She let out a very loud laugh and I felt like she was going to squeeze her revenge out of me in a thousand tiny moments from this day forward.
Upstairs we had a lot of serious canopy beds. I’m talking beds with enough fabric to open up a fabric store. Not only that, one of the rooms had walls covered in the same fabric as the bed, a green and pink floral print. It was dizzying.
“If you say we need to preserve these walls, I’m going to bite you in your sleep,” Jake said, grinning at me.
“Nooo. You have my permission to tear those down immediately. In fact, I might just do it myself!”
“There’s our Hel,” he said.
Of course, there was a library, but a lot of it was cleared out. A desk with many drawers had been ransacked.
“That was me,” Jasper said. “I was looking for the diary Byron mentioned. No luck.” He started pushing the drawers back in now. A lot of them were being stubborn and he was cursing as he punched one into place. I think Jasper was just finding excuses not to walk too much. I was so pissed whenever I saw him limping, knowing my cousin did that to him and it was going to slow down our progress a lot. I wondered if he would be able to climb a ladder at all.
Fuck. We really did have a lot for three healthy people to do, since Billie admitted that she had no skills.
“This is the master,” Jake said. “Prepare yourself.” The halls upstairs had led us to three medium-sized bedrooms plus the library so far, but now we reached the largest bedroom.
This room was like a 70s boudoir designed by Louis the XIV, with gilt picture frames, gilt mirrors, gilt lamps with the most enormous 1970s lampshades I’d ever seen, and a gilt bed and dresser set. The whole thing was planted in a layer of thick gold carpeting and smelled like healing tonic for old people.
“Ewww,” I managed.
“But wait,” Jake said. “There’s more.” He jumped onto the bed belly first and the whole thing wobbled.
It was a water bed. Oh god.
“But then, the bathroom has never been updated since it was first installed,” Billie said. “Look at this! This is the craziest room I have ever seen.”
Considering that the rest of the house was already pretty crazy, I was wary of how much crazier it could get.
Obviously the home had been owned by wealthy people who were early on in the bathroom trend. I had never, ever seen a bathroom like this.
The shower was the sort of Victorian spa shower made from a metal frame that looked sort of like a torture device, encapsulating the victim in a cage with spray nozzles going all the way down from head to feet—a rib cage shower, as they are known for reasons that seem immediately obvious.
The bathtub wasn’t even clawfoot. It was tin, set in a wooden box of sorts that honestly reminded me of a coffin. And the wood was rotting badly around it, making it extra creepy. The tub matched wooden wainscoting that surrounded the entire large room, and it had also seen better days, as had the wooden floors.
The sink, chipped and cracked, had a painted bowl and candleholders to light the mirror, while the toilet was this scalloped porcelain art piece where the S-bend in the toilet actually had the shape of a fish, and it had the overhead tank like early toilets do, so gravity would give the flush a little more force.
Jake turned on one of the bathtub taps. It creaked, and then it clonked, and then a thin stream of water reluctantly emerged.
“I don’t know if it ever gets hot,” he said. “Now if you tell me we have to save this room because it’s so beautifully authentic…”
“Nooo. It is sad to tear out these old fixtures, but this is a gut job, no doubt,” I said. “It’s fascinating, but I would never ever bathe here.”
“So we have a house with no kitchen and a bathroom that has to be gutted,” Jasper said. “We’d better focus on those two rooms and just do what we can with the rest because those two things will cost a lot. We also need to demo the servant’s house. It’s unsalvageable.”
“Yeah, I agree with you,” I said. “If we make the kitchen and bathroom beautiful then we’ll just fix the damaged bits and call it a day.”
“Didn’t you say the faeries have to find a human bride, though?” Billie said. “You said you were going to work these bedrooms, right? At the very least. They’re just so ugly. And some of the paint downstairs is just too much. That pink in the foyer?”
“We have a lot of painting to do,” Jake said. “No way faeries have this bad of taste.”
I pouted a little. A part of me actually liked the cheerfully audacious colors downstairs. They seemed so French and so…optimistic, or something. Like I could feel the energy of how the original builders must have been excited to settle in the New World, to tame the Mississippi River, and put coffin bathtubs inside their house. But the pink would look way better if we took it down a notch.
“You’re right,” I admitted.
“Well, no time to waste,” Jake said. “Are you girls teaming up? I know you said you don’t do reno, Billie, but no better time to learn. Hel can teach you.”
Neither of us loved this idea. I worked alone. Billie was usually just the boss of her crew, and that didn’t bode well.
“I can paint,” Billie said.
“Okay, great,” I said, relieved. “We can just make you the painting queen.”
“What colors do we want?”
“Jake’s going to fight me on this, but I’m inclined to riff off the original wall colors, just make them much lighter and more subtle.”
“I am going to fight you,” Jake said.
“It’s not your house,” Billie said. “And I like that idea. All right. I’m going to peel some samples off the walls and then I’ll go to the store.”
I groaned. “You can’t just start painting, you know,” I said. “Old walls were originally painted with calcimine paint and you have to strip off the old paint and then treat it or else the old paint will mess with the new paint.”
