Minerva batted her eyelashes at me and pushed her shoulders back. "Do I look lonely?" she said.
She looked like someone I wanted to push onto her back right then and there. Like someone I wanted to kiss until we were both dizzy. But there were things you didn't say to a princess, not when your station was so far below hers.
***
On her first day working as a maid, Eve finds the king dead on his throne. His murder kicks off a cascade of intrigue, and as the plots of the nobility come crashing down around her, Eve is torn between hungry princes, the ever-watching eyes of the royal court, and a mad princess who seems to know far more than she lets on. Complicating everything further is the Imperative, a magical curse through which the Andan nobles have bent the world to their whims. If she is to survive, Eve must learn what it means to find strength in the face of overwhelming power.
The Maid and the Monarch is created by EOK Gifford-Smith, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

The Maid and the Monarch

When the princess woke, she was lying on one of her couches with a soft blanket draped over her. I sat on the floor by her side. Half the basket of pastries was gone, though if she paid any attention to the way I was licking my fingers, it would not be hard to figure out to where.


"You remember me, princess? I'm touched." I really was. Over the last half hour, I had ruminated constantly on the scare I must have caused her, appearing in her chambers in the dead of night. It was a stupid idea.


"You came." She smiled and reached for me. I offered her my hand and she took it, interlacing her slender fingers with my own.


It didn't matter how suave I thought I was, the moment we were touching every thought and conversation starter fled from my mind. "You- I- You are... well?" I asked. 


She giggled. "Better now than I have been in a long time."


Chapter 29: Remembering IV