Stripping out of my suit, I toss it onto my dry cleaning pile, and then…fuck. What the fuck am I doing, and what the fuck do I wear to take my nanny into my library?
I catch my reflection in the mirror. “You’re a fool.” Pretty accurate, considering I’m now tossing on pajama pants and a white T-shirt and will neither confirm nor deny an extra application of deodorant and aftershave. I feel like the teenager I never was, crushing on a girl I have no business even looking twice at.
But I am looking twice. Especially as I open my door and find her waiting patiently for me in the hallway wearing mid-calf pink yoga pants and a cropped black T-shirt. Her hair is down in thick, silky waves that flow along her back and across her breasts. She doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, but she certainly doesn’t need it.
Twenty-one. Nanny. Off-motherfucking-limits!
“Ready?” she chirps, far too excited, and I think that’s because she hasn’t been to the library yet. Being the one to show it to her…knowing her avid love of reading…
“If I must.”
She rolls her eyes at me, and I have yet to comment on that particular tic of hers. Mostly because I find it strangely endearing that she’s utterly unimpressed with me. I wonder if she’d still be so if I had her ride my face while my finger fucked her ass.
Thoughts like these are why I shouldn’t be here, and yet thoughts like these are why I can’t manage to say no.
Tonight especially.
It’s like Samil’s pictures, his quest, set me off, and now I can’t turn her off.
Or on, I once again remind myself.
“Your Majesty.” She waves for me to go ahead, but decadesof ingrained manners won’t allow it, and I find myself taking her by the arm and leading her. Down the stairs. Across the second floor. All the way through the palace to the opposite turret.
The library is two full floors. Endless books dating back to the inception of my family and country, which was right around the time Jesus was born.
Opening the door, she steps in and immediately releases me. The lights flash on one by one and her gasp fills the room, climbing as high as the ceiling. “Magic,” she whispers as she twirls around and stares up at the top shelf, and that’s the word that sticks in my chest when I look at her.
She’s magic. It’s as if she was brought to us. That my daughters were meant to find her.
It’s only been a week.
But when I look at her, I see way too much. I want to believe in fate. That’s what Althea has always told me. That fate will guide me. But with my fate comes a curse.
“Are my children going to have to survive you when you go?”
Her gaze snaps to mine like the lashing of a whip. “Who said I’m going?”
I wait her out.
She pivots to face me fully, her dark lashes sweeping across her cheeks as she blinks at me, thinking. “I don’t plan to. I’d like very much to stay. I adore your children, and despite the odd circumstances around me being their nanny, I’ve had an incredible first week with them.”
I believe her. And that’s what’s fucking me up.
“I need to hate you,” I confess.
A soft grin. “So I’ve gathered. How is that working out for you?”
“Depends on the moment.”
She spins around in a circle, her arms stretched out wide. “Love me or hate me, both are in my favor. Love me and I’ll be in your heart. Hate me and I’ll be on your mind.”
No one knows who wrote that, though it’s often been attributed to Shakespeare. Still she’s quoting things like that to me in my library, and never have the words of a poet pissed me off more.
“Only if I give you that sort of importance, which I haven’t.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me. Hating each other is easier than anything else, but that doesn’t mean that’s what we’re doing now.”
“If I give you the library as your own, will you stop flirting with me? Any book you want to read, you may. I only ask that you take good care of them.”
