Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (26 page)

Read Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica Online

Authors: Rachel Krame Bussel

need
that information being a curator.

“Stay behind me,” Sean said. In any other circumstances she

would have gladly done so just to look at his ass, but now she

actually paid attention to the matter at hand.

They crept through the dining room and entered the foyer

just in time to see a faint light moving away from them, toward the sitting room and library.

Sean had loosened his jacket so he had easier access to his

gun, but he left it in its holster. Brenda hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

She was appalled that someone would break in. Yes, the

place was brimming with antiques, but most of it was heavy

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furniture. The knickknacks were all discreetly marked and ev-

erything, down to the silver, was obsessively categorized and

photographed. If the thieves tried to sell anything, they’d get caught, no question about it.

Sheer mindless vandalism, then? It wasn’t out of the question,

but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. They usually had prob-

lems on the Fourth of July or around graduation time, when stupid kids got stupid drunk and came up with stupid plans.

Surely nobody was stupid (or drunk) enough to want to come

out here in the middle of winter, in snowshoes, just to smash

things up.

The snowshoes, Brenda decided, meant they’d planned this.

That made her even madder. She felt like a mother partridge

puffing up to protect her young.

Although didn’t mother partridges pretend they were wounded

to draw predators away from their chicks? Might not be a bad

strategy here, if it came to be needed.

Following Sean, she was impressed at how smoothly he

slipped through the rooms. Victorian decorating called for a lot of furniture to be jammed into small spaces—and don’t even

mention the knickknacks and lace and frippery. It was all ut-

terly lush and romantic, but it made it hard to walk in a straight line.

Sean moved like a panther, lean and silent. And Brenda knew

where every stick of furniture was placed better than she knew

her own apartment.

The man (she assumed it was a man) they followed, on the

other hand, had neither of their skills. He wasn’t crashing into things, at least, but he was moving slowly and bumping into the

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occasional side table, chinking the curios and ornaments against each other.

At this rate, they could have followed him blindfolded, just

from the noises he was making.

They caught up with him easily in the vaguely leather-scented

library, which had looped them around almost back to the foyer.

Brenda had the vague sense that they could have just waited for the perp to come back to them, but it was too late to contemplate that now.

“Freeze!” Sean shouted.

Brenda jumped. She pressed a hand to her pounding chest as

the thief whirled and his hand shot into the air. His flashlight made crazy patterns on the ceiling.

“Don’t shoot!” he said.

“What are you doing here?” Sean demanded, training his

own flashlight on the thief ’s face.

Wait a minute . . . Brenda stepped from behind Sean, squint-

ing in the gloom.

“Clyde?” she said. “Clyde Whitney, is that you?”

Clyde started to bring his hands down, but Sean’s sharp

“Hey!” made him rethink that. “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“What in God’s name are you
doing
here?”

Sean shot her a look that clearly said,
Who’s in charge here?
but she ignored him. The situation was back in her territory now.

“It’s Clyde Whitney,” she told him. “His grandmother left

Frogmorton her things when she passed. I know him from when

I subbed at the high school. You graduated two years ago, isn’t that right, Clyde?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

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“So why
are
you here?”

“The things my grandmother gave you,” he said. “She wasn’t

supposed to give you everything. The treasure was supposed to

be mine.”

Treasure? “What treasure?”

“In the writing desk. She
told
me.”

“I’m sorry, Clyde, but I think she was mistaken. She gave us

a detailed listing of everything she was donating, and she didn’t say anything about something being in the desk.”

Clyde let his hands drop, not threateningly, but as if he’d

forgotten he’d been caught. “But—”

And that’s when they heard the voice behind them. “Clyde, I

think I found it! It’s in the big bedroo— Oh, crap.”

The speaker loomed right behind Brenda. Without thinking,

she turned and nailed the stalker across the head with the heavy silver candelabrum.

The young man blinked once, then crumpled to the floor.

Most of the candles went out, but one dislodged and went fly-

ing. With a shriek, Brenda dove after it, stomping out the flame before it caught anything alight. She winced at the thought of

wax on the hardwood floor, but she knew several different se-

crets to removing it.

Then, in the near darkness, she ran her hands over the can-

delabrum to check for any dents or nicks. It may have been an

everyday one, but it was still a part of Frogmorton House.

“Nice job,” Sean said, admiration in his voice.

She straightened her coat. “Thank you.”

Sean gestured to Clyde. “Come on.”

Clyde’s eyes widened. “Where are we going?”

“You two can cool your heels in the basement until morning.

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The cops won’t be able to get here till tomorrow, and we can’t

let you go off tramping around the countryside.”

“What about my treasure?”

“There’s no treasure,” Brenda said.

“But—”

“But we’ll check the writing desk, just in case. Okay?”

“Okay.” Clyde’s shoulder’s drooped.

Sean made Clyde help him lug the half-conscious and moan-

ing Jeremy to the basement. Brenda grabbed an armful of wool

blankets from the linen closet. It would be chilly down there,

but they wouldn’t come near to freezing to death.

In the light of the freshly burning candelabrum, Brenda found

the secret compartment in the back of the writing desk within

minutes. Sean whistled his admiration.

“I never thought to check for a false back,” she said. “Hello,

what have we here?”

