“You’ll have to handle Molly,” Mephisto warned her. “Once the family starts to descend, I won’t be able to hang around and manage her through this transition. Not without causing a lot of questions about Clayton’s private life.”
Rose looked skeptical. “I’m not sure I can handle that one.”
“It’s just until after the funeral. Until his family leaves town. From what I understand they were never that close. I doubt they’ll stay long.”
“They’ll stay long enough to make Mrs. Copeland uncomfortable. They’ll want her to take herself off, now Mr. Copeland’s gone.”
“They can’t make her leave. This is her house now.” He topped off the housekeeper’s glass and then leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Will you stay on here? You won’t leave her, will you? She’s going to need you, and not just as a housekeeper.”
Mrs. Jernigan looked apologetic, but resolute. “I’m afraid I can’t stay. Not beyond the funeral. I’ll stay until Mr. Copeland’s laid to rest, until his family leaves, but then I’ll be off. I don’t know that she’d want me to stay anyway. I’d have left years ago if not for the generous salary. I never much liked how he treated that woman. Like an animal, making her go around naked and collared, and she putting up with it, so pleased with herself. I didn’t agree at all with how they got on together. I don’t care to stay around and see her with another just the same.” She slid him a look. “Will you be the next one, then?”
Mephisto went still. Would he be the next one? Subconsciously, he supposed he’d been mulling over that question. He wanted Molly as much as he ever had, and Clayton had assumed Molly would go to him next. Hell, he’d practically pushed her into Mephisto’s arms. There’d been an understanding between them, but like everything else, the details were a lot more complicated than the general idea.
“I don’t know,” he said to Rose, pouring more whiskey into his own glass. “I don’t know if I’ll be the next one or not. I guess that will be up to Molly.”
“Agh, like she can make a decision, that one. If you don’t snap her up, someone else will, and she’ll go following after him like she doesn’t have a brain between her ears.”
“She has a brain,” Mephisto said a little sharply.
Rose nodded and waved a hand. “I know. Don’t get your dander up. Believe me, I know. That’s the most irritating thing about it. No, I won’t stay. Not past a week or so, to get things settled. I owe Mr. Copeland that at least. Then I’ll retire, thanking him for so many years of generosity.” She sighed and got to her feet. “I’m for bed. Will you stay tonight? There’s a guest bedroom down the hall from Mr. Copeland’s room.”
“Yes, I’ll stay.” Mephisto wouldn’t dream of leaving Molly alone tonight. He wouldn’t stay in the guest room either.
Will you be the next one, then?
He couldn’t think about that yet. Like everything else, it was too overwhelming at the moment. Still, as confused and sad as he was, he couldn’t imagine what Molly was feeling in her grief.
*** *** ***
Molly woke up reaching for Master before she remembered he was gone. Her eyes ached, her throat ached. Her whole body ached with the absence of him.
And Master Mephisto was lying beside her in Master’s bed.
She bolted upright, clutching Master’s pillow to her front. The motion and noise shook Mephisto awake.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for her.
She backed away from his hands and tumbled off the edge of the bed, then scrambled to her feet, still hiding behind the pillow. Last night, she’d wanted to be nude because her Master preferred her that way. Now she felt like Eve in the garden, horribly aware and suddenly ashamed of her nakedness. She didn’t want to be seen, not by
him
. “Why are you here?” she asked, voice trembling.
He blinked, still coming awake. “You told me not to leave. I didn’t want to leave, in case you needed me.”
She meant,
Why are you here in his bed? With me?
Not that Mephisto didn’t know her intimately, every inch of her. Master Mephisto and Molly had a long and complex relationship, to include a week of sex and training she’d never forget. She couldn’t be around him, couldn’t look at him without remembering. He had affected her that deeply, but she didn’t want to remember that right now. She respected Mephisto. She knew he was her Master’s closest friend, both in the scene and out. But she wasn’t ready to belong to anyone but her Master, not yet.
But your Master’s gone.
“It’s okay, Molly,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
With anyone else, she might have doubted, but Mephisto could read her better than anyone she’d ever known in her life. Yes, including her Master. She burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t... I want... I know you’re just trying to help but I don’t want—”
He held out a hand, but he didn’t come closer. Maybe he thought she’d attack with Master’s pillow. She buried her face in it instead.
