Page 12 of Hearts of Stone

An hour later, a long, rambling, vaguely hysterical phone call to my parents was finished, Mellors was gone and Harry let us know he was not far away in the caretaker’s cottage. The only ones left were the new residents: me and Daniel. We stood at the base of the stairs that led to the first floor, dead on our feet, but still…

“It’s right about now I’m wishing I didn’t watch all those horror movies,” Daniel said, then looked at me. “You know that if this was the start of one of those movies, this would be when a gang of organ harvesters would burst in and slice and dice us in our sleep.”

“Danny—”

“Or a coven of reclusive vampires would slink out of the shadows.”

“Danny—”

“Or witches that needed virgins to perform dark rites.” He wrinkled his nose. “That rules me out. And just because you haven’t had good dick, that doesn’t mean you haven’t had any dick.”

“For fuck’s sake, Danny,” I said, right before he shot me a wicked grin. “I don’t know about you, but I’m trashed.”

“Totally. Walking out on my job, drinking my rent away, confronting Pencil Dick and finding out you’re the owner of a goddamn mansion takes it out of a boy.” He yawned wide, forcing me to do the same. “So, shall we see if they have clean sheets on the no doubt fancy arse beds upstairs?”

We both nodded, then together we made our way upstairs.

It was easy to see why old houses made such good settings for horror movies. If they were all like this one, they were too big, too creaky and also too quiet. We heard a scraping sound and both jumped out of our skin, only to flick the lights on and see that at the end of the hall, branches had been allowed to grow long and brush against the window glass.

“OK, maybe we should grab an Uber back to my place,” Daniel said hurriedly. I gave him a look before I walked down the hall and he scooted along behind me.

There were so many doors, but all were closed, except for one. I walked through the doorway, my footfalls swallowed by the thick carpet, but went still when I flicked on the light. Daniel didn’t get that message, forced to come to an abrupt stop when he collided with me.

“Holy whore’s bedroom…”

I got what he was saying, but, damn, any sex worker living here was living the high life. The room was massive, no scooching past the cupboards in a tiny gap between the bed and the doors. And the bed was bigger than a king. Emperor-sized maybe? It was covered in a thick, richly brocaded quilt, pillows, so many pillows mounded perfectly at the head against a thick upholstered velvet and gold bedhead. But that wasn’t even the main feature of the bedroom, that was on the ceiling. There was no ceiling rose, nor a painted mural to rival that on the Sistine Chapel. Instead there was a massive gilt framed mirror.

“It looks like your ancestors liked to watch themselves as they fucked,” he said.

“So, you’re taking this bedroom,” I said hurriedly, able to see him there, reclining in luxury. I beat a hasty retreat towards the door, but Daniel grabbed my shoulders and steered me right back towards the bed.

“Like fuck. You’re the lady of the manor now. You need to sleep in the super, massive fucky fucky bed.” I stumbled forward when he gave me a shove.

“But what about—?”

“I know what you’re thinking.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re wondering when this is all going to be yanked away. And I know why.” He sighed and then looked around the room. “You’re out of your comfort zone.” I nodded emphatically at that. “So damn far out you couldn’t find your way back to said comfort zone if you had a compass and a map, but…” Those brown eyes swung back to meet mine. “Think about this. You get to sleep in your own damn bed, not on a couch. You don’t have to be serenaded by the sound of Spitoon faking her orgasms. You don’t have to wake up to Trevor’s passive aggressive bullshit.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t even have to wake up and rush to catch the train to get to work on time. Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and they’ll say that Ancestry.com made a huge mistake and some other girl gets to go to the ball, but that is not tonight.” He backed away toward the door, scanning the room, then giving me a satisfied nod. “Tonight you sleep in the bed that your distant ancestors had sex in, because, whatever the future holds, we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

I shook my head, then smiled.

“OK, fine. So you’ll find another room to sleep in?”

“I’m fairly sure the toilet in this place is bigger and nicer than my whole apartment,” he replied, “so, yeah, I’ll be fine. If I getscared, I’ll scurry down the road to see if that big caretaker of yours can look under my bed and see if the boogie man is there.”

“The one that’s into you?” I asked.

“You got that too, huh? Yeah, my gaydar was going off, babes, and that arrow was pointing at him. Mellors was giving me vibes too, but I’m not sure if it's because he wants to suck my dick or he’s just posh.” Daniel winked at me. “We’ll find out tomorrow.” Then he moved in and pressed his forehead to mine. “But we’ll get through this together, right?”

It was that assurance that helped me to pull away finally, close the big heavy door to the massive bedroom and stop myself from staring at all the decadent decor so I could move towards the shower. Those familiar night-time rituals helped settle me down: getting undressed, checking the water temperature then searching the bathroom cupboards for and finding some brand new cakes of lemon-scented soap. I grabbed one of those and some thick, thick towels and I was set. The other morning I’d washed away my sense of responsibility for Trevor, but now…? So much felt like it went swirling down the drain, that when I stepped out of the shower afterwards and stared into the mirror, I almost didn’t recognise myself.

Wide eyed and too pale, that was what I saw first, with my hair plastered flat to my skull. Juxtaposed against the tiles of the bathroom, the beautiful fittings, I felt like a fish out of water. But I was determined to learn how to breathe in this atmosphere. I’d find a lawyer in the morning, one that wasn’t connected to Trevor and his cronies, and I’d clarify if what Mellors had said was right, but for now…

Couldthis be mine? I wondered, staring at the mirror, the basin, the painted porcelain soap dispenser, the plush hand towels and felt a tug of longing. I wanted it to be, all of it, every glorious inch of this place, with a fierceness that kind of took me by surprise and that need followed me into the bed. I nestleddown in all those pillows, sighing at the feel of a perfectly firm mattress rather than a couch, and let my muscles relax one by one, dropping down into sleep.

I wasn’t alonein the bed, I became slowly aware of that. A finger slid up my spine, making me twitch and then when I moved, a whole palm rubbed across one arse cheek, the fingers sinking in. Another hand slid up my ribs, moving slowly, so slowly, forcing me to guess where it would end up. There, I panted, when a hand sought to cup the swell of my breast, but failed to contain all of it. A thumb rubbed across my nipple, slowly at first, as if to test the swollen point, then more surely when I moaned. I shifted under the covers, the silken slide of the one million thread count sheets doubling as his caress.

“There you are.”

My eyes flicked open and that’s when I saw where I was. In the same bed, that was clear, but what was different was that the covers were all thrown back. And then there was him.

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