by Kathryn Moon
Auguste laughed against me, rolling us so that I was draped over his chest. “For now,” he said, and I snorted.
“That’s true,” I said. “Do you leave tomorrow?”
“I’m staying a few days, but I’ll be out of your hair during the day,” he said. “Beneath the manor.”
Right. Vampire. “How long until morning?”
“A few hours still,” he said, pulling the pins free from my hair. “You can rest.”
“Only if you promise to wake me in an hour with your face between my thighs,” I said.
Auguste hissed. “Wicked girl,” he said, but his dimples had appeared. He rolled us again, hands roving over my breasts and stomach. “I’ve changed my mind. We’re not wasting a second. You can sleep in the morning.”
I giggled, squealing as he nipped over the same places on my breast he had bitten not long ago. They were a little sore, and the ache went straight between my legs. I spread my thighs wide and pushed at Auguste’s shoulders.
“I like a man that keeps his word,” I said, sliding my fingers into his hair as he kissed above my stomach.
Chapter Six
A Flickering Light
Auguste stayed for three more nights, spoiling me with rich foods—although he had a better grasp on how much to make now—and alternating whose turn it was to drive the other absolutely mad in bed. He said he wanted to teach me patience, but I was pretty sure he was learning that he liked it when I lost my patience completely.
Vampires heal up nicely from carpet burn.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said as we stood out by the loch, the waning moon hanging like a frown above us.
Auguste nestled me back against his chest, taking my hands and crossing them with his arms to hold me tight. “I’ll be back before too long to take you to London with me for a spell.” I smiled a little at that. He said we could visit Dr. Underwood and drag him to the theater with us. Auguste squeezed me gently and added, “And you’ll have new callers in the meantime.”
I snagged my nails over the buttons on his coat sleeve. A week ago, I’d be desperately impatient to meet as many men as I could and enjoy each of them in turn. Now…
“What is it, mon coeur?” Auguste whispered into my hair.
“I’ve never had this much time with a…” I hesitated.
“Lover?” Auguste supplied, kissing behind my ear.
I laughed a little but nodded. “Yes.”
“Mmm, and you’re not sick of me yet,” Auguste said, his lips trailing farther down my neck and making me shiver.
I wiggled my way around to face him, and he wrapped the coat over my back as I twined my arms behind his waist. “Not very sick,” I teased.
Auguste snorted and pinched at my ass as I leaned in for a kiss. I stopped as something caught my eye at the manor. A flickering light through one of the upper story windows flashed like a warning. Auguste’s lips grazed my cheek, running into my ear as I stood up on my tiptoes to look over his shoulder.
“Is someone in my bedroom?” I looked back behind me and then up at the window again, lights still tripping on and off through the curtain. It looked as if it could have been my room, sitting three stories above the patio.
Auguste released me and turned, taking a long look up at the window before scanning the darkness around us. “Ah…it’s time for us to go inside,” he said, raising his eyebrows at me.
“But…” I stared blankly back at him for longer than it should have taken for me to understand. The wolf I had seen my first night, or something like him, was waiting in the wilderness behind us. Auguste tugged on my hand, and I skipped quickly to follow him back onto the patio and up to the door. “But who is in my room?”
“I think we should go find out,” Auguste said. When we stepped inside, one of the other girls of the house, Danielle, was on her way out. Auguste tipped his head to her as she and I grinned at one another.
“Someone’s waiting for you,” I said and she blushed and hurried out the door.
When Auguste and I made it up to my floor, the hall was empty except for one figure.
“Booker!” He was standing outside my door facing the hall like a sentry, and when I greeted him, he turned and bowed a little, eyes landing briefly on me and Auguste. “Were you in my bedroom?” I asked.
Booker’s forehead faintly knotted as he shook his head.
Auguste looked between us and turned to Booker. “Was anyone else in her room? We saw the lights flash.”
Booker’s forehead tightened again, and he looked at the door. “Saw no one,” he said after a long pause.
