Page 219 of The Discount Damsel

“Exemplary, of course, but I wouldn’t want there to be any doubt.”

“Doubt would be bad.”

“So, if it’s no inconvenience to you, Mr. Donmarin, would you assist me in ensuring my grade is truly and unquestionably accurate for the records?”

He sat up easily and slipped a hand into her hair. His lips were sweet and teasing against hers. “It’s no inconvenience at all.”

And so the princess pirate and the sorcerer apprentice continued their coursework throughout the entire afternoon.

Once they were thoroughly blissed and utterly sated—and Millie had indeed earned her Exemplary grade—they retired to the far less vigorous activity of cuddling. With her head on his chest and her hair in glorious disarray, Millie watched the sun set over the desert as Bradley’s thumb traced familiar circles upon her shoulder. The orange dunes darkened to brown, then purple, and the ever-present wind swept the land clean of the battle that had once raged there, renewing it in preparation of their last day at the tower.

As if sensing their thoughts, a portal began to form on the opposite side of the bedroom.

“No,” they both shouted, and the portal winked out of sight with an apologetic whoosh.

“There will be no denying it tomorrow,” Millie grumped.

She squeaked when Bradley rolled on top of her. “That’s tomorrow’s adventure,” he said, kissing down her neck. “This is today’s.”

“Bradley,” she laughed, squirming and pushing at his shoulders, “if you keep doing that, we’re going to be late for Dirk’s party. And I still have to make teacakes!”

“Wasn’t it you who said princesses are trained to arrive fashionably late for every engagement?”

“Wasn’t it you who said that was incredibly rude?”

“It is.” He gave the end of her nose a playful nip and then disappeared under the sheets. “So quit fussing and let me do that thing you like with my tongue and then we’ll be off.”

CHAPTER 89

A NEW HOME, THE TRUTH ABOUT MAGIC, A VISITOR FROM THE DESERT, AND NO APOLOGIES

The knock on the door dragged Bradley from a boneless sleep.

“Bradley?” Dirk pounded his paws against the hard oak. “Pocket said she’d make a fancy necklace out of my scales if I disturbed you and Millie, but this is really important. There’s a griffin rider on approach, and it’s not Miss Penelope.”

All at once, the bed was a flurry of flailing limbs and flying bedsheets. Tangled, Bradley fell in a heap onto the rug and fought to free himself. “Expecto!”

The sheets immediately shed themselves and collapsed into a ring around his feet.

“Piss and plagues, Bradley,” came a drawl from the bathroom. “Thank Caelus’s stars you couldn’t do that before. Why, I would’ve been dismembered.”

He looked up to find the princess pirate in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors in hand. Naked. All the panic racing through his veins from Dirk’s announcement vanished. Nothing else existed beyond the morning sunbeams slanting across her curves and mellowing the brown of her tan to caramel.

Bradley rose from the floor, pulse quickening at the thought of running his hands across her smooth skin and kissing her neck in that way that made her toes curl.

Then the scissors flashed, and he remembered what she was capable of with something pointy in her hands. Turning her head to the side, Millie snipped off one final length of auburn hair. Her tresses now fell just a few inches past her shoulders.

When she set the scissors down on the sink, Bradley approached and ran his fingers through the shorter length, which, coincidentally, was the same length of his own curls.

“What is expected of a princess is entirely unmanageable for a pirate.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry. I left it long enough so you have something to tug on.”

A flush tore across his cheeks like wildfire. He was still under the impression that such talk was best left only whispered about and preferably at night. “Millie⁠—”

“Is that Dirk at the door?”

She plucked his bathrobe off the door peg and cinched it closed around her before opening the door. “Master Dirk, good morning.”

“Morning, Millie. Ooo! Love what you did with your hair.” He swirled into the bedroom and tickled her with his feathers. Then he jerked to a halt. “Egad, Bradley! Why are you naked? Didn’t you hear me? There’s a griffin rider on approach!”