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I walk a few steps toward the bed. “Perhaps the better question is how you got into my suite.”
“I convinced them I was your wife.” Her eyes smolder. “It wasn’t difficult.”
“Whoever let you in should be fired,” I say under my breath. And I’ll make sure they are. They let her into my private space without any kind of proof of her claim. “All right. There’s nothing else to do except get you your own room at this point.”
She grins. “The hotel is booked, sir.”
I sigh again. “Fine. You take the bed. I’ll take the pullout in the living area.”
Just what I need. A shitty night’s sleep and a backache in the morning from sleeping on a pullout couch. Even in the Countess Regalia, pullout couches suck. They’re never long enough for me. My legs will be hanging off the end.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, sir.” She pulls her arms down, flips onto her stomach, and crawls toward the foot of the bed. So much for my commanding bindings. “I can change.”
“Keira,” I say as gently as I can, “don’t try to change for any man. Never give up who you are and what you want. You’re important. Don’t forget that.”
She rises onto her knees and touches my face. “If I’m so important, why don’t you want me?”
I gently remove her hand. “I know what you want, and I can’t give it to you. You deserve to be with someone who can.”
“I don’t want anyone else, sir.”
“Yes,” I say, again as gently as I can. “I understand that, but I do.”
I don’t realize the truth of my words until I say them. I know next to nothing about Mary. I don’t even know her last name. But already, I feel something brewing inside me. Something foreign and far from unpleasant.
Mary’s already a submissive, but something has her rattled. And for some reason I want to be the one to help her.
“I hope you brought something to sleep in,” I say. “If not, grab one of the bathrobes from the bathroom. You’re not going to sleep naked in my suite.”
I close the bedroom door. All of my stuff is in the en suite bathroom. I strip off my shirt, kilt, and hose, gently folding the kilt to keep the pleats in place. My suitcase is also in the bedroom, and it contains my underwear and my pajamas. I don’t wear anything under a kilt, so I’m naked.
Great.
I pull out the bed, make it up with the sheets and blankets provided, and slip between them.
Damn.
I have a naked woman in the next room—a woman who would let me do whatever I want to her right now.
And all I can think of is Mary. Sweet Mary who introduced me to New York pizza. Who showed me the spectacular skyline of Manhattan from her favorite viewing spot.
Sweet Mary, who’s a little bit broken, but who trusted me enough to spend the evening with me.
She gave of herself when she didn’t have to.
And I want to give something back to her.
Chapter Eight
Mary
I only make it about ten minutes on the elliptical the next morning at the gym before I tell Brenda I’m heading down to the small dinette on the first floor to have a smoothie. By the time I have my smoothie ordered—today’s special is raspberry pineapple—Brenda has joined me to order her own.
“You’re quiet today, Mare,” she says.
“Am I?”
“Spill it. You haven’t said more than three words about the Scottish hunk.”
