I pinched the flesh between my teeth and bit down hard.

Varen barked a curse and tore his hand from my mouth, shaking the pain away.

"Let me go—you cheating, lumbering oaf!" I bellowed, struggling against the arm banded around my waist. My feet dangled off the ground because he was so godsdamned tall. I kicked back, hitting his shin with my heels. Scratching at his bare arm with my fingernails. Writhing and striking out like a rabies-infected cat, practically howling with the need to draw blood.

Varen cursed low once more and dropped me. I broke free, darting forward, and moved deeper into the narrow room wrapped in darkness. A stab of pain jarred up my foot as my toes kicked metal and when I stumbled against the hard edge of a shelf, pain cracked up my shoulder. I let out a startled cry. Like dominoes, an eruption of sound filled the space—the clang and jingling of metal, hollow thuds of plastic, ringing of glass—as buckets, bottles, and jars tipped over and rolled along the shelves or hit the floor.

Yellow light suddenly flooded the room. I drew in a breath of stale air infused with bleach and fake floral chemicals. We were in a utility cupboard with cleaning products lining shelves, and brooms and mops leaning against the wall or standing tall in metal buckets.

I whirled around and faced Varen. He stood in front of the door, his hand poised at the light switch, the hilts of twin swords poking over his shoulders. Long, lank locks fell around his face and shadowed his furrowed forehead. The room's dim light deepened the somber lines around his wary eyes—deep purple eyes that were narrowed on me.

Dragging my furious gaze over the bandoleer across his chest, I dropped my line of sight to the daggers strapped to his thighs. He looked like a homeless man—albeit armed to the teeth—in his filthy, fire-pocked suit. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothing was utterly ruined. He certainly didn't look like the heir of Lower House Crowther—an heir for freaks sake!

Giving into riotous wrath, I let it soar through my blood like a blustering typhoon that drove cruel gusts of wind before it. I stormed toward him and hissed, "Get out of my way!"

He held his palms out as if to placate a wild animal. Me. I was the wild animal. I sounded like one too with the jagged breaths I huffed out. I bared my teeth. Every inch of my body was knotted tightly, my fists raised, ready for fight or flight.

He barred the way out with his formidable size. "Hear me out."

I rushed him and shoved at his massive upper arm, trying to push him aside. "Let me out of here!"

He grabbed hold of my wrist and I slapped at his hand. "Calm down. Take a second to just breathe, and listen."

As if I was going to listen to anything this asshole said to me.

Then my eyes flew wide and I sucked in a shocked breath when I realized I'd gone one more step further with my cursing. He was such a freaking bad influence. Hellsgate, right now who the hells cared—he was an asshole!

I tugged and strained against his strength, my long hair flailing about my shoulders as I tried to free myself from his unyielding grip. "Tabitha," he gritted out, "calm the fuck down."

I gave up, not because I wanted to, but because I realized I was stuck here with the cheater until he chose to let me go. I threw up my arm and seethed, "You're Varen Crowther! When"—the hells—"were you going to tell me?!"

His fingers tightened on my wrist. "To be fucking fair you never asked my name."

"I did! I did!"

"No. You. Didn't." He flipped up his free hand, frantically rolling his wrist as if he were trying to remember something specific. "You said something along the lines of—I don't know your name."

"Not outright! Not freaking outright!" I shouted, stamping a foot. "You knew I was a servant. You knew it, and you played along and pretended to be a hunter." I shook my head in disbelief, my nostrils flaring. I'd been so clueless. Such an utter fool.

I wrenched my arm and he let me go. I staggered back, righted myself, and flung at him, "I can't believe that your fiancée doesn't know what a jerk you are. A cheating jerk!" How many other girls had he been with over the years? Beckah always said—Once a cheater, always a cheater.

"Irma is not my fiancée—"

"Really?" I spat, interrupting him, popping a hand on my hip. "Because everyone seems to think she is." I stabbed my chest with a finger. "Even I know it. I'm a servant and I know that Varen Crowther and Irma Szarvas are childhood sweethearts destined to marry."

