“Her breasts are adorned like a slave’s. Is she a slave?”
“She is not.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. She is not from Alorn, so you brought her with you. Does Lord Evston know that you travel with such a girl?”
He didn’t answer.
“If you’re not willing to explain things, raise him on your com and let me speak to him.”
“Absolutely not,” he snapped.
The girl crept back into the main room.
“I wish to see to Lord Calex,” Brandese said.
“He doesn’t want to see you,” the commander replied.
Brande’s stomach lurched, and she took a startled step back. “He said so?”
“I know him as I know myself,” Rocurt said. “If he wanted to see you, he would be here. He knows your wishes.”
Heat flamed in Brande’s cheeks. She had tried several times to obtain Lord Calex’s most recent com linkages, but as a member of the legislature, they were kept secret. Her father had them of course, but the king’s coms were never unattended or unsecured.
Now Lord Calex’s brother made it clear that Evston had heard that she wished to speak to him and was purposely ignoring her. It was a cut down to the bone, and it took all her strength of will not to let tears spring into her eyes.
“I see,” Brande said. She lifted the hem of her dress to prevent herself from tripping as she fled the room’s balcony doorway and the inn.
* * *
Evston Calex leanedagainst the doorway of the communal playroom, glancing absently at the wall of whips and paddles. He pushed off the door frame, wondering if Rocurt had gotten their pet, Melsint, safely into the inn without anyone spotting her.
Alorn, the ancestral home of the royals, was not a large place. The inn was generally used by diplomats, high-ranking military personnel, and the very wealthy friends of the monarchy. A shy, unassuming girl who was not known to anyone would eventually be noticed.
He trusted Melsint though to be discreet. He believed that she would stay in the room at all times once she got there safely. He’d arranged for Rocurt to have a walled patio room, so the girl could sit outside, which she liked.
He glanced at his com. He really wanted to know whether Rocurt and the pet were in the room now. They should be.
He would wait. Rocurt would make contact when he was free to. He was probably just enjoying the girl’s body and would be occupied with that until his scheduled meeting time with the monarch.
Evston walked out onto their own balcony. He glanced out at the moonlit grounds. Their castle was perfectly situated to get full sunlight and double moonlight, depending on the hour. Alorn had good sun in daytime, but rarely caught both moons.
The sister moons had been renamed for Endricane’s current pair of princesses. He wondered whether they were in Alorn now. He rested his hands on the rail, thinking of the girls. Lanamoar, the older, was a very pretty twenty-two-year-old with famed violet eyes. And then there was the little firebird. Nineteen-year-old Brandese had been a cute child with a constant gleam of mischief in her eyes. He’d enjoyed her curiosity and banter and so had talked to her when she sought him out, which she often did when he was in Alorn or elsewhere to meet the king. He’d assumed that she gravitated to him because he was two decades younger than every other advisor the king had.
Then around sixteen, Brandese had evolved into the most exquisite beauty anyone had ever seen. Of course everyone’s treatment of her changed. Evston had worked hard to maintain a casual friendliness when she was charming and a firm opposition when she perpetrated pranks and minor crimes. He sentenced her to time on her knees in the corner when she’d stolen a horse. But he’d swatted her pretty bottom twice when she’d caused a ruckus in town.
Evston smirked at the memory of her bad behavior. She’d had the audacity to claim that the horse had followed her home and that she was planning to return him the next day, but had been too busy to do so right away.
The near spanking had been delivered because she’d taken matters into her own hands when she’d seen a woman berating and slapping her six-year-old son. Brandese had flown into a temper and flung wastewater on the woman, calling her an unfit mother. The woman, a terrible shrew who deserved more than a foul dousing, had actually filed a legal grievance. It had been an embarrassment to the crown to have to admit that a princess had trespassed on private land and attacked an adult woman on her own property.
Evston had taken the wild-eyed princess in hand. First, he’d attempted to reason with her and explained the proper course of action she should take if she ever felt she was witnessing abuse in the future. The girl had been unrepentant about the trespassing, despite his warnings that previous unlawful seizures of land by the privileged had made common people suspicious and angry about having their homes invaded without just cause.
“I did what I felt I must do. I would do it again!” she’d snapped.
“You risk being arrested,” he said. “The crown can’t allow that. You’ll control yourself from now on.”
“I will do as I please!”
And so, he’d yanked her over his lap and flipped up her skirt, exposing her delicate underthings and a very shapely ass. He should have given her a long punishing spanking, but even two slaps had been too arousing. She was so beautiful and so impassioned. It called to his dominance in a way that wasn’t safe.
