22. What are You Afraid of, Little Angel?
WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, LITTLE ANGEL?
Fable, August
Noah hands me Bear’s inhaler after insisting on giving it to him. “See? He likes when I do it.”
“He’s just good at taking his medicine.” I pet his little head. “He’s good at everything.”
“Especially sleeping.” Noah laughs as he curls onto the pet bed between us. I ordered it for him online and keep it on the couch in the common room so his fur doesn’t get everywhere. It’s easier to clean than stripping the covers from the cushions and washing them.
Once I have the inhaler in the bag where I store it, I set it on the coffee table and recline into the couch.
Season two of Bridgerton plays in the background. Surprisingly, I’ve already seen the first season. Noah and Ashlyn have seen them all and are rewatching them with me, but Ashlyn left to take a call in private.
My phone chimes with a text.
Camila: The serpent Lord will be arriving tonight and wants to see you at nine. He’ll be in touch with where to meet later.
I gasp.
“What?” Noah’s head pops up from the back cushion.
“He’s coming back tonight, and he wants to see me.”
She blinks several times, then shrugs. “Maybe he missed you.”
I glower. “I doubt he’s out pining over me when he’s away.”
She sighs and sits back, petting Bear. “He is different with you.”
“Camila liked how he ignored me for two weeks. She’s been gloating.”
“You think?” Her features scrunch like she doesn’t agree.
“Not openly, but there is a gleam in her eyes that wasn’t there before.” For a while, her smile was so forced her face looked frozen with Botox.
She probably thought I was the serpent Lord’s new bed partner. She thought wrong. After screwing me against the wall in the Gilded Cage, giving me my first orgasm during sex, my Lord left me thinking he wasn’t interested anymore.
He returned the following night—to my surprise and quiet delight—and for four weeks more, keeping our agreement. But he never claimed me the way I had dreamed about ever since we did it that first time, the only time.
He paid me extra attention: dancing with me in the ballroom when he was in town and making it clear I was his and no one else’s.
Clearing out the Gilded Cage so I could dance privately for him.
I learned some moves from Ashlyn, who pole-dances as a workout, which had my Lord so turned on, he masturbated while watching me dance. On two different nights!
“I’ve never done that with anyone,” he said, and I felt special. So much so, I crawled to him and sucked him off. His cock was hot and thick in my mouth. I gagged a few times but kept going, unwilling to quit until he came again.
When we were in the Gilded Cage alone, he always had me take off my wig and mask.
He stroked the back of my head, threading his fingers through my hair, while I gave him oral.
At one point, his hold tightened on my head, and he slammed into my mouth ruthlessly, making me gag, before halting just as suddenly.
He let me take over again, doing all the work until his hot cum spurted down the back of my throat.
He gave me an orgasm afterward, but not through sex.
The next night in the private room, our clothes were on when I climbed onto his lap and dry-humped his hard cock, begging between hot kisses, “Will you screw me against the wall again? Please.”
Maybe if I’d used the word “fuck,” he would have. Maybe not. He licked and bit my neck, then removed my tights and fucked me with his tongue.
I cried to God and the Lord—my Lord—wishing I could call out to him with his real name.
Last weekend, we spent Friday and Saturday in the Crimson Chamber with two other Lords—who sounded just like my Lord—and their dates.
The conversations were impersonal and odd.
Everyone talked about other people, or the tabloids, or music and artists.
They were safe topics. Anything personal might be revealing.
My Lord ordered them out when he got bored and fucked me with his fingers.
We’ve never once been completely naked. I’ve accepted we may never.
During the day, we’d meet in the lake garden and talk for hours about places I’d love to visit, many of which he’d been to, although not to the abandoned locations I wanted to see.
I was more open than he was, but he shared his likes and dislikes in a vague way.
The last time we met at our daytime retreat, he surprised me with cheese and wine in a basket.
No one had ever done anything like that for me.
It felt like a real date, even though we were masked and he wore a hat.
He got more personal with his questions too.
“Why did you choose to work at Hellfire?” he asked in his British accent, which I decided I liked better than the Scottish. It must mean something that he’s not faking it around me anymore. Don’t read into it. I told myself more times than I could remember.
“I like how safe it is,” I replied by mistake.
“Safe?” His tone got low and protective. “What are you afraid of, little angel?”
I loved the way he called me that. No one had ever given me a nickname.
“You know I’d protect you from anyone,” he added when I dropped my gaze to the checkered blanket we sat on instead of answering.
I came so close to telling him who my dad was and how he had someone threatening my life. But it’d been a month, and I hadn’t gotten a single letter. How could I here?
So I told him, “He’s in the past. Some memories are better left there.”
He rubbed my jawline and kissed me fiercely as if he were trying to erase the memories from my mind. He’d never kissed me when we were exploring outside, only in the club and at night.
When I begged him to take me right there in the open, under the warm summer sun, he brought me somewhere else.
“I had this section reinforced so it’s safe for you to video,” he said in the abandoned room of the west wing where I first met him—well, the British version of my Lord, the real version.
My jaw hit the floor as I stared at his plain black mask. “Why?”
“You love it.” He shrugged like giving me this was no big deal as he strolled around the crumbled debris near the staircase.
From behind, in his black pants, shirt, and hat, I could pretend he wasn’t wearing a mask and that I knew his face.
