Maid for the Royal Prince

by Winter James

  Tidy the bedroom.

  I can at least get closer. Take a look. I can always say that I tried to, but it was locked down. It’s closed right now, the lid firmly shut, which means I wouldn’t be lying.

  The silence in the bedroom crystallizes as I make my way to the opposite side of the prince’s desk. The laptop doesn’t seem to be bolted down, and it’s a new, lightweight model. It would hardly weigh anything in my arms. How far would I get if I tucked it to my chest and ran with it?

  Probably not far. The guards outside the room would see me running and shoot me in the back. Boom. All over.

  Would he have a password on this thing? Here, in his private room, so far away from everyone else that we’re probably the only two people to see it today?

  I could flip open the top and look. That would be nothing. Opening a laptop isn’t a crime.

  The air shifts and I have a single breath to realize there’s someone in the doorway. My body jumps, startling, and I put a hand on my throat. My pulse has gone wild. It’s him, it’s him.

  Sebastian Martin is gorgeous. Dark hair falling in a perfect wave. Lips that make him look like an emperor. And complicated dark eyes, narrowed with suspicion.

  “You’re behind my desk.”

  It’s not a question. It’s a statement, and the low timbre of his voice makes me want to sink down to the plush carpet and beg forgiveness for being in this space between glass and mahogany. The silence takes on a sharpened character with him standing at the door to his own room, watching. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he could stand there all day. He has the muscles to do it. He has the muscles to do anything. And all I have is this maid’s outfit and a pair of suddenly weak knees.

  Words come slowly, painfully. An excuse. I have to say something. The Prince of Belleza is staring at me, a maid, and that can’t be the normal order of business here. Maids are supposed to be invisible and I’m underneath a superpowered spotlight. If his gaze gets any more intense it will burn me to a crisp. “I was dusting.”

  Sure you were, you liar. Guards? Take her to the courtroom. I’ll try her for treason now. On second thought, don’t bother with the trial. Directly to prison. You know what to do with her.

  “There’s no dust on my desk.” Dust is almost mocking. “Unless you can see something invisible to my eyes. Is there a crumb? A spec?”

  I force myself to look down at the desk. No, of course not. There is no dust. As if dirt doesn’t dare touch a surface that the prince might use. “I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness. I thought this was part of my duties. Please don’t be angry. I’m new here.”

  When I look back up he’s several paces into the room, coming closer. He’s a panther in the night. Lethal. His eyes flick down from my face and down over my body, hidden under the maid’s uniform. It doesn’t matter. He’s looking anyway. It’s like he can see right through it and it’s all I can do not to pinch my legs together. “Your duties. List them.”

  “I’m to make your bed. The edges should be crisp. The pillows should be plump. The sheets should be perfectly white. Any variation will be reported. I’m to clean the windows--”

  “Enough.” Those eyes come back to mine and I feel a shock of recognition—he wants me. It’s the subtle widening of his pupils, the way he parts his lips a fraction of an inch. It can’t be real. I blink once, twice, trying to convince myself that it’s not. That he’s just looking at me because I’m a new maid and he caught me in a treason-adjacent position. That he is not undressing me with my eyes and calling to mind exactly what my naked body looks like.

  “Dusting,” he muses, looking from me to the desk and back again. “If you had found any dust, what were you going to do about it? Lick my desk?”

  I don’t know what he means for a beat, and then I do.

  I’ve been caught red-handed.

  Empty handed.

  If I was going to clean smudges from the windows I’d need one of the cleaning sprays and a rag.

  “I don’t know.” My heart is ready to fly out of my rib-cage and flop uselessly to the ground. That would be faster and easier than being tried for treason. It would be faster and easier than the things flickering in Sebastian’s eyes. Am I any safer here, with his eyes stripping off my clothes, than I would be as a prostitute? How far would a man like this go?

