Page 26 of Once a Villain
“You may do as you wish, of course.” Geoffrey’s posture was respectful, but he didn’t seem quite as afraid as the security team had been. “But where are their pendants?”
Joan touched the bare hollow of her throat unthinkingly. That answered one question she’d had—how people in this timeline treated people who were part monster and part human.
Aaron’s jaw tightened. “They lost them.” His tone suppressed questions.
Geoffrey opened his mouth and closed it. It was clear that humans didn’t just lose pendants in this world. “I shall arrange replacements.”
For a second, Joan couldn’t remove her hand from her throat—the urge to protect herself was too strong. Aaron’s attention flicked to her, laser-like, and his real self glinted through again. Joan realized with a start that he was calculating the risk of insisting thatthesehumans be allowed to stay pendant-free. Joan shook her head slightly. Aaron had to be careful. They were still learning how this world worked. He couldn’t break character over this.
“Fine,” Aaron ground out.
“My lord...” Geoffrey sighed. “You’ve slept your way through half the Court, and now you’re picking up humans off the street?” He lowered his voice. “People will talk. Theyaretalking.”
Joan’s mouth fell open again. She could hardly process what Geoffrey had just said. He thought Aaron had brought Joan and Nick here to sleep with them?Bothof them?
She thought Aaron would deny it, but Aaron looked like a deer in headlights—as surprised as Joan.
Geoffrey played the beam of light from Nick’s square jaw to his muscled chest, and then on to Joan, lingering on her eyes, her mouth. Joan’s face heated. Beside her, Nick glared at Geoffrey in a way humans probably never did in this timeline. Geoffrey didn’t seem to notice. “Icansee why you picked them,” he said to Aaron. “He’sa little low-class for your taste, but she’s—”
“That’s enough,” Aaron said.
“I only meant to say that she’s quite—”
“I said that’senough.” The sudden dangerous undertone in Aaron’s voice made Geoffrey blanch.
They walked in silence up the path. Joan seemed to be processing everything in slow motion. Aaron was the head of the family in this timeline. And he maybe liked guys as well as girls. She lifted her gaze to the back of Aaron’s gray suit. His shoulders were tight. Joan could tell that he’d felt exposed by Geoffrey’s words.
Joan had never really been surewho Aaron’s type was—he’d always been so private, so self-contained.Everyonewas attracted to Aaron. His looks made strangers on the street do double takes and stare.In return, though, Joan sometimes wondered if Aaron was into anyone at all. His gaze never seemed to linger on anyone.
Except that lately... Joan had noticed the way he looked at her, his eyes soft.I’ve only just found you, he’d said back at the inn.
She took a breath, trying to clear her head. This wasn’t the time to delve into how Aaron felt about her; how she felt about him. They were about to walk into a lion’s den.
The Oliver mansion towered over the landscape, a glowing castle on a hill, four stories high, capped with turrets. From this angle, it had the quality of something ancient: a cliff at the edge of the ocean.
As they approached the front door, it opened, and a sleek brown dog came out, trotting up to Aaron. It snuffled his hand, tail wagging, and Aaron’s new persona slipped for a moment as he bent to stroke its head. A tag around its neck saidChaucer. Joan didn’t recognize the breed, but the dog’s fox-like ears and little muscled body reminded her of ancient Roman mosaics. “Was that you barking earlier?” Aaron asked the dog, his voice gentling.
“He didn’t like the Court Guards,” Geoffrey said.
The dog barked now, as if in agreement. Joan whispered to Nick under thewhuffs: “No wonder the dogs didn’t sniff us out in the garden.” They’d known Aaron. They hadn’t sensed a threat.
“My lord!” A tall man came out to greet Aaron. His uniform screamedbutler. And—God—Aaron had a butler here. He had staff.A valet. A security team.
“You have messages,” the butler said. “I’ve placed them in your office.”
Aaron straightened, and the dog pattered inside, wandering out of sight. “Very good.”
The butler’s gaze felt like a heavy weight on Joan’s shoulders. He knew that she and Nick were human. And from his disapproving expression, he’d made the same assumption as Geoffrey about why they were here.
Joan folded her arms around herself. Nickwas hunched and uncomfortable too, but—as his gaze darted around—Joan realized he was more disconcerted by the posh house than the assumptions of the staff.
They followed the butler into a foyer that rose the full height of the house. Nick stared up. A skirt of windows flared under a painted ceiling. High above, mermaids swam underwater, their blonde hair billowing around them. Underfoot, the floor was tiled in gray marble, swirled with white like a sky before a storm.
Joan couldn’t have pinpointed why, but the layout of the space, the painting, the floor, felt like Aaron. It was his taste. And, from Aaron’s wary recognition, he saw it too, and he was disturbed by it.
Joan was so lost in their surroundings that she almostmissed Geoffrey’s expression change as Aaron turned toward a small door at the back of the foyer.
“Aaron,” Joan whispered warningly to stop him—he was heading the wrong way. In the previous timeline, his bedroom had been in the servants’ wing. His father had banished him to a punitive closet-like space, far from the other Olivers. She caught Geoffrey frowning at her. “My—My lord!” she corrected herself quickly. “My lord Oliver.” The title stuck in her mouth.
