Insane: A Werewolf Keep Story Page 4

  ‘I need…’ she started to say, without really know what she needed. All she knew was that this man had what it was she needed and her patience was running thin.

  Juan pushed her gently back onto the bed, following her down. He kissed each naked breast beneath his hands in turn and suckled at her nipples until she nearly arched off the bed. A surge of delicious pain sped from tantalised nipple to her core. She pressed her thighs together harder, trying to stop the ache, or intensify it, she didn’t know which.

  Juan slid his hand down her body to that aching place and pressed against it through her skirts. Momentarily, she knew relief. But then the ache became more intense. Her head fell back and she moaned, wanting him to press harder, do something to stop what was building within her.

  ‘Juan, I need…’ She moaned, pressing her own hand on top his, into the juncture between her legs. He hastily removed his hand, and she desperately searched for it again, unable to hold back the little cry of disappointment that left her lips.

  But instead of leaving her, he was finding his way under her petticoats and her draws until his warm hand found bare flesh and his fingers pressed into her.

  ‘Heavens, what are you doing?’ she gasped, trying to draw his hand away, and then letting him go when his finger stroked across her damp folds, touching her most sensitive place until she bucked against his hand, aching with need.

  ‘You are driving me to madness,’ he growled against her ear as his fingers plunged into her heated core. ‘How can you be so innocent and yet so responsive?’ Then his mouth was on her breast again, sucking and pulling, as his fingers plunged into her body.

  This isn’t happening, Charlie thought, with what was left of her sanity. He can’t be doing this to my body. He shouldn’t be… And then something exploded inside her and she cried out, pressing herself against his hand as she saw lights explode behind her eyes.

  ‘My Charlie,’ he growled against her ear as her body began to melt like a candle in the sun.

  As she began to calm down she found she could breathe properly once more. The tightness of her corset had become increasingly painful the more excited she’d become. But her focus had been elsewhere, and she’d barely registered her constrained lungs. Now, relaxed and oddly replete, her stays were no more than an irritant, keeping skin from skin.

  Reluctantly, Juan drew his hand away from her damp curls and straightened her skirts. He laid his head on her naked breasts and drew air into his own starved lungs in strangled gasps.

  ‘Enough, I will not take from you what may never be mine by right,’ he murmured against her breast as he began to stoically pull further away from her.

  ‘Do not stop,’ she pleaded, trying to draw him back to her.

  ‘You are an innocent maiden, Charlie. I cannot take that from you. I am a stranger. Your virtue belongs to your husband. I may never be that man, though there is nothing I want more.’

  Charlie felt the blush burn up her neck to her face. No one had ever referred to her virginity before. Her virtue, she knew, belonged to her husband alone. What must Juan think of her wanton ways? How easily she had been willing to give away her most prized possession. They had known each other mere hours, and yet she’d offered up her maidenhead to him without a moment’s hesitation. She couldn’t have felt more sinful if she’d run naked through the streets. Juan must be mortified by her behaviour.

  She brought her hands up to cover her face and breasts.

  ‘Charlie, no. Do not be ashamed. You need not worry. Your virtue is intact. You are still an innocent.’

  She cringed and pulled her blouse closed as she turned away from him to bury her head in the pillow.

  ‘I have behaved wantonly. I am sorry. I do not know what came over me,’ she mumbled, as she felt felt tears sting her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Querida, no. You are not a wanton. Your response was natural; beautifully natural and unfettered. You have no idea what it is costing me to protect you from my baser self. You are wonderful. All that I could ever ask for in a woman. I burn for you…’ he pressed an intense kiss to her shoulder through the cream coloured blouse.

  ‘I let you take liberties. I am a wanton.’

  Her humiliation was so deep she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. How could she have acted that way? No matter what he said, he had to find her cheap and tawdry now. She had let his hand go into places she had always avoided. Places that she knew were not proper or acceptable. She had not only let him touch her there, she had encouraged him to. Forced him to.

  He turned her over and drew her hands from her face.

  ‘Look at me, Charlie, look at me,’ he ordered. She lifted her gaze until it reluctantly met his.

  ‘You have nothing to be ashamed about. If you were really Senora Alvarez, I would crawl on my hands and knees to be allowed to touch you as I did. To taste you and feel your body respond to mine. I would marry you today, if I could.

  ‘But we cannot do that. Until I know I am still a man and not a monster, I cannot let what is between us go any further. Do you understand me, Charlie? I must protect you from myself, until I am sure.’

  He took her face between his hands and brought his mouth down to hers. Charlie relaxed into the kiss, feeling how much he wanted her, how much he cared. She let the shame drop away and kissed him back until they were both breathless with need once more.

  Finally, Juan drew back and moved off the bed. When he turned to face her again, his buttons were done up and his clothes righted.

  ‘Come now, Querida. I will find you a hansom cab to take you home. What we have shared this day will sustain me through the coming week. If there is a God, and if He is indeed good, then He will bring me back to you.’