It was gorgeous, an older version of James Beaufort, the main character in Maxton Hall, except James had blond hair, and my Lord’s hair looked brown—what I could see of it under his hat.
“And your content is getting repetitive. The same old lake garden,” he added, teasingly. But he wasn’t wrong.
“You’ve seen my posts?” I asked, surprised.
“It’s all you ever talk about. I was curious.”
Tears formed in my eyes, and emotions clogged my throat. “Thank you.”
It wasn’t how he reinforced part of the building for me that had me choked up. It was the thoughtfulness behind it that I never expected from another human after my mom died.
I sniffled and removed my mask to wipe my nose.
My Lord turned and walked to me as a tear slipped down my cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. “It’s just a decrepit room.” He tried to dismiss the magnitude of what it means to me.
“And you’re just a man in a mask.”
Both statements were true, and yet both things meant the world to me.
A small gasp sucked down my throat with a terrifying thought.
I’d fallen for this man who I didn’t even know, and who wouldn’t sleep with me after having sex with me one time.
He was my boss, but he had also become my everything.
I woke up wanting to see him. I missed him during the week when he was gone.
I fantasized and dreamed about him. I thought of him as mine, like we were a couple, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
How had I let this happen?
“I think we need to take a break.” My gaze drifted everywhere except for his mesh-covered eyes. “I’m losing focus. I need to remember my place. I’m sure you understand.” Before he could say anything, I covered my face with my mask and raced out of the building.
Two weeks passed without a word from him after that day. I was so stressed, I barely got my period. In my mind, we were done—and now this.
“What should I do?” I ask Noah as I pet Bear, my hand getting clammy from the topic.
She flicks her gaze at me, not bothering to lift her head from where she lounges on the couch, and shrugs. “You could see what he wants.”
“What if he wants to have sex?” I whisper in case any of the staff are in the hallway. I didn’t hear anyone, but you never know, and I don’t want any more talk about the serpent Lord and me.
“Do you want to have sex with him?” she whispers back.
“Of course, I do, but I don’t want to get more attached.”
“Then don’t see him.” Her gaze stays fixed to the TV as Antony Bridgerton and Kate have a heated argument in the library, their chemistry explosive.
“But I want to see him.”
“Then see him.”
“I don’t want to complicate things.”
She raises her brows at me. “They’re already complicated.”
I huff. “You’re no help.”
“You already knew what you were going to do before you asked me.” Her focus returns to the TV. “You were just looking for approval. You don’t need it.”
“What about Camila’s approval? I feel like I need that.”
“You’re reading too much into it. She’s been sleeping with the wolf Lord to Ashlyn’s dismay.
Damn. I’ve spent the last several years not being noticed by choice.
I’ve admired others from afar but never wished for more, knowing it’s unattainable.
To want someone’s attention and not get it is a heartache I’ve yet to experience.
“Why do you think the serpent Lord is different with me? I mean, why go out of his way to spend time with me during the day and do things no other Lord has done? I’m no one special. I don’t stand out.”
“First of all, you’re wrong. And second, why is anyone attracted to one person more than another? Maybe he feels a connection with you, or maybe you remind him of someone?”
“Like an ex-girlfriend?” My upper lip curls. “That’s creepy.”
“Most elites are in some way.” Her expression mirrors mine.
“He told me a couple of times he sees a kindred spirit in me, but I always thought that meant someone who shares the same interests as you.”
“I thought it meant someone you share a spiritual connection with.”
“He doesn’t seem very spiritual.”
“Maybe he’s just saying that because he wants to bone you.” Her fingers dig into the bowl of cheesy popcorn.
“And yet he’s not.”
“Maybe he will tonight.” She tosses a piece at my head.
I giggle.
Wes
I race my McLaren F1 down the highway toward Hellfire, about twenty minutes from the estate.
I was already on the way to the mansion to see Fable when Felix texted me he had the information I’d been looking for.
Even with all the data Vantage has access to, it still took the helpful skills of an exclusive PI I recommended to get the information I needed, proving technology can’t do everything.
“I’m driving,” I say to Felix when he answers the call from my burner phone. “Give me the rundown of what you have.”
“I think Fable’s dad is after her.”
“How?” I ask even as I shake my head, the idea too impossible to believe.
“Vera Farrington has been making large donations to her son’s Psychiatric facility.
Her husband doesn’t seem to know. He’s had no connection with his son since he and Vera cut off Kip when he married Lola Navarro.
But Vera has visited him twice. After the first visit, he was moved to a less protected suite in a less secure wing.
He has connections to the outside world through one of the other patients and is suspected of having an affair with one of his doctors.
Several things have been smuggled in and out for his benefit.
He’s also been linked to Harvey Jones, who used to work for the notorious hitman Slade O’Brien.
Slade died in a car bombing over a year ago, but Harvey runs in the same circles and could have anyone, if not himself, threatening Fable’s life. ”
My skin chills. “Why would Kip want to murder his own daughter?”
“He murdered his wife.”
“In a brutal crime of passion,” I think out loud. “Going after Fable is premeditated.” But then, Lola’s murder could have been planned too—if he’d been hunting them ever since they returned to America. Fable has these answers. I need to get her to talk somehow.
“Thanks for the help.” I end the call and send a voice-text to Trae, the guy I use for operations like this. It requires a person whose morals are as compromised as mine.
If I’m to get in and out of that facility like a ghost, he’s the only person I trust to make it happen.
Me: I need your help. Contact me ASAP.