Page 94 of My Dark Horse Prince

“Said every single villain ever.”

His hand clenches at his side. “I’m not a villain for killing the men who tried to kill you. I think most any man you’ve ever met would agree with me.”

“But I don’t.”

“It wasn’t even the first time they tried.” Now he’s standing right in front of me, a muscle in his jaw pulsing. “You would have died if I hadn’t found you that night before you bled out.”

He’s right about that, but he’s missing the point. “Protecting someone’s not a free pass. If you really want to take care of me, you have to do what I want. Not what you want.”

“What would you have had me do?” A lot of the tension has gone out of his body, and he’s looking at me with curiosity. Wonder, almost.

“I don’t know,” I confess. “But I would not have had you play with them until they died.” I still see that in my dreams. When I close my eyes. All the time. “It haunts me.”

“I’m sorry. You should know that I wasn’t playing. I was punishing, and they deserved that and much, much more.” His hand floats upward, like he wants to stroke my hair.

Which is disturbing, since he was just talking about punishing people by slicing them up.

I flinch.

And he drops his hand. “I don’t know what to do to show you that I’m sorry.”

“Nothing,” I say. “Do nothing to me, nothing for me, and nothing with me. That’s what I want.”

“Is it really?” That muscle’s working again, and it just accentuates his powerfully square jaw.

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll be here, by your side, but if you don’t tell me to do something, I won’t do it.”

I wish I could believe him. Knowing that he would listen to me, no matter what, would do a lot to ease my anxiety about the future. Proximity to violent men always leads to more danger, and men like him are never able to keep their promises.

Never.

Just like the nail guns that make houses go up so much faster, there’s a danger in being near him that no one, not even the man himself, can quite control.

One stray nail is all it takes to cause a lifetime of pain.

18

Finally—finally—a solid month and some change into our training, we’re jumping oxers and doing a few small combinations. We’re only jumping two and a half feet, but it’s progress.

I understand Kristiana’s main motivation: to keep me safe. But with Charlemagne’s skill level, we can clearly move up faster. I need to be practicing patterns, not incrementally doing small runs like the ones I teach my kids.

“See?” I ask. “We can go higher. Let’s just do three feet.”

Kris looks like she might throw something at me. I’m lucky she’s only holding a coffee. There’s no way she’ll part with that until the last drop is drained. “Just do as I tell you and stop complaining.”

So we do.

I’ve noticed that Charlemagne’s paying attention whenever she gives instructions, and it’s a very strange experience, having a horse who knows where to go as well as I do. The only time it causes problems is when he decides to get somewhere a little faster. He hasn’t done many courses, so he doesn’t always understand why we need to take the longer way round.

“Blue to red, then the purple line,” Kris says. “After that, I want you to make a hairpin turn and hit the flowers.”

A triple with two box oxers. Even if it’s only two and a half feet for each, I’m excited.

“Once you come off those, I want you to circle and do the purple line one more time,” Kris says. “That’ll be a nine-jump run, and next week, we’ll start working twelve-jump runs, set up more like the ones they may have in Riga.”

A little thrill runs through me.

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