Free Reign: A Royal Military Romance by Roxie Noir Page A

helps too,” he says.
    I sigh, still rubbing slowly widening circles on his back, trying to ignore the way his body feels beneath my fingers and the effect it’s having on me.
    “I’m burning this shirt,” I mutter.
    He raises both eyebrows.
    “Now?”
    I stop rubbing for a moment, open my mouth to say no , blush, shut my mouth, keep rubbing, and swallow.
    “Only if I can have yours instead,” I say instead.
    What the fuck is wrong with you? I think.
    Slowly, Kostya smiles, and a teasing, challenging look comes into his gray eyes.
    “I don’t think you’ll go through with it,” he says.
    “Is that a dare?” I ask, my fingertips tracing a circle around his shoulder.
    “It’s a challenge,” he says. “I’ll give you my shirt, but you have to burn yours. Right here, right now.”
    Laugh, say no, and leave , I think. Just for once, try not to make a situation worse.
    I take my hand from his shoulder, take the lighter from my pocket, and set it on the stone wall. Then I look back at Kostya just in time to see his gaze flick up from my way-too-perky nipples.
    Heat floods downward through my body, even though it’s cool out. I’m pretty uncertain about a lot of things right now, but I know one thing for an absolute fact.
    Prince Kostya wants to see me topless. He turns to face me, still smiling.
    “No cowardice,” he says, and I laugh.
    “You mean, don’t chicken out?” I say.
    “Sure,” he says. “No chickens.”
    “No chickens,” I say.
    My heart is hammering in my chest, and as certain as I was that I shouldn’t have been smoking up on the ramparts, I am super ultra really fucking certain that I shouldn’t be getting half-naked with the prince up here. I’m equally certain that telling anyone who catches us that it was his idea will be useless.
    I hold out one hand anyway, the other on my hip, my bravest stance.
    “Your shirt,” I say.
    He fucking dared me, after all.

10

Kostya
    W hen the hottest girl you’ve ever seen is standing in front of you, wearing short pajama shorts and demanding your shirt, there’s only one option.
    You give the girl your shirt.
    “No chickens,” Hazel says. “Your shirt.”
    I think she’s laughing at me, but I reach behind my head and tug my undershirt off anyway, then deposit it in her outstretched hand, the soft white cotton crumpling. Her hand makes a fist around it.
    Then she looks at me, her eyes traveling up from the waistband of my jeans. It takes a split second, but I can practically feel the burning trails that her gaze leaves behind.
    It’s been a long time since a woman saw me shirtless, and I cross my arms over my chest, hoping the half-dark hides some of the scars.
    “Well, zloyushka ?” I ask. “Feeling some chickens now?”
    I know that’s not quite the English phrase, but I’m too fucking distracted to remember idioms.
    “It’s chickening out ,” she says, the teasing look back in her eyes. “And I’m not.”
    She tosses my shirt on the stone wall, next to the lighter, and then turns her back to me.
    I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed. My cock twitches anyway, half-hard no matter how much I try to keep it down.
    Hazel whips her shirt off, and suddenly she’s half-naked on the palace roof, her black hair swishing over her shoulder blades. She’s got those perfect dimples in her lower back, right above her shorts, and despite myself I go rock hard just looking at them.
    I clench my fingers into my arms. I swear, it looks like those indents were put there so I could grab her by the hips and sink my thumbs into them, and it’s all I can think about.
    My hands on her skin, pulling her toward me. The gasp she’d make, the way the curve of her ass would rub against me.
    I grind my teeth together, but I can’t stop staring .
    She tosses her shirt onto the stone wall, and as she does, I can just barely see the outer curve of one breast, and I clench my teeth even harder. As she grabs my shirt, she glances over her shoulder at