Page 39 of The Discount Damsel

“Roomie,” the dragon exclaimed delightedly, for the princess was indeed poking her head out Dirk’s bedroom.

“I hope you don’t mind, Master Dirk, seeing as you sleep in the tub.”

“I don’t, so long as you don’t mind sponge baths. That tub is all mine but the sink is all yours.”

“Hmm.” She planted her hands on her hips and somehow managed to look down her nose at Bradley, even though he was higher up in the tower. “Are you just going to stand there and stare, sir, or are you going to make us dinner? It’s well after sunset.”

Bradley rolled his eyes, took the one step back into his bedroom, and slammed the door.

CHAPTER 18

GIRDLED LIZARDS, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, AND A PROMISE OF ECCENTRIC TORTURE

When the dunes blushed with the first rays of dawn, Bradley knew something was amiss. Perhaps it was the faint, rhythmic breeze caressing his neck, or the strange bands of warmth that striped across chest and thigh. Or, most likely, it as the tickling sensation of silken threads upon his cheek.

His blue eyes snapped open.

That wasn’t a breeze against his neck or two girdled lizards that had somehow snuck into the tower and claimed his chest and thigh as their preferred sleeping roosts or silk against his cheek. It was the exhales, limbs, and hair of a princess who had not only snuck into his bed in the dead of night like a thief of peace and tranquility, but who had picked the lock on his door to gain entrance.

After he’d slammed his door shut last night, Bradley hadn’t taken two steps into his room before he’d turned around and twisted the key in its lock. A glance at the door revealed the aforementioned key on the stone floor directly below the door handle, wiggled loose.

And there, draped over his chair, was that stained taffeta dress and those soiled silk stockings.

“Tula!” he roared.

Millie came awake with a start, her whole body jerking in alarm. Which meant her hand on his chest clamped down on a nipple just as her knee bucked into his groin and her hair lashed him across the face like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

The sorcerer apprentice wheezed, and the princess rolled over with a groan. “What time is it?”

Bradley kicked himself free of the quilt and sheets and tumbled out of bed. The princess yawned and snuggled into the heat he’d left behind. She winced as the shutters flew open and cracked against the stone walls, opening a single eye into a slit that grew wider and wider with each nanosecond.

Standing off-center of the meager sunlight so Millie could see his hands, Bradley signed, “What are you doing here? You were rooming with Dirk. And how did you open the door? It was locked!”

Millie realized returning to sleep would be an impossible task now. The apprentice was madder than Duchess on bath day and would undoubtably seize the bed frame and simulate an earthquake if she tried to catch a few more winks. But that wasn’t the reason for her alertness. No, that was entirely the fault of Bradley Donmarin standing there in the sunlight in nothing but his boxer briefs. She knew knights trained to get muscles that big and sharply defined, but no sorcerer apprentice had any business being that chiseled. It simply wasn’t fair to the knights.

So, a mite flustered for the aforementioned reason, and a smidge grumpily, as she was unused to rising until after the sun had made a good and proper appearance, she dragged herself upright into a seated position.

“Firstly, that bed in Master Dirk’s room is sized for a child, or a dwarf, and my legs were starting to cramp most terribly,” she said. “Secondly, you should hear the snores that come out of that little dragon. It should be physically impossible and yet, against all odds, it isn’t.”

Millie had meant what she’d said yesterday, that under no circumstances would she ever share a bed with the grouchy apprentice ever again, but that was before she understood what it felt like to sleep with her knees tucked up by her ears. Not to mention she hated the idea of sponge baths. What was the point of bathing if you couldn’t do it properly with water you could submerge yourself in and an obscene amount of bath bubbles to keep you company?

She couldn’t very well sleep anywhere else, for none of the other rooms had met her standards. Nor the standards of any person alive, for that matter. That first night with the apprentice had been intimidating, but he proved himself such a gentleman (in this matter only), that it’d been worth risking it a second time. And she couldn’t undergo the metamorphosis from princess to pirate without her beauty sleep, could she?

“And the door?” the apprentice demanded, still irate, still distractingly shirtless.

“I picked it, obviously.” She leaned back on the heels of her hands. “My fifth etiquette tutor, Miss Dama, thought I indulged my sweet tooth too often and locked up all my favorite chocolates in her desk drawer. Then, if she thought I misbehaved that day, she would eat one right in front of me at the end of lessons. So I learned how to pick the lock on her desk, indulge my sweet tooth, and replace a chocolate with a block of polished mahogany. She left the same afternoon she lost that game of Russian roulette.”

His eyes rounded like twin blue pools. “You’re insane.”

“That’s never been diagnosed. Just never mess with a woman and her chocolate stash, especially during that time of the month, Mr. Donmarin. You’ll live longer.”

Given the serious delivery of that last statement, he made a mental note to add chocolate to the blackboard in the kitchen and hoped Miss Penelope could be persuaded to bring the luxury item. Perhaps if he told her why he needed it⁠—

Sweet mother of pearl, he wasn’t allowed to have guests at the tower. The last few days had been a whirlwind of change and he hadn’t given it a lick of thought until now. Could she even be classified as a guest? Surely she was more of a squatter. For sure a Major Inconvenience, as he’d classified her before, and a female one at that. What would Master Excelsior think?

The Prestigious College of Sorcerers was actually two in one, the young men and women apprentices being trained separate from one another, lest youthful impulses impede their concentration and magical maturity. If Miss Penelope discovered the princess, she would surely tell Master Excelsior, and then the grand master would think Bradley wasn’t taking his studies seriously. That he was on a six-month holiday funded by the College and his master’s coffers. Doubly—no, quadruply—so if Master Excelsior knew they were sharing the same bed.

“Get out of the bed,” he ordered. “I am going into that bathroom to shower and shave, and when I’m done, you’d better be out of that bed and dressed. If not, I will forcibly remove you.”