Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Lord of his manor.
Lord of me.
I was powerless to his pull, and I didn’t care.
I went up, kissed his furry belly, then he moved down as I kept crawling up.
He wrapped an arm around my waist, rolled us both to turn off the only light we’d turned on, then he yanked the covers over us.
I snuggled into him, half on, half off, cheek to his pec.
“If you dream, I want you to wake me, sweetheart,” he murmured.
“Okay,” I mumbled in return, kinda hoping to go back to Augustus and Adelaide, if only for ideas.
He gathered my hair and started twisting it in a coil between my shoulder blades.
“You give great head,” he noted.
I smiled a sleepy smile into his shadowed chest. “Every girl’s dream compliment.”
“Every guy’s dream girl.”
He didn’t just mean enjoying me going down on him.
Again with saying the right thing.
“I want you again,” he said quietly. “Does that frighten you?”
I tipped my head back even if I couldn’t see his face in the extreme dark of the room.
“Are you up for that?” I asked with no small surprise.
Truth, I didn’t know if I was. I was fucked out.
But with how Ian fucked, I could find it in myself to rally.
“No. I just think it interesting I’ve come four times tonight, I’m no longer eighteen, I’m shattered, but I still want more.”
“You like me,” I reminded him.
“I do. I already did. Though, I had no idea how talented you were with your mouth and pussy, so one could say I like you quite a bit more now.”
I laughed softly, righted my head on his chest and hugged him closer.
His hand tightened in my hair, and I tensed.
“You’re extraordinary, Daphne.”
The words were low and fierce, and I felt them in my womb and heart.
“Ian—”
“If you didn’t know that, you do now. And it’s my job to make sure you never forget.”
Oh my God. He was killing me.
“Shut up,” I demanded, voice husky with feeling.
“All right, darling. Sleep.”
I turned my head to kiss his chest and closed my eyes.
But I could feel my lips were smiling.
Though I didn’t see, as both Ian and I drifted into sleep cuddled together under his duvet in his bed, the time on his tablet said it was three oh three.
Thirty-One
THE CONVERSATION
We were seated in black velvet wingback chairs in a void. No walls. No color.
Just black.
And she was wearing a spangled, black sheath, her legs crossed, her T-strap shoes with the arched heel were covered in jet beads, and a black beaded band was tied around her forehead.
Her platinum hair and the alabaster skin of her bare arm, therefore, shone stark against the abyss we were occupying, and she was examining me, like she needed to decide whether to deem me fit or not, for what I did not know.
“I wouldn’t let a little nothing like Rose be the end of me,” Dorothy Clifton informed me.
“I know. It was David,” I told her.
She made a scoffing noise. “I wouldn’t allow a man to be the end of me either.”
“Then what happened? Why were you up there? Did you fall?”
“I can hold my drink, girl. I did not fall.”
I was losing patience.
“Okay, then what happened?”
“Why do you care?” she demanded.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m not what’s important that’s happening in that house.”
“You were important,” I returned.
She rolled her eyes then again focused on me. “I know that.”
“So, tell me, what’s important in the house?”
“Him. You.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes, and I returned. “I know that.”
One side of her lips curled.
“I think I like you,” she decided.
When I said nothing, she went on.
“There’s more going on in that house.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay then, the flute. You don’t know about the flute.”
I was confused. “The flute? The one in the Music Room?”
She nodded. “Tell Ian about it.”
“No, you tell me about it.”
“It has to be Ian.”
Whatever.
I wasn’t playing this game anymore, not even in my dreams.
But while I had her…
“Why’d you do it?” I pressed. “To Virginia. To Rose. You’re a sister. Why did you sleep with both their husbands right here, in this house?”
“Virginia didn’t care I fucked David. Virginia herself had no interest in fucking David and so, when she could avoid it, she didn’t. And William didn’t care about Rose’s feelings.”
“He should have. She might not have been the love of his life. But she was his wife.”
“Tell that to him.” She made a mock-horrified face. “Oh no! You can’t! He’s dead. Like me.”
“Stop it and tell me,” I demanded.
She suddenly looked forlorn. “I was in love with him, you know.”
“Which one?”
Now, she made a face of distaste. “Well, not David.”
“William?”
Back to the forlorn when she shared, “It wasn’t true. What I said. He did care about Rose. It hurt him every day, knowing she’d wake up to such pain, having to live in that house with her husband and the woman he loved.”