Page 21 of My Dark Horse Prince

I turn to follow their gaze, and my mouth drops as well. Right in front of me is a very large, very muscular, very naked man.

His longish, dark brown hair is shaggy, and he looks like a copycat carving of the ancient Greek gods, with perfectly sculpted muscle covering his upper and lower body.

With one notable exception.

He would need an extra large loincloth. No simple Speedo would work to keep him modest.

I can’t help swallowing, in spite of the dryness of my mouth. “What—who—Where’s Grigoriy?”

The very hot, very large, very hung, naked man arches one dark eyebrow over a startlingly cerulean eye. “I’m Grigoriy, and I’m very pleased to finally meet you, Mirdza.”

5

Once, when I was seven years old, I went to a birthday party for one of the rich kids in my school class. They had a lot of things at that celebration that shocked and amazed me, from a cake almost as tall as I was to people walking around the room with trays of food. They were carrying them so that the guests could pluck things off to eat. Why they didn’t just put them on the table and let us walk over to the table? It’s still a mystery.

But the strangest thing of all was something we did as an activity at the party. A man showed up and helped us—in our party dresses and Sunday-best shoes—to pour white glue into a bucket… and then to add shaving cream to it. He asked Elmira what her favorite color was—she said blue—and he dumped blue food coloring into it.

It turned into slime.

The feel was odd. The look was bizarre. None of us had ever felt anything quite like it. We all shrieked at the feel of it against our skin. The party girl decided she wanted someone to take off their shoes and stand in the bucket. It was a weird request, but seven-year-olds are odd.

For some reason, she chose me to do it.

Pretty soon everyone in the room was chanting my name. It was exhilarating, and terrifying, and exciting. I unbuckled my shoes, and then I stepped in the bucket. The slime squished between my toes and I sank and sank and sank. . .and then another hand slid into mine, our fingers interlocking.

The whole thing—all the eyes on me, the slime in my toes, and my bare feet in a bucket—was terrifying. But it was far less scary than it would have been without Kristiana’s hand in mine, her calm demeanor, and her reassuring words in my ear.

That day, I learned that scary things aren’t nearly as frightening when you’re doing them with a friend at your side. So today, after watching a horse transform magically into a human man, who then turned and addressed me by name, I turn to face my friend.

She smiles at me reassuringly.

Kristiana doesn’t look alarmed, shocked, or even surprised.

“What’s going on?” I angle away from the naked man, and if I do it partly because a small part of me wants to keep looking and looking and looking, well. I’m proud of myself for doing the polite thing.

“Okay.” Kris smiles and bobs her head like a cheerleader at a pep rally. “Wow, you’re taking this really well.”

“Taking this?” I blink.

“The first time Aleks shifted in front of me—”

Aleksandr hisses.

“I’m pretty sure the halter’s off this wild horse, hun,” she says. “She just watched Grigoriy shift, and also, ‘Yay! He shifted.’” She smiles at him. “That means I was right, and she’s involved. Now it’s time to make sure my dearest friend of all time is also on board with keeping this secret?” She turns back toward me slowly, biting her bottom lip and half-smiling.

“On board with what, exactly?”

“So, I never really told anyone, including you, but it’s not personal,” Kris says. “I wanted to tell you.”

“You wanted to tell me. . .that your boyfriend is a horse?” I can feel my brows pulling together.

“Yes.” Kris smiles again. “Look how fast she’s accepting it!”

“Accepting what?” I ask. “None of this makes sense.” But the fact that the horse in front of me who was so helpful, and so insistent, and so, well, so human, is a human, well, it makes sense. I mean, it doesn’t. But also, it does.

“Aleksandr Volkonsky is a Russian prince who comes from a long line of princes who have magical powers and can shift into horse forms.” Kristiana looks totally serious.

So does her boyfriend.

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