Marie-Therese curled herself in a perfect laughing pose, half-crouched with one shoulder forward and her dark eyes, just like Max’s, snapping with wild spirit. When Dree tapped the screen, clicks ruffled out of the phone.
“Perfect!” Marie-Therese said. When Dree was handing her the camera, Marie-Therese grabbed Dree around her shoulders. “Selfie!”
Dree had been having a friendly conversation so she was already smiling, and she had the good sense to mug for the camera as Marie-Therese’s arm shot out to the side and held up the phone. It erupted in another flurry of clicks.
Marie-Therese released Dree and looked at the screen. “Oh, these are good! Do you want one?”
“Sure!” Dree took her phone out of her little satchel-bag and swiped to turn on the Bluetooth. They held their phones close together, and Marie-Therese swiped several images upward on her phone.
A funny flash of yellow light illuminated Dree’s screen, and the pictures appeared.
In the pictures, Marie-Therese was glamorously beautiful, and Dree’s skin looked alabaster-flawless. Her eyes were bright blue, and her smile was perfectly balanced. “Oh, these are cute. You takereallygood selfies.”
“My filter app does a few things automatically. Because Instagram, you know?”
“Oh, right. But thanks!”
“No problem.”
Dree grabbed her notepad, and they started walking again. They turned a corner and entered an even more magnificent corridor. Crystal chandeliers blazed sparkling light off the marble floors and mirrored walls.
Marie-Therese said, “Here’s Maxsy’s apartment. Don’t let him keep you up too late.”
Dree laughed at her. “I’m just an admin with a sad, hopeless crush on her boss, but thanks.”
Marie-Therese grinned and walked back the way they’d come, the haze of beads on her dress swaying on her slim figure.
Dree stood at the door, her arms crossed over the notebook pressed against her chest. The double door was black-stained wood, and the knobs and fixtures were silver. When she knocked softly, the solid wood didn’t move or rattle under her knuckles.
There wasn’t any sound from inside the apartment.
Dree glanced at Marie-Therese’s retreating back, which was bare in the backless evening gown she wore. Her raven-wing curls cascaded from the crown of her head and over her neck. The light from the chandelier sparkled on her dress’s beads.
Marie-Therese wasn’t watching Dree.
While holding her phone under her armpit, Dree slipped the key from her purse and rattled it into the lock. She was just twisting it when she glanced guiltily at Marie-Therese, who was turning the corner.
Their gazes touched with that momentary tingle of eye contact, and Marie-Therese stepped around the corner and was gone.
Dree hurriedly grabbed the long lever that was the doorknob and shoved the door open. It swung easily on well-oiled hinges even though it was at least twice as tall as she was.
Inside, darkness fogged the room except for three strategically placed lamps centered on tables and the piano, spilling flickering light across glass and wood and lightly stroking the curving outlines of other furniture.
She closed the door and locked it.
One corner lamp with a dark shade flooded light on a dark figure of a man sitting in a chair and wearing a tuxedo. “You’re five minutes late.”
Dree set her notepad, purse, and phone on the table. “I’m sorry. I got lost in the palace. I ended up over at some reception on the other side. I almost didn’t make it here at all.” She dropped the key back into her little pouch and tugged the drawstrings closed.
Maxence said, “Take your clothes off. Leave them there. Sit at my feet,pet.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Little Prince of Monagasquay
Dree
Dree trailed her fingers across Maxence’s heavy pectorals and up the curve of his biceps as they lay on his living room floor, wrapped in the white comforter from his bed. Her thighs were sore from sitting on the floor at his feet with her legs folded beneath herself while Maxence stroked her hair and gazed into the distance. He’d told her to hold several unlikely poses while he silently toyed with her body, then she’d straddled him, riding him while he ground his teeth, nearly emotionless, until his back arched and his eyes squeezed shut like he was in agony. He’d grappled her waist, raked his teeth over her throat, and forced her down over his erection until she writhed in his arms, her breath rushing through her body into her head and turning the world white.
