Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (25 page)

Clyde stopped. Jeremy went right on by him before he realized

it, and stopped as well, scootching backward carefully.

“What is it?” Jeremy asked.

Clyde jerked his head, indicating forward. “There it is.” As if Jeremy couldn’t see it.

Dusk had fallen. The air was the midnight blue of twilight,

when everything seemed possible. Around them, the wind was

the only sound. The snow still tumbled down.

In the gloom, the house loomed before them. Clyde had ex-

206

S
ophie
M
ouette

pected to see some lights on, even after the staff left, but the entire place was menacingly dark. He was glad he had a Maglite

in his backpack.

“Whoo-ee,”
Jeremy said. “Crazy-lookin’ place, ain’t it?”

Since the land around Frogmorton House was owned by the

museum trust, there was no hunting on the premises, but their

usual hunting grounds skirted the area, so they were familiar

with its bulk.

Even though hunting season was long past, Clyde had

brought his shotgun, just in case. Never know when you might

come up against a bear, grumpy at being woken early from its

hibernation.

“Guess they went home early,” Clyde said. “Better for us any-

way. Won’t have to wait.”

Jeremy rubbed his hands together, his ski poles dangling

from straps around his wrists. “Can’t wait to get my hands on

some treasure.”

Clyde tossed him a silver flask. “I’ll drink to that,” he said.

Sean moved from the left nipple to the right, drawing it into his mouth, making her arch so he could take more in. The bereft

left nipple puckered in the cool air, pressing against the slightly damp linen of her corset cover. He didn’t let it get cold for long, though, tweaking it between his thumb and forefinger.

Tit for tat—or was that tit for tit? Brenda pinched his nip-

ples, which stood out dark behind the not very Victorian, but

eminently practical, white T-shirt he wore under his uniform.

True to his word, he was taking his time. Her dress was open

to the waist, but he decided he liked the lace-trimmed corset

cover and had worked her breasts above the corset without taking

H
idden
T
reasure

207

it off. And while her skirt was pushed up, showing off her silk drawers—she was perched on the kitchen counter at this point,

with her legs wrapped around Sean’s waist—he wasn’t rushing to

get the drawers or his pants off, either. (Although, thank goodness, he’d taken off his gun belt—that had been a little distracting.) Never mind that he was hard as a steel rod, threatening

to pop the fly buttons on his trousers, and never mind that her drawers were so drenched in the crotch that they must be transparent, or that they were both trembling with want.

When was the last time someone had taken the time to ex-

plore her this way? Never, not that she could remember—and

Brenda was damn sure she’d have remembered it.

Remember being this aroused, this sensitized, so much so

that Sean’s breath on her skin felt like a touch. Remember being this wet and open and needy. Remember her sex pulsing around

emptiness, yearning to be filled. Remember reaching for a fly

with an achingly hard cock behind it and being turned away

with a playful reproach and a passionate kiss.

Her mother always said patience was a virtue.

And in this case, Mom was right—up to a point. But damn,

if Sean didn’t pick up the pace, she might catch on fire.

“I want to be naked with you,” she whispered, running her

hand down his chest and taut belly to his fly. One of the rel-

atively few brain cells that wasn’t focused on her rising need

pointed out that there might be a better location for doing so

than where they were. Someplace with soft surfaces and warm

blankets. “And not on the kitchen counter, either.”

“Spruce Bedroom?”

The master bedroom with the fully made-up bed, very com-

fortable bed, including an impressive, if perpetually dusty, em-208

S
ophie
M
ouette

broidered velvet coverlet and canopy? “Hell yes.” The sheets

were Irish linen, still sturdy despite their age. And if by chance they destroyed them, well, it would be a shame, but they had an entire closet full of similar sets.

Before she hopped down from the counter, he cupped her mound at last, and that pressure was almost enough to drive her over the edge.

Almost. Not quite. “Please?” she moaned, feeling ridiculous

to beg but needing it so badly that she didn’t care.

His grin grew. He looked like a fox, or maybe it was just foxy.

Delicious, in any case. “I like hearing you beg.”

Brenda writhed under his hand. “Please. Pleasepleaseplease-

please . . .”

He started circling his fingers, slowly but with just the right pressure. “Yeah. That’s it. Perfect . . . so close . . .”

She took a deep breath, sensing that within seconds she’d

need it to scream.

And in that instant of silence, they heard the distant sound

of shattering glass.

She might have thought she imagined it, except that it was fol-

lowed immediately by the shrill droning of the burglar alarm.

Jeremy jumped back as if the house had bitten him. He started

to run—and promptly fell down because in his panic, he forgot

he was wearing snowshoes. It would have been hilarious except

for the alarm screaming at them.

“Clyde! There’s an alarm!”

“Asshole. Of course there’s an alarm. And you just tripped it

by breaking the window.”

“Then how were we going to get in?”

H
idden
T
reasure

209

Honestly he’d been hoping that there wouldn’t actually be

an alarm, but he wasn’t about to admit that. But he did have a

plan. He reached into his pocket. “I have instructions! How to

disarm an alarm system.”

“Really? Where’d you find that?” In the last of the fading

light, Jeremy finally looked interested.

“On the Internet. You can find all kinds of shit on the Inter-

net.” It occurred to him belatedly that he’d never tried them out and they might be just as fake as the boobs on a porn site.

What the hell. The window was broken anyway, the alarm

was going off. Might as well just crawl in the window the old-

fashioned way. If the alarm was sending a message to the police station, well, the cops couldn’t get there before morning at least, and by then they’d be long gone.

He propped his rifle against the wall and leaned down to

remove his snowshoes. Then he shimmied out of his backpack

and tossed it inside before clambering in after it.

