A Legacy Divided

by Holley Trent

  Mallory licked her lips and ripped a square of paper towel off the roll. Grabbing a piece of chicken from the nearby tray, she whispered, “Wasn’t my father supposed to work today?”

  Mrs. Carbone harrumphed. “I don’t give a rat’s patoot if he is. Colt said that Tess wanted chicken, so I’m making chicken. I guess he was here earlier for breakfast and lunch.”

  “He was here,” Erica—Mrs. Carbone’s junior cook—said. She was busily drying to-go trays, probably for Tess and her entourage at the baby bunker. “Being annoying as always.” She looked up, brown eyes comically round behind her glasses. “Uh. No offense, Mallory. I keep…forgetting that…”

  Mallory waved off the insult.

  “Erica,” Asher mused, “how long have you worked here?”

  “Since right after Queen Tess got back.”

  Mrs. Carbone grimaced. “Right after they cleaned the house and dumped most of the staff.”

  Erica nodded. “Lora asked if I needed a job. I’d never worked in a kitchen like this before, but she knew I’d catch on quick.”

  “How do you know Lora?” Mallory asked.

  “We were in the same year at school. We weren’t friends, you know. I don’t think anyone was really Lora’s friend because she kept to herself so much, but she was always nice to me. Helped me out whenever I was struggling in math class. I’ve got something like dyslexia but with numbers, so she used to whisper the questions to me when I was making certain faces, I guess.”

  “Did you tell her you were having issues?”

  “No, I think she just figured out something was up and didn’t want me to be embarrassed. I didn’t get diagnosed until the next year.” She peeled off her glove and picked up the tablet computer on the counter. “She put an app on this that lets me scan all the recipes we use here and it’ll read them out so I can double-check I got the numbers right for my measurements.”

  “Why did she hire you and not someone with kitchen experience?”

  “I asked her the same thing. I already had a job when she came to me.” She shrugged. “She said she trusted me.”

  “To be in the mansion,” Asher muttered.

  “Yeah. That’s the impression I got when I came in,” Mrs. Carbone said. “Most of the folks who were working here before didn’t get clearance to come back. Dan only did because they wanted to keep him close.”

  “And he trusts you?” Asher asked Erica.

  “Doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t. He can’t fire me. He doesn’t have oversight over me because Lora hired me, not him. He could certainly complain about me if he doesn’t like my performance, but can’t fire me.”

  “Seems like Lora’s always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else,” Mallory said.

  Mrs. Carbone performed a sharp nod. “Jody calls her cynical, but I happen to think she’s just a little more forward-thinking than most folks. She likes to have a trap door installed for any potential contingency.”

  “I hope she has one for whatever the mess is that she’s in right now.” Erica tugged her hairnet down over her ears and resumed her work with the trays. “I’d be sad if she didn’t come back.”

  “She’ll come back.” Asher nabbed two more pieces of chicken and guided Mallory out the door. “I’ve got a hunch that she was where she wanted to be, and she’ll do what’s necessary to get back.”

  He would have done the exact same thing. He’d never again take for granted being someplace where his contributions were worth praise.

  And where there were people he wanted to hold onto, even if they did think he was silly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mallory

  Mallory chuckled around a mouthful of hot, crispy chicken skin. “How do those hunches usually work out for you, fairy?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty good. I may not have magic the way Prince Heath and Princess Simone do, but my impressions about people are usually pretty spot-on.”

  “And that’s a fairy thing?”

  “Tends to be for a lot of us, assuming we’re at all observant. Fairies are more attuned, on average, to people’s motives. Lora may be closed-off, but she’s genuine.”

  “Good to know.”

