Shadow, page 5
part #1 of Jaegers of the Consortium Series
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Mister Wolverton,” Charity glared at him. What was it with men always thinking with the thing that was in their pants? “That wouldn’t be proper.”
“Not yet, anyway.” Lucas smiled broadly. When she pursed her lips and gave him a cross look, he held up his hands. “No, I’m not going to coerce you into bed with me. If, or should I say when, that happens, that will be because you have either asked me to or begged me to.”
“That will never happen,” she said with a dignified sniff, even though she was already picturing such an event in her head. “Your Ayla’s… friend.” The image of Lucas naked last night appeared and she quickly shook it away. What was she thinking? Regardless of how she felt about it, she was already promised to someone else.
“In any case,” Lucas continued, writing on his pad, “I will agree to be your accountant for the duration it takes me to sort out your accounts, a time not to exceed the length of this summer, at the price of a single kiss per day.”
“I beg your pardon?” Charity’s eyes widened. The initial thought shocked her. Although, she was hardly one to cast stones. If her parents ever found out about the affair she had with that diver from university, they’d be furious. Charity smiled. Kissing Lucas wasn’t the same thing at all. If nothing else, it would irritate her mother. After all, it wasn’t as though Eddie kissed her on a regular basis. On the rare occasions they were in the same room, he hardly even looked at her. She could count their outings together on one hand. They had slept together multiple times—if one could call it that—but he hadn’t kissed her then, either.
Lucas, on the other hand looked at Charity in a way that made her feel like she was the only woman on earth. He was an attractive man, standing well over a foot above her with his chiseled jaw, roguish grin, and dark black hair that seemed to be perfect despite the fact that she shattered porcelain over it the night before. Charity couldn’t quite figure out if he was looking at her only as a client or as someone who wanted more than just kisses. Remembering Ayla’s comments about them and casual sex, it was probably a little of both.
Charity looked over the terms he handed to her, trying to ignore the heat rising to her face as she thought about Lucas. She frowned as she caught one little caveat. “What’s this ‘in accordance to Consortium Law and IAAP’ mean?”
“It means that I have to act within the boundaries of accounting that the Consortium has laid down in the Internationally Accepted Accounting Procedures,” Lucas said, sounding pleased that she’d taken the time to thoroughly read the terms. “When the Consortium was founded after the Cataclysm and took over world banking and commerce, IAAP was set forth as the only standard to which all nations must report their finances. It was to ensure that hyperinflation, like what had occurred in Great Britain, Germany, Nippon, and the former United States would have a very hard time ever happening again.”
Charity nodded in understanding. She couldn’t find the request very unreasonable, even if a bit unorthodox. “Just the kisses,” she said at last.
Lucas smiled and signed his name below the statement of terms that he’d written out before turning the pad for her to read. Charity looked it over and it was just as he’d said. She scribbled her name down beside his on the formal parchment. Lucas wrote a second copy out, signed it, and gave it to Charity to sign and keep. “I’ll leave it up to you to decide when you wish to ‘render’ your daily fee.”
Charity stood abruptly, grabbed her hat, and walked around the table to him, causing him to scramble to his feet. “I’d rather do it now so that I can leave you to your work in peace.”
“Get it over with now instead of dread of having to do it later?” Lucas teased.
“Something like that.” She stood for a couple of tense moments, waiting for him to make a move, bracing for the inevitable. But when he broke the silence it was to spread his hands a bit in a questioning gesture. “Well?”
“Oh!” Charity blinked. “Ladies never make the first move where I come from.”
“Yes, I know, it’s a nasty habit that doesn’t hold in Sin Islands.”
Charity gave him a sour look, but stepped forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Well, good day to you Lucas,” she said quickly, before making her rapid retreat.
“Wait a minute, that’s it?” Lucas asked, shocked. “That’s how you kiss a member of your family, not another person!”
“One kiss daily for services rendered, are those not the terms?” Charity asked, feigning innocence, her big blue eyes dancing with a hint of amusement.