It was, of course, pitch-black inside, but he got the flashlight on just as Jeremy fell through the window and landed with an

audible thump.

“Just a broken window,” Brenda said, hoping Sean would put

any quiver in her voice or shake in her hands down to sexual

frustration.

Which was definitely part of it. Whatever this emergency was,

the timing couldn’t have been much worse. Although maybe it

wasn’t all bad. She’d probably feel even more anxious if every

nerve in her body wasn’t too busy screaming for relief to register the influx of fight-or-flight hormones.

“It’s really windy,” she added. “Probably a branch or a roof

210

S
ophie
M
ouette

slate or something blew through.” She was buttoning every

third button of her bodice as she spoke. Getting them all would take way too long, but she’d be damned if she’d face down an

intruder—or even deal with a simple, drafty, broken window—

with her tits hanging out.

“Let’s hope.” Sean fastened the gun belt around his hips,

grabbed his big flashlight, then gave her one last quick, hard

kiss. “You stay here. I’ll go check.”

“No way. I’m going with you.”

“I’m the security guard. It’s my job.”

“And it’s my museum, dammit.”

“Your museum?” He glared at her, his thick eyebrows draw-

ing together. He did fierce awfully well for someone with such a gorgeous smile. But not well enough to make her back down.

“I’m responsible to the board for anything that happens . . .

and I know this place like the back of my hand. Better than you do.” She took a deep breath and decided to admit to the truth.

“And if I have to sit here alone, I’ll go nuts. I’ll leave any tackling of burglars up to the person with combat training, but I can’t

just sit here.”

Sean nodded. “Good points, all of them. Let’s go.” He headed

for the main door.

She shook her head as she grabbed the candelabrum. “Ser-

vant’s hallway. If there’s anyone in the front rooms, we can surprise them coming that way. And shut off the damn alarm while

we’re at it.”

They’d made it to the front of the house. Clyde poked his head

in one room, but it was being used as an office, and he didn’t

see his target.

H
idden
T
reasure

211

“What are we looking for again?” Jeremy asked.

Something resembling a brain in your head. Clyde gritted his

teeth. “My grandmother’s writing desk. You remember, the one

that used to be under the window in her living room.”

“I don’t remember,” Jeremy said, as if he hadn’t sat in that

living room a million times eating Clyde’s grandmother’s home-

made peanut-butter thumbprint cookies like he was one of those

starving kids from Africa.

“It was kind of a reddish wood, with carving along the

front—roses or something. Stood about this high.” Clyde held

out his hand, palm down. “She usually had a vase of fresh flow-

ers on it, and a framed photo of my grandfather.”

Jeremy squinted. “Okay,” he said finally, reluctantly, as if he maybe didn’t really remember but he didn’t want Clyde to get

angry.

At Christmas a few years ago, Grandma had gotten tipsy on

eggnog and told Clyde something very, very important.

She’d told him the desk contained a special treasure.

When he’d asked what sort of treasure, she’d smiled a smile

he’d never seen before (and even though he couldn’t quite ex-

plain why, it kind of squicked him out) and patted him on the

head and told him he’d understand one day. And Clyde had

taken that to mean that she’d be giving the treasure to him.

Then she’d upped and croaked and left everything to Frog-

morton House, including the writing desk—which, as far as he

was concerned, they could keep—and the treasure she’d prom-

ised him.

“We’ll split up,” he said, because Jeremy had done one thing

right and remembered to bring a flashlight of his own. “You go

upstairs; I’ll look down here. Look for anything that looks like
212

S
ophie
M
ouette

the desk I described. We’ll meet back here in—” he checked his

watch “—fifteen minutes.”

He felt compelled to add, “Don’t break anything else. Don’t

even touch anything,” as Jeremy clomped toward the stairs.

He shone his own flashlight left and right. Right seemed to

be the dining room, and he doubted the desk would be in there.

Left, then.

At the top of the stairs, he heard a bang and an
“Owdammit!”

from Jeremy. Then Jeremy’s faint voice wafted down, “S’okay!

Didn’t break anything!”

Clyde went left.

As Sean fiddled with the alarm box, Brenda leaned out the bro-

ken window, careful not to brush against a fragment of glass.

“They came on snowshoes,” she announced. “Two pairs. There’s

a rifle out here, too.”

“Good to know they didn’t bring it inside,” Sean commented

into the blissful silence left when the ringing stopped.

“They could have another one,” Brenda said. She stepped

back, her shoes crunching on the glass. She was pretty sure the window hadn’t been an original, but she was still pissed off that the slobs had broken it.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

They continued on. At the end of the servants’ hallway, in the

dining room, Sean signaled a halt.

Brenda halted all right. She felt a little ridiculous with her

long gown and her candelabrum, like the ditzy heroine of a

vampire movie.

At least she wasn’t going to make the ditzy-vampire-movie

H
idden
T
reasure

213

heroine mistake and run off on her own. Face it, neither the

master’s in history nor the certificate program in nonprofit management had covered How to Deal with Intruders.

“Flashlight,” Sean whispered, making almost no sound at

all. She had to lean in to hear him, which brought back the

scent of—oh God,
herself,
on his fingertips. The reminder of her arousal made her clit tremble again.

“What was that?” she whispered back, sure she’d heard

something.

“Voices. Couldn’t hear what they said. I think you’re right:

there’s two of them.”

“Good odds,” Brenda said, even though she wasn’t much sure

she was a match for one of them. She’d been desperately trying

to remember the self-defense course she’d taken in college. That had been a long time ago, and she and her friends had spent

most of the time ogling the instructor.

Why hadn’t she paid attention? Nobody said she’d actually