Little Red Shadow (A Talented Fairy Tale Book 2), page 14
“I’m going to make you come apart, right here on this piano.”
Scarlett didn’t doubt his promises in the slightest as he teased her entrance with a single finger. She swallowed, finally finding her voice again, although it came out breathy. “Are you just going to talk about it or are you going to do it?”
Benedict huffed in amusement, fingers still exploring tortuously. “If you thought I was going to be quiet, then you don’t know me very well.” He looked up with a playful glint in his eye. “Maybe I can find a better use for my mouth.”
Benedict’s lips trailed over her chest to her stomach, and he sat on the piano bench in front of her. At this angle, his face was level with Scarlett’s core, currently throbbing with unrelieved heat. Scarlett desperately wanted to close her eyes, to not exist beyond the feeling of his fingers dragging lightly over her thighs, but those honeyed eyes kept her pinned. He saw Scarlett as she was, and she could not be unseen.
“I want to hear you sing, little bird.”
With no more warning, he leaned forward and drew his tongue up her seam in one long stroke. Her shadows jerked with an intent of their own, renewing their caresses of his chest and shoulders.
Scarlett gasped at the onslaught of sensations, biting her lip to stifle the sound as she was overwhelmed by Benedict’s mouth, hot and slick against her center along with the odd caress at the back of her mind that came from the touch of her shadows. Emboldened by her reaction, Benedict lifted her knees over his shoulders, licking into her as if ravenous. Scarlett panted through gritted teeth, any sense of composure rapidly slipping.
With another skillful flick of his tongue, he succeeded in pulling a ragged moan from her. Scarlett’s fingers scrabbled at the piano behind her, adding to the symphony of desperate sounds now clawing their way from her throat. Benedict only devoured her more enthusiastically, Scarlett’s shadows fluttering over every inch they could reach, pushing him away and pulling him closer in equal measure. After the incessant teasing of his fingers and his words, Scarlett’s pleasure was already baring down on her, hot and undeniable. There was no stopping the way Benedict undid her.
With a cry, Scarlett shuddered through her release, shaking so hard she nearly fell off the piano, but Benedict’s firm hands on her thighs kept her pinned, continuing his onslaught until the only sounds he could pull from her were desperate whimpers.
With one last kiss to the seam of her thigh, he pulled back to look at her with a smile that would have been smug if he didn’t look positively dazed.
“I knew you’d be a lovely songbird,” he remarked softly.
Scarlett let out a huff that might have been a laugh if she had any breath in her, surprised at how easily he seemed to pull amusement from her, even after such intense feelings.
As she gazed down at where Benedict still sat between her splayed thighs, her shadows lingered around him, tracing his neck and shoulders in lazy circles. He reached up as if to pet one, finding that it wasn’t quite solid in this state, fingers drifting through it like water.
“These are lovely too,” he commented, admiring them as if he really meant it. Scarlett shuddered. To have somebody touch her shadows and admire them not for what they could do, but simply for their existence was utterly foreign. It felt almost as good as Benedict’s mouth on her—almost.
Coming back to herself slightly, Scarlett realized that Benedict was still fully clothed. He could expose her so easily, in more ways than one—even things that she had hid from herself. As the thought dispelled some of the languid haze in her mind, she reached for Benedict, intent on distracting herself from such thoughts by returning his explorations.
The clang of a bell echoing through the house froze her in place, hand outstretched.
Benedict swore under his breath. “That must be Leon.”
Scarlett scrabbled for her clothing, the lingering warmth in her veins chased away by cold reality setting back in.
“Your clothes are on the chair by the fireplace in my room. I got them as clean as I could,” Benedict said, helping her pull his dressing gown back around her shoulders.