Auguste’s own expression tightened as he glanced at the door. “Go in with us, if you don’t mind, Booker.”
Booker was difficult to read, but I had never seen him move faster than he did, the door swinging open and him striding inside as if he’d only been waiting for someone’s permission to act.
“It wasn’t him,” I whispered to Auguste, just in case he was suspicious of my golem friend.
“No,” Auguste agreed, moving in front of me with a squeeze to my hand. “I didn’t think so.”
The lights were still on when we walked in, bright and calm without a hint of flicker. Booker was standing in the heart of the room, turning in a slow circle. In front of me, Auguste was breathing deeply, face lifted as if he were scenting the air. His nose wrinkled.
“Someone was here,” Auguste said, “They’re gone. Smells like…campfire.”
I would take his word for it, although how he could distinguish campfire from the fireplace that was burning in the room, I wasn’t sure.
“Booker, would Magdalena let you stay with Esther while I’m away?” Auguste asked. “She’ll be safe with her gentlemen, but until we know who made their way in, I’d rather she wasn’t alone.”
I kicked at Auguste’s heel, and he spun to me. “I issue the invitations, thank you,” I said primly. But I looked over Auguste’s shoulder to Booker and asked, “Please?”
“Yes,” Booker said, without any of his usual pause.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding to him and stepping aside as he left us and headed out to the hall. I raised an eyebrow at Auguste and resisted the twitching smile that wanted to spring loose.
“You’re right,” Auguste said, nearly ruining my stern resolve with his damn dimples. “My apologies. You’re going to have a hard time keeping us all in line.”
My eyes widened at that, and I pushed Auguste backward toward the bed with slow steps.
“So you know about the others?” I asked.
“A little,” Auguste said grinning with just the faintest flash of fang. I didn’t care what he said about teaching me lessons in bed, he liked when I bossed him about. “Dr. Underwood is a friend. His…companion has a special talent for sniffing supernatural folk out of the woodwork. He found me hunting one night.”
“Hunting? You mean for blood?” I asked. Auguste’s eyes shifted about the room for a moment. “You didn’t have another girl like me before?”
Auguste froze at that and, after half a beat, scooped me up in his hold, eyes wide and brilliantly blue. “Mon coeur, how many ‘girls like you’ do you think there are? No. I had little affairs, but not for blood. And I’ve had blood, but not with affection. I’ve been waiting for my invitation to a house like this for almost two centuries.”
My heart stuttered in my chest at that, and Auguste settled us both down on the bed against the headboard, his face nuzzling into my neck.
“I am grateful it took so long,” Auguste murmured, kissing my neck. “Magdalena knew what she was about.”
“Dr. Underwood too,” I said, twisting myself onto his lap and stretching my throat for his attention. “He found me.”
Auguste rumbled his agreement into my skin. “Yes, he’ll be unbearably smug now.” I scratched my nails over the back of his neck, and he added, “He has every right to be.”
“And the other men?”
Auguste dragged me farther down the bed an
d rolled us so I was on my back. His hair was wild with the black curls he tried to tame and I promptly rumpled. He grinned down at me, “Greedy girl. I only know about the sphinx because you mentioned him. You’ll have to be surprised.”
I plucked a button loose on Auguste’s collar, and he tilted my chin back to meet his eyes. They were still fairly blue. I’d made it a goal to keep them black with hunger as much as possible while we were together.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, sweet girl,” he said in a coaxing purr, and his chest vibrated against my own with the low tone.
I opened my mouth to say something obscene, but what came out was, “I want Booker too.”
Auguste laughed at that, head dropping down to kiss my forehead. “Yes, I don’t blame you. He’s quite a figure.”
“You don’t mind?” I asked, kicking my legs until my skirt rode up enough that I could hook my knees around his waist.
His hand landed on the bare skin of my thighs, hitching me closer to him, and I watched with a little victorious thrill as his eyes started to darken.
