Maxence squeezed his eyes shut and pressed one fist to his forehead.
Dree leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Do it again.”
His eyes flew open, and he turned his head to stare at her.
She smiled, and her smile turned into a laugh.
Maxence grabbed her elbow and rolled her over him and then underneath himself. “You’re all right?”
Dree cradled his cheek in her hand. “That was beyond anything I ever imagined, and I’m really sad about my lack of imagination right now. I need to imagine more ofeverything.”
His lips curved upward, and he scrutinized her face as if he thought she was messing with him. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
She laughed and settled her arm around his shoulders. “But, maybe, ‘do it again’tomorrow.I’msore,man.”
Maxence laughed and kissed her temple. “Ma petitechérie,we have all the time in the world.”
He carried her to his shower—an enormous glassed-in affair of caramel marble—and washed her like she was his dirty plaything to clean, and then he held her in his arms for hours while they slept with their legs intertwined.
Dree opened her eyes.
Morning sunlight streamed in the window from a much higher angle than she had expected.
She snatched at her phone lying on the table beside the bed.
The numbers on the front began with a nine.
Dree flapped her arm across the bed. “Max,Max!Wake up! We overslept. Really a lot. We need to get upnow!”
Maxence lay in the bed beside her, sprawled with one arm hanging off the edge where the monsters could totally have gotten it. He blinked, his dark eyelashes fluttering, and he squinted up at her. “It’s going to be a long day. The Sea Change Gala is tonight. That’ll run past midnight.”
Dree opened the project management app the palace used. “You have appointments starting in fifteen minutes. I didn’t think you had any meetings this early today, but somebody’s booked right now.”
Maxence stretched, his ridiculously long arms and legs taking over the entire, enormous bed. “They’ll wait.”
Dree scrambled out of bed and grabbed her dress from last night. “Geez,Max!I can’t be late! I’ll getfired!”
“Yeah, I hear your boss is a real jerk. If you’re late to the office, he’ll probably punish you. Probably a bare-bottom spanking.”
“There arepoliciesin place. I have to check in when I start working.” Dree shoved her skirt down her thighs and inserted her toes into her shoes. “You can’t circumvent palace policies.”
“Yes, I can.” Maxence sat up on the other side of the bed and yawned, stretching one musclebound arm above his head.
Dree paused for a moment to watch his musculature roll under the skin of his arm and his back, rippling the black tattoo of destroyed angel wings inked there.
She didn’t like that someone had picked out that tattoo for him, a suggestion that he was a fallen angel, and so he was the Devil. Max had said his best friend had designed it for him, but that guy must not know Maxence at all. He liked things a little rough, sure, but he wasn’t sadistic. He wasn’tevil.
And maybe it was her baloney barometer, but even the passion that ran through him so strongly that it might destroy one or both of them felt like desperation to Dree.
She said, “I need to get ready for work.”
And she bolted out of his bedroom.
Dree finger-combed her hair back and trotted through the palace corridors, just another admin wearing business-formal and hurrying somewhere important.
Living in the palace felt like having a room in a combination apartment building and office complex, where the business was so important that people needed to live beneath the same roof as their jobs. Crowds of people wearing suits strolled through every corridor on their way to do something important, while liveried servants took care of the housekeeping.
Back in her dorm-sized room, Dree showered and slapped make-up on as quickly as she could, donning a dress of a similar dark color in case somebody had seen her hurrying back from Maxence’s apartment and questioned why she had changed clothes mid-morning. She managed to get to Maxence’s office by nine forty-five, where the receptionist sitting outside whispered, “His first appointment is already in there. You need to take notes to deposit in the archives. His Highness would not allow anyone else in but you.”
