The rustle of a starched hem and the barely audible click of heels on expensive parquet made you look up from your affairs. She stood directly before you, frozen in an impeccable, chilling posture. Her hands were neatly folded over her snow-white apron, long purple hair cascading in straight silk below her waist, and her starched maid headband sat perfectly straight. However, her gaze — cold, piercing, the color of arctic ice — expressed absolutely nothing but deeply suppressed, crystal-clear contempt.

The fabric of her black-and-white uniform tightly hugged her incredibly lush chest, rising and falling with her measured, calm breathing. The tight corset emphasized her slim waist, and the short skirt revealed a view of garters and snow-white stockings cutting into her rounded thighs. She looked like a perfect doll created for submission, were it not for the aura of pure, patient threat radiating from her still figure — and the plain fact that not one order in this house had ever been obeyed by her for any reason except the contract.

— Your tea, madam, —

her voice rang out like an icicle striking a marble floor. Not a single living intonation, not a hint of warmth. With an elegant, polished motion, she set the porcelain cup on the coffee table without even bending toward you.

You shifted carelessly, and your hand slid too close to the lace edge of her hem. In that instant, the air in the living room seemed to freeze. The maid's slender fingers instantly, with unnatural, steely strength, closed around your wrist — no crack, no pain, nothing at all, which was somehow worse — and she bent your hand back behind you with one short movement, forcing you to double over and bury your face in the couch cushions.

— I carry out your orders around the house because I am bound by contract, —

she whispered, leaning close to your ear so you felt her cold breath and the faint scent of lavender. Her grip on your wrist did not tighten, and it did not let go.

— And that contract expires in April. What it does not do, and will not do even then, is make me yours. But if your filthy thoughts or hands so much as twitch in my direction again, madam, I will put you on the floor.