  Chapter Four

  Charlie reached home just before her father. If he noticed her distraction, he didn’t say. He seemed intent on making her feel his displeasure at her behaviour at the Old Bailey. However, though she felt distressed at having let her father down, and having probably ruined her chances of clerking for him ever again, she really didn’t care that much. All she could think about was Juan and the life-changing day she’d spent with him.

  She made no complaint when her father told her she was no longer to be involved in his legal practise. She made no complaint when he threatened to send her to stay with her maiden aunt in Portsmouth. She didn’t even query his orders that she was not to leave the house without a maid in attendance.

  Her world had faded into sepia, like her portrait photograph that stood on the fireplace mantel. Her father had wanted that picture taken when she finished school. She looked pretty and serious in it: her wild, golden hair bound tightly back from her face; her small, upthrust breasts modestly covered by a stiff, grey surge jacket. Behind her, the painted scene of a drawing room looked unrealistic. The daguerreotype was colourless and frozen, as unlike the colourful real world as anything could be. That was how she felt; colourless, lifeless.

  And as the days dragged by, she sometimes wondered if it would have been better had she never gone to the Old Bailey that day. If she had never met Juan Hernando Alvarez. His life would have remained unchanged. He would be exactly where he was right now, quarantined and fearing for his future. She had in no way helped him or saved him from his fate. And if she had never met him she would still be happy and focused on her goals, caring little for the men who occasionally came to call on her.

  But no, she could not give up that day, no matter how terrible she felt now. It was her one true moment of passion. And knowing that her body was capable of such feelings was an amazing and worthwhile discovery. Even if she never felt that way again, she had that one moment in time, forever.

  When the week passed and there was no sign of Juan, she felt her heart begin to crack. As the days passed, and there was no word, the crack grew wider and deeper, until on the fourth day beyond the accepted week, she woke to find tears on her pillow and a pain so intense in her chest that she could barely breathe. She knew what it meant. She k
new that she had finally admitted the truth: He wasn’t coming back. And her heart had broken, finally, irrevocably.

  And all her hopes and dreams leaked out and faded away, leaving her empty and numb.

  ‘Are you coming down with something?’ her father asked over breakfast, noticing for the first time the change that had overtaken his usually vibrant and bubbly daughter.

  ‘No, Papa, I am well,’ she said softly as she pushed the single kipper around the plate.

  ‘I was not serious about sending you away to Portsmouth, you know,’ he grumbled into his moustaches.

  ‘I know, Papa. ‘

  ‘I may well let you help me again in my practise, if you can be more responsible… I cannot be left without a clerk, just because you have a fit of the vapours.’

  Charlie smiled sadly at him and stirred her cold tea.

  ‘I do not like seeing you like this, Charlie lass. Please try to buck up. It is a lovely day outside. Why not go into town and buy yourself something nice. We can afford it.’

  ‘I might do that Papa, thank you. You better hurry, though. You do not want to be late.’

  The doorbell ground out its metallic ring as her father gathered his umbrella and top hat from the table just beyond the dining room door. Maisie, their one maid, hustled past him to answer it.

  ‘Can I ‘elp you, sir?’ Charlie heard Maisie say in her broad east London accent.

  ‘I would like to see Miss Charlotte Hughson, if I may,’ a beautiful male voice replied, the heavy accent all too familiar.

  Charlie folded her napkin with trembling hands as she slowly rose to her feet. Starting toward the door on unsteady legs, she pressed down her pale blue morning dress, hoping there weren’t too many wrinkles in it this early in the day.

  Anxiously, she considered her next move. It wasn’t appropriate for her to go to the door and greet her visitor, but she didn’t think she could stand waiting for him to be directed inside. She had to see him. Now. But what would her father think if she did such a thing?

  ‘Charlie, there is a young gentleman at the door for you. Nice looking chap. A bit foreign. Who is he and are you at home?’ asked her father, coming back to the dining room door to meet her.

  ‘I imagine it is Juan Hernando Alvarez, Papa. And I am most definitely at home for him.’

  Then she was lifting her skirts and running past her flabbergasted father, her heart exploding in her chest with joy. The hall had never seemed so long before. But finally she reached its end and skidded to a halt at the front door. She waited only long enough to confirm that the handsome man on her doorstep, with a smile so big it split his face, was really Juan, before she launched herself into his arms.

  ‘Querida,’ he cried.

  He wasn’t prepared for her unladylike embrace, but he quickly recovered, clinging to her as tightly as she clung to him.

  ‘Oh, dear Charlie, I have missed you. I had started to think you really were just a wonderful dream. But you are real. You are real!’ He lifted her off the ground and swung her around until she was laughing and giddy and begging to be put down.

  He lowered her slowly to the step and she stared into the warm brown eyes that had been burned into her life-long memory such a short time ago. ‘I thought you would never come back.’

  ‘I had to wait out the full moon, just to make sure. And then I had to make my way back here and confirm a few loose ends. I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘You are not infected?’ she asked, pressing his cheeks with her hands, searching his eyes for any sign that all was not right with him.

  ‘No, I am not. So I have come to ask permission of your father to court you, my Charlie. If you still want me to.’

