His bedroom is large with a light wood four-poster king-sized bed, two nightstands, a brown leather bench at the foot of the bed, and a dresser and desk that match his bed. I pick up the couple of items he has on the floor and put them into the laundry bag to be sent down, give everything a fresh dusting, and lastly, make his bed.
The drawer on his nightstand is slightly open, and I go to close it but stop when something inside catches my eye. After checking that no one is here and there’s no sound, I open the drawer wider and gasp. Holy shit, it’s my earring. Or Signoria Batorini’s earring, I should say.
I told Antonia I had lost one of them, but she said “earrings” to Signoria—meaning the pair—and I never corrected her. I was getting a beating anyway. Might as well keep what I had. Call it payment for fifteen years of indentured servitude and years of abuse.
I assumed it had fallen out in his suite, but I was hoping it happened after I made my escape. No such luck. I pick it up, holding it in the palm of my hand. Heat prickles the back of my neck. He kept it. And he drew pictures of us from that night. I’d figured it meant nothing to him. He is Prince Rowan after all. The very definition of a playboy.
But the earring…the pictures.
I hate how much I like that he drew those pictures. That he kept my earring and has it in his bedside table. No condoms in here. Not even lube.
I can’t take it. He’ll know.
I wish he hadn’t kept it. I wish he hadn’t drawn those pictures. I wish I didn’t feel the way I do when I’m around him.
With a mental headshake, I put the earring back and close the drawer.
The sheets are a bit rumpled, and his pillows are in disarray. My hand runs along the silky sheets where he slept, feeling like a total creeper, but not stopping either. Memories of him fromthat night swarm me. He teased me yesterday about how I was a ride virgin, and I teased him back about popping my cherry, but that’s exactly what he did.
The way he thrust inside me makes me shiver. His mouth. His hands. His voice. His words. I’ve made myself come over and over to thoughts of that night, and being in here now is doing things to me.
I force myself to get back to work and finish making his bed. His pillows are large and soft, and like a girl who knows better, I bring one up to my face, smiling softly to myself in the way you do when you’re doing something naughty, something forbidden, and no one knows about.
Except that’s the moment Rowan enters his bedroom and finds me with my face in his pillow.
“Well, well. Look at this.”
Oh god.
The pillow falls from my hands, landing with a gentle thud. My heart takes off at a sprint, and my adrenaline-frazzled mind works circuits to come up with a plausible explanation, only to fail. He saw me. He knows what I was doing. There is no talking myself out of that.
“Sir—” I stop short as he enters and shuts the door behind him with a deafening click.
I don’t move. I hardly breathe. He steps deeper into the room. The tap of his shoes on the wood becomes softer as he reaches the carpet beneath his bed, and my body stiffens.
My hair being swept over one shoulder makes me jump, and his hot breath by my ear has me biting into my lip.
“Were you smelling my pillow?”
“Your Highness, I?—”
A hard smack to my ass jolts me forward, my hands planting into the mattress to break my fall, but now my ass is pointed back to him like an offering. It’s funny, in all the ways I’ve been hit, no one has ever spanked me before. But thethought of him hitting me, punishing me, sends a frisson of fear through me.
I hold bone still, not even my chest rising or falling with the need to take in extra air.
He moves in behind me. His hard cock presses against my ass as he leans over me, eliciting a gasp I attempt and fail to suppress. I was wet and turned on before he walked in, but feeling him like this…
His hands are on either side of mine, and his body is completely against me as he brings his mouth back to my ear.
“I’ve asked you to call me Rowan.”
I gulp. “Yes, si—Rowan,” I correct. I’m trembling. I’ve been hit by women, and their brutality is fierce. I’ve never experienced a man. His sheer muscular strength alone could tear me in two.
“Better. Did you like how I smell?”
My eyes pinch tight, my fists clenching the bed. “Yes. I liked it.”
“I like how you smell, too.” He takes a deep inhale of the space beneath my ear, and I whimper, half aroused, half in fear, unable to stop my reaction to him. He chuckles, the sound warm as it rustles my hair. “Marcella, Marcella, such a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. Where is the person who normally cleans my room?”