“We already have some stripper and sealer,” Jasper said. “In the van. The last house we did needed the same treatment.”
“Oh…okay,” Billie said, clearly daunted now.
“Those room are huge,” Jasper said. “That project alone is going to take forever.”
“Well, I guess it’s all right if we get eight hundred grand for this house,” Billie said.
Oh god, I hoped I was right about that. Why did I make all these bold pronouncements?
“While you do that, I’ll be back soon. Graham rented a restored old house for the weekend before he goes home and I want to get a look at it for inspiration.” Back soon? I don’t know why I said that. I couldn’t seem to admit I was going to sleep there.
“Y’all have fun,” Billie said.
Jake and Jasper were giving me twin looks, their golden eyes possessive, pinning me in place like prey caught between them.
“Alone with an incubus?” Jake sauntered up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not here to toy with your heart, Hel. I’m here to win it. And I think you know that. Graham’s going back where he came from? Good. But what does that say about your future together? He’s already tied down. We’re here to stay from the first square of carpet tossed on the trash heap to the installation of a working refrigerator.”
“Sexier words never spoken,” Jasper laughed.
But…they kinda were the sexiest words. To me, at least.
“I’m just looking at the house,” I said, as Billie looked at me and I remembered that she told me it was my job not to make it weird. “Maybe overnight,” I added, in the doorway.
“Oh, sure,” Jake yelled back at me. “We all knew you were going to fuck the incubus. Get it out of your system and then let him go back to the senate or whatever he does.”
Chapter Twelve
Helena
If Graham heard Jake yelling at me, he gave no sign of it as we drove to the house. I was determined to project confidence. Billie hit a nerve when she talked about my boarding school education. As far as
I knew, a confident woman knew how to play hard to get. How to say no. How to be aloof and modest.
Yeah, they taught me all of that and I wasn’t nervous at all on that footing.
What they never taught me was what to do if you were just feeling super charged up surrounded by sexy men all day, and they seemed as into you as you were into them. How long was I supposed to play hard to get? When Graham kissed me it was so hot that my lips still remembered every moment, and I was proud of myself for making him wait.
Now it was almost a month later and I was just itching to feel a man in real life. Dream sex was awesome but it was different. It lacked the raw edge of reality, the sweat and the smell of desire and all the messy stuff of life. I had never minded getting dirty.
Graham’s eyes flicked toward me like he caught a hint of the need building in me now.
The whole time he was driving, his phone kept vibrating with messages and missed calls, and occasionally he glanced at it, but now he turned the phone off.
“Here’s the house,” he said, stopping in front of a house that was cute as a button.
“A shotgun shack! In pink! How did you know I would love this?”
“I’m not sure I did know you would be this excited about a ‘shotgun shack’, but I got the feeling you like a lot more color in your houses than in your wardrobe.”
“That’s very true. Well, if I had a place of my own and I was more settled, I would want one just like this. Just the right size for me and a dog.”
“Just a dog?”
“Well…we’ll see what happens.” I hopped out of the car. We were close to a town now, within walking distance to shops and restaurants, one of those touristy small towns. It was the type of town a witch might prefer, one where you could open up a shop to sell herbs and human-approved magical stuff, or tell fortunes, or some silly thing, and walk to a bar in the evening for a nice drink in the fresh air, without being so saturated by human life that it killed you. We were about fifteen minutes from Greenwood Manor. Deveraux wasn’t the hermit that Fiore had been, but then, I could tell that from the house. I don’t know when he last partied as an old man, but it was obvious that at one point, he had a house worth showing off to friends.
Graham opened the little gate that surrounded the house, waved me into the spot of front yard where a few flowers clung to life before a frost nipped them, and entered a passcode to get the key.
Despite the small size of the cottage, it still had double front doors and inside it was just a dream. The style was effortlessly Bohemian with a well-worn rug and an antique green velvet couch, and old prints advertising Louisiana musicians on the walls around a small brick fireplace. Straight back was a dining/work space and a kitchen, and the bedroom must be up the spiral staircase in the attic space. The decorating theme was carried through perfectly from end to end, with glass-door bookcases, tall windows that generously spilled in light, instruments hanging in the dining room, and heart of pine flooring.
“I can tell you’re happy,” Graham said. “I’m glad you came to see it. As soon as I saw it listed I thought it was a place you would appreciate, even if it is a ‘human’ house.”
“It’s not your style, is it?”
“I’ve always been more of a minimalist. I don’t enjoy dusting. But I don’t have to dust this one, so let’s enjoy ourselves. Gumbo tonight?”
“Yes, please!”
We had a lovely evening. Hot, spicy gumbo loaded with shrimp and Andouille sausage on a cool night is not something I’d say no to, and I wasn’t inclined to say no to the handsome man sitting across from me either. Except that he seemed a little troubled, and so was I.
We had a bottle of wine to share, and we were drinking more than we ate. I felt like we needed to talk but I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’ve never gone so long with my phone off,” Graham said. “And…now, of all times.” He held up the phone. “This doesn’t feel real anymore.”
“It’s not…your world,” I said. “You’re just learning that.”