"Like fuck I will. We're—"

"It doesn't even matter," I interrupted, waving a hand to cut him off. My voice rose to a horrible shrill note. "You are a cheater!"

Varen's face contorted with anger. "Listen up, Little Miss Freak Out. You and me, we kissed—"

"We freaking made out against a wall, Varen." I was struck silent as soon as I uttered his name aloud. Varen. It rolled around deliciously in my mind. I blinked, mentally shaking it free from my head, shaking the feeling of how lovely it felt on my lips. My gaze sharpened on the offender in question. "You and I..." Heat stung my cheeks as I made a waving motion between us both, down there.

My legs had been wrapped around his hips and he'd ground his hard length into a place that ached sweetly. Both of us seeking friction, chasing it, hunting it, desperate to steal it from one another. Flustered, I tried to make my point that it was indeed more than a kiss we'd shared. I raised a finger upwards. "You breathed in my ear. I didn't even know how sensitive it could be to have someone breathing and kissing my ear. I sure as"—hells—"didn't know you could orgasm from it either!"

"We kissed. I made you come. We didn't fuck. And this thing with Irma isn't what it looks like."

"What does it look like, Varen?" I crooned, crossing my arms over my chest and tapping an irritated foot. "Because from where I was standing, you pretty much looked like a couple. You kissed her."

"She kissed me. I was an unwilling participant."

I snorted, rolling my eyes.

He had a girlfriend. I felt sorry for her and disgusted with myself. I'd been duped, so easily too. There was no way I would have ever done anything intimate with Varen if I'd have known that he was in a relationship.

A chilling thought ensnared me. Would Irma know what Varen and I had done? My mind swept back to Irma in Varen's arms. Her body had been battered and bruised, and she was clearly distressed as she desperately clung to him. Irma had been so worried for him too.

What if she suspected? She didn't seem to be suspicious when she'd asked me to organize her possessions and arrange for them to be delivered back to her House. And really, everything that had happened between Varen and me had only occurred throughout this evening. It was too new, too fresh for her to be distrustful and point the finger at me.

He'd put me in this position as the other woman, and he stood there glowering down at me as if I was the one being unreasonable in all of this. My eyes slit as I paced back and forth, tempted to snatch something from the shelf to throw at him. Spitefulness surged through me. I couldn't help myself. "Cheater," I whisper-hissed.

I also couldn't help the way that guilt and shame stabbed my heart, stinging with the salt of longing. I thought we were going to have something together. That I was going to have a boyfriend. Me, the Uptight Spinster, would have a boyfriend. Someone that, yes, as I searched his messily bearded face for any sign of guilt, maybe my aunt might not wish for me to have. She'd have hoped whoever had stolen my heart wasn't as dirty-mouthed as he was, but he was going to ask her permission to court me.

And Aunt Ellena would say yes.

Because she could see how happy I was.

I was an idiot.

And I hated that for one brief moment when he'd kissed me to stop my panic-rambling about who I was and my job as Between Maid, I'd seen our future family. We had girls—lots and lots of girls. And for a flash of a second, I'd held them in my mind with golden ponytails and dimpled grins with deep violet eyes.

And yet...yet, I wouldn't have been able to take that step into a new life either, until I'd saved my aunt.

My aunt came first. She always had.

A flash of remorse scored through Varen's stormy eyes. He rubbed a tired hand through his beard. "Fuck," he said, as he braced the other hand on his hip. "I know all of this looks bad."

"Understatement," I muttered dropping my gaze to my mud-dried toes.

My anger twisted into humiliation at my own idiocy. Hot tears pricked the corner of my eyes and I wrung my fingers. I could only bear looking at him beneath my eyelashes. I asked quietly, my voice cracking, "Do you do this often? Is this what you do to entertain yourself? Am I a story to tell your high-ranking friends?"

I want to fuck you.

He certainly hadn't said—I want to get to know you.

That stung the most. I'd so easily fallen for his deception.

