Chapter 6 6

Chapter 6: My Naughty Maid

Alexander was straightening his cufflinks when he noticed the bed behind him was empty, the sheets still holding the shape of her but nothing else — no note, no sound of the shower, no sign she'd meant to say goodbye before disappearing into the early morning. He stood there a moment longer than he needed to, turning that over in his mind, faintly amused despite himself that a girl he'd known less than a day had simply gotten up and walked out of his house like it belonged to her as much as him.

"I'll let it go this once," he said to the empty room, more to hear himself say it than because anyone was listening. "But she doesn't get to make a habit of it."

He left for the office the way he always did, unhurried and certain, and told himself the thought of her wouldn't follow him through the day. It did anyway, in the small idle moments between meetings, surfacing and vanishing like something half-remembered from a dream he couldn't quite place.

Ana, meanwhile, was not thinking about dreams. She was thinking about the three minutes she had to change out of yesterday's clothes and into her uniform before Gwen noticed she was late, and she lost that race by exactly enough for her manager to catch her slipping onto the floor with her nametag crooked and her hair still damp. Gwen didn't say anything. She didn't need to. A look, a slow shake of the head, two fingers raised toward the back office — the whole conversation happened without a single word, and Ana understood every part of it.

'After my shift, then. Perfect.'

She threw herself into restocking shelves with more force than the job required, the kind of busywork that kept her hands occupied and her thoughts from wandering somewhere she didn't want them to go. It didn't entirely work. Somewhere between the cereal aisle and the register, it occurred to her that she'd turned twenty today, and that the number sat strangely in her chest — not exciting, not even sad exactly, just quiet, the way a room feels when you expect someone to walk in and nobody does. Nobody had texted. Nobody had called. She'd half expected that and it still managed to sting a little, the way old bruises do when you forget about them until you press down in exactly the wrong spot.

She was too proud to let it show, and too tired to pretend it didn't matter, so she settled for something in between and kept working until her shift finally, mercifully, ended.

By the time she made it out back, the sky had gone the deep gold color that only showed up an hour or so before sunset, and she sat down on the curb without much grace, her legs finally allowed to stop moving. Her phone had been buzzing in her pocket for the last twenty minutes, and she'd been ignoring it out of some mixture of exhaustion and dread, but she pulled it out now because there was nothing left in her to keep running from it.

'Babe, why aren't you answering me?'

'We're still doing dinner tonight right? My treat, since it's your birthday.'

She read the messages twice, and the second time through, something in her chest went very cold and very still. Because Damian didn't know that she knew. He had no idea that she'd stood in his doorway last night and watched him with Vexia, watched it long enough that there was no explaining it away, no version of events where it meant something other than exactly what it looked like — and here he was now, hours later, asking her to dinner like the two of them were still the people they'd been yesterday morning.

"You have got to be joking," she said out loud, to no one, and found that saying it didn't make her feel any better.

She thought about typing back everything she wanted to say — that she'd seen him, that she knew, that two years meant apparently nothing when weighed against whatever he thought he was getting from Vexia — and then she thought better of it, because none of it would land the way she wanted it to, and because some small, stubborn part of her still didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. So she put the phone away instead and let herself sit with the anger until it settled into something quieter and heavier, something closer to grief.

I don't even want to go home tonight.

That was when she thought of the house. Of the man who'd offered her a strange, half-serious position as his live-in maid the night before, in the middle of what had already been the strangest twenty-four hours of her life. She didn't fully understand why the thought of going back there felt like relief instead of another risk. He was unpredictable in a way that should have scared her more than it did. But her life right now was small and gray and entirely too predictable, and some reckless, birthday-fueled part of her wanted exactly the opposite of predictable.

So she got up, and instead of walking home, she walked toward him.

...

Alexander had left the office earlier than he normally would, telling himself it had nothing to do with the fact that he hadn't been able to concentrate properly since lunch. Collin met him at the door with the kind of face that already told him the news wasn't good.

"She hasn't come back yet, sir."

"She agreed to this," Alexander said, more to himself than to Collin, the words coming out sharper than he intended.

He went upstairs, changed, poured a drink he didn't really want, and picked up a book he ended up reading the same page of four separate times without absorbing a word of it. Every time his mind wandered — and it wandered often — it wandered back to her. To the way she'd looked at him the night before, equal parts wary and curious, like she hadn't yet decided whether he was dangerous or simply strange. He found himself irritated that she hadn't come back, and even more irritated that the irritation itself seemed to matter to him at all.

She played me, he thought, closing the book harder than necessary. And now she's going to regret it.

He'd nearly reached for his phone to tell Collin to go find her when a knock came at the door, and Collin's voice followed it, even and unbothered as ever.

"Boss. Anastasya's here."

Alexander set the phone down slowly. The door opened, and there she was, standing just past the threshold with her hair slightly wind-tossed and an expression that hadn't quite settled on nervous or defiant — somewhere caught between the two.

He let the silence stretch a beat longer than was comfortable, mostly to watch what she'd do with it. She didn't look away.

"Well," he said finally, low and unhurried, crossing the room toward her. "Look who decided to show up after all."

"I had work," she said. "I meant to tell you this morning, I just—"

"You forgot." He said it slowly, testing the word, watching her face as he said it. "Interesting. What time do maids usually start their shift where you're from? Because in this house, it's generally before the sun goes down."

"I can only come here after my other job," she said, chin lifting slightly, some of her earlier exhaustion burning off into something steadier. "I should have said that clearly before you offered, I know, but I didn't think—"

"A maid who only works nights." His mouth curved, slow and considering. "That's new."

Before she could finish her sentence, his hand had already found her waist, drawing her up onto her toes so that the space between them closed to almost nothing, and whatever she'd been about to say dissolved somewhere in the sudden, close warmth of him.

Why am I not pulling away?

She didn't have an answer for herself, and the not-knowing scared her more than he did.

"A late arrival and a naughty one," he murmured, his breath warm against her temple, "I think that earns you a punishment, don't you?"

"Wait—" Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "I already apologized, I don't understand what you mean by—"

His thumb brushed slowly along her lower lip, and whatever she'd meant to say after that simply didn't survive the sentence.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Her heartbeat filled the silence loud enough that she was certain he could hear it too.

"Careful," he said, voice dropping lower, closer. "Keep going quiet on me like that, and I'm going to start taking it as an answer."

"An answer to what—"

He didn't give her the chance to finish. In one motion he had her wrist gathered gently above her head and her back meeting the mattress, his weight settling over her before she'd fully registered moving at all.

"Alexander—" Her eyes went wide, breath catching. "What are you doing?"

"Punishing you," he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, reaching for the hem of his own shirt and pulling it over his head in one unbothered motion.

Whatever protest she'd been building died somewhere in her throat.

"On a bed?" she managed. "That's not — that isn't how punishment usually—"

He was already reaching for her again, catching her ankle before she could put any real distance between them and pulling her back beneath him with an ease that left her breathless in an entirely different way than she expected.

"You're not actually trying to run from me," he said, amusement threading through his voice, "are you, little maid?"

"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted, and the honesty of it seemed to catch them both off guard.

"Neither do I," Alexander said, quieter now, his gaze moving over her face like he was trying to memorize something he wasn't sure he'd get to see again. "But I know I want you. More than I have any business wanting anyone I met yesterday."

"Alexander—"

"Say it like that again," he murmured, "and I'm going to make sure you're saying it a lot more before the night's over."

Whatever answer she might have given was lost the moment his mouth found hers, and after that, neither of them had much interest in words at all.

...

To be continued...