The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky (Includes Lady Luck, House of Dolls, The Reluctant Bride, A Woman on Top, plus a bonus story!)

by Eden Myles

  Devon sat between his dolls, listening to them chat, gossip, and bicker, and felt very much at home. They were his girls, his best friends, his family. Before them, he’d never realized how alone he sometimes felt, even among the other courtesans. But he, Evelyn, Rachaela and Daniel were close, more like family than anything he had ever known, even among his own clan, a bunch of East End drunks, criminals and ne’re-do-wells who wouldn’t know family if it bit them on the face.

  Soon—much too soon, as far as Devon was concerned—the gentlemen reappeared to collect their respective courtesan or courtier, and it was time to say goodnight to everyone. “You lazy cow,” Malcolm laughed over Devon’s prone form. Devon had taken up residence on the sofa after Daniel had vacated it to walk Alexei back to his car.

  Devon laughed and cushioned his head on his arms as he glanced up at his gentleman and life partner. “I’m just one of the dolls, my good sir. I don’t have to do anything but look good tonight. It’s my job.”

  Malcolm nodded with approval. “You look very good on that white pleather. I should get my camera.”

  “You’re too drunk to shoot straight, old man.”

  Malcolm touched his heart. “I’m never too drunk to appreciate beauty in its natural environment.” And to prove it, he straddled Devon’s hips and leaned forward on his knuckles to tease Devon’s lips apart with his tongue. Devon moaned as Malcolm deepened the kiss and nibbled delicately on his bottom lip.

  Malcolm Sloan was middle-aged and of middling height. He leaned toward a heavier girth, a result of years of running one of the bigger publishing conglomerates in the city of New York. His hair was medium brown and his eyes a medium grey. His nondescript banker looks were so average as to make him invisible on the New York streets, and Devon often joked that he would have made an excellent FBI agent, the kind of guy no one would notice, even were he waving a gun around in the middle of Grand Central Station.

  Devon, on the other hand, was tall, lean and very, very blond. His eyes were the shocking blue of a Caribbean sky. He’d been a hustler, a Burlesque performer, and had made a decent career for himself as a professional underwear model. He’d even had a bit part on General Hospital, once, long ago. At thirty years of age, he still had the coy, rakish, falsely naïve look of a boy of twenty. Most folks couldn’t understand why someone like Devon would find someone like Malcolm even remotely attractive. They were like two different men from two different worlds. There were various reasons, of course, most of them private, and one reason, which was nine inches long, that was known only by the Dollhouse Society.

  Malcolm was an amazing kisser, and that was a skill that was vastly underrated, as far as Devon was concerned. Malcolm turned his head and crushed his mouth against Devon’s while simultaneously grabbing the back of his hair in one powerful fist, controlling the kiss, his tongue darting hot and slick into the cavern of Devon’s mouth. He might not have had model good looks, but Malcolm was strong, sweet, and just a little perverse. He was everything that Devon wanted in a partner. Their tongues warred for a moment before Devon gave in. With Malcolm, it was always more fun to give in than to fight. Malcolm snagged Devon’s Adam’s apple in his teeth and sucked, wrenching a cry of pure pleasure from Devon’s lips. Devon boldly reached out and gripped Malcolm’s belt and yanked his body against the cradle of his pelvis. All nine inches of Malcolm jabbed into Devon’s belly like a drawn sword.

  “Thank goodness,” Devon groaned between kisses. “I thought I wore you out, old man.”

  Malcolm dry humped him a few times. “You almost did, pet,” he said, leaving a small, loving bruise on the front of Devon’s throat as he let his partner go. He took Devon’s free hand and brought his knuckles to his lips to kiss, an old-fashioned and very genteel gesture that Devon found endearing and sweet. Malcolm kissed the bruises there, one at a time. His tenderness, mixed with the ferocity of his play earlier, and the easy way he controlled their lovemaking, never failed to undo Devon. Most of the time, all Malcolm needed to do was glance at him and Devon could feel himself melting and turning into a tongue-tied idiot, like a guy under the influence of his first crush.