  He would go far. Too far. And part of me wants him to go too far in a twisted spike of desire. If he did, then it would be over—then I would know what it was like—

  The prince is so close now that the only thing separating us is the sturdy, elegant mahogany of his desk. Every step he takes closes the gap and my imagination runs wild with what could happen. He smells even better in person than he did on the sheets and I can’t help but think of the manly scent of him enveloping me. Would it be so bad if I were in trouble with him? Would he punish me with those big, sensual hands? It would be a mistake to say that he doesn’t do rough work. Maybe he doesn’t descend into a mine or work in a field, but I’ve seen clips of the trials he oversees. Trials for treason. They never end well for the person on trial. How could they? A person on trial before him would be nothing. Worse than nothing.

  One square-tipped finger points to the gleaming wood. “Lick it.”

  My heart rate spikes. Is this a test? It feels almost like a dare. “You want me to--”

  “No,” he says, the silk of his voice more dangerous than steel. “I don’t want you to do anything. I’m only here to observe. A little employer oversight, you might say. Let’s see what you planned to do if you’d seen dust. Since you don’t have anything in your hands, lick it.”

  I’m a new maid in his household—I shouldn’t be standing on the pure white carpet, staring at him like he’s the first person I’ve ever seen. “I’m sorry,” I say with my parched mouth, my tongue awkward, thick as I think about licking. “I’ve angered you. I’ve been foolish. Please forgive me.”

  He presses his forefinger to the wood, ruthless in his certainty that I’ll obey him. That’s what it would feel like to be royalty--to know that people will lick on command.

  I bend toward the desk. Am I really doing this?

  It almost seems like a mistake to move in front of him. Movement might attract the animal inside. I take one step, then two, leaving the false safety of the desk.

  Run, an urgent voice in the back of my mind insists. Run right now.

  But it’s too late. He’s there, cupping the back of my neck and making me gasp out loud. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Prince of Belleza doesn’t touch members of his staff, he doesn’t even notice members of his staff and if he is touching me then this has all gone terribly wrong. All of me freezes. Don’t move and he won’t see you.

  Of course he does see me, he watches as I slip my tongue onto the smooth glossy surface of his desk. It tastes like wood, like nothing. There’s no dust. Only my own shame. Before he lets me rise, he bends near my ear. I breathe in the midnight spice smell of him. The Prince of Belleza growls, “Stay the fuck away from my desk.”

  Then his hand drops away, so quickly that the touch might not have happened at all, and I don’t exactly run but I do hurry the hell up and get out of there, out of his sight.

  Away from the humiliation and the strange ache it creates.

  The taste of smooth wood comes with me.

  Chapter Four

  Sebastian

  Touching the maid is a mistake I won’t make twice.

  I won’t.

  It was hardly a conscious choice, to grasp her slender neck and direct her movements. More of an overwhelming sense that if I didn’t control her, she’d disappear into the palace and never resurface. Now she’s gone, the air in the room seems to hold a space where she used to be. A maid. For god’s sake. I shouldn’t have even noticed her standing there.

  She’s supposed to blend in with the furniture.

  Only this maid does not blend in with the furniture. She was not in motion when I entered the room, like any other maid would have been. Her hands we
re not busy. They twisted into her apron like the apron was the only thing holding them back from reaching out for something.

  That something was undoubtedly on my desk.

  As Prince of Belleza it’s not fucking seemly for me to let my emotions take over. But when I saw her there, looking down at my laptop like curiosity had taken hold with both hands...well, I wanted her to obey me in the most visceral sense.

  Fire her. It’s the easiest decision I’d ever have to make. I’ve fired people for less. I’ve had them taken from the palace and sent to the other side of the country for hesitating when I gave them an order. The facts remain that my father did our country an enormous disservice when he decided to concentrate all his efforts on impregnating random women and throwing lavish parties.

  But if I was going to fire her, I should have done it while she was still in my suite. The most mercy I’m willing to grant is not hunting her down in the maids’ quarters and taking her outside the palace walls myself. I’ll give her one more day, and that’s all. The royal household is supposed to set the example for the nation. I’m going to put it back in order if it’s the last fucking thing I do. Twenty-four hours.