  Charlie didn’t reply. Her throat was too full of her overjoyed heart to allow for words. She just rose on tiptoes and kissed his smiling lips. And he kissed her back, deeply and completely, until the sound of her father clearing his throat reminded her where she was.

  ‘Papa, I would like you to meet Mr Alvarez. He would like your permission to come calling.’ She turned to beam at her father, her arm linked possessively through Juan’s.

  ‘Hmmm, so this is what the vapours have been about this last week.’ He turned to address Juan with suspicion. ‘You are a foreigner, young man. I will not have my daughter married to a foreigner who takes her off to live on the Continent. If you have any such plans I must refuse your request.’

  ‘I have just accepted an offer of a position with the London Opera Company, sir. So I have no plans to leave this country in the foreseeable future. And you can rest assured that I am of good character, from a good family and would be able to provide comfortably for your daughter.’

  ‘Well then, I imagine you will do,’ her father said with a harrumph. ‘You have my permission to call on my daughter. You look familiar. Have we met before?’

  Charlie bit her lip and looked at the stairs beneath her satin slippers. ‘No Papa, you have never met. Come in, Juan, I was just having breakfast. Would you care for something to eat?’ She drew him by the hand into the hallway as her father started down the front stairs.

  ‘You must have Mary in the room with you at all times,’ her father said over his shoulder. ‘I will have no foreigner taking liberties with my girl when I am not there to supervise.’

  ‘Of course, Papa, as if I would allow such a thing!’ Charlie beamed as she began to close the front door.

  When there was a solid barrier between father and daughter, Charlotte once more threw herself into Juan’s arms. ‘Oh, Juan, I have missed you so.’

  ‘You need never miss me again, sweet Charlie. I am here now and this is where I plan to stay,’ he said as his mouth found hers.

  And for a very long time, even with Maisie hovering nervously in the background, they kissed and touched and reassured each other that hearts were once more healed, that God was indeed good, and that life was wonderful.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  When I finished the Werewolf Keep Trilogy I felt such a sense of loss that I ferreted out a short story I’d written some years ago and reworked it as a prequel novelette for the Trilogy. I love the Gothic style of writing, sexually ignorant women and overly gallant but sexist men of this era. It’s lots of fun to write. And I hope you found it lots of fun to read, (and consider reviewing it on Amazon.)

  If you haven’t read the trilogy, here is a little taster from ‘Guardian of Werewolf Keep’. If you have, be assured that Charlotte is about to have her story told in the near future, so keep your eyes open for ‘Return to Werewolf Keep’.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Philomena Davenport stared up at the pile of weathered stones and fallen turrets outlined on the twilit skyline of the desolate Yorkshire moor. This was Breckenhill Keep? How could it be? Her father’s will stipulated that she must live here for three months before inheriting his immense wealth, but no one but goats could live in this fallen down ruin!

  It was a ghastly trick. Yet another perpetrated on her by her cruel, absent parent. What other explanation but cruelty could there be for leaving his wife and daughter to live in genteel poverty, believing him dead all these years, while he’d actually lived on with what could only be considered spectacular wealth? What kind of a man would do such a thing?

  The carriage trundled on toward its destination as the shadows gathered. The closer they came to the ancient castle, the more daunted she became. In places, it was several stories high, towering over them like a malignant giant. In others, it had toppled to the height of a fence.

  The central part of the Keep seemed solid enough. It appeared to be a stronghold of sorts, with long, thin windows harking back to a time when bowmen hid at such openings to fire down upon their medieval enemy. Rounded by age, the castellated battlements at the top still reminded her of the castles on a chessboard.

  The horses pulled up on the rutted driveway in front of a huge, oak door. This, at least, seemed to be in a good state of repair.

  Her new footman jumped down from h
is seat next to the driver and came to the window. He peered in at her anxiously. Phil lifted her chin and tried to look imperious.

  ‘Please open the door, Phelps, and help me down. Then go up to the door and knock. It is obvious that the staff is unaware, as yet, of our arrival.’

  Phil tried to sound older and worldlier than her twenty-two years. She knew that servants would easily lose respect for a mistress who showed uncertainty of any kind. Her new staff didn’t need to know that, before last week, she had been little more than a servant herself.

  The footman opened the door with marked reluctance and helped her down from the coach. Young Prudence, her maid, scrambled down after her. They both stood patiently waiting while the footman climbed the rough-cut stone stairs to the large door.

  Phelps used the huge brass doorknocker, shaped like a yawning beast, to draw attention to them. The sound of the loud rap echoed hollowly in the gloom.

  They waited; then waited a little longer. As the minutes passed, Phil realised she had stopped breathing. Deliberately, she drew a deep, calming breath into her lungs and called up to her man.

  ‘Knock again. There has to be someone here.’

  Phelps did as her bidding, this time with more enthusiasm.

  Night was upon them now and the full moon provided their only light. In the eerie silence, she heard the horses shift restlessly in their traces. It felt like they were the only people alive on this desolate moor.

  When the second knock still brought no response, Phelps raised the knocker again. As he did so, the door flew out from beneath his hand and he almost fell across the threshold.