  During the Masqued Ball, the rules had changed and play had been shared openly in the Great Room rather than in the separate Playrooms. Malcolm and Devon had garnered the most attention at the antique divan that had long belonged to gentlemen and their courtesans over the years. Malcolm’s prowess with various whips and switches was legendary, even among the more experienced gentlemen, and Devon had cracked almost every nail and broken almost all his knuckles during their play, but it was a small price to pay. The fugue that Malcolm’s rough lovemaking had induced had left him swooning like some heroine in a gothic romance. No one brought him like Malcolm brought him.

  He was just wrangling his lover’s most impressive attribute out of his slacks when Malcolm tugged his ear. “We’ll finish this at home, pet. I still need to lock up.”

  Devon sighed as Malcolm eased back and climbed to his feet. He wasn’t the spry forty-year-old publisher he had been when he and Devon had first met almost ten years ago and his bones groaned alarmingly as he straightened up.

  “Old fart,” Devon laughed, climbing smoothly to his feet. “I’ll help you.”

  “You young punk,” Malcolm said, wincing, a hand in his back. He smiled. “Thank you.”

  Malcolm canvassed the ground floor and Playrooms while Devon went upstairs to make certain all the windows and dormers were closed. This late in the season, the weather was unpredictable, and there were rumors of some heavy, cold autumn rains hitting Long Island tonight, maybe even a touch of snow.

  The upper floors of the Dollhouse were used only for storage these days. When Jeremiah Hampton had willed his house to the Society, the occupants at first had used both the upper and lower floors as Playrooms, but over time, it was decided that members would be encouraged to stay on the ground floor during meetings. It was too easy for couples to slip away to one of the more private bedrooms and become so caught up in themselves that they forgot the purpose of the meetings, which was to share their experiences with the others. Besides, storing furniture and props upstairs allowed the board members to change out the room themes below more often.

  Devon checked the window on the landing at the top of the stairs, saw it was secure, then made his way down the long hallway, checking the bedrooms as he went along. There were five bedroom suites upstairs, and one giant sitting parlor at the end. He checked all the bedroom windows, then stepped into the parlor to do the same. The parlor was a huge, rounded room with windows facing east. It was the only room not used for storage.

  Devon had asked Malcolm about that once, and Malcolm had shrugged and told him it was part of the Society’s tradition, something to do with the fact that, back when it was Goodman Hampton’s house, he had used the sitting parlor as his personal playroom, throwing elaborate parties of debauchery in it. The parlor had been the house’s first official Playroom and it was considered bad luck to crowd it.

  Just in the event the spirit of old Goodman Hampton and his wenches want use of it, Devon thought with a sigh and a shake of his head.

  The room was kept in very good repair, as was the rest of the house, but, of course, it was still an old room. Devon smelled the wood and dust. He smelled age, if that was possible. The room was full of sheeted pieces of antique furniture, and dusty shadows seemed to skirt around him as he entered. Old portraiture of a less erotic nature watched from moorings high up on the walls. A chair sat dusty in one corner with a book open upon it, face down, as if the occupant had just stepped out. Devon wondered how long it had been there, enshrined by time and the superstitious members of the Society, and shivered at the thought.

  He tried to find the switch for the main lights, then realized there were no switches. The room had never been wired for electricity, he now remembered. Spotting an old oil lamp on a sidebar—left, no doubt, by the last person who had checked the windows—he took up one of the long kitchen matches th
at that same person had left and struck one, carefully lighting the chimney of the lamp.

  Yellow light fluttered winglike across the room, cutting the shadows into geometric patterns of light and dark. Someone gasped, a woman, and Devon grabbed up the lamp and hurriedly turned.

  There was a massive, four-poster bed situated at the far side of the room. Sheets stirred dustily.

  “Hello?” Devon called, feeling a little stupid but almost certain he had interrupted someone who had likely crept up here during the festivities and had fallen asleep in a drunken stupor on the bed, probably beside her gentleman. No one answered his query. He knew the sudden spurt of worry he felt rubbing between his shoulder blades was rubbish, that he was probably letting his imagination run away with him, so he lifted the lamp and took a bold step toward the bed.