She pushed off the piano and came to her feet, legs a bit wobbly beneath her. At least the morning’s…diversion had chased away most of the lingering headache from the night before. Scarlett quickly darted towards the staircase to get herself decent. She spared a backward glance before she left the room though to see Benedict trying to set his own clothes to rights, rumpled as they were by the touch of Scarlett’s shadows. Despite her mind already racing with questions for Leon, the image of Benedict’s tousled hair played at the softness in her heart as she bounded up the stairs.
12
When Scarlett made her way back downstairs, she was much more decent, although it was still a relative statement. Her clothes bore several small tears from the night before, and Benedict clearly wasn’t as good at getting blood out of clothes as Scarlett was, judging by the dull coppery stains dotting her shirt. Still, she was glad for her short hair, which was easily tamed with a quick finger comb. As she glanced in the mirror above Benedict’s washstand, she pronounced herself good enough, knowing there was nothing to be done about the cuts littering her face or the hollows under her eyes from too many nights spent prowling rooftops instead of sleeping.
Scarlett followed voices back into the dining room, where Benedict had somehow embroiled Leon in a discussion on the recent rise of romanticism in paintings. Despite the direness of the situation, it seemed Benedict had an easy time conversing with people, even in the most intimate of situations. Scarlett’s cheeks warmed at the thought of the things he murmured to her not ten minutes earlier and reminded herself to focus on the matter at hand.
As she rounded the corner into the room, Leon sprang to his feet. Taking two large steps forward, he stopped abruptly, as if he wasn’t sure whether to hug her or keep his distance, looking her over from head to toe.
“That was incredibly stupid,” he settled for saying.
“Bold words for somebody I once watched fall out of Georgette’s window with his pants around his ankles.”
Benedict coughed violently into his teacup.
Leon shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that for me. I would have been fine.”
“You can thank me for taking that thrashing for you by explaining to me what exactly you were doing there, and why on earth you haven’t contacted Georgette yet. If you’ve gone off of her, I might just throw you back into that pit and let Ivor have his way with you after all.” Scarlett slid into a chair and propped her chin in her hands, looking at Leon expectantly.
Leon looked back and forth between Benedict and Scarlett before resuming his seat with a heavy exhale.
“I assume Georgette told you I had gone to Paris to get my father’s blessing to propose?”
Scarlett nodded, and Benedict leaned in with interest.
“When I got there and saw my father, he told me he had no intention of sending me back to London. He wanted to send me to America to expand his art trade. When I refused, saying I planned to return to London for Georgette, well…” Leon ran his hands through his hair, showing that he too bore bruised knuckles. “He disowned me.”
Scarlett grimaced. She knew all too well the struggles of being forced to fend for oneself overnight.
“What about your art trade?” Benedict chimed in.
“I’m trying to set off on my own with it,” Leon explained, spreading his hands on the table in front of him. “But all our pieces legally belong to my father, and I don’t have the capital to acquire many works on my own.”
“So how did you become embroiled with the Wolves?” Scarlett asked.
“I was in a pub in the lower city, trying to plan my next move, when I overheard some men talking about how the Wolves were looking for Talented, saying they could make a killing. And well—I’ve never told anybody about my Talent, and it hasn’t been hard to hide, but if there was ever a time to use it, I figured this was it.
“When I asked, they told me about the fighting rings and that any fighters get a healthy cut of the purse. I figured I could do it to get just enough money to get the art business up and running, and then I would propose to Georgette as a successful man. What could it hurt?”
Scarlett huffed. “You could get killed is what it could hurt.”
Leon shook his head. “Watch.” He reached across the table and grabbed a knife that still lay there from breakfast. Before Scarlett could react, he plunged it into the hand that still lay spread on the table.
Benedict let out a grunt of surprise, but it didn’t quite drown out the metallic clang as the knife bounced harmlessly off Leon’s skin.
“You’re invulnerable?” Scarlett asked once she managed to stop staring with her mouth agape. Some Talents were more powerful than others, but she had rarely heard of any so dramatic.
“Not quite,” Leon explained, holding up the knife and finding the tip bent from the impact. “I have to focus on it, and it only affects parts of my body when I’m actively concentrating on them. See?”