  On the second floor, Asher guided Mallory into his suite of rooms and closed the door behind them. He’d left only a small lamp on in the corner, so the room was more shadow than light. Bright enough, though, that she could make out the general configuration of the space. It was a long, sideways rectangle with the door to the hall at the rightmost end when it was faced. The seating area at the left was crowded with mismatched furniture, open cardboard boxes, and a few laundry baskets. Beside that were a dining table that seated six and a neat white kitchen with an island boasting two stools. The door to the left of the cabinets must have led to the bathroom and bedroom.

  “It’s kind of the same as Keith’s.” She found the trashcan inside of a cabinet under the island, pitched her chicken bone into it, and then washed her hands. “Different direction, though.”

  “Mm.” Asher discarded what was left of his snack and crowded her at the sink. He pumped a few squirts of the forest-scented dish soap into his palm and lathered up. “I believe this was Jody’s suite before he moved out. He needed to be close to Tess, but then Tess got her chieftains, and then they hired the wolf guards. She has a lot of folks looking out for her.”

  “Not nearly enough, in Keith’s opinion.”

  Asher raised his brows and let them fall. “Yes, he does have…opinions.” He grabbed a dishtowel from the counter and scrubbed her hands dry as though she wouldn’t have managed on her own.

  “Asher,” she said with a laugh, “you don’t need to coddle me.”

  He scoffed. “You sure?”

  “I’m a grown woman of thirty-three years. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Well, just in case, let me do a bit of your thinking for a while. I think you’ve been doing too much lately, especially with your brother turning up.” He moved her through the doorway beside the kitchen. Just like in Keith’s apartment, there was a walk-in closet on one side of the interior hall and a bathroom on the other. Straight ahead was the small bedroom.

  Asher turned on the light and kneeled to untie her shoelaces.

  “Asher…” She flicked his hair out of his eyes. “Really. I’m okay. I can take off my own shoes for a nap. I learned how to do that before kindergarten.”

  Shrugging, he stood, though didn’t move very far away. He’d given her less than a foot of clearance. “So go ahead.”

  “You’re just going to watch me and make sure I’m doing it right?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  She didn’t bother bending. The shoes were old enough that she didn’t feel any particular angst at heeling them off without untying them. “Boom.”

  He scoffed.

  “Can I lie down now?” She wouldn’t admit it, but she was feeling more out of sorts than usual. Weeks of keeping tabs on Elliott from such a distance and then enduring the up-close bombardment of his unfiltered psychic output had caused unexpected toil on her mind. She was like an outdated computer that had been upgraded for additional purposes without having been turned off for a while to reset.

  A nap was probably the least she could do, but her hunch was that it wouldn’t at all offset the weariness she felt.

  “Absolutely,” Asher whispered. “Let me help you with this.” His nimble fingers quickly freed the buttons of her shirt from their holes—so quick that it didn’t register in her mind that she was being undressed. That realization didn’t come until she watched him drape the shirt over the back of the chair, as though she was watching him in a movie and not there in the flesh with him.

  He returned and reached for the fastener of her pants next.

  She shooed his hand away.

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I hadn’t planned on undressing.”

  “You’d be more comfortable if you do.”

  “But it wasn’t your decision to make.”
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  Silently grinding his teeth, he folded his arms over his chest and stared down at her in the same way he did to Keith whenever Keith was being a dick. Lately, that was often.

  She wagged a scolding finger at him and nudged him away. “I do not behave like Keith. Save that glower for him.” She perched on the edge of the chair and took off her own damned pants. Her bra and panties didn’t match, but she couldn’t rustle up enough shame to give a shit. Asher was from a different realm. He probably didn’t even know they were supposed to match.

  With a brisk nod, Asher stepped into the hallway.

  She thought he was leaving her to her nap, so she got under the covers—sighing wantonly as the sensation of butter-soft flannel embraced her skin. “I need sheets like these.” She pulled them up to her shoulders and tensed, not because of the lights going out or the bedroom door closing, but because Asher’s footsteps were moving in the wrong direction.

  Toward the bed, not down the hallway.

  Seconds later, the side of the bed dipped with his weight, and he slid in beneath the covers, large and warm.