“I don’t mind,” Auguste said. “And you’ll have plenty of time to convince him now, although I doubt it will take much. Will you let me watch?”
My breath stuttered at that, and my eyes grew wide. He wanted to watch me with Booker? Suddenly, a whole world of possibilities appeared in my head. If I had more than one caller, could I have more than one man in the same night? In the same bed? This one was certainly big enough for a crowd.
“Yes,” I said, voice thin.
“Ahh, I see your wicked little wheels turning,” Auguste said, his hands traveling farther up under my skirt. “But tonight, I will keep you to myself, mon coeur.”
I continued popping buttons loose down the front of his shirt. “Then you better keep me busy,” I said.
Auguste growled, grinning and diving down to my mouth, ready to follow orders.
Chapter Seven
An Uninvited Guest
“Booker?” There was a faint grunt from behind me, where Booker was acting as my chair in the grass in front of the loch. I was soaking up some of the sun I’d missed during Auguste’s stay at the manor. Booker didn’t speak much, regardless of how I tried to coax the words, but he did always find some way of responding. I twisted to look up at him and found him already watching me, waiting for me to continue.
“I know you can feel, but is it…nice?” I asked. He was a surprisingly comfortable support for being made of marble, as if he could relax himself enough to suit me.
Booker’s forehead knotted in the center, a remarkably elegant little fold of flesh. If he had been a statue and not a living man—of a sort—the artist of such an expression would have been applauded for the detail.
“Like this,” I said, picking up his hand from where it rested on his leg. It was heavier than an average man’s hand but certainly not as much as rock should have weighed. I turned it over, palm up, and scratched my fingers lightly across the lines in his hand. There was a slight squeak of fingernails on polished marble. I did applaud Madame Mortimer for her detail, come to think of it.
Booker’s fingers twitched at the touch, and I beamed at the response. He nodded.
“Funny,” he said.
I pressed my thumb into the pad of flesh beneath his thumb and there was more resistance, but also give.
“I feel…like man,” Booker said, nodding shallowly again.
I turned a little more to face him, dropping his hand and lifting mine up to his face. He was cool and stiff to the touch, just like he ought to have been, but when I ran my fingertips over his bottom lip and pressed, I made a little dent in the stone flesh. I looked up at his eyes and wondered if I was imagining the warmth in that stony gray gaze. It was there, in the slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes.
How did one seduce a man of stone? Magdalena had said it happened but not who had done it, and so I had no one to ask for advice.
“Esther,” Booker rumbled with the smallest lift at the corners of his mouth, where I was still touching.
I had all but made up my mind to simply kiss the golem when we were interrupted.
“Esther, darling.”
Magdalena was leaning out of one of the downstairs windows, waving a fan in her hand at the pair of us.
“Sorry to interrupt, but may I borrow you for a chat?” she asked. She didn’t look sorry. She looked near to laughing. At least she didn’t look angry.
Booker picked us both up off the grass, and his arm around my waist was tight but not uncomfortable.
“Inside,” he said, patting me on the back, just above my ass. My eyebrows raised at that. His face was smooth as stone again, but from anyone else, that would have been wonderfully impertinent flirtation.
Like man, he had said. I would take him at his word. I snatched his hand up and wrapped my arm around his as he started to lead us back to the manor. Magdalena smirked at us both from the window and ducked inside again.
I was finally starting to get a handle on the twists and turns of the manor, but it was nice to have Booker leading the way. He knew every shortcut through the halls, and we arrived at Magdalena’s office in a moment. She was waiting for us at the round table, crystal ball pulled close to her, and a pile of illustrated cards spread over the tablecloth.
“Looking for more callers?” I asked, taking a seat across from her.
“More girls,” Magdalena murmured. “We have quite a few new gentlemen looking to attend the house. You don’t happen to know of anyone do you?”