“My world is…” He reached for my hand, running his fingers across my skin so lightly that I shivered, but his touch was almost absent. He looked at the restaurant, small and candlelit and old-fashioned, with dark wood chairs and tables and paintings of old riverboats on the walls. Piano standards were playing gently. The world will always welcome lovers…as time goes by.
“I’ve never gone so long without sex either,” he said. “I mean, since the first time.”
“Ohhh. Well. Good,” I said. Good? Should I have said that? But it was good. If he was a warlock, I might have rolled my eyes, but I knew how genuinely hard it was for an incubus not to have sex, especially when he’d been running this election campaign and needed energy and power. Sex was literally food to him, and he must be running on empty. But he’d controlled himself very well today, I thought.
The very idea was making me sweat.
“What do you want?” Graham asked, turning back to me. “Out of life? In the long run?”
“Ummm…I don’t know. I guess…I already have what I wanted.”
“But no home of your own. No dog either. I saw the way your eyes lit up in that cottage.”
“Yeah, I might be a little lonely sometimes. I wasn’t really thinking about a husband or kids. So much pressure on me to get married when I was young. Sometimes I would think, it’d be nice to have an old Airstream trailer or something to drag around, but then I would hate driving. I like to speed.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind having the Sullivan brothers around to work with more often?”
“I—I don’t know.”
His eyes twinkled in the candlelight as he slipped his fingers beneath mine. “None of this is what you thought you wanted, is it?”
“Nope…”
“Me neither. But…you know what I do want is just to make you really happy tonight and I don’t care if you aren’t sure what you want, or who you want. I need to follow my gut, not the world I thought I knew, because that world is slipping away from me.”
He didn’t seem so jealous as he was before. I wondered what on earth Byron said to him when they were talking.
“What about your election?” I asked.
“I’m going to lose,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I haven’t had sex in a month. I didn’t want to win with magic.”
I giggled—the giggle was definitely thanks to the wine. “Watch out or you’ll start having dream sex with old ladies.” If an incubus couldn’t get sex in real life, they could start feeding in dreams, and there were plenty of jokes in the magical world about incubi getting stuck in dreams with horny old women on accident.
An incubus who wasn’t getting laid at all was a demon whose powers would grow weak and desperate. Was he doing this to prove something to me? That was pretty cute.
“I’ve never done anything without a plan before,” Graham said.
“I know. I could tell that from the moment you ordered the low calorie heart-healthy option in the diner. You’re a sensible plans guy.”
He finished off the wine bottle, dividing it between our glasses, and then he pressed his knees against mine as his gaze told me that tonight…he knew why I was here. There would be no second thoughts. I felt the strength of his long legs, the brush of fine suit material against my thin tights. He pinned my knees between his and then, under the table, he slipped a hand between the tight space between my thighs and stroked as far as he could reach without being too obvious. Just that one simple touch made me almost too hungry for him to eat the gumbo. The gesture was dominating and left no doubt about what I’d always known about him. He was going to have his way with me tonight.
It wasn’t even that scandalous a move on the surface but it left me flustered. My heart was beating faster now as he opened his legs and released me, edging his chair back an inch. He fidgeted a little in his chair and took a slightly tortured breath that told me without even having to look that
his cock was ready to claim me right then and there.
“Hurry up,” he said, his voice sharpening in the sexiest way.
I scraped up the last few spoonfuls as he asked for the check. We walked about a mile home mostly in quivering silence, his hand on my back, his jacket draped over his sleeve, hiding his arousal as we passed some retirees walking toward the restaurants.
When we got to the cottage, he slammed the door behind us and seized my wrists, leading me to the antique sofa.
“Not the sofa!” I said. “Antique upholstery!”
He grinned wickedly. “The table for you, then.”
“Or there’s this invention called a bed—oh!” His arm went around my hips and and scooped me up.
“No time for beds,” he said, sweeping aside all of the stuff on the table—flowers in a vase, a corded telephone, a container of pens—putting me down on the table. “I need you now.” He yanked my tights down to my boots and then he tugged on the boot laces. “Why don’t you have zippers on your boots?”
“I don’t like zippers.”
“At least I know—it isn’t often—someone tears your clothes off in a passionate rage,” he grunted, tearing them off my feet. Then he expertly removed his clothes—all of them. You know how most people manage to look a little more ridiculous when naked? Not Graham. He looked as comfortable as a Roman statue on display, and ohh goddess, that huge cock was coming for me.
“Condoms! I don’t have any condoms!” I cried. “I haven’t been making any birth control spells!”
“I got it,” he said smoothly, producing one from his wallet. I swear that rolling the condom down his shaft made it look even bigger, like the Magnum was quite snug. I guess I’m about to find out if I’m ready for one man, much less four, in real life, I thought.
Chapter Thirteen
Helena
The whole walk home I’d been wondering what it would be like to have this man make love to me and now I knew. It was delicious and overwhelming and I was groaning uncontrollably as he drove a little deeper with each thrust. Usually I need more of a warm up, but my imagination had already been running wild for long enough that I was soaking wet and once my body adjusted to his size, he could fuck me hard.
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