"Shit, no Tabitha," he exclaimed, looking almost angry. He drew in a long, deep breath, looking up at the ceiling, his mouth pinched to the side. And I covertly brushed the tears from my lashes.

He suddenly swiveled around to fully face me. "It all got out of hand. You assumed I was a hunter, and I didn't correct you and went along with it. This mess is all on me...not you." It seemed as if he was apologizing in a not-going-to-actually-say-the-word-sorry kind of way, yet his voice was iron, almost businesslike as he paced back and forth in front of the door. "It was fun for a bit too."

"I don't think that's helping your I'm-not-a-jerk case," I muttered, frowning and folding my arms over my chest.

There was an arrogance to the line of his body, and a tone that brooked no argument as he carried on speaking as if he hadn't heard me. "And then, well, things fucking steamrolled from there. There wasn't really the right time to tell you the truth."

My gaze narrowed as I tilted my head. "Really?" I drawled.

"I didn't know how to tell you I wasn't a hunter for House Lyon. Because I'm..." the words drifted apart as he slowly ground to a halt facing the mops and brooms. He ran a hand down his chest to his bandoleer, tapping the hilt of one of the slender blades with a finger, as if unable to think of the right word to describe himself.

"A jerk?"

His shoulders stiffened and his eyebrows slowly rose.

"A cad? A deceiver? A cheater?" I carried on, supplying him words to choose between, or all of them.

He rounded on me, his expression astounded and offended. "I was going to say—not good at this..." He waved a hand between us as if I should understand what he was trying to say. Except I didn't. Did he mean—apologizing?

"I fucking hate drama. I wanted to talk to you now," he quickly added, and firmly, "Reasonably. And clear up this misunderstanding."

I made a hmmm-ing sound as I looked away at the line of bottles that had tipped over and fallen to the floor. "Misunderstanding." It was a lot more than a misunderstanding.

Then he mumbled something I wasn't quite sure of, but it sounded a lot like—Sorry. Before I could even unravel if he'd actually said it or not, he spoke on. "I'm not a cheater. I despise cheaters." His tone was caustic enough that I glanced up in surprise. "Irma and I aren't together. I haven't... I haven't told anyone what happened between us, why we broke up, not my family, not even my twin."

Valarie.

And he'd said cheater so bitterly. Had Irma cheated on him?

My heart stumbled and my mind filled with curiosity. Despite my anger, despite not wanting to acknowledge the reproach shining in his eyes, my voice grew softer and I took an unconscious step forward. "What happened?"

"It doesn't matter. It's over between me and Irma," he said gruffly. He rubbed the back of his neck and dropped his gaze downward as he toed the floor with a ruined shoe. His shoulders slumped along with his hand. He heaved a weary sigh and the same feeling I had when he'd kissed me brushed along my bones, the desperation and guilt and sadness that laced his kisses like poison.

Varen cleared his throat and shifted his weight, perhaps needing a moment longer to shutter away those vulnerable emotions, because when his dark eyes met mine again, they were hard and sharp like unpolished obsidian. "Irma is not my girlfriend. Not my fiancée. I don't want anything to fucking do with her. I know it. She knows it. But she's not making it easy." A pause. "We haven't been together since...well, since my brother..." He swiftly glanced away, as if he could no longer hold my gaze. Couldn't bear to see the sudden sympathy burst within my eyes.

I observed his profile, the way grief strained the lines around his eyes and full lips.

Gratian, his younger brother had died in a hunting accident in the Hemmlok Forest. It left me feeling uneasy, the timing of it all...but the thought split apart when I wondered if he was still lying to me. From what I'd witnessed between Varen and Irma in the guest bathroom, they'd seemed like a couple. If indeed, they had broken up, surely Irma would have enough self-respect and leave him alone.

"Why is Irma acting like you two are still together then?"

His eyes slid my way, jaw locked in anger. "Because she's fucking crazy. She's never been denied anything. She's spoiled. And she wants what I will eventually inherit."

"Head of Lower House Crowther," I answered for him.

