The Dollhouse Society: Isabelle (New Adult BDSM Erotica) (12 page)

Naturally, I was intrigued. An ancient sex t
rade taking place in Colonial New York, right under the noses of its citizens? You bet I would be.

A few more trips to various libraries and some
visits to underground clubs proved useful. The Society was still around, I discovered, nearly four hundred years after it had been established, and there were still regular monthly meetings at this old, secluded colonial on Long Island. The hard part would be getting inside, getting the exclusive. But if journalism teaches you anything, it’s how to work the angles.

Tonight I’d gott
en in dressed as a server before quickly ditching my costume for the borrowed evening gown I’d brought along. Everyone was wearing masks—even the courtesan presently bound to the bedpost—so that made things even easier. I could be anyone’s courtesan. I just needed to act the part and stop fidgeting and being so nervous.

Yeah, right.

“Are you enjoying the show?” A soft, course male voice said low in my ear. The way he said it made it clear the words for my ears alone, and the sound sent a flush of gooseflesh crawling down my back.

I stood stock still and said, “It’s very…interesting.”

“What do you find interesting about it?”

The man
was standing very close, almost on my heels. His was big, and his presence made my nerves jangle. His voice had a strange, alternating inflection, the clipped briskness of an English accent with something else underneath, something foreign and exotic. I thought about moving away, but I was already on the group’s fringe. If I moved forward, I would be deeper in the crowd. If I moved back, I would literally be stepping into his arms. I took a deep breath to calm my flitting heart and half-panicked thoughts and stayed where I was. “They’re very pretty together,” I said lamely.

The man behind me put his big hands on my shoulders. The scent of his
cologne—light, breezy, foreign, incredibly masculine—enveloped me. I could literally feel the adrenals picking up in my blood. He put his mouth very close to my ear, so close I could almost sense the roughness of his chin, and said, “I should put you over my knee and spank you for what you’ve done, my dear. You don’t belong here.”

My heart seemed to stick
in my chest. Speaking was impossible. Moving was a fantasy. I shivered instead, and he responded to that and tightened his grip on my shoulders as if afraid I might bound away like a frightened rabbit.

“Give me one good reason why I should not alert everyone here as to who you are?”

I realized I had one of two choices—I could scream bloody murder and alert everyone that I was an unwanted guest, or I could try and negotiate with the brute standing behind me, ready to unmask me, figuratively speaking, for the pleasure of the Society. After I got my panic swallowed down to a manageable level, I whispered in a shaky voice, “What…what do you want with me?”

“Come with me,” he said. His big hand enveloped my elbow, his grip powerful enough to make me wince and prove he meant business
as he turned me around. A part of me wanted to resist, to fight him, but I had this fantasy of being dragged, kicking and screaming, away. I wasn’t sure I could deal with the humiliation of that anymore than I could deal with the idea of being tied up and caned in public for the delight of some of the most powerful men in New York.

The gentleman dragged
me toward one of the playrooms. As I looked up to see what breed of man had captured me, I wondered if screaming wouldn’t have perhaps been the smarter thing to do.

***

Read an excerpt from
Blood & Lace (Blackstone Hall #1)
by Eden Myles:

BLOOD & LACE

by Eden Myles

Chapter I

As we passed a dense forest of fine, old oaks on our way to Blackstone Hall, I leaned out the window of our coach and noticed that many of the trees were tall and proud, with strong limbs, good for climbing.

My father, seated on the cushioned bench beside me, said, “Marie. You mustn’t.”

“Mustn’t what, Father?” I asked innocently, biting back a grin. I didn’t turn to look at him, lest he see my secret smile.

“Climb trees or do anything which might be construed as unladylike.” He took my hand and squeezed. “You’re almost twenty years old, girl. I’m counting on you to be on your best court behavior.”

“Yes, Father.”

The coach jostled along the uneven road, throwing us back against the braces, but my father’s coach was so luxurious that the padded velvet seats made the ride—almost seven hours thus far—more than bearable.

“We shall be there shortly, my dear,” Father said as if concerned I might be losing patience.

I wasn’t. I more than enjoyed watching the landscape drifting by, the deep, old forests—it was so different than the colder, craggier Northlands where our estate resided. There the trees grew short and farther apart, the people were brutish and covered year-round in animal furs, and the horses shaggy. There were mountain orcs that were a constant threat to my father’s people, but I hadn’t seen such creatures here. I wondered if there were Fae in these forests. “No more than an hour yet,” he added.

“Yes, Father.” Once more, I leaned out the window of the coach, seeking out both the familiar and unfamiliar in this strange land.

Where we lived, in the lands several hundred ticks to the north, the squatty pines shivered in the heavy snows. The people were fair-haired and blue-eyed like my father (except for the gypsies who regularly passed through) and there were still a few remaining ice dragons slumbering deep within cairns in the earth. On a cold morning one could stand on a balcony and spot their breath pluming up through small cracks in the earth.

But I’d heard that Lord Elric Rothschild’s lands were warmer, the oaks and elms soaring and rotund, spreading their lush green boughs to the heavens like supplicating hands. I’d heard there were dwarves and tall, slender people of a swarthier complexion here. Food was bountiful, war scarce, and the people more congenial and trustworthy. Stone dragons still occasionally circled the skies. It was a pretty land, green and fecund, with autumn bleeding through the trees in vibrant shades of yellow and fiery orange, though we had not encountered many villagers along the way so I could not yet ascertain the friendliness of the local inhabitants.

I did not blame the villagers for hiding. Though beautiful, it was said these were perilous lands, dangerous for those on foot, particularly now, with the evil of a corrupt Vargr on the loose—a werewolf who kills for its own pleasure.

