The Manor Has Moods
NICO
Three days after the masquerade and Blackthorne stopped feeling like a holding cell.
Draco had loosened the restrictions and gave the freedom to wander the manor's corridors without Mateo or Rowan appearing at the end of them like a politely dressed wall.
I did not trust it but I took it anyway, because refusing freedom on principle was a level of self-destruction even I could not justify.
Drake came with me when I wandered. He moved through the manor's corridors like he decided the place was his and was simply waiting for the humans to catch up.
“Don't start,” I told the nearest portrait. A severe man in Regency-era tailoring with a jaw like a geological event.
The portrait did not move. Obviously. It was paint on canvas.
The lamp beside it flickered.
“Right,” I said. “Obviously.”
I had started talking to the house two days ago and I was definitely not proud of it. It had begun with muttering and progressed into actual conversation because the house kept responding, and at some point continuing to pretend it wasn't happening felt more insane than leaning into it.
I turned a corner and the door at the end of the hall was closed when I was fairly certain it had been open twenty minutes ago.
“Are you going to open or are we doing this?” I said.
Nothing.
“Fine.” I reached for the handle.
The door swung open on its own.
“Thank you,” I told it.
The hall beyond flickered its lights once, briefly, in the way I had started reading as the architectural equivalent of an eye roll, and I walked through and Drake followed.
I turned left at the end of the gallery and the hall extended. It took eighty steps to reach the stairs and today it was taking significantly more and the walls were not rushing to apologize for it.
“I know where I'm going,” I said.
The hall did not shorten.
“You're doing that on purpose.”
A door to my left opened onto a sitting room I had not seen before. Through it, warm morning light, a window seat, and an armchair positioned to face the garden with what I could only describe as intention.
“If you're going to haunt me at least commit to the bit.”
The chandelier above me trembled. I walked on before it could escalate.
The smell of breakfast reached me before I reached the kitchen. Drake accelerated ahead of me which shows he had his priorities. I pushed the kitchen door open and the warmth hit me all at once.
The kitchen was the most human room in Blackthorne. Copper pots along the far wall, a range that looked like it meant business, herbs in terracotta on the windowsill, a marble island that had clearly been used and enjoyed.
Standing at the range with his back to me while managing two pans simultaneously, was the largest person I had seen in this house outside of Rowan.
He turned when Drake announced himself by jumping onto a stool and chirping with the expectation of immediate service.
The chef looked at Drake. Then at me. His face was open and warm, with a mouth that sat naturally in the shape of someone who found most things funny.
“Nico,” he said.
“How does everyone in this house already know who I am?”
“Mateo told me. Also you're the only person in the building who looks like he's been awake since four and is deciding whether to be angry about it.” He nodded at the island. “Sit down. Coffee's on. I'm Bastian, by the way.” He slid a mug toward me before I'd reached the stool.
I sat and Drake settled beside me with his tail curled over his feet like a king. Bastian turned back to the range without asking what I wanted, which should have been annoying and somehow wasn't.
“How do you know what to make?” I said.
“I've been cooking for you since you arrived. I know what comes back untouched and what disappears before the plate's cold.” He shrugged.
I stared at him.
“The polite version was going to be chef's intuition.”
“That's unsettling.”
“That's my job.” He turned back to the stove, adjusting the flame under a heavy cast-iron skillet.
He paused, looking at the array of ingredients on the cutting board, then glanced back at me.
“You just going to sit there and let me do all the work, or do you want to learn how to make food that doesn't come out of a microwave?”
I blinked. “You want me to cook.”
“I want you to help,” Bastian corrected, a slow, easy grin spreading across his face. “Come here. Wash your hands.”
I hesitated for a fraction of a second before sliding off the stool. The kitchen was warm, and the simple, domestic demand was entirely disarming. I moved to the sink, scrubbed my hands, and stepped up to the massive marble island across from the stove.
“Grab that knife,” Bastian instructed, pointing to a wicked-looking chef's knife resting next to a pile of fresh herbs. “We're finishing the garnish.”
I picked up the knife. I wasn't exactly helpless in a kitchen, but holding a blade in Draco Reed's house with his personal chef watching made my grip a little stiff. I started chopping the parsley and chives, my shoulders tense.
“Too rigid,” Bastian murmured.
Before I could turn around, the space behind me vanished entirely.
