“The master’s son hasn’t found himself a date?”
Since that was exactly she had been worried about but would never admit to it, she had instead mumbled an excuse about having to clean in another room.
By seventeen, confusion had evolved into full-blown infatuation with a side of mortification. She’d started noticing things she had no business noticing. Like how his racing suits clung to his thighs. How his hands looked working on an engine. How his hair curled slightly when damp from the shower.
She learned his patterns with the dedication of a scholar studying for the most important exam of her life. He woke at 5:47 every morning, not 5:45 or 6:00 but 5:47 exactly. She knew because she’d started setting her alarm for 5:30 just to make sure his coffee would be perfect when he came down.
He took it strong enough to wake the dead but with exactly one sugar cube, never two. She’d spent a week testing different roasts until she found the one that made him pause mid-sip and actually look at the cup with something like approval.
“New coffee?” he’d asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep it.”
Two words. She’d floated on them for days like an idiot.
By the time she turned eighteen, she’d graduated from confused to infatuated to completely, desperately aware. Aware of him as a man. Aware of herself as a woman. Aware of the space between them that felt charged with electricity she didn’t quite understand.
The physical reactions were the worst part. Or the best part. She couldn’t decide.
Her body had developed curves that made Mama buy her shapeless uniforms and lecture her about keeping her hair braided tight. But around Aivan, everything felt too tight, too hot, too much. Every time she found herself in the same room with him, she would feel so inexpicably restless and so shamelessly aching.
And oh, the dreams...
She never quite remembered everything, but she would remember enough that she would wake up either crying for something that wasn’t real. Or blushing so hard because what she had dreamt of was a littletooreal.
But then...the whispers started.
As his fame grew, so did the rumors swirling around him, with the other servants exchanging excited whispers about the latest news they had heard from this source and that. Models so tall and long-legged they made Sienah feel like shrinking away in comparison. Actresses whose looks were so lovely they were like life-sized dolls. And heiresses who seemed so perfectly posh that Sienah could easily imagine them still acting with grace and poise even in the midst of an alien attack.
Sienah knew she wasn’t helping anyone, least of all herself, by cataloging all the women Aivan dated like they were Pokemon to be collected and their information filed in her mental Pokedex. And yet that was exactly what she found herself doing. She would take note of who he was currently dating, try to figure outwhatattracted Aivan to the other woman, and later on,whyhe would break up with her.
Almost like she was strategizing her best moves for attacking—er, attracting—Aivan while at the same time preparing her defensive strategies to make sure that he would have no reason to dump her.
Ifhe were to ever notice her, that was.
And it was a pretty bigif,or at least it was so in her Mama’s eyes.
“You’re playing with fire,mija,” Mama warned the night she caught Sienah altering all her cleaning routines to match his schedule. “The master’s son is no ordinary man.”
“I never said anything—”
“You don’t have to,” her mother said with a sigh. “It is all in your eyes, and I do not like it one bit. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I need you to know what I feel about this...this infatuation—”
“Mama!”
“You can deny it all you want, but we both know the truth.”
In Lynnette’s eyes, she was reaching foolishly for the stars, and while Sienah loved and respected her mother too much to argue about this...
It was when she was alone with her thoughts that she couldn’t help but wonder.
Was it so foolish, really?
Because there was that time when she’d been reaching for a book on the high shelf in the library and he’d appeared behind her, pressing close to pull it down. She’d frozen, overwhelmed by his heat, his scent, the solid wall of his chest barely brushing her back.
“Wuthering Heights?” He’d read the spine, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “Didn’t picture you as the romantic type.”