I had never seen a Vargr, either dead or alive, but stories abounded in our own realm of such things. Men who became wolves to placate their own nefarious hungers. It gave me something of a delicious shiver to think of it, for in our lands, there were no more werewolves, evil or otherwise. They had all been hunted to extinction decades before I had ever been born. I wondered if I would see one during our stay at Blackstone Hall.

I admit I sighed to think of it. Adventure. The only adventure I had ever really known past childhood games was in my father’s libraries. A wealthy man who had made his fortune in shipping, he had a thousand books spanning every possible subject: science, alchemy, romance, chivalrous adventures with knights and pirates. I swore I had read them all at least twice. Growing up, reading about fierce warriors, and pretending I was one among their number, had been my two great passions in life.

Less than hour later, I saw “the Hall,” (as the locals called it), standing mistily upon its distant rock for the first time, its highest spires and flapping banners rising far above the summit of the land. Even from this great distance, Blackstone Hall sprawled large enough, and certainly grand enough, to house a king or emperor.

It had been built in a time that no one remembered by the hands of the Fae Folk, according to folklore. It was said the King of the Fae built the great keep for his Queen and court, and he had done so out of pure, shining white stone carved from his mother the moon. But some great tragedy had occurred there, and the Queen of the Fae fell dead, a dagger in her heart, and as her sacred blood spilled upon the floor of the Hall, it turned all the stones in the structure black. Or that was the story, anyway.

No one knew who had really built it, or why. According to Father, only the Rothschilds had occupied it in the last few hundred years after their ancestor, the fierce and bloodthirsty warlord Alaric Rothschild, had conquered the land and set his flag upon the highest turret.

As we rumbled nearer, I could just make out the black banner sinister with the white dragon upon it, the sign of Rothschild house. Father had stayed here at Lord Rothschild’s court as a child when Elric’s own father had invited him here visiting, and he had many tales to tell of it.

As we crossed the spindly bridge that spanned a yawning and seemingly bottomless chasm on our last leg of the journey to our destination, I marveled at the vast, rambling darkness of it—the chipped, battle-weary ramparts and battlements, the craggy side chapels and gatehouse. The outer walls of the Hall stood five hundred feet high, with a tall, pinnacle tower twice that size rising from the center of the courtyard, enshrouded by a yellowish, poisonous-looking mist.

The black-as-soot flagstone of which the Hall was constructed made me think of some burned leviathan of a dragon, the spines of its carcass shimmering high in the heavens. The few windows on display were of colored glass, giving the place the brooding look of an abandoned monastery. The land surrounding the hall was different than the countryside—jagged and strangely lifeless, with virtually no trees and only patches of melting snow and cold, churned mud, which made crossing the vast, arched bridge treacherous and slow-going.

The sun was beginning to set by the time we approached the portcullis, and as we rode under the gatehouse, I marveled at the enormous, black stone dragons and gargoyles crouching overhead, seeming to watch us with their cruel, idiot stone eyes.

Then we were past the stone sentinels, the gatehouse and attached livery, and coming out in the courtyard where that mysterious tower stood in the most awkward of places, taking up at least half the space. It rose up like a black finger toward heaven, making my neck crick in my attempt to find the top.

My father saw me looking and said, “A wizard’s tower, my dear. Or, at least, that’s what they used to call them.”

“Is it really?”

“The Rothschilds have long been dabblers in the Craft.” He inclined his head. “Not unlike yourself. In fact, I hear that Elric Rothschild is quite the magical adept, as well as being young and comely of face…”

“Come now, Father,” I laughed a little nervously to cut him off. “Your attempts at matchmaking are sorry at best, and desperate at worst.”

He took my hand. “Would it be so very despicable to find yourself in a state of marriage, Marie? I shan’t live forever, and you will need the protection after me.”

“I hardly despise marriage, you know that. But you also know about my standards. He must be strong and sure of himself, a warrior and a protector.” I smiled at my father. “Fear not. I shall meet him one day.”

“Marie,” he chided gently. “The man you seek exists only in books of romance.”

I laughed even thought I truly did believe he existed! Once, long ago, I cast a spell upon a pond of water near our estate. A water nymph had answered my summons and had told me my one true mate was out there in the world, waiting as I was, and that I would meet him one day. He would be a powerful warrior, and a protector to me. I hadn’t stopped looking since!

As we crossed the courtyard I spotted several house servants waiting for us, lanterns held aloft to ward off the quickly descending dark. They swept forward to greet us, enshrouded in their long, fur-lined cloaks. Quickly they pulled open the coach, footed us down, efficiently and with little ceremony. 

“We should hurry, Lord Belmont,” one of the servants told my father as they rushed us toward a pair of huge, iron-banded doors. “Night has already fallen and these are not lands to be about in.”

“Yes, of course,” my father answered.

I had only time to gather my gown and cloak before a particularly stout man shoved me along. His strength and determination surprised me. I was a tall, hardy woman like my gypsy mother. There was meat on my bones and I was not so easily moved. My legs had gone all pins and needles during the long ride, and my knees all but buckled as we dashed into the hall as thought the hounds of hell were nipping at our heels.

Only when we were safely inside the cold, torch-lit corridor, the iron-banded oaken door securely locked behind us, did the men finally relax and offer up the proper bows and courtesies that our respective ranks demanded. Then we were ushered down the cold, swarthy corridor to the end, where a rough-hewn, stone staircase spiraled upward into darkness.

We’d be staying in one of several guest towers, and the idea excited me. I wondered how much of the Low Country we could see from our tower windows.

The light of the men’s lanterns had pushed back the darkness only feebly, but I immediately recognized a broad, looming shadow standing at the end of the corridor, near the stairwell. It took me a few moments to recognized it as Lord Simon Devereux, and only because my father had given me sufficient warning in advance to beware the lord and his questionable past and pedigree.