  The sheets stirred again as someone retreated from his light. So someone was here.

  He frowned and took another step. “Sorry to say, doll, but you shouldn’t be here. We’re all going home…” He stopped as the wash of buttery yellow light fell across the old carven mahogany bed and the doll sitting there, the sheets gathered around her.

  She was a looker, that was for sure, petite and blonde, with a heart-shaped face and big, dark, childlike blue eyes. Devon didn’t recognize her, and for a moment he found it difficult to judge her age. She looked so innocent, but there was a stubborn set to her chin. Anyway, if she was here, and she belonged to one of the Society gentlemen, then that meant she was of age. No one got past their doorman.

  The sight of her both intrigued and annoyed him. Devon was sure he knew every member of the Society, and he made certain to meet every new doll the moment they stepped through the doors. But this doll he didn’t know. He smiled so as not to spook her. “Hey, gorgeous, what’s your name?”

  The little blonde doll clutched the bright, crimson sheet to her bare breasts but didn’t say anything. She did look at him rather peculiarly, less like she was spooked and more like she was sizing him up, assessing him in some way, like he had stumbled upon her territory. She wasn’t a woman easily intimidated, he decided. When he reached the foot of the bed, she shifted back and into the arms of her gentleman, and it was then that Devon realized that she wasn’t alone in the huge, canopied bed.

  He didn’t know her gentleman anymore than he knew her, but there was something about them that was vaguely familiar. Devon thought perhaps they were a couple who belonged to the Society but who hadn’t been to the Dollhouse in some time, much like Daniel and Alexei, who lived in Martha’s Vineyard and only visited when business brought they back to New York City.

  They had that feel about them, a feeling that they belonged. The blonde’s gentleman was a tall, rangy man with a lot of long dark hair and a scar across one cheek. That should have made him both intimidating and memorable, Devon though, yet he couldn’t place the bloke anymore than he could place his courtesan.

  The doll reached out and massaged her gentleman’s partially erect cock and giggled. That solicited a groan of satisfaction from the man. He slid his big hand across her bare bottom under the sheet and squeezed his courtesan’s firm flesh, which teased another giggle out of the girl. Normally, Devon had very little patience for these giggly mall-rat types. He preferred watching courtesans like Evelyn perform—sexy, sophisticated, and sometimes rather solemn. But the blonde was so adorable that when she finally lowered her head and took her gentleman’s cock in her mouth to suckle him, her white-blonde hair draped across his lap like an afghan, Devon decided to settle on the foot of the bed and watch. He could take them to task later for hiding away up here.

  She cupped his balls in her other hand as she slowly, almost lazily, worked him up to a fever pitch of excitement. He quickly went from grunting to thrusting into her pale pink mouth. Devon could easily imagine the salty warm pre-cum spurting down her throat. Slowly, without rushing, she eased him out of her mouth and began licking his meaty shaft up and down. He groaned and eased back into the pillows of the bed, his eyes fluttering closed in pure bliss.

  Her fingers traced his spit-slicked dick and she licked and sucked his balls until he was thrusting upward compulsively. He sank his fingers into her hair and guided her teasing mouth from his balls back to his cock. She immediately deep-throated him, slathering his cock with the foam of her saliva. His thrusts quickened and soon he was bucking wildly into her pretty little mouth. She reached between his legs to boldly fondle him again. His hands clutched her head, urging her to go deeper, faster, and she easily complied.

  When he was almost there, she slid him out of her throat and poised him in front of her open mouth. She stroked him until he thrust one last time and with a lusty groan came in her open mouth, across her pink lips and cheeks, so his come trickled down her chin and throat. She licked her lips hungrily, looked up at Devon with sly, winged eyes, then licked her gentleman’s cockhead clean.

  Devon sat on the edge of the bed, gently stroking himself through his slacks. He thought about calling Malcolm upstairs so they could enjoy watching the couple together, but he didn’t want to move just yet, not just yet.

