Read Online Horns for the Harem Girl by Lynn Red - Free Book Online Page B

After he made the sound, he kicked his hind legs into the air and reared his forelegs high off the ground. “An ibex wheelie,” Helena giggled. “Of all the things to encounter, this is possibly the last one I ever imagined.”
    “Wheelie. No... hoofy?”
    He laughed again and sped across the parched ground, a cloud rising up in his wake. That was when Helena realized they’d encountered no guards, they’d not even encountered an abandoned checkpoint. “How did we get out so easily?”
    “Blew up the wall. The first fire was a bomb making a hole for us to escape. This has been planned since long before you and I met. I just never wanted any part of it. My mother – Maret,” the prince said, “she gave me up when the king took power. She’s wanted revenge ever since.”
    “You’re... hers?” Helena said, her voice distant with wonderment. “It makes sense though; you both have such good hearts. You never reminded me very much of the king, I have to admit.”
    “He’s a good man, but a bad ruler. He is my father, but I’m a bastard. He and Maret cavorted back in the days when his father had the throne. Which is probably why she’s so understanding about our little predicament. But anyway, I’d never be part of her plan because I didn’t want the trouble.”
    “Trouble?”
    “Of fighting. Of possibly dying. Of not spending my days running wild and my nights feasting and drinking and carrying on. I never got to the point I wanted to settle down and I...” He trailed off.
    “You what?”
    “I never found a woman I loved enough to risk all that for,” he said simply.
    She hugged him, tighter than before. “I love you too,” she said into his ear.
    Another rearing of his forelegs, then another kick of the back ones. They fell silent as the desert vanished underfoot and the stars blazed in the millions above their heads. Out in the utter pitch blackness, there was nothing to stop their brilliant shining, nothing to get in the way of basking in the beauty of the infinite.
    Helena looked back and watched the palace burn.
    That’s when she realized that she’d understood what the prince was saying perfectly. She felt his words, she knew his heart.
    Sliding a hand around the front of his neck, she felt the thump of his heart beating against her, and flattened her cheek against the hard, thick muscles in the prince’s ibex neck. She held fast, and he ran faster.
    For all their differences, just then, they were one.

-8-
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    “H e... Helena? How are you... why are you here? And what in the world is this?”
    Her father’s voice roused Helena from a slumber that felt like it had lasted a month. She rolled over, popped her back and her shoulders and her hips as she always had and then instinctively recoiled, covering herself... even though she was wearing a full, and very modest, set of pajamas.
    “My daughter! Home!”
    Running to her, her father openly let the tears run down his cheeks and embraced her. “I thought you weren’t allowed to leave. I thought we’d never see you again, I—wait, how did you get here in the first place?”
    “The prince brought me,” she said, truthfully. “And we’re not allowed to leave, it’s just that there’s an emergency at the palace and everyone was sent away. I’m lucky to still have a home. Most of the women were put up in a hotel in the city.”
    Helena was a little surprised at how easily her tongue told a series of lies to the man who raised her. Perhaps the harem life was rubbing off on her a little more than she realized with a shock of horror.
    When he finally pulled away and she wasn’t buried in her father’s long, thick beard, she finally got a look at him. The past six months seemed to have aged him a decade or more. His full, normally round cheeks had hollowed. His eyes were further back in his head than she remembered, and were ringed with black circles. But he still had the same boisterous laugh and bright, honest smile