by Shai August
The valet escorted them to the registration desk, a high granite counter where another brown haired, blue eyed uniformed employee waited, a woman this time. There was no one in the lobby, it was deathly quiet for the middle of the afternoon when people should be lounging by the pool, or in search of an afternoon snack. His fur was standing on end at the eerie silence.
“The Wilmingtons,” the valet announced to the front desk clerk.
“Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Wilmington of Terrell Hills. I have your reservation here; you’ll be staying with us for six nights?” There was no computer visible, no sound of keys being struck, none of the modern trappings of a hotel check in procedure.
“Is it me, darling, or are there some very good-looking people here? We didn’t know this was a family run establishment when we saw the advertisement,” Felice said softly to the air, not addressing her comments to anyone in particular.
“Yes, we’re a family run business,” the receptionist said without inflection or pride of ownership or any hint of emotion in her voice, even the most wooden actor had more depth to their voice.
“We love supporting family businesses. How long has your family been here?” he picked up what Reese was putting down.
“A few generations,” was the vague answer given back to them, triggering all types of inner alarms. “You’re in room three-oh-one, Ned will show you the way.”
She passed two gold keys tied with yellow ribbons, she held the keys with the ribbon out first. Almost forcing you to accept them that way. He reached for them, but Felice slapped his hands away. “How beautiful! I’ll have to snap a couple of pics for the Gram and I don’t want your dirty fingers smudging them up first.” She gushed, “It’s so quaint and romantic to have old fashioned keys!” Felice held the keys at arm’s length, not touching or using the ribbon loops to place on her wrist. She rummaged in her purse and pulled out her cell. “The light isn’t so good here, I’ll try later.” She pouted, holding the metal keys between two fingers.
Pushing down all the confusing signals, so they didn’t cross his face, he leaned on the counter. “Listen—” he peered down looking for a name tag. Alice was written in black on the silver oval. “—Alice. Felice here is a huge fan of Magda Olivera and her descendants. I’d never even heard of the woman until we started dating. Hate to admit I wasn’t an opera enthusiast, but I got my assistant to set one of them web alerts to track opera keeping me in the loop. You know when the little lady has an interest, it’s your job as the man to provide. Is there any possible way that a one on one could be arranged for my Felice? It doesn’t matter the type of one on one or the cost, Felice sings opera herself and she’d probably be very, very grateful if Big Daddy could arrange for her to meet one of her idols before Thursday’s concert.” He winked at Alice, but the stony expression never left the receptionist’s face.
“I’ll reach out to Ms. Olivera’s team to see if she would be available for a one on one with Mrs. Wilmington,” Alice said smoothly.
“Remember, no matter the cost. I like to keep my FeFe happy.” He grinned leaning away from the counter, and then popped Felice’s tight rear end in her all white jumpsuit that stretched to fit all her curves.
“This way sir, ma’am,” Ned said behind him in that same flat, toneless voice.
“Big Daddy, I thought we were going to keep the touching to a minimum in public,” Felice hissed.
“Why should I?” he boomed. “You don’t have a minimum, you’ve got a maximus and I like to touch it. I like the sound it makes when my hand smacks it,” he said loudly, before he proceeded to smack her bottom. The smack reverberated loudly in the quiet of the hotel foyer to his utter delight. Reese/Felice frowned like an upside-down soup bowl.
There was going to be some benefit to spending a week in the middle of nowhere, even if that only benefit was him getting to freely fondle the round perky ass of Reese Freeman publicly and without shame.
Chapter Four – Reconnaissance
Reese
Colt held his hand up for silence after Ned closed the room door with a soft click. She watched his face tracking the footsteps back to the elevator by his shifter hearing.
“He’s on the elevator,” he whispered.
She loosened enough of her powers to work, quietly she built a ward around the room, one subtle enough to be undetected, but powerful enough that they could speak without fear of being overheard. Using the natural magic of the building, she twisted it with a finesse that her cousin Booker T. the Ward Builder would be proud of, before pushing the shimmering ward into the walls.
Colt’s eyes were watching her as she worked, waiting for the okay signal. “It’s done.”
His shoulders dropped a millimeter and she felt the same amount of relief.
“Four fingers! Can you tell what they are?” His astonishment matched her own.
“Not without revealing myself as a witch. Can you?”
“They never stand in smelling range long enough and avoid getting too close. It explains why they eschew cash tips; you have to get in arms’ reach.”
Exchanging hard looks, they quietly debated their options for half an hour until Colt’s eyebrow stood up. “What was it about the keys?”
She’d forgotten the keys. “It wasn’t the key itself; it was the ribbon. I can’t tell what spells are on it exactly, but don’t let it touch your skin.”
“Midas Protocol?” he asked, and she vigorously agreed. Pulling a pocketknife from his boot, he sliced the ribbons off without touching them. She whisked the fraying ribbon shards away into the trashcan.
Under the Midas Protocol, they wouldn’t touch anything or eat or drink anything they didn’t bring with them; it was the only way to ensure that they didn’t accidently trip some magical spell trapping themselves here, in whatever here was. After ten minutes of debate, both agreed that she would go search out her fellow opera aficionados and he would lounge by the pool. After two hours, they would return to the room, share intel and proceed to the dinner where their host and all the hotel’s occupants would be for the evening’s entertainment.