Leon now dragged the edge of the knife along the back of his hand, drawing a few drops of blood from flesh that a few moments ago had been as hard as steel.
“That would come in handy in a fight,” Scarlett admitted.
Leon laughed humorlessly. “It does, although it doesn’t mean I knew how to fight. At first, I mostly just took a beating and watched people break their hands when they tried to punch me. It turns out the crowds enjoyed it though, and I’ve made a killing.”
“Then why haven’t you proposed to Georgette?” Benedict interjected.
“I was going to, but it turns out I was making the Wolves too much money.”
Scarlett’s heart sank as she guessed where this story was going. Greed ran the lower city, and somebody like Fang didn’t let go of a valuable asset.
“When I told the Wolves I wouldn’t fight anymore, they threatened me. Of course, I told them their weapons were no good on me. That’s when Fang played his trump card.” Leon’s tone was utterly defeated. “The whole time I had been fighting for them, he had been learning all he could about me. He told me he knew about Georgette, and if I stopped fighting, he would kill her. I didn’t know if he could do it, but I wasn’t willing to risk it. Then I heard Georgette was being courted by the son of a duke—” Leon inclined his head towards Benedict, “and I knew it was over. There was no point in trying to get out anymore.”
“Ah you see, that’s where your wrong,” Benedict piped up.
“Georgette still very much wants to marry you. She’s been worried sick,” Scarlett agreed.
“Then you’re not…” Leon looked between the two with a bewildered expression.
“The Wolves delivered a death threat to Georgette, and Mr. Ward asked me to try and figure out why. I’ve been disguising myself as Georgette in public to keep her safe while we get to the bottom of this,” Scarlett explained. “That’s why we were at the fight last night in the first place.”
Leon furrowed his brow, clearly trying to process this chain of events. “How did you get involved?” he asked Benedict.
“They were trying to blackmail me into killing Georgette, and I suggested that I seduce her out of her dowry first,” Benedict replied cheerily.
When Leon’s eyed widened into perfect circles, Scarlett jumped in, shooting Benedict an exasperated look. “It was all a ruse to buy us more time to figure things out.”
“Well, I’ve told the Wolves that I’m in to stay if they leave Georgette alone,” Leon said.
“Although they might still expect me to marry her and then dispose of her,” Benedict pointed out completely unhelpfully.
“We might have made this even more of a mess,” Scarlett admitted, brain churning uselessly through possible solutions. Before she could come up with one, the bell chimed again.
Benedict looked up in confusion. “I wasn’t expecting any other callers today.”
He pushed up from the table and headed to the front door, and there came some muffled voices before two sets of footsteps approached the dining room once more. Benedict rounded the corner followed by a rather petite footman. Before Scarlett could get a good look at him, there was a shriek, and the figure threw itself at Leon, nearly toppling him out of his chair. In the commotion, the cap fell from his head, letting a cascade of silky brown curls spill out.
“Georgette!” Leon gasped as she leaped into his lap, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his neck.
“You’re here! You’re really here.” Georgette cupped Leon’s face in her hands and stared at him intently, as if verifying his identity. Seeing the bruise on his cheekbone, her eyes widened. “What happened? And why didn’t you tell me he was here?” She rounded on Scarlett .
“He wasn’t when I sent the letter,” Scarlett said. “What are you doing here?”
Georgette squirmed so she sat across Leon’s lap more comfortably, apparently having sworn off propriety entirely when she forewent her normal lady’s attire. “When you said you were recovering, I knew something awful had happened. I felt so guilty about you taking all these risks by traipsing around as me, especially if you were hurt. Then it occurred to me that if you could masquerade as me, then I could leave the house safely if I pretended to be you. I’m not quite as good at climbing out the window though.”
Scarlett blinked in surprise.
“I have to say, I’ve never worn pants before, and I can see why you do it,” Georgette added.
