Hey Everyone!!
I hope you're all having a lovely week so far. Today, I thought I'd share a moment when Roni was having a bit of self doubt. I think it's something that just about all of us can relate to, even if the specifics might differ somewhat..
Excerpt from Bound By The Summer Prince:
Sighing, Roni put the book she held back on the table beside her. She allowed the dress to slide the rest of the way off of her body, but didn’t drop it on the floor. It was far too nice a dress for her not to care for it properly, and it had somehow survived the evening relatively unscathed. There were a couple of small wine stains near the hem, from when she had dropped her glass on the floor, but other than that it was fine.
No one had told her what to do with her dirty laundry, so she folded it carefully and laid it over the back of a chair. She figured she could ask Jillian in the morning where she could wash it. When Uaine had left, he seemed to take all of her energy with him. It was all she could do to remove her bra and put on a nightgown before crawling into bed.
In spite of her exhaustion, sleep would not come. There were too many questions spinning through her mind for her to rest. She didn’t understand what had made the man pull away from her; wasn’t he supposed to be magically drawn to her? And why had she flinched when he had approached her?
She knew her reaction had been imperceptible to others, but she couldn’t figure out why she’d had such a reaction at all. Uaine wasn’t cruel or a bully. She was confident he wouldn’t deliberately hurt her or do anything she didn’t agree to. He was certainly easy enough on the eyes. Also, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t slept with her marks before in order to advance a scheme, so why the sudden attack of nerves?
Uaine’s behavior was also unfathomable. She knew he couldn’t possibly have seen anything on her face that would have given her thoughts away; her poker face had long ago been perfected, as her life often depended on it during the cons she ran. So what made him pull away? Was it possible this ‘bond’ that supposedly existed between them wasn’t as strong as she’d been led to believe? And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
If he didn’t feel bound to her, was he more likely to let her go home or just less likely to protect her? If nothing else, the party had demonstrated how much danger she would be in if the prince decided not to take care of her. Aside from the danger from magic, there were still so many things she didn’t know about this strange place. Jillian had only had time to explain the very basics to her before they had to dress for the banquet. She didn’t even know what these people used for money!
Chills wracked Roni’s body, in spite of the warmth of the room and the blanket that covered her, as she realized just how very vulnerable she was without Uaine and Jillian’s help. She had never before doubted her ability to survive with just her wits and a charming smile, but now she did. If the Fae decided she wasn’t worth their time, she was well and truly screwed.
Perhaps that was part of why she had reacted the way she did to paying up on her bet. It wasn’t the sex that had bothered her so much; it was the sense that she was losing control of her game. Sex on her terms was one thing; sex because she hadn’t been able to steer events the way she needed them to go, was another thing altogether. If she couldn’t even maintain control for the duration of a party, how was she ever going to manage to manipulate all of these people long enough for her to escape?
Roni tossed and turned for what seemed to her to be hours. When sleep finally did come, it was troubled and the nightmares came with it.
