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.