatient.”

“And what about you, Embry?” She turned back to look at me now that I was fully dressed. “How patient have you been?”

“If you’re asking if I’ve fucked anyone on base, the answer is no,” I said. “I know this may seem like an alien concept to you, but I have to follow the rules of my job or else I’ll get in trouble.”

Morgan smiled. She was twenty-three and had been working for my stepfather’s lobbying firm since she graduated from Stanford. There were no rules for her since she worked for her own father, at least none that mattered. “Whatever you say, bubby,” she cooed, using the name she used to call me as a toddler.

I walked over to the bed and took her elbow in a firm hand. Morgan and I had a certain kind of brother-sister relationship…as in: it wasn’t really a relationship at all. We respected each other because we understood each other, but any affection between us was logical, cold, and born of a clan-like pride. I never knew familial love to be any different.

But right now? I just wanted to be alone.

“I think it’s time for you to go back to the village. I’ll meet you at the train station tomorrow. Sissy.”

She gave me a fake pout but allowed me to escort her out of my room and down the hall, where of course we encountered Colchester coming out of his own room, a towel slung over his arm.

Keep walking, I willed him. Just keep walking.

He didn’t. He saw me and paused and then he saw Morgan and stopped altogether. And suddenly I saw my stepsister through his eyes—the silk-black hair hanging to her waist, the emerald eyes, the long throat and slender frame. Something inside my chest tied itself into a knot, loose and hard, like a cherry stem.

“Lieutenant Moore,” he said cheerfully. “Who is your friend?”