“I’m just here to help,” he said. “That’s all. I promised your Master I’d look after you. That means whatever you want it to mean.” His kind, calm voice somehow made things seem even bleaker.
“I don’t know what anything means right now,” she bawled. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You’re going to grieve for a while.” Mephisto got out of bed, approached her slowly. “Can I hold you? I’d really like to comfort you right now, as a friend. Your Master would want me to comfort you.”
“My Master’s not here!” she screamed. As quickly as it flared, her explosion of rage died, and she clawed at the pillow in misery. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry...”
“Shhh.” Mephisto put an arm around her, then another, and she was crying into his chest, soaking his dark tee shirt. “I’m just here as a friend,” he said. “For as long as you need me. You’re going to need a friend.”
She backed away from him. “It’s hard to think of you as a friend, Master Mephisto.”
“Don’t ‘Master’ me then. Just call me Mephisto for a while. How can I help you? Right now, what can I do? Do you want to get dressed, have some breakfast? Clayton’s family will show up soon. I don’t want to be here, but I can help you get ready. Mrs. Jernigan can help if you’d rather.”
Still Molly stood, her Master’s pillow dangling from her hand. She hugged it to herself again. She didn’t know what to do, how to go on beyond standing there. Yes, she had to get dressed. Yes, she ought to eat, although the idea of it nauseated her. She would have to keep living, but it seemed an insurmountable task even to make her legs move.
“Why won’t you be here?” she asked Mephisto. “You said you’d help me. They’ll try to make me leave. They’ll try to cut me out, separate me from Master.”
“They won’t.” He shook his head brusquely. “Don’t let them. Clay left everything to you. It’s all in his will, ironclad. They have no right to anything, no right to even come in this house unless you let them. Remember that.” He moved closer. His dark eyes shone with kindness. Understanding. “I know you’ve been a slave for years now. You can be a slave again if you want to, in time. But for now, for this time right now, you need to be strong. You need to stand up for yourself and Clayton, and plan his funeral and settle his affairs. I know it sounds impossible, that you think you won’t be able to do it, but you’ll have help.”
“You said you wouldn’t be here.”
“Just for now, while his family’s around. I think I might scare them,” he said with a slight smile. Molly thought it was probably true. The large, muscular, pierced and tattooed black man would probably stand out a bit too much amidst Clayton’s lily white relatives. “Besides, no one can know about Clayton’s fetish life. You and I know, of course. The Seattle fetish community knows, but they’ll be discreet. His household staff knows but they’ll be discreet too. His family...” He pinned her with a direct gaze. “His family can’t know, so you can’t be the slave right now. You have to be the wife. Mrs. Molly Copeland. You’ll have help from his executors and lawyers. Lots of people will give you advice. Listen to them.”
Molly felt sick terror in her stomach. “How will I know I can trust them?”
“If Clayton trusted them, it’s a safe bet you can trust them.”
Of course. Her Master had been an excellent judge of character. He would have surrounded himself with the most trustworthy business partners. And her Master had told her outright, many times, that he didn’t trust his family, so Molly wouldn’t trust them either. Her Master trusted Mephisto...so she would have to trust him.
“I think I’ll get dressed,” she said. “I’m sure you have to go. The club...”
“Club Mephisto will be fine. But if you feel okay at the moment, I’ll go and take care of a few things.” He came to her and squeezed her hand. Molly couldn’t look at his face, so she didn’t know what his expression was. Sad, probably. Pitying. As soon as he was gone, she allowed herself to fall apart yet again, collapsing where she stood, sobbing until her eyes and head ached so much she had to stop.
This is too hard. This is too hard, Master. Please, come back. I’ll be good, so good if you do.
But no matter how good she was, or how perfect, this was all she had left at the end of it. Nothing.
Nothing at all.
*** *** ***
Mephisto sat in the back of the sprawling city church at Clayton’s funeral, feeling uncomfortable in his suit and tie. He’d said his goodbyes to Clayton beside the hospital bed, but he wouldn’t have missed this. Clayton would have been happy with the grand, polished service, even though he was never a religious man. Clayton had always been very much about appearances and decorum, even though he accepted Mephisto’s scruffy goth image.
