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This world was not meant for human eyes.
I parted thick drapes and hurried inside, keeping my gaze ahead and off the faces of those around me. It was always best never to look the club’s patrons in the eye, or else they might demand more than I cared to give.
The deeper I dove into corridors longer than the building’s simple façade accounted for, the more the air thickened, cloying with seduction and debauchery.
In the corner of my eye, I caught sight of someone—something. He appeared to be a man, slumped in the corner, head lolled to the side. His dark eyes were open, but empty. Pink, pouting lips lay slightly parted. Others moved around him, laughing, indulging, dancing, uncaring. He wasn’t dead. You couldn’t die if you’d never been alive. He’d beendiscarded.
I hurried on.
Rochefort had his own private rooms, far larger and more extravagant than the illusion of the gentlemen’s club townhouse allowed for.
I should have brought the pistol.
Attacking Rochefort was its own fantasy never to be made real.
In Valentine’s reality, Rochefort had been killed—slain by a mysterious foe. Valentine’s gaze had shifted as he’d described the events. Hadhemurdered the lord? He’d skimmed over the details of their dinner, but I suspected a great deal more had happened than a mere disagreement. I’d experienced many a disagreement with Rochefort. Arguing with Rochefort rarely had a good outcome.
I didn’t knock—he wouldn’t answer if I had—and swept in to find him laid out on a large four-poster bed with his trousers around his ankles and two men attending to hisneeds. One of the men used his mouth to pay close attention to Rochefort’s cock, while the other participant straddled Rochefort’s waist, presumably so the lord could pleasure him up close.
I stopped at the bedside, with all three energetically performing in front of me. “Might I have a word?”
Rochefort turned his head and smirked like a drunken fool. He released the foremost man’s cock and waved his hand at me. “Join us, Devere?”
I drew in a deep breath and folded my arms. “This isn’t a game.”
He laughed so loudly and freely that it almost sounded genuine, then arched back as the man sucking his cock did something that had Rochefort’s eyelids fluttering closed and his naked chest flushing pink. “A game isexactlywhat this is,” the lord said with a moan.
I turned my face away and studied the filigree pattern on the bed’s drapes. I couldn’t unhear the sounds of skin sliding on skin, of their ragged breaths and quickening pace.
I shouldn’t have come. Although, there was never a good time to confront him. If he hadn’t been fucking these two, he’d have been engaged in something far worse.
“Valentine has already killed you once? Perhaps he will do it again and save me the trouble.”
He clutched the man’s thighs—the one straddling him, pumping himself—while the second continued to suck on Rochefort’s cock, and turned his head, fixing his eyes on mine. This was so much worse. Desire burned in his eyes, sizzling beneath the illusion he wore. He couldn’t keep up his act for much longer, and if he let himself go, these two men—whoever they were—wouldn’t leave this room alive.
The whole charade was a disgusting display of his control over others.
The two lost to his thrall had no will of their own. If they had known who and what he was, they never would have consented to this.
I turned away and crossed the room to the window. Snow danced through the air outside. Day had turned to night sometime since my arrival. I held back the drapes and watched the snow fall as the sounds of ecstasy built to their crescendo behind me. I hated this place, hated the taste of it, rich and heady on my lips. Hated the touch of it, silky and smooth beneath my fingers. And Rochefort knew it.
The trio reached their breathless conclusion and despite the hate, to my shame, I wasn’t immune. Their heat warmed my veins, their passion summoned my own. I hated that too. He controlledeverything. Even me.
The bed creaked as the two men dismounted. I watched their reflections in the glass scurry away, back to whatever lives they believed they lived. Rochefort clambered from the bed in a state of disarray, but the bumbling lord act didn’t hold for long, now that he and I were alone.
I watched in the window’s reflection as he reached up, combed his fingers through his hair, and turned the silken locks from golden to hair as black as a raven’s wings. He skimmed his hands down himself and his entire illusion fell away, like a snake shedding his skin. The creature that stood in Rochefort’s place was both elegantanddeadly. So beautiful, it was said a glimpse alone could turn a weak mortal mad. He wore a long black gown over slim shoulders and pale skin, and moved like oil over water.
The illusion of Lord Rochefort was gone, its lie shed and discarded, and in its place stood the puppet master, Adair. His reflection drew closer to mine, approaching like a snake through grass. With a stride left between us, he stopped. His heated gaze touched my skin, roamed and burned beneath my clothes, burrowing inside into my inner workings, my soul—if I had one.
“You should visit more often.” His voice was warm honey on silk, his every word as smooth as glass. “In your absence, I forget how marvelous a thing you are.”
He pressed himself to my back and tucked my hair behind my ear, then skimmed cool knuckles down my cheek. “Such perfect imperfections,” he said, whispering the words over my ear.
I swallowed and tried to silence the screaming in my head. Sometimes, it was loud, like now. But other times, the screams were so soft I forgot I screamed at all. The ticking of the toy store clocks helped, out of time, out of synchronicity, each one a beating heart. But I wasn’t in the store. I’d come into Adair’s world, to him. And now I wasn’t even sure why. To save a lost man I despised?
“He says my toy store burned,” I said.
Adair retracted his hand, as though scalded. His reflected gaze in the window caught mine, then skipped away. He turned away, taking his suffocating presence with him. “A minor incident. Easily rectified.”