Lucas glared, but there was a smile beginning at the corners of his mouth. Then he laughed. “Alright, you get one freebie, but tomorrow I expect to get a real kiss from you; one you would give a lover, not your brother.”
“Well then, until tomorrow,” Charity said with her own smile and a curtsey, disappearing down the hallway, her sundress flowing behind. Already, she felt anxious about the next morning.
Chapter 5
Days later, Charity felt lightheaded after her morning kiss to Lucas, to the point she felt she might swoon. Rather than stay in Lucas’ temporary office, where she’d be sorely tempted to be unladylike, she roamed around the mansion. They’d been kissing steadily for nearly a week now, each one becoming longer and more intimate than before. True to her word, the second day she gave him a soft kiss right onto his lips, and it made her tingle from head to toe. A couple of days after that, she’d started getting physically closer to him, and had to hold the tops of his shoulders to steady herself while they kissed. This morning, Lucas’s hands slipped to her waist, and she found herself not wanting to pull away at all.
While Charity was still feeling unsure and a bit ashamed of the kissing, Ayla and Lucas seemed to find it amusing. She’d heard Ayla say something to the extent of “I’m happy for you,” as Charity quickly excused herself from the room. She didn’t want to wait around for clarification. Instead, she decided to go for a long, leisurely stroll, determined not to see either of them for some time.
She retreated to her own suite before setting out for her walk. The massive room with its adjoining walk-in closet and changing room had been empty except for the few pieces of furniture that Ayla kept in it. The suite encompassed the entire upstairs of the mansion’s east wing. Even the bathroom was luxurious. The large, ornate basin stood between three bay windows, with a lovely view of the surrounding countryside, and a tub that size could easily accommodate more than a single guest. But Charity was in the room just long enough to splash water on her face, pat it dry, and continue walking around.
Exploring the mansion was entertaining. There were many hidden passages and rooms. The first night, she found one such passage that had been left open, leading from her closet to Ayla’s. That discovery prompted her to look for more. In her room, she found a passage in the corner that contained a spiral staircase. At the bottom, she found herself in Ayla’s library, with enough books to put a public library to shame. “That’s certainly a convenient way to get something to read,” she mused as she walked along recessed stacks in the walls, her hand running across the backs of paperbound and leather-bound books.
Ayla had a wide range of books—fiction and nonfiction—from new to ancient text. She even found copies of religious works from around the world. As much as she wanted to stay pious and grab the One Book that was on the shelf, Charity wanted even more to be adventurous and to enjoy herself on what was likely to be her last fun vacation ever. She wandered down the shelves, into a small alcove behind the staircase, and her mouth turned upward when she found the more lewd and racier titles. She found a thick, leather book filled with romantic and erotic short stories. Before taking the book off the shelf, she craned her neck to look down the long hallway that led back toward the center of the house to see if anyone was around. No one was in sight and she couldn’t hear anyone, so she sat down on the plush fainting couch in front of the fireplace and began to read.
It wasn’t a cheap novel from the local copper store but it wasn’t one of the silver store stories, either. It didn’t take long before she felt the familiar flush of erotic warmth flow between her legs as she read a story about a gentleman having his way with a woman, using various binding contraptions. Not for the first time that week, she pictured similar scenes with Lucas, doing the things described in the book. Granted, she could do without the riding crop she saw him use on Ayla, but a spanking with his hand, much like the gentleman in her story was doing, would certainly feel nice.
She wanted more. Taking another look to ensure that she was alone, Charity reached into her purse to take out her favorite item: her dream collar. She snapped it into place around her neck and flipped the switch in the back to start it up. The tiny capacitors whined as it powered up. Soon, her eyes closed and was “living” the story rather than simply reading it.