He nodded. His eyes had gone a more violent shade of violet.

It was quiet in the small room but for the sound of our breathing, the air saturated with his need for me to understand. Outside, hurried footsteps resounded down the hallway as several people walked past with hushed urgent murmuring.

The last of my blistering fire died, doused by a wintery sea that rolled up the shore on a rising tide of wretchedness. Even with all of this misunderstanding cleared up, Varen was the heir to Lower House Crowther. There was a divide between us, a vast ocean separating our classes, and neither one of us could bridge that kind of gap.

Acceptance spiraled through me, heavy and unwanted, but nevertheless, it was the unbending truth that lay between us. This was the way things were in our world. Would always be.

My mind stumbled as I ran through the course of the past twenty-four hours. I didn't think anyone had seen me talking to him. I glanced around nervously, at the small narrow room which anyone could walk into. It was one thing to be caught with a guy, but another thing altogether when that guy happened to be a member of the upper ranks. And out there, in my world...it was so dangerous for a servant to associate with one of the elite. Servants had been transferred to other Houses for illicit relationships. Some had even gone mysteriously missing in the past. It was whispered that they'd been permanently removed.

What had only begun to unfurl and bloom between him and I needed to be cut before it fully flowered. I hurt. I would for a while. But I'd get over it and him. And besides, it wasn't as if he'd said he liked me. Though a small part of me whispered his kisses told me otherwise.

I sank into my role as easily as dressing for it every morning. All emotion dropped away, all feelings for this scruffy, entitled member of our world safely tucked behind a blank expression, and I became the wallpaper—pretty, but nothing more than the background.

My chest pinched with pain when I saw understanding flood over his features at the shift in my demeanor and watched him spin into pure panic of the desperate kind.

I smoothed a hand down the front of my dirty, torn dress and squared my shoulders. "Mr. Crowther, I appreciate your honesty...and that apology." An apology I still wasn't sure if he had actually given me or not. I took a couple of steps closer so we were flush. "So if you please, stand aside, and let me go. There's much I need to help with."

"Wait," he said quickly, then uttered a low curse between gritted teeth. He dipped his head, staring down at the floor once more as if he were too shy to show me what he felt inside. A weary sigh. "The truth is, I haven't laughed in a long time..."

My breath caught in my throat. My body went rigid, my ears alert, listening and feeling with all my senses. Wondering just what he was going to say next.

"I've had the most fucked up, ridiculous evening ever, excluding the whole Jurgana wanting to eat us all of course," he continued.

My mouth twitched on a smile.

"You saved my sister's life," he said, his voice hoarse. And I knew that meant the most to him. "You nearly died twice and both times it scared the shit out of me." He straightened his shoulders, lifting his head to stare at me with warm, yet wary eyes. "It's also been the most fun I've ever had." He took one step closer, sliding his gaze, glowing with awe, over my face. "A girl with gold spun hair, bright green eyes, and sexy as hells dimple made me laugh."

I blushed, biting down on my bottom lip as a smile threatened to creep over my mouth.

"I like your refreshingly sassy attitude, not to mention those fucking prim manners." He shoved his hands in his pockets and angled his head, black hair dipping over his intense violet eyes. "I like you."

My whole body sighed and a wondrous, delighted warmth invaded every inch of my body.

I like you too.

"And I want more of that. More of you."

The sad truth was, he couldn't have it. I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Finally, someone like him was within my grasp, he liked me and I liked him right back, and I couldn't have him.

"I feel the same way too," I said quietly.

He beamed a glorious smile that made my heart sing.

I briefly closed my eyes and steeled my spine. My voice was softer yet forged in resolve, inviting him to hear me and accept this. "Here's the thing, Varen. None of this even matters. You are the heir to your House. I am a servant. Nothing can ever happen between us. Nothing can ever go any further."

And as I watched that marvelous smile falter and then fall away, the threat of deep despair stung the back of my throat. Before he could speak and I burst into tears, I wove around his formidable size and pulled the door open.

The flat of his hand slapped it shut.