But have I already ruined myself? I fear if I don’t entangle myself with them, I’ll wonder for the rest of my life how it could have felt.
My hand hits one of the crystal glasses, and – as if in slow motion – it falls to the floor. My reflexes are good, but I’m still too slow, and the expensive crystal shatters into pieces on the hardwood floor. Shards of crystal fly across the floorboards and I freeze like an animal of prey, cringing at the horrific sight; terrified of what their reaction might be.
I turn, guilt filling my cheeks with heat – but it’s not just the heat of embarrassment and fear at their reaction which colors my skin. I’m ashamed at how I’d become distracted because my body is aching to be tamed by these men, and I hope desperately that the rumor that Aurelians can smell arousal is false.
Yet, I fear it isn’t. I remember the trip to the manor just a short while ago – even though it feels like a lifetime – during which Cyrus told me that I smell right. If he can smell that…
My heart pounds faster.
Cyrus closes the book he was reading slowly, and looks up at me.
“That came from the oil-age of humanity,” he says coolly – calmly, “when your people relied primarily on fossil fuels to sustain their economy. The complete set is – or should I say was – worth five-hundred-thousand credits.” He sighs. “With one of the glasses gone, we’d be lucky to sell it for fifty-hundred-thousand.”
My stomach drops. I knew that the items in the Aurelian home were expensive, but my mind boggles at the thought that I’d just erased four-hundred-thousand credits from the Aurelian coffers with one single misstep – one innocent, if clumsy brush of my hand.
A Sector 1 lawyer might earn a couple hundred-thousand in a year of work, and I just erased double his salary from existence in less than a second!
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know!”
I feel clumsy for the first time in my life. I’m a cat burglar, a climber, a stealth thief and as silent as a cat…
…until these three gorgeous Aurelians got me so flustered with desire for them that I was as clumsy as a bull in a china shop…
…or, to be more accurate, maybe a fine crystal shop.
And the worst part? Right now – fearing for my life – my hand is suddenly completely steady. That’s how I get when I’m scared or anxious. Despite fear of capture or detection, I’ve always had perfect balance, poise, and calm...
…it was only because of them that this happened. Those Aurelians have turned my own body against me, through the feverish lust that boiled over inside of me.
I look up, and I can see Gallus is about to say something…
…but suddenly he stops, as if he’s hearing a private conversation inside his head.
There is a pause. Their silence is far more painful to me even than their anger would be.
“Perhaps,” Cyrus eventually says – as if responding to something somebody unheard had suggested, “you are not cut out to be a maid.”
His gaze hones in on me – like a lion staring at its prey. All he’d need to make that comparison complete would be to lick his lips in anticipation of devouring me.
I swallow hard, the guilt growing and growing inside of me.
“You save my life,” I shudder, “and I repay you like this… I’m so, so sorry. It won’t happen ever again…”
I apologize again and again, even as the foolishness of this situation hits me. As expensive as that glass was, I’m literally planning to steal far more than this from them…
…and yet, somehow, I feel guilty for destroying something so valuable belonging to the Aurelians.
I guess it’s because they aren’t like the stuck-up, snobby families that I have stolen from before. There’s no guilt in taking from those that look down me as dirt. While they paid me as a maid, I didn’t meet a single member of those families who didn’t consider me unworthy of even making eye-contact with them.
And yet these Aurelians? They eclipse the wealth of every family I’ve stolen from before combined. Their wealth is beyond reason – and yet they have treated me with nothing but kindness, respect and appreciation.
This is why I want to make it up to them – even if I’m going to put a dagger in their back shortly down the line, when I repay their kindness and patience by stealing from them.
Oblivious to my turmoil, Cyrus actually smiles at my tortured reaction.
“Oh? So, it won’t happen again? You promise?” His smile widens. “If you were in my harem, young lady, I’d turn your bottom red to make sure of that.”
My jaw drops.
The sudden image of being thrown over Cyrus’s lap floods my imagination. How small I would feel over the knee of that huge, sexy, dominant alien? I step forward, my eyes descending to the floor as my cheeks flush a deeper, hotter shade of red.
Cyrus takes a deep breath in as he watches, and I suddenly know that he can smell – no, taste what he does to me...
Gods, it would be even more humiliating and shameful to be punished in front of Gallus and Varian… Disciplined like an unruly wench, while those other two powerful men simply watch.
Suddenly, I can’t.
I can’t let him do that to me, or I’ll truly be lost. I know I won’t be able to resist the pure, unbridled need that would surge up inside of me – the hot, shameful ache to be taken and owned by these Aurelians.
I know I’d be lost instantly in the wicked, masochistic, submissive pleasure – and I’d let them claim my innocence, right then and there, if they so much as suggested it…
But that
