TWO | THE ARROGANT PLAYBOY PRINCE

[POV: Sera]

My sister Genevieve craved the whip. She, like every other courtesan in our bloodline, was biologically wired for this twisted life. My family was a museum of voluptuous, seductive women designed to pleasure the royals.

I was the defect. The anomaly.

The very concept of a harem, of sharing bodies like meat on a butcher's block, sickened me. I wanted out, but survival in this palace meant opening your legs to whichever blue-blooded aristocrat pointed a finger at you.

Life had been tolerable until my eighteenth birthday. In this gilded cage, reaching adulthood meant one thing: the live demonstrations. I was forced to sit in velvet-lined rooms and watch orgies. I saw Genevieve giving lap dances, swallowing pride and dignity just to get the royals hard.

Then there was Milian.

The youngest prince, twenty-four years of ruthless masculinity and predatory hunger. His brothers were cold, but Milian? He was a localized earthquake. I had spent years hiding in the shadows, quietly drooling over his sculpted torso during those long hours he spent sparring. I would touch myself in the dark, imagining his hands on me—only me. A naive, pathetic fantasy. I wanted a man who would come home to a modest cabin, not a tyrant who slept with a different courtesan before breakfast.

But then, last week, my drunken aunt whistled at him in the hallway and announced that my virginity was his for the taking.

He had stopped. His stormy grey eyes had locked onto me, burning away my skin.

"With pleasure. Fresh meat," he had smirked.

I panicked. Later that day, while he was fencing with his little nephew, I approached him. I begged him to release me from the arrangement. I offered him labor, servitude—anything but my body.

He paused his sword, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You want to dig in dirt instead of wearing silk?"

"I don't want sex like *that*," I argued.

"Are you asexual?" he mocked, clearly bored. "Or do you just want to play a dom-sub game in my bed?"

The casual cruelty of his words stung. "I just..."

"Tough luck, honey." His voice hardened into a cold edge. "You will strip when I tell you to. Clear?"

I nodded, shattered.

I faked an illness to skip his party, assuming he would replace me and forget. But Milian didn't forget offenses. Today, the summons came. I walked into his room expecting a torturous beating. Instead, he gave me the most earth-shattering orgasm of my life.

Now, pacing my room, my lower body throbbed with a hollow ache. I was a puppet, and he held all the strings. The memory of his tongue slipping inside me made my knees buckle.

I was officially his slave. And the most terrifying part? I craved more.