They say a Princess’s duty is to her people. Tonight, I have been thinking of a different, more primal duty. My own.

After the council adjourned, I dismissed my attendants. I needed to feel the weight of the day dissolve, not in a bath, but under the weight of a fantasy. I laid back on the furs of my private chambers and let my mind wander far from treaties and titles.

I didn’t imagine a gentle lover. I imagined a beast. One who wouldn’t ask permission to part my thighs, who would simply take the space he wanted. I pictured his calloused hands pinning my wrists above my head, his rough beard scratching the soft skin of my inner thighs as he tasted me. I thought of the brutal, beautiful force of him fucking into me, my back arching off the bed, my cries echoing off the stone walls. I wanted to feel my own slickness coat his cock, to hear the filthy, wet sounds of him taking what he wanted from my cunt. To look into eyes that see no princess, only a woman begging to be filled, to be marked, to be claimed so completely that the memory of the throne room fades into a dull hum.

Sometimes, the most regal act is to surrender utterly to the animal within. To let the crown fall and simply be a body, screaming in pleasure.