She inverted her sight and started scanning the hotel looking for clues. Everything was glamoured within an inch of its life, the walls, the furniture, everything. Desperately she wanted to pull at the edges of the glamour to see what was underneath but that would be like sounding an alarm. “Nosey witch here!”
Troy/Colt grabbed his bag and stepped into the bedroom. Ten minutes later, Colt/Troy came out of the bedroom in a pair of green board shorts that matched the green streaks in his eyes, a pair of lime green swim shoes and nothing else. She felt herself melting all over the chair, like a puddle of unspoken desire. He looked like Tom Selleck dipped in butterscotch, he only needed to perch one leg up on his knee and lean back against a red Ferrari to complete the image.
The man oozed both human and animal magnetism and she didn’t need to know what animal, but her body burned to touch him, even her magic thrummed in harmony around him the longer they were together and that shouldn’t happen.
She thought of the upcoming Coven Gathering and groaned. The Coven Gathering was a nationwide meet and greet for all single witches and warlocks to find someone who shared magical capability. It was the only way to ensure that magical children would be born. No warlock there was going to give her a magical hardon much less a physical one the way Colt Landry’s butterscotch body did, but she needed to find someone whose magic would resonate with hers. If her cousin Trouble McNamara could find a willing Crutchfield warlock to marry her, then she definitely needed to get on the ball. She thought of the tantrum she’d thrown after her parents’ call announcing that Trouble had found a warlock, lifting all the furniture in her house and slamming it down three times in frustration. Being the late bloomer in the family truly sucked buffalo balls when your younger cousin was a prodigy and made it look easy.
He beckoned her to come with a tilt of his head, and she rose from the chair to follow. Taking the briefest moment to adjust h
er white jumpsuit that felt uncomfortable in several places, his heated eyes greedily roamed the curvy outline of her body and the crotch became even tighter as she moistened under his gaze.
“FeFe,” he breathed. “We could go act like real newlyweds and try out the bed,” Colt offered quietly.
She felt all the heat of her body pooling in her pussy. Her damned precognition kicked in with images of them tangled in the sheets together, her chocolate brown hands caressing the smooth butterscotch skin of his back while he was nestled between her thighs. His full lips nipping at her neck with soft growls. She felt her empty pussy spasming at the want of him now and the loss of him in the future.
Stammering, she tried to remember the name of the Senator’s daughter. The images of them exploring one another’s bodies escalated, this time flashing harder and faster with his hips grinding out a punishing pace that left her breathless and wailing his name. All that was able to escape her mind and mouth was, “Duty.”
He blinked, shuttering the heated gaze that had lit her body on fire. She wished she had the ability to shut the heat out of her body.
“Duty,” he echoed, opening the door to the suite for her to proceed him out into the opulent seeming hallway with its plush carpet and expensive artwork. Her inner sight had stripped her human enjoyment of the elegant building, being heavily glamoured both on this plane and definitely in the ether as if it was trying to fool the creatures of the ether too.
They stepped onto the elevator together. “Do you know where you’re going?” he asked solicitously, posh Texas accent fully back in place. Automatically, they assumed there were listening ears.
“The website said they had padded practice rooms. I forgot to ask where when we checked in. I’ll start there.”
“Don’t lose yourself in the music, I want to get to dinner early so we can have an early bedtime.” Again, the heat of his gaze passed over her body and he inhaled deeply. Leaning down, he whispered, “The smell of your desire is intoxicating.” Just barely loud enough for her to make out.
She’d never recovered from his heated gaze earlier, now she was fully engulfed in desire. The cool air of the lobby rushed inside the opening elevator doors. She scooted away from Troy/Colt’s desires. He left the elevator whistling, heading in the direction of the pool.
“Alice, which way are the padded practice rooms?” she asked when she was within a few feet of the reception desk, as she got closer, she lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper like they were long time girlfriends, “Troy hates when I sing in the room. I keep begging for a private music room at home but…” she trailed off.
Alice had been replaced by Vera, but they looked exactly the same. She felt the top of her head and thanked her lucky stars the prototype ether viewing sunglasses were still there. Gently, she placed the sunglasses on her face as if the glare of the light streaming in the windows behind Vera were too much for her.
Her heart started hammering in her chest, in the ether Vera looked like a five foot five-inch-tall rat. She did her best to stifle the scream that was on the verge of escaping.
Vera pointed her arm to the right, her clawed hand at the end of her arm gesturing in the opposite direction of the front doors and the pool. The giant rat’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear the words as the sloped skull nodded and spoke.
Saying thank you was beyond her capabilities at the moment, she nodded and headed off to find the padded practice rooms. Keeping the glasses on after she’d passed another five foot five-inch tall rat looking employee was beyond her now. She snatched them off, the thought of dropping them on the marble floor crossed her mind, but Zosime’s disapproval and the mountain load of paperwork she’d have to complete stopped her. Returning the sunglasses to the top of her head, she rounded a corner to find the practice rooms and seemingly all the hotel guests except Delilah Dennis.
