“All right then.” He spoke in a tone that made the knot in her stomach tighten even more. He pulled the chair out from the table and finally sat down. Still, he hesitated as he toyed with a bit of lace that fell from his gold sleeve. “I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that when you’re having sex you’re a screamer, right?”
Now it was her turn to cringe as a nasty suspicion went through her.
Please, please let me be wrong…
“You heard us?” she whispered in horror.
“Oh honey…” He placed his hand over hers comfortingly. “With the acoustics in this place… everyone has heard you. Even Syn and Hauk. That’s how I knew to wait almost an hour before I brought them up.”
She felt suddenly ill over that news. “What?”
Patting her hand, he nodded. “Three quarters of the staff is convinced he’s torturing you up here. None are willing to believe any man can have that kind of stamina or that any woman can have that many orgasms in a week, never mind a single day.”
She wanted to crawl into a hole and die over that. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“Didn’t want to embarrass you. As you saw, I had to force myself to bring it up even now. I knew you’d feel awful about it.” He screwed his face up sympathetically. “But look on the bright side. I’m both jealous and impressed with Darling’s skills. I had no idea he had all that in him. Girl, you are so lucky. Trust me, for I have a lot of experience in this area, most men cannot do what he does to you for as long as he does it. If we could figure out what he’s eating or doing to cause that, we’d be even richer.”
Mortified to the core of her soul, she leaned forward on the table and covered her face with her hands. “I am so humiliated.”
“Don’t be. We should all be so lucky.”
“Could you please stop using that word?” Lucky kept ramming home how much she’d been screaming the last few days.
She was even hoarse from it.
Maris laughed. “Sorry, sweetie. Couldn’t resist. So, now that it’s just the two of us, how did Darling cut his hand last night?” He wagged his brows wickedly at her.
Of course, he’d ask her that. Could this day get any more mortifying?
But for some reason, she really didn’t mind talking to Maris about such intimate things. Somehow, he made the most embarrassing moment funny. “You know the tawdry murals in my bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Some of those positions should come with warning labels.”
Maris laughed. “I would have paid to see that.”
“And I feel terrible about it,” she said, covering her plate with the silver dome, and pushing it aside. “I’m the one who slipped first. Darling got hurt because I’m a klutz.”
“Well, from where I was standing in there, he didn’t seem to mind.”
“That’s because he’s insane.”
“He is indeed.” Maris shooed her from her seat. “You go on and get your bath. I’ll take care of this for you.”
“Thank you, Mari.”
He squeezed her hand before she got up and made her way into the bathroom. Thank goodness someone had cleaned up the mess from last night’s “accident.” Aside from the broken glass, there had been blood everywhere—even on the walls.
Between cutting his hand and three nosebleeds, it was a miracle he hadn’t bled out.
But that wasn’t the most disconcerting part.
Gah, someone… a complete stranger… had come in here last night and seen what all we’d done…
And they’d most likely heard us in Darling’s room while they cleaned in here. Zarya covered her face with her hands as she realized what an insatiable slut she must look like to everyone. Never in her life had she been more horrified.
Well, you are legally his sex slave…
His very public mistress as the collar on her neck attested to. Still, that didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, it stung what little dignity she had left.
Why was it whenever Darling was around, all she could think about was touching him? Having him inside her? Of course, it didn’t help that whenever he was around her, he was a complete and utter horndog.
An exceptionally skilled horndog who knew how to set her on fire with nothing more than a quirk of his lips and a hot look that scorched her all the way through.
Even so, she’d had a life before this. Granted it was one focused on destroying his family, but she had been a well-respected military leader.
Now…
I’m a nobleman’s plaything.
No, not just a nobleman.
Darling’s. If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t stomach it.
But the very thought of him wrung her heart. His life had been so unnecessarily tragic and it shouldn’t have been like that for him. Any more than she should have had the tragedies that marked her past—the loss of her sisters, brother, and parents.
She couldn’t even think of them without wanting blood. Especially Gerrit. While they had fought every day of their lives together, he’d died protecting her from their enemies. She winced at the involuntary image of him expelling his last breath before he went limp in her arms while she begged him not to die on her.
Or the look on her father’s face when she’d told him how Geritt died…