3
Jemma eyed me up and down. “Are you telling’ me ya want to see into a room?”
I felt my eyes go wide. “Um, you mean… you would let me…”
“I got this feelin’ about yer problem,” she said, leading me out into the yard where fresh laundry hung on clotheslines across the Frisky Kitten’s walled-in back lot. I knew what problem she meant: that I not only didn’t want any men, but when Madam had tried to make me work as a bed girl, the men had all said it wasn’t physically possible.
Those had been some awkward moments. One of the men had cried.
“Ya know that little ‘un, Max, who lived above the stables on Ferth Street?”
I nodded. Max’s older brother had taught me how to ride a horse years ago, before my aroma had started. I tried not to think about what had happened after that.
Max had been so sweet. He’d had a terrible stutter, but I’d been like an older sister. One day I was teaching him a silly song I’d heard in the Sow, and he’d laughed so hard he forgot to stutter. Then he joined in singing and had kept up with all the words. For the next year he’d sung almost all his conversations, and I’d told him as many jokes as I could to stop him from getting nervous about talking. I hadn’t seen him in years, though.
Jemma hauled out a tub and began carrying buckets of water from the well to fill it. She pointed a gnarled finger at a stack of dirty chamber pots, and I followed her unspoken direction, picking up a scrub brush and getting started.
“I think ya’ just need practice,” she said after twenty minutes, like she’d never stopped talking. “Little Max just needed more practice speaking, with someone he liked. Someone to make it seem fun, right?” I nodded uncertainly. How did this relate to sex?
“Well, tonight’s specials night at the Kitten,” she said, her lightly mustached lip quirking up on one side. I didn’t interrupt to ask what she meant by specials . “I’m going ta get you cleaned up, and then I’ll set ya loose in the halls. Our keyholes ain’t blocked one little bit.” Her bushy eyebrows waggled up and down. “You get in the tub and I’ll find you a decent frock. Then you can take a slow walk along the upstairs hallway takin’ those pots back. See if any of it makes you giggle. Makes you forget yourself.” She waved a work-roughened hand at my midsection. “See if you get them butterflies you always wanted. Or even a tickle in yer knickers.”
I did giggle, then remembered. “I can’t. If there are any Alphas up there…” She knew what could happen.
“You bathe. I’ll check on the Alpha situation,” she promised. “I won’t let you get hurt.”
I nodded reluctantly, but when she poured two kettles of boiling hot water into the tub, along with a handful of flower petals, I relaxed.
What if it did fix me, like Jemma suspected? Even if it didn’t, how much trouble could I get into in one walk down a hallway anyway?
* * *
As it turned out, the answer was plenty of trouble.
Jemma left me at the end of the hallway in a shadowed nook just before the ladies began escorting their customers into the bedrooms. All the men so far looked perfectly normal, but Jemma had assured me that specials night was different. When the final lady pulled her customer into the closest room, holding onto his necktie like a leash and him smiling like he’d just won a pot of goldani, I crept out of my hiding place.
I had a stack of clean chamber pots in one hand. Everyone knew the working girls didn’t clean their own pots, so it was a legitimate reason to be there. I looked the part of a real lady’s maid as well. I smiled down at the dress Jemma had found for me: a corseted, faded turquoise-green gown with a white underskirt and a plunging neckline. Jemma had tucked a fichu into the gaping front, and I pushed it down, wishing for the thousandth times the Goddess had seen fit to give me more padding upstairs. “Could be worse,” I murmured, setting a chamber pot down outside the first room. “I could be like Selene.” All fake breasts and fake smiles and festering maggots on the inside.
I leaned to the first keyhole and squinted.
At first, I didn’t understand what I saw. The woman inside wore cat’s ears and a tight costume covered with some sort of speckled fur, complete with a long tail that she swished with one hand. No, one paw .
She had on furry gloves and matching booties. Slowly, she crawled on her hands and knees to a large bowl of cream on the floor at the feet of a man who sat cross-legged, waiting for her. She crouched and lapped the cream up with her tongue, stopping to lick her arm and bat at an imaginary mouse. The man patted her, and she arched her back in such a perfect imitation of a preening cat, I had to stifle a laugh.
The cat gave a curious meow, her eyes darting to the door. I moved past quickly, returning to the shadows at the end of the hall, in case she or her customer came out to investigate.
When no one did, I went to the second door and peeked in. This room had two women inside, sitting at a small table and sipping tea from china cups as if they were dining at the castle. Only, when one of them turned so that I could see a profile, I realized that woman was a man dressed in an elaborate gown. He wore a wig and rouge on his lightly stubbled cheeks, but his movements were perfectly feminine. I watched until I realized nothing else would happen. It was just two women, having tea, catching up on the latest gossip.
My throat tightened. This is what his special fantasy was, to be allowed to act like the person he must really be inside? He had to hide it, or thought he must, to be treated with dignity. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I sent up a short prayer to the Goddess that She would give Her blessings to this man, and any others like him. I vowed never to denigrate any person who had the courage to reveal their true self, no matter how the rest of the world acted.
The remaining rooms were interesting, but none of them gave me the butterflies I’d longed for. In two of them, the occupants were under covers, and in one, the lights had been turned out and I suspected there were more than two people under the sheets. But all I could gather was that the people inside were having a very good time and calling out the Goddess’ name a bit too frequently for it to be an honest prayer.
I was about to leave, slightly disappointed to have to tell Jemma her plan didn’t work, though I wasn’t surprised, when sounds from the final room caught my attention: a loud thwack, and then a soft shout of pain. I ran to peer through the keyhole.
The man inside was dressed in a voluminous, dark cape, and raven-black hair fell over his face, too long for me to make out any of his features. In one hand he held a strange whip, a long leather-handled contraption with a bunch of soft, braided cords at one end. He raised it and I saw who he was using it on: Lorelai, one of the prettiest girls at the Kitten.
Her long red curls were spread out on a pillow, her face turned to one side. The man had wrapped silky lengths of cloth around her wrists and ankles, and she twisted against them, but not as if she were really trying to free herself. Her expression was one of agony and delight, tears streaking the kohl on her eyes, but with an unmistakable smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
The flogger came down on her thighs again and she let out a muffled cry of… well, it should have been pain, right? He was hitting her, sort of.
I watched until my knees began to throb, waves of shock and something else keeping me paralyzed, unable to look away. I couldn’t even blink.
Gently, methodically, he struck her, moving the flogger so that her skin was painted with stripes of light pink. Her cries became pure pleasure as he settled his long fingers between her outstretched, bound legs, moving them in a way that I wished I understood and longed to see more clearly.
Some masculine scent wafted from the room, and a wave of need rushed over me.
I had to get closer to that aroma, craved it. I pressed my face to the keyhole and sucked in a deep breath. A breath that smelled of leather and mint… and peaches and honey.
My scent.
As if he had sensed me, the man lifted his head and began to turn toward the door.
Oh, Great Goddess. He was taller and broader than any of the Beta men I knew. At least six feet tall, the black cloth of his cloak doing little to conceal his strength. I still couldn’t make out his face in the dim light, though some small part of me was desperate to see him, know him.
A larger part knew he was a clear danger to me.