  All at once, her brain incited with thoughts of curiosity and anticipation, but also worry.

  There was an extremely attractive man in the bed. She’d be lying to herself if she’d said that the idea of topping him had never popped into her mind—especially since their episode in the motel bathroom. The man had a primal sensuality about him that couldn’t be ignored, and in her mind, he was a safe lay.

  But he was also Asher.

  “Asher.” Mallory started to sit up, but he rolled her onto him and scooted to the middle of the bed.

  “Shh. What do you have against rest?”

  Holy fuck, he’s naked.

  But of course he was. She recalled then a rousing discussion he’d had with Ollie and Heath soon after moving in. They’d been trying to get him settled and Ollie had asked if he needed pajamas. Asher had been confused, not understanding the point of them. In his estimation, they created needless extra laundry and the bed sheets would suffice.

  “Asher, what are you doing?”

  He put her head against his chest and nuzzled the top of it with his chin while sliding his hands slowly down her back.

  If she weren’t so distracted by the protrusion between his legs that she was trying—and failing—to arch away from, the strokes might have felt nice.

  “Just rest,” he said. “I’ll help you sleep.”

  “Beneath me?”

  “I’m a fairy. Some of us can aid sleep, so sleep. Aren’t you tired, Mallory?”

  “Obviously, you’re not.”

  “If you’re referring to my arousal, I don’t think that can be helped. You’re pretty.”

  She blinked, baffled. Flattered, actually, in one of those gushing, “Well, you’re so pretty, too!” ways typical of hormonal high school girls. What actually came out of her mouth was, “Well…one way to make it go away is to not be beneath me?”

  He seemed to consider that, not responding for a minute. But then his chin moved side-to-side atop her head—a no. “You need to sleep.”

  The logic obviously made sense in his head, even if not in hers, and it wasn’t really that big of a deal if he were there.

  She sighed, yawned, and slowly let her body relax atop him.

  She wanted to argue but was too tired—too mentally wrecked to come up with a good argument for why he shouldn’t have been nude and her very nearly the same. Too exhausted to engage in the sort of mental gymnastics that generally allowed herself to avoid such bad ideas as leading on men she didn’t want.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want Asher, precisely. She simply hadn’t let herself consider him to be an option—sexual or otherwise.

  She hadn’t been with anyone since her husband was killed. No one had seemed worth the effort or the potential bruising of her already battered heart.

  But she was a woman with needs, like any other, and Asher was kind, and willing, and available. Better still, nobody but them needed to know.

  Notching her teeth into her bottom lip, she considered how easy it would be to just work the crotch of her panties aside and slide onto him. She could trust him to figure out how to do the rest of the work, even if he were new at it.

  He wouldn’t hurt her.

  She smoothed a hand down his side, pondering.

  Nothing else would have to change. She could tell herself she’d simply done a good deed, and then they’d move on with their lives.

  So she slowly nudged aside the fabric between her and him and eased upward in such a discreet manner that he didn’t notice her moving in time to scold her.

  “Come in,” she whispered.

  “To you?”

  “Mmm.”

  “How?” His voice was hoarse, breathy.

  With that one permissive rasp, he reminded her of the feminine power in her she’d cooled and buried so long ago. She’d missed feeling like that—desired and unabashedly sensual. For too long, she’d denied herself an outlet. For too long, she’d told herself she wasn’t entitled to one.

  She enveloped the thick head of him at the entrance of her sheath, and he forced out a breath of surprise and raised his head.

  “Normally, a lady would lecture you in advance about safe sex, but I don’t see the point,” she said. “You’re a virgin, and I’m on the pill because of lady issues. You’ll just have to trust that you’re not going to get me pregnant.”

  He blinked rapidly, making the fluorescent hue of his eyes shimmer like Christmas lights in the dark.

  “From here…” she whispered, dancing the tip of her index finger around his distended nipple, “you thrust until you come.”

