On the third night, after another solo dinner that I asked to be sent up to my room, a maid appears at my door and hands me a note.
Come to my study.
—E
My pulse jumps. “Now?”
The maid just gestures for me to follow her. So I shrug on my robe—I’ve already changed for bed into one of the lush pairs of satin pajamas Eva provided—and I follow, even though I know the way myself.
The study is no smaller than the other rooms in the castle, but somehow, the bookshelves reaching toward a coffered ceiling and the fire crackling in a massive stone hearth make it feel more intimate. Eva sits behind an ancient desk, perfectly composed in a black silk blouse that makes her pale skin glow.
She doesn’t look up when I enter, and continues writing something into a ledger book. “Sit.”
I take the chair across from her, hyperaware of every detail: the way the firelight plays across her cheekbones, the elegant line of her throat, the scratch of her pen across the page.
And then she sets the pen down.
Her eyes lift to mine.
My mouth goes dry. This is about power. About control. About the way she’s been watching me for three days like a predator deciding when to strike.
And she’s decided tonight is the night.
She stands, moving around the desk, and leans over my chair. “Lovely little Robin,” she murmurs. Her hand cups my face, thumb brushing across my cheek with devastating gentleness. Then her mouth is on mine, and it’s nothinglikegentle. It’s claiming, possessive, a kiss that steals the breath from my lungs and the thoughts from my head.
I should resist the temptation to fall into her kiss. Should remember that this is business, that I’m here because I sold myself, that Eva Novak is selfish and greedy and…
I kiss her back.
She makes a sound low in her throat—satisfaction—and her hands slide into my hair, tugging me closer. The chair scrapes against the floor as she pulls me to my feet, never breaking the kiss, until I’m pressed back against the desk, and she is pressed up against me.
Her hands are insistent—tracing the curve of my waist, tugging open my robe, finding the hem of my pajama top and sliding underneath to brush bare skin. I gasp against her mouth, and she swallows the sound, her teeth grazing my bottom lip.
“Tell me to stop,” she murmurs, but her hands are already unbuttoning my top from the bottom, baring my stomach to the warm air. “Tell me you don’t want this. Make me believe it, and I will stop.”
I can’t. Because despite everything—the circumstances that brought me here, the cold distance she’s shown me, the way this feels like another form of captivity—my body is singing under her touch.
She reaches behind me to the desk and makes a wide movement with her arm. Papers scatter to the floor as she presses me back and slides between my knees, her hands framing my face as she kisses me again. Deeper this time, hungrier, like she’s trying to swallow me whole.
The wood is hard against my spine as she pushes me back insistently, her mouth trailing fire down my throat. My pajama top slides away from my breasts and I’m half-naked in the firelight while she remains fully clothed.
“Beautiful,” she breathes, running a warm hand down my breastbone, and the reverence in her voice makes something flutter in my chest.
Her mouth finds my nipple, tongue circling the peaked flesh until I arch beneath her with a soft cry. Her hands grip my hips, holding me in place as she lavishes attention on first one breast, then the other, until I’m trembling and breathless and completely at her mercy.
“Eva, please?—”
“Please what?” She lifts her head, amber eyes dark with desire. “Tell me what you want, Robin.”
What I want. As if it’s that simple. As if wanting anything in Eva Novak’s world doesn’t come with a price attached.
But her hands are sliding up my thighs, her fingers slippery against the satin, and rational thought becomes impossible. “I want…I want you to touch me.”
“Where?” Her fingers trace patterns on my inner thighs, maddeningly close to where I need her most. “Here?”
“Higher.”
“Here?” She’s barely grazing the seam of my pajama pants, and I’m about to combust from the anticipation. Am I already soaked through?