She drew out a packet of papers, tied with a red ribbon and

smelling of cedar and lavender.

She examined the envelopes. “They’re letters,” she said. “From

Mr. Whitney to Mrs. Whitney, and vice versa.”

“Love letters?” Sean said with a chuckle. “Grandma’s secret

treasure was her love letters?
Aw,
that’s sweet.” Then he smiled, and it wasn’t the roguish, flirty grin that Brenda had come to

lust after. It was a softer smile, still sexy as hell, but almost . . .

wistful.

So, naughty Sean was a closet romantic? Brenda told herself

firmly it was too soon to obsess about the ramifications of
that
bit of information—although they could be very nice ramifications—and filed the knowledge away for future reference.

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She’d meant to take a quick glance at the letters, then put

them away and get back to more interesting matters, but the first few lines she read intrigued her so much that she kept reading, not even bothering to sit down.

“Oh my. Not just love letters.
Steamy
love letters. Listen to this.” She scanned the letter until she found the passage that

had caught her eye.

“ ‘I miss you. All of you: your eyes, your laugh, your toes,

that mole on the back of your leg, your beautiful breasts, your round little bottom, and every other bit of you. But right now, I really miss being inside you, feeling you so tight and wet and hot around me. When I get home, I’m going to kiss every inch of you, from your forehead to your cute painted toes’—
hmm,
seems Mr. Whitney was a bit of a foot fetishist—‘and then I’m going

to lick you until you beg me to fuck you. But I don’t just want to fuck you. I want to make love to you. I want to make love to you so we can’t tell where I end and you begin.’ ”

Brenda looked up. Sean’s eyes were shining, dark blue and wide.

“Hot stuff,” he said. “As long as I don’t think about Mrs.

Whitney playing bridge with my grandmother, at least.”

“Let’s not go there, okay?” Brenda laughed. “God, Clyde

would die, knowing we’re reading his sweet old grandparents’

smutty letters. Hell, knowing his grandparents
wrote
smutty letters.”

Brenda shuffled through the papers. “Here’s another good

one. ‘I know I’ll be home in a week. I may even get home before this letter gets to you. But a week’s too long. When I’m alone

in my hotel room, I take out my cock and play with it, trying

to pretend you’re touching me instead, imagining your hands,

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your lips, your sweet, greedy cunt. And I come. Oh, do I come.

But even while I’m coming, all I can think about is how much

better it is when I’m making you cry out and tighten around my

cock. Do you touch yourself and think of me? I’m sure you do,

because you’re a naughty girl and that’s part of why I love you so much, but write to me about it. That way, the next time I travel, I can read it and imagine you lying in the dark touching yourself and imagining it’s me.’ ”

“Did she?” Sean asked.

“If he was half as sexy as he sounds in these letters, I bet she did. It looks like he traveled a lot on business.”

“I mean write him about it.” Sean had moved in behind her

now and was reading over her shoulder while he unbuttoned her

dress.

Brenda leaned back against him as she flipped through the

packet. “Found it! ‘You want to hear how I keep from going

crazy while you’re away? You want to know how much I miss

you? I miss you so much that my fingers aren’t enough some-

times. I can make myself feel good that way, but it’s not the

same without you inside me. I hope they’re feeding you well in

Indianapolis, because you’re going to need your strength when

you get back here.’ ”

“Lucky man. I bet he got a warm welcome home.”

Sean pushed against her as he spoke. Even through her layers

of skirt, Brenda could feel how hard he was.

It pretty much matched how wet she was getting again, be-

tween the steamy letters and Sean’s hot body pressed against

hers and the memory of their play down in the kitchen.

“It gets better. ‘It got so bad that today I went to the market and found a cucumber about the right size. It wasn’t the same at
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all, but filling myself up with something made it easier to think of you inside me. So imagine me so desperate for you that a cucumber looks pretty good. Imagine me pushing that cucumber

in and out of me and calling your name and . . .’ ”

She stopped. “I actually can’t read the rest because . . .

well, it looks like he did imagine it. Often. This letter’s pretty beat-up.”

Sean let out a shuddering breath. “Jesus, that’s hot. Just knowing she was so horny and so far away must have made her hus-

band crazy.” He pushed her dress off her shoulders, forcing her to set the letters down on the desk so he could work the narrow sleeves down her arms. “Have you ever been that horny?”

She turned in his embrace, letting the dress slither off her

hips as she did. “Not until tonight. And it’s all your fault. Hope you’re planning to do something about it.”

Another of those roguish grins that made her insides quiver

and melt. “I don’t know . . . I kind of like the idea of watching you getting yourself off.” He paused just long enough to get her concerned about the evening’s plans, then added, “Sometime, if

you’d be into it. Not tonight. Tonight I want to be inside you

when you come. Want to feel you exploding all over my cock.”

Brenda slithered the rest of the way out of the dress and got

her petticoats and corset cover off in record time.

Sean stopped her when she was down to corset and drawers.

“Let me look at you,” he breathed. “Just for a minute. Damn,

you look good like that.”

She made a show of unpinning her hair, shaking it out so

it tumbled around her shoulders. “No fair. It’s cold. Besides, I want to see you, too.”

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“Fair enough.” He opened his fly teasingly, one button at a