If the young woman in the sketch wasn’t Anara then she was a woman who looked exactly like her. She had the same canted eyes and long braid of hair that reached down to her hips. Her face was the same shape.

The only discernable differences in the sketch were the small gash on Anara’s left cheek, and her breasts were slightly different. The Wind Steppe princess looked down, inspecting her own breasts as she cupped them in her hands. Hers were larger, but not by a lot.

She pinched her nipples, inspecting them. They didn’t protrude as much as in the sketch, but that difference was dependent on how she was feeling.

Her head was spinning. How could this be? It wasn’t possible, was it?

Perhaps that’s why the captain had stared at her so intently. Dante thought he had recognized her. Perhaps he still thought he knew her, but was waiting for her to say something?

No. She didn’t like that idea. He would have said something, wouldn’t he?

Anara was so confused. She didn’t know what to think. But now she had to see the rest of the book, right now. Tonight. She could find out the truth from the other pages, surely.

Her heart was racing. Not knowing what else she might find, she took pause for a moment, wondered if she could even go on, as she feared what she might find.

She must, she told herself forcefully, and turned the next page.

The moment she realized what was on those pages, she clapped the little book shut as if she had guarded herself against an oncoming dagger aimed for her heart.

Idiot!

With eyes closed, she instantly regretted that decision. Anara actually felt the blood pool into her face. The heat in her cheeks burned and she was intimately aware of her own womanhood. Her heart thundered inside her breast.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

She could not unsee what was on that paper. It had been another page-spanning depiction. Anara—no, the woman who looked like her—was with a man, that man being Dante Campione. There could be no mistaking it. It was him with the same powerful body, same curls, same strong jaw. And those piercing eyes.

She wasn’t certain she even possessed the correct words to describe what was on those pages. His back was arched in what could only be an expression of pure physical pleasure, as she—kneeling before him—gazing up in worshipful adoration and want of his…

No woman would think this way, surely? It was the private thought of a man. One with experience and a vivid imagination that made Anara’s own imaginings seem like that of a child.

Both the figures in the sketch had been so needful of one another.

Gods.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to shake the images out of her head. She could not have been intruding more deeply upon his most private thoughts. This journal where he sketched these intimate things from his mind was not to be seen by others, least of all her.

The Wind Steppe princess lurched from the chair so fast that it toppled backward and slammed on the hardwood boards. Her legs pounded like drums as she rushed down the steps and across the Captain’s stateroom. She went straight to where the bookshelf was. Moving quickly, she inserted the journal back where she had found it.

Anara turned to go back to her bed, her face burning with heat and shame, but before she reached the steps, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Had the book not been upright, nestled with the others like that?

Oh gods, she thoughts. No.

She went back to the shelf, took the little red journal out and put it on top of the other books in a lying down position. She looked at it. She turned it slightly. No, it hadn’t been like that either!

She couldn’t remember how the book had been situated with the others.

What was she to do? He would know the moment he came to the shelf. Worrying over it for what felt like hours, she finally decided that the last time he had seen the books they had been heaped into mess on the deck. She had put the books back in, so if she inserted the journal among them it would look as though she simply put it in with the others without any forethought whatsoever.

Yes. That would work. He would never know.

Swallowing, her heart began to ease on the punishment it was inflicting upon her. Anara ran back up to the loft, blew the candle out and slipped under the covers. She lay there, unable to get the images out of her mind. Dante’s intimate thoughts in her head. It was so wrong.

Shame assailed her.

And yet like a wanton woman, she ran her hand between her legs. Her panties were completely soaked through with her own excitement.

Why was she wet?