“They are rather freeing,” Benedict agreed when nobody answered.
Leon stared at Georgette as if she was an angel who had materialized in their presence, a mix of awe and adoration. Benedict only seemed amused by her appearance. Scarlett’s mind whirred, half still occupied by the delicate situation they found themselves in while the other dealt with Georgette’s sudden appearance.
“So what happened to you, and how did you find Leon?” Georgette asked, taking a moment to stroke Leon’s cheek again and give him a soft smile.
“It’s a long story, and I’m afraid we have a bit of a situation,” Scarlett hedged, not entirely sure where to begin. How could she tell Georgette that Leon was trapped in an underground fighting ring to keep her alive? Leon didn’t seem to be piping up.
“Tell me,” Georgette urged. “I might be able to help.”
Scarlett chewed her lip. This was exactly the type of situation she didn’t want Georgette embroiled in, even if it was too late at this point.
“Oh stop it,” Georgette snapped. “I’m optimistic, not naïve. Stop trying to shelter me like I’m some porcelain doll.”
The words hit Scarlett like a slap across the face. She had always tried to protect Georgette from the realities of her life in the lower city. It was part of the reason Scarlett kept her distance. Georgette was so kind and so positive—it seemed like wiping muddy hands on a white dress to draw her into the dire politics of the gangs. But here Georgette was calling Scarlett out on it and reminding her that she was the one friend who hadn’t cut all ties with Scarlett after her parents had been exposed as Talented.
“Ok, I’ll tell you. But first, I want you to know that even though we don’t have a plan yet, we will find a way out of this,” Scarlett urged.
Before Scarlett could embark on the tale of the prior night, the doorbell echoed through the house once more.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had this many callers, and that’s saying something,” Benedict grumbled as he left the room once more. He was gone for a moment, but when his footsteps approached down the hallway once more, they were followed by another set punctuated by the sharp rap of a cane against the floorboards.
Benedict rounded the corner stiffly, eyes wide. The sight of the figure following him twisted Scarlett’s stomach uncomfortably and she lurched to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leon’s grasp tighten on Georgette’s waist, stony fear etched into the lines of his face.
Fang himself strode through the doorway, once again in an ostentatious waistcoat and a silk top hat, broadcasting just how much cash the Wolves were drawing in these days. He stopped a few steps into the doorway, propping both hands onto the snarling wolf head on the top of his cane. The gesture would have been construed as gentlemanly if Scarlett hadn’t been willing to bet the crown jewels that the cane concealed a sword. His eyes darted over the scene before him appraisingly, a spark of interest lighting in their steel gray depths.
“How considerate of you to gather everybody I have business with in the same place,” he remarked conversationally.
Scarlett took a step in front of Georgette and Leon, shadows already dancing at her fingertips.
“Come now, I’m not here to fight. Why would I have come alone if I planned to kill you all?” Fang said.
“Then why are you here?” Scarlett bit out, not believing for one moment that Fang was truly unprotected. Surely Wolves were stationed around the house, waiting to crash in and overwhelm them if whatever was about to transpire wasn’t working out in Fang’s favor. While Scarlett could certainly hold her own in a fight, and Leon might be helpful as well, they wouldn’t be able to protect Georgette and Benedict from superior numbers.
“I’ve come to deliver your cut of the house’s winnings last night of course,” Fang explained, pulling out a purse. He set it down on the table with a metallic thud that spoke of a hefty amount of money within.
“While that’s considerate of you, you’re not welcome here. You can take your money and leave,” Scarlett protested.
“Come now, you haven’t even heard the offer I’ve come with.”
“And what could you offer us?” Scarlett asked, still firmly planted between Georgette and Leon, while Benedict stood with his back to the sideboard a few steps away.
“I would actually call it a…firm request,” Fang said with a smile that looked more like bared teeth than an expression of friendship. “You see, the spectators last night loved you. Something about a little scrap like you taking on a behemoth of a man…and with such ferocity!”
