This is an excerpt from "A Princess Bound: Naughty Fairy Tales for Women" edited by Kristina Wright. It has been reprinted with permission from Cleis Press.
He did not come every night, and even when he did, sometimes he only stood and watched me work over the shirts. He was the king of the land, and there were no doors that were barred to him. If he wished to watch a madwoman sew endlessly and silently with flowers, it was his right. His name was Marek, but I had little enough cause to use it, and when he opened the door to my room, I stood and then knelt before him in greeting, a subject to her liege. Of course I did not speak.
He stripped his black leather gloves from his hands, and instead of telling me to rise, he came to stand close to me. He had bathed before the hunt. My nose was filled with the smell of sage soap, and underneath that was his own smell, warm and rich. He was a tall man, though not broad, and this close to him, I felt the way that I had when he first caught me. He could tear me to pieces if he wished, but something told me that he never would.