  “Gods.” He swallowed loudly and slid his shaking hands down to her ass.

  “Do you like it?” She eased more of him into her, in case he needed a bigger clue as to what he needed to do.

  “You’re…wet.”

  “Yes. That means you’re welcome inside. I can’t believe such an evolved race doesn’t have sex ed.”

  He gulped again and gave his hips an experimental upward roll, driving his thick length far enough into her that her toes curled against the flannel. “We don’t need it. We usually learn from watching others, but I never had a chance to.”

  “Fairies are voyeurs?”

  He shrugged and, putting his head back, rocked his hips again. “Perhaps. I was never interested before. I’d watch you, though, if you’d like. I don’t think I’d want to share you, but if I could learn something—”

  She clapped a hand over his mouth and rolled her hips to help him establish a rhythm. Sharing was the last thing she needed to worry about. After having fallen off the saddle so long ago, she needed to work her way back up to satisfying just two people—the man she was riding, and herself.

  “Oh,” she moaned, notching her fingers into the lean muscles of his chest as she gripped him tight and rode him slowly. “I…I was going to let you do the work.”

  “So let me.” He tried to sit up, but it was her turn to direct someone back down onto the bed.

  She shook her head and clamped her teeth hard into her lower lip. She’d worried she wouldn’t remember what felt good when the phallus inside her was part of a living, breathing man and not plastic or silicone, but her fear had been misplaced. Her body was responding to his exactly as it should have, with the familiar sensation of fullness low in her abdomen, and the bright tingles building and coalescing in her core.

  “Maybe I’ll keep you,” she mused, and she stirred him inside her in a figure-eight pattern, enjoying how full he made her feel and savoring the exhilaration of being overwhelmed by choice rather than circumstance.

  “Yes. Keep me, Mallory. Whatever you like.”

  “But maybe I should have kept you pure.”

  Too late for that. The more she rode, the bolder he seemed to be. His grip on her ass intensified to just shy of painful, and he leaned up and mouthed her breast through the lace of her bra.

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nbsp; “Keep…doing that…” she instructed through clenched teeth as she rocked. “Yes, keep doing that.”

  “Like this?”

  The man learned fast. She had to give him credit for that.

  He tugged aside the fabric of her bra and pressed his open mouth against her, drawing against her breast with incredible suction that sent shudders of pleasure down to her toes.

  “Just like that, Asher.”

  He got into a flow beneath her, long strokes in and out, increasing in speed and enthusiasm until at last, his body was quivering beneath hers and she felt the warm surge inside her.

  Likely taken aback, he froze then, mouth ajar and bright eyes wide.

  Still rocking atop him, she bent and kissed him. Slow and tender—a thank-you as she wrung every last bit of pleasure out of him and eked out her own much-needed release.

  Collapsing on top of him, she closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. That was so hard to do with the spicy male scent of him invading her nose, tickling her anxiety with the notion that perhaps she wasn’t done. Perhaps there was more to do.

  “Was that okay?” she whispered as she draped her leg over his thighs and tucked her foot beneath his knee.

  He let out a startled laugh and snaked his arm around her waist possessively. “I’d like to do that again.”

  “Maybe we can work something out. We’re both consenting adults, hmm?”

  “Yes, we can work out that you can sleep in my bed whenever you’d like.”

  “As long as you’re in it, right?” She laughed and settled more comfortably against him. He was so warm, and the reprieve from the sleepiness she’d felt before mounting had ended.

  He pulled the covers up over them. “No, you can have whatever of mine you’d like. I wouldn’t have to be here, but I hope you’d want me.”

  “Lots of people want you, Asher.”

  “Oh?” There was a note of genuine surprise in his tone.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know. People here aren’t particularly subtle.”

  “Well, compared to fairies they are. Fairies tend to be quite explicit when they see someone they want, so I’m assuming the phantoms you’re referring to aren’t fae.”