Chapter Eleven #2
Helen looped her arm through Tyler’s. “Let’s take a look at our room before we get our bags.”
She pulled him down the hallway of cherry wood paneling, slowing at the large, framed photographs.
“The house still has the same trellis.” Helen pointed at a grainy photo in a black frame. “Look, they kept a lot of the original
stuff. Oh, that must be the butler. He looks grumpy.”
She glanced at Tyler. His gaze was fixed in the direction of the photos, but he still seemed far away.
“Okay, get ready,” Helen said, and a curious light entered his eyes. “Whoever spots a harlot first gets a shoulder massage,”
she said and planted herself directly in front of him. She rose up on her toes to try to block the photographs from his view.
“Hey, no fair.” Tyler put his hands on her waist and tried to move her aside, but she braced her feet.
“Who said anything about ‘fair’?”
“Look, I found a harlot!” he exclaimed. “She’s right here, in the flesh.” He squeezed her sides, and she giggled as he said,
“I win.”
“I meant find a harlot in the photos.” She leaned back against him. “Plus you know I gave up prostitution once we started
dating.”
“Oh, I misunderstood the rules.”
“There they are!” Helen slid over in front of a large black-and-white framed image that showed at least two dozen working
girls gathered in front of the house. “Do you think this place is haunted?”
Tyler leaned in for a closer look. “I mean, I hope so.”
She laughed. “Who do you hope is haunting us?”
A smile played in the corner of his mouth, and she felt relieved that he was finally loosening up. “Like, which prostitute
do I want to be haunted by?”
“Yeah.”
“The only girl I’d want to haunt me is you.”
The whole conversation was so silly, but it filled Helen with sweetness nonetheless. “Deal,” she said. “But if you die first,
I want you to haunt me.”
“No deal.”
“No?”
“I’m not that mean, Helen.”
“I didn’t say flicker my lights and rearrange my furniture to scare the hell out of me. Just visit me in my bed at night.”
Tyler stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He nuzzled his face in her neck. “Okay, maybe just that.”
“It would be mean if you didn’t do that.”
“You’re right. That would be kind of mean.”
Helen glanced down the hallway. Still empty. “Show me what you’d do to me,” she whispered.
“Here?” he asked.
She nodded, and he gave her a look like he really would strip all her clothes right there and then, and she giggled. Then he took her hand and led her to the hexagon-shaped drawing room at the end of the hallway with a velvet sofa, several wingback chairs, and tables. There they paused.
“Here?” Tyler asked.
“Right on this sofa,” Helen replied.
Then they both laughed.
Several numbered doors led off the drawing room, and Tyler unlocked their door, revealing a four-poster bed draped in a rich
purple bedspread.
Helen didn’t give him a chance to move toward the bed though. Instead, she yanked his shirt off as soon as the door shut behind
them and shoved him against the wall beside a window with white curtains overlooking a sunken English garden. Tyler pulled
the curtains all the way shut, then reached for her shirt.
She sighed as she felt the soft cotton pull over her head. She made the sound because it was how she felt but also because
she knew he loved the sound of her exhales, the sound of her voice, the sound of anything that came out of her. She wanted
to make his anxious thoughts fade away, wanted to make this so good for him that he’d know tomorrow would be okay, no matter
what.
As the rest of their clothes were coming off, voices started to collect on the other side of the wall. Teatime in the drawing
room.
Helen wrapped her arms around Tyler’s neck, and as their naked bodies pressed together, they could hear a woman ask if there
was any honey for the tea.
“These walls are thin,” Tyler said under his breath.
“So the patrons could hear what they were missing,” Helen said. “It’s good for business at the brothel.”
She tugged him toward a low antique dresser against the wall. She sat on the edge of the dresser and spread her legs. “Let
the patrons hear what they’re missing.”
“God, Helen.”
Tyler was inside her in one hard thrust that sent the antique dresser rattling against the paper-thin wall. After that, he
tried to be quiet, but she kept pulling him into her deeper, telling him how she wanted it, telling him how good he was. The
more she talked to him, the more powerless he became. He was no longer trying to be quiet, and the dresser hit the wall more
than once.
Then, abruptly, Tyler stopped and rested his head on Helen’s shoulder. “I just almost came,” he said, holding still inside
her. He was going to wait for her, but she didn’t want him to wait. He was completely at her mercy, and that was a different
kind of turn-on.
“Yes, come for me,” she said. “Right now, Tyler.”
She didn’t have to tell him again. She felt him let go on her command, and it filled her with a powerful kind of satisfaction.
She wanted to be the only woman who could ever haunt this man.
“Do you want to get tea with the others?”
Tyler chuckled. “God no.”
They were lying in a tangle of sheets on the bed. Sex on the dresser had been followed with an encore on the bed, slightly
less feverish, but still emotionally charged. And now Helen lazily ran her fingertips through Tyler’s soft hair. The summer
sun on their weekend hikes and beach days had bleached some of his sandy strands to pure blond. He closed his eyes and sighed,
and she thought of the Persian cat she’d had as a little girl and how if she stilled her hand for even a moment, it would
push its head against her palm. She stopped moving her hand, and Tyler angled his head toward her ever so slightly. More, please. She smiled to herself and trailed her fingers across his head and down his neck.
After a bit, his drowsy voice said, “Thank you, Helen.”
He was already drifting to sleep as she said, “I got you, baby. I promise it’s going to be okay.”
She looked toward the window and could see through a gap behind the ruffled curtains into the garden where several angel statues were situated in a circle.
They were weathered and ancient. For a moment, she considered how many women—from the glowing ones to the broken ones—had sat here and gazed out at those very same angels through the years.
The prostitutes. The wife of the lumber baron. New brides. Hotel patrons like her.
Those angels had been there long before she was born, observing it all, and she wondered if they’d still be there after she
was gone.