I opened my mouth to say no, the other housemaids I’d known at the Pickerings had been better behaved than I and they’d all found good positions before the end. Then my memory snagged on another option. Eleanor Teague, the daughter of the family I had worked for first. We had caught each other with men and kept the secrets. Out of those secrets, a friendship had been built, one that tore at my heart when I took one risk too many and was asked to leave the house.
Eleanor was a proper lady, at least by birth, but she had a wicked imagination and her own illicit habits. She could have been married to some stuffy old bore by now but…if she wasn’t. She might not admit to it, but this was just the kind of house she would enjoy.
“I could send a letter,” I said, and Magdalena’s face brightened.
“Wonderful, I had a feeling you could help,” she said. “Now, why I called you in. Amon is still traveling, Dr. Underwood and Auguste are both occupied with business. I thought I might have another suitor for you to meet, but the cards are being…well, they say to wait. Do you mind terribly?”
I blinked at her and then down at the cards on the table. They had something to say about who I slept with? There was a faint shift out of the corner of my eye, Booker, and I realized that as odd as it was to say, the cards might have been right.
“I don’t mind waiting,” I said. It would give me time to further my suit with Booker. Or to enjoy my time with him.
“Lovely. You are a darling, Esther,” Magdalena said, reaching over to squeeze my hand. “One more favor. May I borrow Booker from you for an hour or so?”
“I stay with my lady,” Booker said before I could even think to whine a protest.
Both Magdalena and I turned to him, equally stunned, and found him staring at his own feet, a baffled openness on his face, expression lax.
“Auguste asked Booker to keep an eye on me after he smelled a stranger in my room,” I explained.
Magdalena was still watching Booker, but she didn’t look unhappy at his uncharacteristic speech. For the first time, the older woman was unreadable, an almost calculating sharpness to her gaze.
“I see,” she said, turning back to me. “Well I promise you both, my wards guard against intruders. No one can cross our threshold who is not meant to be here. It was likely an accident on the part of one of the other patrons. You are very safe.”
She held my gaze as strongly as if she were holding my face in her hands, and it took me serious mental effort
to tear my eyes away long enough to check on Booker. He was watching me, waiting for instruction.
“That’s all right then,” I said, nodding to him.
“I promise it won’t be long,” Magdalena assured, and now her face was softened and sincere, cheeks full with a smile.
“I’ll be up in my room,” I told Booker as I stood, adding to Magdalena, “I’ll write to my friend about the house.”
“Wonderful!” Magdalena said, clapping her hands together. “Thank you, darling.”
Booker took a brief step in my direction as I made my way out, but stopped himself and I headed upstairs alone.
How much could I write to Eleanor without giving the greatest secrets of the manor away? I would have to make the position clear, it wouldn’t do to be vague about that part, but I could be vague on the details of the men. Private men with…unique needs. Or would that sound a bit too far for a girl like Eleanor? I’d seen firsthand that she wasn’t shy about her own pleasure, but I didn’t know how she might respond to a man who changed like Dr. Underwood. Or one who had a taste for blood.
Still, she didn’t have to come if she didn’t want to, and it would be better to be warned than spook her when she arrived. Maybe…maybe I could simply ask to meet her in London when Auguste took me. Then nothing too delicate would be written down.
I chewed over my thoughts as I reached my bedroom, heading to throw myself against the mattress.
But it wasn’t a mattress I landed against.
“Oof!”
It was a body I crashed against, although I never saw anyone else in the room and certainly not in front of me. A large hand clapped over my mouth, muffling my shout, as a strong arm fastened around my shoulders, holding me fast to the invisible figure.
“Shh, puisín, no shouting now,” a man said in my ear, and there was a scratch of a beard against my cheek and warm breath on my skin. I screamed again, eyes growing huge and searching the air for any hint of who was holding me. My voice was barely audible through the grasp of his fingers, digging into my cheeks just enough to be firm. “Hush now, I’m not here to harm yer pretty head,” he said, a trill of Irish brogue ringing in his words.