Now, she lay in his bed in his castle in Scotland, her body exhausted and aching but content by his play. Content in the knowledge that he again fell asleep inside her and she again fell asleep full of him. All of which she told herself she would never be and would never again do.
Humiliation crept into her muscles alongside the ache and the bitterness that guarded her heart turned to hatred.
The tears of that bitter hatred started stinging the backs of her eyes when she heard a knock on the door.
She froze and stared, silent, hoping whoever it was (for it wasn’t Callum, she would smell him, and anyway, he would never bother to knock) would go away.
They didn’t.
The head of a tall, very pretty woman peeked around the door. She had dark hair burnished with coppery highlights and a huge smile on her face.
“You’re awake!” she said brightly, her words also softened by a Scottish burr, and she threw open the door, balancing a tray in one hand and closing the door behind her with a hefty kick of her foot.
Sonia sat up, holding the hides to her bared br**sts. The woman, wearing jeans, boots and a pretty, bright orange, woolly sweater with a fluffy scarf in orange and red and purple stripes wrapped around her neck, walked into the room. Then she put the tray on the bedside table and dropped immediately to a knee, head lowered.
Sonia stared at her, stunned.
Then she remembered what she was supposed to do.
“Please rise,” she invited and, with abundant energy that startled Sonia so much she jumped, the woman surged to her feet.
“My queen!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting ages! Everyone has! Ages and ages and ages! And look at you! You’re even prettier than I expected!”
“Um…” Sonia muttered, taken aback by her exuberance and, of course, the small fact she was na**d in bed and confronted with a stranger. “Thank you.”
The woman burst out laughing while she turned and rushed to Sonia’s six suitcases (and one cosmetics case) that somehow were all lined up with Callum’s cases in the room.
“She’s thanking me because she’s pretty,” the woman said to no one. “Hilarious!” she cried.
Then she started opening suitcases in apparent abandon. She was digging through Sonia’s possessions while Sonia stared in shock, uncertain what to do and unable to do anything seeing as she was na**d and the woman had four inches and at least fifty pounds on her.
“I’m Maraleena. I’m Drogan’s mate,” she announced while opening another suitcase and still digging. “Drogan is Steward of the King’s Estates.” She snatched something out of a suitcase and whirled, brandishing Sonia’s stretchy, black, cotton nightie with the deep hem of black lace and matching lace covering the cotton at the bosoms. “Ah ha!” she cried and rushed to Sonia. “You can put that on. Then you need to eat. Everything. King Callum said he wanted me to bring down a clean plate.”
Of course he did, Sonia thought but didn’t speak aloud as she took the nightgown Maraleena dropped on the bed beside her so the other woman could start pulling covers off food on the tray.
“You’re human, I forgot,” she said apropos of what Sonia thought was nothing but going back to her earlier subject. “Steward of the Estates means Drogan takes cares of all things castle. You know, the plumbing and heating and the cars and the gardens and the forest and stuff like that. He also helps Callum with other stuff too, official stuff. Ho hum. Bo… ring!” she decreed, lifted the tray and Sonia had just pulled the nightgown down over her h*ps when Maraleena planted the tray on Sonia’s lap then she looked at Sonia and said, “I’m housekeeper, or I was. That means I take care of all things castle that are, you know, housekeeping things. Keeping it clean, doing the laundry, ironing, getting the food in. Though, I’m a terrible cook. Poor Drogan, he loves his food. His life is a misery with me.” She grinned a grin that belied her words and then carried on, “We’ve a she-wolf who sees to that, or saw to it, her name is Callista.”
Sonia’s astonished eyes went from her tray to Maraleena. And her tray, incidentally, consisted of two eggs over easy on what looked like two fried pieces of bread and sat next to a pile of baked beans, a pile of sautéed mushrooms, two rashers of bacon, two huge sausages and two patties of some kind of meat that was black. This was accompanied by a toast caddy of four half-diamonds of perfectly toasted toast and three small bowls, one of butter, one of strawberry jam and one of orange marmalade. This was finished off with a cafetière of coffee, a mug, a small jug filled with milk, a sugar bowl and a tiny salt and pepper shaker.
“She-wolf?” Sonia breathed, forgetting her food and she watched as Maraleena went stock-still and her face paled.
Then she blinked.
Then she stammered, “Oh, it’s just something we… it’s just. Well…” she spluttered, her eyes lit and she proclaimed, “King Callum is known as The Wolf!”
It was Sonia’s turn to blink at her, stunned silent by this news.
Callum was known as The Wolf?
The Wolf?
The Wolf?
Why had he not mentioned this to her?
Not once.
Not while she was calling him that, screaming it during her orgasms (as hideous as that memory was at the moment), cuddling her stuffed wolf, fiddling with the wolf charm his mother bought her or any time in between.