As the story progressed, a sense of longing swept over her as her free hand drifted down her skirt to start inching it up over her legs. Lucas certainly seemed like the type of man who could give her what she wanted. Why couldn’t she be betrothed to him, a handsome and arousing man? She’d gone to bed with Eddie only a few times, and he’d only had her strip so he could plunge in and out of her a few times before he came. Then he’d rolled off her and left to sleep in another room, leaving Charity to take care of herself in silence. The other so-called “romantic interludes” that they’d had in the daytime were much quicker and far worse, as he had typically just thrown her down onto the floor, despite her protests, and had her like a common scullery maid. That was not the sort of man she wanted to be married to. And it would only get worse after marriage.
Charity drew her hand up the inside of her thigh, sighing as she pictured what kind of lover Lucas would be. Seeing him brandishing that riding crop with Ayla had given her a general idea, and it made her both scared and excited.
Her hand covered her cleft over her panties, and she gently squeezed. Underneath her bodice, her nipples stiffened in response as arousal overcame her. As she continued on, her hand came up just long enough for the saliva in her mouth, and back down to dip inside her panties, brushing past the wisps of golden hair to slip into her moistening slit. Her chest heaved. Her heart rate accelerated and her breathing became heavier. She propped the book on the back of the couch as she leaned back further. Bringing her free hand up to her chest, she gently squeezed a breast while her other hand worked between her slick folds. Still reading, she wet her fingers in her mouth again as her thighs fell open, but as her fingers worked more furiously between her legs, the book was forgotten and her eyes closed, bringing her closer to that sweet release. Lucas. She had yet to know the sensation with a man, but Lucas would show her what it felt like. What she wanted. Lucas.
She worked herself into a frenzy, the erotic story now distant as she closed her eyes and pictured Lucas in the dream sequence, holding her down and ordering her what to do. Her breathing became labored and ragged, her skin flushed. In her mind, she called out his name as she imagined his hands roaming all over her supple skin. She writhed on the couch, and then her body jerked and jerked again as the climax roared through her body. Charity buried her head into a pillow as she inadvertently let out a scream. Sweet release.
Charity felt the strength ebb out of her, replaced with sensual warmth. She rubbed at herself softly through the tail end of her release, through the afterglow, not wanting the feeling or the fantasy to end. “Ahhhhh,” she sighed, letting her loll to one side as she came down from the ecstasy.
“Need some help with that?” Lucas asked, his voice slicing through her haze like a sword.
Charity’s eyes snapped open and she saw him leaning close over her with a bemused expression on his face. “AH!” she screamed, grabbing the book on pure instinct and swinging it defensively. The hard, leather-bound book caught him in the side of the head, knocking him sideways. “Don’t ever do that again!” she yelled, yanking the dream collar off her neck and shoving it back into her purse in a hurry.
“Don’t ever sneak up on a Dixie Lady while she’s getting herself off. Got it,” Lucas muttered as he straightened back up, holding his jaw and tentatively working it around. “I am so glad that we got that covered.”
Charity scowled at him as she straightened up her skirt to preserve her modesty. “You startled me. And you’re a pervert for staring at me in such a state. What on earth are you doing in here? Shouldn’t you be working in the office?”
“I’m a pervert,” he laughed. “You called me, remember?” Lucas arched eyebrow.
Her eyes widened with fright. “Not possible,” she breathed.
“Need I recap?” Lucas then launched into a rendition of Charity’s sexual gyrating on the couch while she was moaning and, apparently, talking aloud. He even put his hand between his legs.
Charity blushed furiously. “You… you heard all that?”
“Honey, the whole mansion heard that,” he gestured over to the door to the hallway where Ayla was standing with many of her maids clustered behind her. When she saw that everything was okay, Ayla shooed her staff away while giving Lucas and Charity a knowing smile.
“Ohhhh,” Charity buried her face into her hands, mortified. “Oh my God, oh my goodness,” she cried as she rushed from the library, nearly knocking Ayla over as she ran.
She wasn’t far enough away to miss their conversation, though. “What did you do to her now?” Ayla asked.