  Determination carries me through an afternoon workout so intense it leaves me breathless and sweating for a full three minutes afterward. I only struggle a little not to think of her while I fall asleep that night. As always, I’m attentive and in control during the morning’s meetings. I hardly think of the curves of her body in the outfit meant to render her invisible. I hardly think of those big blue eyes and the way she blushed a deep red when I touched her. And I don’t think of the way her teeth worried at her lip when she realized that I was between her and the only exit.

  There are no trials scheduled today, so I have an hour in my schedule to spend as I please.

  Something calls me back to my own rooms.

  Normally, I would sit in my public-facing office on the main floor of the palace, sending emails and signing directives. My father wasn’t much for being in that office or attending to his duties, so I’ve made it a point of being there. And being in charge. Today I stroll back to my own quarters on the third floor. Nobody would dare ask me why I’ve taken a detour from my usual routine, so I don’t have to think of any excuses. I think of them regardless. A personal item. A watch, perhaps, forgotten in the walk-in closet tidied weekly by the maids.

  A certain maid I’m hoping to see.

  No doubt she was just a temporary worker. That would explain her strange way of dawdling behind the desk, like she hadn’t quite gotten her bearings in the position. It would also explain the breathless way she looked at me. She had not, it was clear, been expecting to see me. Only the newest members of the staff are so out of their depth that they’d show surprise at my entrance into my own rooms.

  The guards stare carefully ahead as I go through the doors at the same speed I always do. I’m not rushing to see if that nameless maid with the body I’m dying to see is in my rooms today. No—I’m not dying to see her. I’m only curious. What the hell is she doing now? Part of me wants to catch her in the middle of something especially egregious. I want an excuse to bend her over a nearby piece of furniture and teach her a lesson. Obviously, obviously, it’s beyond forbidden.

  There is no sign of her in the foyer or the living area, though all of the throw pillows have been straightened and the surfaces gleam, free of dust. If she’s not through here she’s been through here recently. My base instinct is to go tearing through the rooms, slamming doors open until I find her. Hunt her down. And if I don’t find her here, then in the rest of the palace.

  She’s not in the exercise room. She’s not in the dining area.

  I push my bedroom door open with a strange expansiveness to my lungs. I’m not holding my breath—I wouldn’t fucking do that over some strange woman I don’t know. But my heart pounds like it’s not getting enough oxygen. My head aches with anticipation. If she’s not there, all of it will come tumbling down.

  She’s here.

  And not only that, she’s stretched out across my bed, the corner of the mattress pressing into the line of her hips while she reaches for the center of the bed. She’s at her limit, straining to put the sheet in the right place and barely making it. It’s almost impossible to do with her feet planted on the floor. One step, and she’d be able to clamber up onto the mattress on all fours. My body reacts in spite of me. Heat and blood rush down to my cock and I am instantly, painfully hard.

  She lets out a little sound as she stretches back, straightening up. The door flies open with a bang. She jumps, no gasp this time, and faces me. “Your highness.” The accent—it’s American. What is an American doing on my staff? Some of them have delusions about what royal life is like, but something in her wide-open face makes me think she’s here out of necessity and not just because she wanted to see the inside of a palace. My staff tries to weed those people out, so it would be rare for her to slip through. She drops an awkward curtsy. Definitely American, then. This should have occurred to me yesterday, and somehow it didn’t.

  Her blue gaze remains on the floor, flicking up at intervals to see if I’m still here. I am still fucking here.

  “I can—” She swallows and tries again. “I can come back later, if you like.”

  “Finish it now.”

  The door is a fine vantage point to watch a maid make a bed, or ignore the maid who’s making a bed. I could sit down at my desk with my laptop. I could be a gentleman and leave her alone. But I’m not a gentleman at the moment. I don’t do any of this. In fact, I can’t resist crossing the room to stand nearby. Close enough to touch her, if I wanted.

