Page 24 of Never Broken

“But the law states that you’re supposed to get at least four hours a night,” I protested. “Not to mention, under New European law, you shouldn’t have been sold for farm labor at that age, either. I’ve been researching this for my term paper, where I talk about closing the loopholes and adding more government oversight. If we had just done that, your life could have been?—”

I clamped down on my lip. When I saw how he was looking at me, I couldn’t do much else.

“No, keep going,” he said. “I defer to the expert.”

“Oops,” I said in a tiny voice. “Sorry.” I wanted to crumple myself up and throw myself in the wastebasket.

He was still smiling a little, thank fuck. Maybe the biggest miracle in all of this was that he didn’t completely fucking hate me. “Oh,” he said. “One more thing: I’m behind schedule again today.”

I slumped in my chair. “Because of being here?”

“Yeah.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“Which is the highlight of my day, of course.”

Like an idiot, I blushed inwardly. “Really?”

“Well, yeah. It’s the only time all day I get to use the furniture.”

He was joking. But also not.

“Take a nap,” I said resolutely. “In my bed. Right now.”

“Under the covers?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

I swallowed. “If you want.”

His reply wasn’t exactly the standard slave line when invited to take liberties:Oh, miss, that wouldn’t be proper, blah, blah, blah.

“Damn, I thought you’d never ask,” he said, pulled back the down comforter, tossed aside Pillow Mountain, and before my eyes, arrayed his rather large, rather long, rather exquisitely sculpted body on the bed in its place, practically purring. Noticing me staring, he patted the space next to him slyly. “Room for two.”

“In your dreams,” I said as if the entire inner workings of my body hadn’t suddenly erupted like a fire hydrant just thinking about that. Clearly, this was a terrible idea. He wasn’t supposed to be allowed onanyfurniture, let alone mybed. He was also, I reminded myself, a person, not a dog. Anyway, there was no changing my mind now.

“No one comes up here this time of day except the maid, and we’re already doing her job,” I said, rising and moving toward the door.

He went rigid, just for a split-second, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who had suddenly remembered where we were and what we were, which was as far as it was possible to get from two ordinary kids shamelessly flirting while pretending not to.

“I’ll keep the door open a crack and watch, just in case. And wake you up in plenty of time,” I reassured him, suddenly convinced that the worst thing that could ever happen would be him deciding this was a terrible idea, even though I already had.

“You won’t have to,” he said matter-of-factly, his sanguinity regained. “I’ve got an internal alarm like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I alwayswishedI had one of those.”

“Spend three years getting kicked awake and you would.”

Fuck. Like by now, I couldn’t haveguessedthat.

He yawned again, and I watched that body relax and sink into the bed, muscle by gorgeous muscle untensing in turn. “Hey, I could get used to this,” he said with another yawn.

“Don’t,” I said immediately. “This is a one-time offer.”

“If you say so,” he said with a half-smile, raising one arm over his head casually to rest on my favorite furry pink throw pillow. A small sigh escaped his lips as if this perfectly normal bed were some kind of luxury spa treatment. Then again, I’d never even spared a thought for the kinds of beds the slaves slept on.

“What do they make these sheets out of?” he asked.

Beds very unlike mine, evidently. “Nine-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton,” I said as I came back toward the bed.

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