“Me? She hit me with a book!” Lucas protested. “Apparently you can’t interrupt a lady playing with her pussy up in Dixie. Hell, if she’d been reading anything Russian, I’d be dead!”
Ayla’s voice, fading: “You deserved it.”
Over the next few days, Charity avoided Lucas as much as she could. She made their next morning kiss go as fast as possible; Lucas was clearly disappointed, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he kept busy making calls back to Atlanta for information, and to the retailers in question. At one point, likely out of frustration at not getting any closer to fixing her problem, and perhaps also at Charity’s own sudden coldness, he’d told someone at her bank in a harsh tone to freeze her accounts until everything could be straightened out. He’d made up for it by arranging to have anything Charity needed to be purchased with his own money, and even gave her exotic flowers, and rare, pricey Caribbean chocolate, made only in Elysium, that gave her a very euphoric and erotic feeling with every bite. By the time the next weekend rolled around, she was speaking to him again.
As per her usual routine, she woke up late on Saturday and had breakfast alone in the nook before going out to walk the grounds with her sun hat on and her parasol resting over her shoulder. It would be harder for someone to sneak up on her traversing an open lawn. According to the staff, Lucas had already come in from his home in the city to look over Charity’s journal and then gone again; out running an extra errand in town that was outside of his normal accounting duties. Ayla was at the beach practicing her free dives. The absence of Ayla and Lucas made Charity realize just how accustomed she was becoming to having friends—new and old—who cared about her the way they did. Now that they weren’t with her, she felt quite lonely.
After walking the perimeter of the grounds, and along the shoreline, Charity relaxed in a wicker seat under the shade of the pool house. She was simply enjoying the sunshine and letting the rhythmic sound of the pool house’s steam engine generator lull her into a peaceful haze. Even the little clicks and clanks of the clockwork servants cleaning the pool in long, smooth, methodical sweeps were relaxing.
A slight sigh escaping her lips, she wondered if life with Eddie would be a life closed away. She couldn’t imagine him ever letting her out of the house. He was so controlling. Since becoming engaged, every time he called at the house, he expected her to sit by his side and say nothing, while he droned on about things that bored her to tears.
Her thoughts inevitably went to Lucas. Every night at dinner, he sat close to her, but not so close that it felt stifling. He engaged Charity in conversation often and actually valued her opinion. Lucas seemed to know when a topic didn’t interest her and was sure to turn the conversation to something that did. Occasionally, he’d place his hand on hers, or touch her shoulder or the small of her back, just to have warm, close contact. It made her feel good. It made her feel. She closed her eyes, and sighed dreamily. Despite the fact she’d hit him twice, hard, she could still see the want and desire in his eyes, which further fueled her own want and desire.
“There you are,” Lucas called out. Charity opened her eyes as he walked around the corner of the pool toward her. At least he was making his presence known this time. She might have hit him with the second wicker chair or thrown one of the nearby clockworks at him.
“Where have you been all morning?” Charity asked.
“Down at the local Consortium office making some more formal inquiries into your accounts,” he said, sitting down on the wicker loveseat beside her.
Charity arched an eyebrow at him. Something had to be up for him to come looking for her immediately. “So how are my accounts looking?”
“Like shit, unfortunately,” Lucas admitted. She gave him a disapproving look for his language, but he went on. “Whoever screwed them up did a really good job with it. I’m elevating the status to a formal complaint with the Consortium since your bank is being less than helpful.” He let out a long breath. “The good news is, the Consortium told me that this is just the latest in a series of problems with your bank, and they already have someone on the inside investigating.”
“But progress is being made?” Charity asked. Lucas nodded. She let out her own sigh of relief. “Thank Heaven,” she said. “I wish that I could do more.”
“You’re doing plenty.” Lucas said, giving her a half smile. “May I walk you back to the house?”
“I’d like to stay out here for a bit more. That water certainly looks inviting,” Charity said as her gaze turned out to the pool. She chuckled as she watched the pair of little clockworks arguing in their steam whistle and beeping language about how to properly skim the pool water.