  She turns back toward the bed, her movements self-conscious, and tugs up the rest of the sheet. I stand so close that when she has to cross to the other side her ass brushes against the front of my pants. Fuck, I want her.

  The front of her maid’s uniform gapes as she bends over the other side of the bed. I’m nothing but blood and want now, watching her.

  “What’s your name”

  She bites her lip, looking up from where her hands dance along the sheets, and meets my gaze. “Me?”

  “Who else?”

  “Tessa Boucher,” she says softly. The act of making the bed means she has to keep bending over it. Keep crossing in front of me. I don’t give her an inch of space. I want to haul her over the bed and shove that maid’s uniform up to her hips. I want to see what she’s wearing underneath. Or not wearing. The skirt could conceal any number of combinations. My heart gives a jagged, animal beat.

  “What’s a pretty American girl like you doing making beds in my palace?” I cover the compliment in barbs. Pretty American girl isn’t necessarily a compliment on this side of the ocean, and from the frown that crosses her face, she must know it.

  “I needed a job.” Another emotion, there and then gone. “I needed a place to stay,” she says instead. “I needed both, and luckily there was an opening.” Tessa straightens up and rubs her hands together. “There. I’ll be out of your way now.”

  Except she won’t be, because I’m not finished with her yet.

  “Oh, just...” Tessa eyes the pillow on my side of the bed and comes to straighten it. The hem of her skirt whispers across my shins as she passes. Fluff. Turn. Straighten. The pillow goes back in its place and Tessa squares her shoulders. She thinks she’s leaving now. I know she isn’t.

  My hand goes out in front of her, palm flat on one of the posts of my bed. It doesn’t have a canopy, only the suggestion of a frame for one. You can strip down anything to its essentials if you put in the effort, which many members of my family have fucking failed to do. I want the essentials of this maid. I have her name—that’s not enough.

  Tessa looks up at my arm, her cheeks flushing a deeper red. Her blue eyes hold a thousand questions. Ask one. Do it. “I have to go,” she says, and the way she says it is the cousin of a plea. “I cleaned your room, and that’s—that’s all I’m supposed to be up here for.” She st
ands with her shoulders back, spine straight, and I want to watch her bend again.

  “Are you sure?”

  My entire soul latches onto her sharp little breath, through those perfect, pink lips. There are so many things I could do with her mouth. Taste it, for one. Bite her. Let her bite me back, though I doubt she would. Swallow all the sounds she makes while I’m kissing her, relentless, taking all the air. Lick her, feral and wild, just to see her struggle against it. Would she struggle against it? And what if I put her on her knees beside my bed and dragged a thumb over those lips? What if I tugged her mouth open at the same time I unzipped my pants and shoved my cock in, in, in, over that little tongue and to the back of her throat? What if I used her the way her body is begging me to use her, even now? She can’t lie about it. Her chest rises and falls under her maid’s uniform and her eyes have gone glassy. There are two guards at the door. I could do it and nobody would be the wiser.

  Except me.

  My hand tenses on the bedpost.

  “I’m sure that’s all I’m supposed to do,” she says desperately. Her voice is begging a question just below a whisper. “I should leave now.”

  “You work for me.” From this distance it’s nothing at all to bend down low, so I can smell her. Clean. Fresh. A hint of soap, wrapped around the most valuable scent in all of Belleza. There is no possible way this maid has the essence of Belleza flowers on her skin, none, and yet it’s there. “You, like everyone else on my staff, will do whatever I tell you to do, whenever I tell you to do it, and you won’t hesitate. Will you?”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  I cannot stop myself from lifting my hand to her mouth and running my thumb over that bottom lip. My body wants to arch with the intimacy of it, which feels like an electric shock. I push my thumb into her mouth, and feel the shocking warmth of her tongue, feel the instinctive way she’d suck it for a moment before she remembered that she is a maid in my household and she is forbidden, completely forbidden, to do that.

  Unless I ordered her to, in which case...my word would still be law.