“Solo practice room or are you looking for partners?” an older white woman asked, she had the air of a cruise ship activity director standing at a podium in the middle of the hallway with a clipboard and pencil tucked behind her ear. Grouped behind her were at least two or three dozen people, most had their back to her and seemed lost in a conversation that she couldn’t hear.
“Let’s try partners, I’m normally alone. It will be a nice change of pace.” Let’s try partners to pump for information.
“Soprano or alto?” the happy lady asked, running her eyes down the list.
“Dramatic mezzo,” she offered to her operatic cruise director and watched the older woman’s eyes widen from narrow slits to half dollars.
“Perfect!” She clapped. “We can do Carmen! Brian!” she called happily over her shoulder.
A chiseled jawed, former academic All-American and three sport athlete detached himself from the crowd that had been milling toward the back of the room. He looked enough like Luke Perry that her nineties teenaged heart bubbled up with pop rocks and Crystal Pepsi.
“Brian Thorne meet… I’m sorry, darling, what was your name?”
“Felice Wilmington.” Six years of Steward training kept her in cover, no matter how much the man looked like an actual teenage dream. She offered her hand and felt an actual spark but couldn’t determine if it was real or manufactured. There were too many love cults in the world that sucked lonely women in by manufacturing that movie quality romantic spark.
“Brian, I mean Don Jose meet your Carmen, Felice Wilmington.”
“I’m charmed and delighted.” He breathed in a pure tenor that clanged all the bells in her head, grabbing her hand and kissing the back of her knuckles like a gentleman from the roaring nineties – eighteen nineties. She couldn’t fathom how or why Brian came to be here in the smack middle of nowhere with his catalog model looks and courtly manners.
She matched his flirtation with one of her own, lowering her voice she whispered, “I’ll charm and delight you.”
“Carlos!” the director trilled.
“Carlos Torres, Zuniga meet your Carmen, Felice Wilmington.”
Carlos was all the dark to Brian’s light with an overblown Spanish style machismo, he strode toward them with a proud bullfighter’s stance and sense of the dramatic. She’d be singing between these two men. What kind of opera fantasy camp had she fallen into? No wonder Delilah Dennis didn’t want to leave.
“Oh Linda, you do know the way to a man’s heart,” Carlos gushed dramatically, his eyes flowed over her in her white jumpsuit the same possessive way that Colt/Troy looked at her; before he grabbed Linda into a bone crushing hug and whirled her in a circle.
Linda tittered like a schoolgirl and she felt herself trying to join her. Giggles needed accompaniment.
Carlos took one arm and Brian took the other leading her to the crowd of singers at the back of the room. They bracketed her body with theirs, standing so close that she felt the muscles of their bodies, while someone stuffed a sheaf of sheet music into her hands. Introductions to the chorus were made in a whirlwind and then they were off full into the production from the Prelude to Finale at the bottom of Act Two Holà! Carmen! Holà!
Two hours later, she was bent over huffing and puffing like a magic dragon or a terrible wolf as the final strains of the orchestra music died down. Grasping her sides, she heaved, nothing on her didn’t hurt but her lungs burned like she’d smoked an entire redwood forest. Her diaphragm had calcified itself into her abdomen and her bones were liquified. She was a hundred and seventy-five pounds of pudding in a five-foot seven-inch skin.
A true diva would be standing, sucking up her applause from the crowd, not sucking the air for microbursts of oxygen to feed her starving lungs. There was only one person clapping currently, when she could stand upright again, she realized that it was Troy clapping. His face wore a look of amazement and adoration directed at her and only her. “Bravo!” he thundered. Carlos and Brian changed their posture, if they were shifters, they’d be bristling with fur and aggression. Enough male hormones had rained down in the air during the enti
re practice session that she knew Brain and Carlos had done this previously, collectively chasing and eventually bedding a string of opera divas.
She’d never tell him, but she was pleased he came, she wouldn’t have to work hard to extract herself from those two. They’d spent the whole rehearsal singing aggressively at her and letting their hands rove her body. It was a competition and an attempted seduction between those two. She smiled broadly, forcing the muscles of her face to cooperate. Performing introductions, “Everyone this is my husband, Troy Wilmington. He’s my biggest fan, no matter how rusty I sound.”
Troy came forward and wrapped his arms around her waist. He whispered just for her ears alone, “I know something that could knock the rust off of that voice.”
Two hours of singing and dancing had exhausted her but that husky statement reenergized her like a fresh set of batteries. She couldn’t tell if her panties were wet from sweat or Troy/Colt, but the way his eyes flashed for a second it was more the later than the former. Out loud he announced to the room, “I knew you would lose yourself in the music. Come, you need to rest before dinner.” Anyone could tell that Troy didn’t mean rest at all.
Troy’s hands moved from her waist down over the swell of her ass possessively and he shot death glare stares to Carlos and Brian; staring them down as he turned them to leave the practice area. His large hand stayed on her bottom through the lobby, up the elevator and down the hall to the door of their suite.