  Still licking her lips invitingly, the doll turned and presented herself to her gentleman. He lowered his head and his tongue found and quivered along her slit. She groaned and spread her legs further, allowing him better access. He licked her up and down, his tongue moving wetly inside her, then up her spine and between her shoulder blades until he was able to mount her from behind. Devon found his hearty thrusts were almost perfectly synched to the man’s own bucking strokes. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears, his throat, his groin. The doll lowered her head and cried out as her gentleman came inside her, hard, making her tremble all over. At the same moment, Devon felt himself go in his own hand.

  He felt exhausted, satisfied, and he had decided that the blonde was now officially one of his favorite dolls. He felt a pang of pity for every man and woman who had ever watched porn but had never experienced the real thing. There was no substitute for the sheer electricity of watching a gentleman and his courtesan playing.

  Staring up at him with that catlike, come-hither face, the girl crawled to the foot of the bed, took Devon’s hand, and licked every pearly drop of his come off his fingers. Then she lovingly sucked each of his long fingers deep into her mouth even as the strange man mounted her again. Her tongue and mouth were surprisingly cool. Her gentleman sexed her roughly this time, the two of them thrusting and grunting, and near the end, she pinched Devon’s fingers in her delicate white teeth, but by then Devon was in such a fugue from watching them fuck that he didn’t even feel the pain.

  Only Malcolm’s voice, calling up the stairs to him, finally brought him back to his senses. Tearing his eyes away from the couple on the bed, he hurried to the door and leaned on the casting to call down to his gentleman. When he turned back to the room, he saw the bed was mussed, the sheets rumpled, but the couple was gone.

  The room suddenly felt very cold and alien, old beyond measure, and full of power. He backed slowly out of it. He was halfway down the hallway when he felt someone grab him from behind. Jerking around, he nearly cried out and struck Malcolm in the face. Malcolm caught his wrist and offered him a frowning look. “Are you all right?”

  Devon made himself stop shaking. “I think so. I don’t know.”

  “Devon…”

  “Just…I think I spooked myself.”

  Malcolm looked around. “The sitting parlor?”

  He nodded

  “The sitting parlor spooks everyone,” he said nonchalantly. “Is everything secure?”

  It took Devon a moment to answer that. “Y-yeah. Let’s go.” The truth was, he wasn’t going back to check. He didn’t care if it bloody snowed in tonight and destroyed the room. He was not going back to the sitting parlor.

  They went downstairs together, the stairs creaking under their feet. Devon tried to remember if they had always creaked like that or not, and if he was only now noticing. He couldn’t remember. For th
e first time, he felt a streak of caution as he stepped into the Great Room. Earlier in the evening, the lot of them had discussed the old legends surrounding the region, the witches supposedly hung, the graves disturbed, even the Headless Horseman. He’d always liked those old spook stories, never found them particularly disturbing. No more. All that nonsense came from somewhere.

  The Great Room was dark, Malcolm having switched off all the lights, the faces in the oldest portraits and photographs obscured by shadows, but he still carried the oil lamp, he discovered. He didn’t even remember taking it. He carried it to the far side of the room, his light fluttering erratically against the walls, and searched the older, larger portraits higher up, near the ceiling, until he found the one he wanted.

  “What are you doing?” Malcolm asked, coming up beside him.

  The one his light fell upon was a portrait he’d seen a hundred times in the Dollhouse, yet never really paid any attention to. It was of a fey blonde courtesan being embraced from behind by her gentleman, a crop across her middle. She had ribbons tied in strategic locations, but they covered up very little, really. The gentleman’s face was buried in the side of her hair, so Devon couldn’t see the left side, and if there was a scar, but he was certain of one thing. These two were most certainly the couple he had encountered upstairs.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  Malcolm raised his eyebrows at that. “Tiberius and his courtesan, Lucky. They were one of the first couples to make extensive use of the Dollhouse. They lived…I guess it was a little over two hundred years ago.” He nodded, then turned to Devon. “I thought you knew about Tiberius and Lucky.”

  “I thought I did, too.” The names rang a bell, but then, history had never been Devon’s strong suit. “Tell me about them.”