Bastian stepped flush against my back. He was massive—a solid, radiating wall of heat that completely eclipsed me.
His broad chest pressed flat against my shoulder blades, the rough canvas of his apron scratching faintly against my shirt.
I froze, my breath catching in my throat as he reached his thick, heavily muscled arms around me, his large hands covering mine over the handle of the knife.
“Loosen your grip,” he rumbled, his voice dropping into a low, vibrating register right by my ear. He smelled like woodsmoke, roasting garlic, and the heavy, spicy musk of a man running incredibly hot. “Let the blade do the work, Nico.”
I tried to focus on his hands guiding mine, the smooth, rocking motion he was forcing my wrist into, but my brain was rapidly short-circuiting.
Because it wasn't just his chest pressed against me.
Bastian had stepped into my space with zero hesitation, his hips settling firmly against the curve of my ass. And right there, pressing unapologetically into the cleft of my cheeks through his flannel trousers, was a thick, staggering, rock-hard erection.
I gasped, a small, pathetic sound, my hips instinctively twitching back against the heavy pressure.
Bastian didn't pull away. If anything, he settled in closer, his heavy thighs bracketing my legs, pinning me to the counter. He guided my hand, chopping the herbs with flawless precision, while his thick cock ground slowly, deliberately against my ass with every subtle shift of his weight.
“See?” Bastian said conversationally, his hot breath fanning over the sensitive skin of my neck. “Nice and even. You don't want to bruise the leaves.”
“Bastian—” I choked out, my voice entirely unsteady. The friction was agonizing. He was so fucking big, the blunt head of his cock a distinct, burning pressure against my tailbone.
“Keep chopping,” he murmured, his hand sliding off mine to rest heavily on my hip, his thumb pressing into the meat of my waist. He shifted his stance to reach for a small bowl, and the movement dragged his thick, jutting erection right up the center of my ass.
I whined and my knees went weak. I leaned back into him because I couldn't help it, my body chasing the heavy, dominant heat of the chef.
Bastian let out a low, approving hum in the back of his throat, his hips snapping forward just a fraction.
He was perfectly casual, acting like he was just teaching me a recipe, while simultaneously edging me into a trembling mess against his kitchen counter.
“Now sweep it into the bowl,” Bastian instructed smoothly, his hand squeezing my hip, holding me firmly against his grinding erection.
I scraped the herbs off the board with shaking hands. I was utterly and completely consumed by the heavy, musky scent of him and the agonizing friction of his cock against my ass.
Then, the kitchen door opened.
I jumped as if I'd been struck by lightning.
I jerked forward, dropping the knife onto the cutting board with a loud clatter, and scrambled out of Bastian's massive, encompassing heat.
My chest heaving and my face burning with a guilty, scorching flush, I practically fled back to the marble island and threw myself onto the stool.
I crossed my legs tightly, trying desperately to hide the painful, throbbing erection straining against my own jeans.
Draco stood in the doorway in a dark shirt. His pitch-black eyes swept over the room.
“Bastian,” Draco said, his voice entirely smooth, betraying absolutely nothing.
Bastian cleared his throat, straightening his broad shoulders. “Morning.”
“The eggs.”
“Almost done—”
“They're fine.” Draco crossed the kitchen with unhurried, predatory grace. He didn't go to Bastian. He came straight to where I was sitting, put his cool hand at the back of my neck, and kissed me.
It wasn't a soft, morning greeting. It was a deep, possessive claiming that tasted of absolute ownership. I had about half a second of shock before my body caught up and I kissed him back, my hands gripping his forearms.
Behind Draco, something hit the floor with a heavy, metallic crash.
We separated. Bastian was staring at us, looking at the skillet he'd just dropped onto the tile, his jaw slightly slack.
Draco looked at the pan on the floor, then at Bastian, and said, with complete composure, “Leave it.”
I could feel Draco's attention shift to me without him moving. The air in the kitchen suddenly felt impossibly heavy.
“Nico,” Draco said.
“Don't.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to play.”
The kitchen went very still. Bastian had not moved, his chest rising and falling visibly under his apron, his hands gripping the edge of the counter behind him.
Drake, demonstrating the emotional intelligence of a creature who had been around for this before, stepped off the stool and relocated himself to the windowsill with unhurried dignity.