Clayton, man, you should see me in this suit.
Mephisto didn’t know how Molly was coping. He hadn’t done any more than talk on the phone with Mrs. Jernigan the last few days. Molly didn’t have a phone. No email address, no nothing. He could barely see the back of her bowed head where she sat in the front row.
Later, at the graveside service, Mephisto was able to study her more closely. Beneath her smart black suit, her widow’s hat, she looked like a shell of the Molly he knew. An imposter. Clayton’s family, at least, seemed to be tending to her. She stood between two of his sisters, looking for all the world as wealthy and brittle as they were. He understood that Molly was in a tunnel now, in the dark. She had gone into the tunnel from Clayton’s light, and would come out of it some day, blinking and confused. For now, the tunnel probably felt like a safe place.
Molly raised her head, looked up at him. Their eyes locked. She must have felt him staring.
If I die tomorrow, tell her you love her.
Clayton had known he might die. For two years, he had kept that secret. As for the other secret...that Mephisto loved his wife... Clay had sensed that too, and been okay with it. But Molly...she hadn’t known anything.
There was no way she could know. Mephisto wasn’t sure of his feelings himself. He always insisted to Clay it was only because of their long history that he took such an interest in her. Mephisto had known Molly in her pre-slave years, when she’d been a wild, tormented young woman. He flattered himself into believing he’d saved her from that. Mephisto liked feeling powerful, liked the idea that he’d somehow had a hand in making her a new person. But the truth was, he had very little to do with creating the complex person who was Molly.
As quickly as their eyes met, Molly looked away. Mephisto couldn’t read her face. He only knew there was grief there, and emptiness.
What do I do, Clay?
Mephisto could go for it. Wait a few weeks, until the worst of her grief had passed, and lay it all on the line, tell Molly his true feelings.
I would like to be your next Master. I want you under my hand. I want that incredible submission you gave to Clayton, all for myself now.
He did desperately want her to serve him. He loved her beauty, her calmness. Her deep feelings of worship and fidelity to her Master. But could he earn those feelings? She couldn’t just summon them up from nothing. Clayton Copeland had earned every iota of Molly’s admiration and love. Mephisto understood it wouldn’t be easy to fill Clay’s shoes.
Then there was his own life to think about. He had Club Mephisto to run, and a lot of s-types who counted on him as an occasional play partner. What did it look like, if Molly came into his life? She could be his alpha-slave, sure, ranking above the others, but would that be enough for her? Could Mephisto participate in playful scene-type slavery relationships with his other partners and still demand the depth of Molly’s service? Molly’s...love? Mephisto had never been in a romantic-love relationship that wasn’t connected to power exchange or sex. What made him think he could fulfill Molly, with a history like that?
It all came down to worthiness, something he’d never questioned in himself. Well, no, he’d questioned it before, during the one week Molly had stayed with him two years ago. That week had forced him to face many truths about himself, not all of them pleasant.
That was the week he’d fallen for her like a boulder off a cliff.
But boulders could smash people. He’d tried very hard, in a way, to smash her that week, and she remembered. Of course she remembered. Her Master’s wishes aside, it was very possible she dreaded nothing more than ending up in Mephisto’s hands.
After the graveside service, everyone drifted away from the yawning hole in the ground, but Molly lingered, and so did Mephisto. For a while he kept his distance, watching her, trying to gauge if he was welcome. She stared down into the earth, thinking about God knew what. The man she loved, probably, cold now in the ground.
“Molly.” Mephisto approached her, feeling very much like a supplicant. Her eyes traveled over him, over his suit and wool overcoat.
“Hello. Thanks for coming today.” She bit her lip. “Thank you for the flowers. Tulips were his favorite.”
“I know.” She was trying too hard to sound cheerful. It unsettled him. “How are you?”
“Oh....” She shrugged, still in that fake-cheerful tone. “I’ve been better. I was actually going to call you after the funeral. I’ve been thinking.”
Mephisto stepped closer, feeling nervousness snake up his spine at her unfamiliar briskness, her closed expression. “Thinking about what?”