Mick attached his lips to her clitoris while he slid a finger up inside her, hooking it until it pressed against the most tender, alive part of her sex, and she almost immediately began to come.
“Oh no, you don’t.” He removed his finger and gave her a single long lick up to her clitoris, sending her back arching off the bed in exquisite torture.
“You don’t get to come until I give you permission.” He smiled up at her, and she could see the fire in the eyes behind the mask. “You are all mine tonight. Did I forget to tell you this?”
From her pinned-down, sexually frustrated position, Piper laughed. She realized that turnabout was fair play and on their first night together she’d done much the same to him, but without the restraints.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he said, all the humor gone from his voice.
“I’m yours, Mick,” she said immediately.
“Good. Then there’s one thing I must insist you do tonight.”
Piper looked at him through heavy lids. “Anything.”
His lips curled in a wicked smile. “Tonight, you may call me ‘Sir.’”
* * *
He lost track of time. The candlelight spilled over their bodies, casting their skin in gold. Kisses melted into hours and hours melted into ecstasy. He’d ravished her too many times to count, turned her this way and that, tied her down, let her up, enflamed her with peacock feathers, and allowed her to use the bathroom only to attack her on her way out, lift her, and take her against the wall like a Viking on a rampage.
When he caught his breath, he whispered into her sweaty ear, “Oh, and by the way, the answer is yes—Mick does like it standing up.”
Many hours later, they’d finished off the wine and eaten every crumb of cheese.
At some point they lay exhausted, weak, damp, and Mick reached for the mask, pulled it up and off, and tossed it aside. They looked at each other in silence a moment, then began to laugh. But Mick watched as Piper’s eyes filled with tears and her laughter came out as a sob.
“What is it?” He stroked her face.
“It’s a miracle,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I never thought I’d get another chance with you, but here you are, and you’ve brought me so much unexpected joy and sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s real.”
He shook his head, feeling his own eyes well up. God, but he was falling in love with her. “You’re the miracle, sweet Piper—a beautiful, brilliant, lusty creature who’s only begun to spread her wings.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m the man lucky enough to watch you take flight.”
* * *
Piper sat up in bed, sweat pooling between her breasts and her heart thundering in her ears. After she gulped in as much air as she could, she reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp.
She nearly screamed. She was in a strange bedroom, beautifully appointed with Georgian furniture and brass candlesticks. She was in a huge bed, looking up at a gracefully arched canopy of white lace.
“Oh!” She stared at the naked man lying next to her, his black satin mask tossed aside on the pillow. No, this was not part of her dream. The handsome dark-haired man was real. And he was blinking and frowning.
“What’s wrong?” he mumbled.
“Invisible chains,” Piper said, immediately shaking her head at the strangeness of her reply. Where had that come from?
“Come again?”
Piper flung the satin sheet from her nude body and went stumbling toward the adjoining bathroom, dream and reality crashing around in her head, mixing and swirling and rolling until she didn’t know one from the other.
She and Mick were at a bed-and-breakfast south of Boston, where he’d created a night of fantasy and passion for her. Okay. As hard as it was to believe, that was the real part—a night filled with sweetness, intensity, and discovery. And Mick knew all about Ophelia’s diaries. He was going to help her with the exhibit. All real.
She’d fallen asleep in his arms, sated, warm, loved, happier than she’d ever been in her life.
Then came the dream.
Piper flipped on the bathroom light to examine her wrists. In the dream, the tender skin had been rubbed until it bled. Her throat had been sore from screaming. Chains, ropes—no! Whatever had her tethered down had been invisible, which had enraged her even more.
In the dream she’d cried out, “How can this be?” She was naked, on display before a crowd, a strange and ugly man’s dirty fingers touching her everywhere. His nasty laugh echoed in her head. She’d nearly swooned as the crowd of men—Lord B____’s dandy gentlemen friends?—taunted her.
Then her surroundings changed. She was part of a crowd, among the mob of men at the Charleston Slave Mart, the feral pack pressing closer, their shouts growing louder, the smell of fear in the fetid air.
But who was she in these dream settings? Was she the young Ophelia, put on the auction block at a country estate filled with sadistic Englishmen? Or was she the Ophelia of thirty years later, standing in the sweltering heat of the slave auction in Charleston, nauseous from the inhumane horror she witnessed, so furious that she ran to the auction master’s offices above the stables, holding up her skirts as she splashed through the muck.
Or maybe it was simpler than that.
Piper turned on the bathroom faucet and doused her face with cool water. She hung over the sink, catching her breath, letting the water drip from her forehead and cheeks.
What if the dream had been about her—just Piper Chase-Pierpont—a woman who’d been held down by invisible chains of her own making?
She closed her eyes. She breathed. She felt the water roll from her face to her bare breasts. And she swore to herself: never again will I pretend to be less than everything I am.
Piper gasped at the touch of a man’s warm, callused hand on her bare shoulder.
Mick stared back at her in the mirror, his mouth tight and his eyes worried. “Are you okay?”
Piper laughed, embarrassed. She reached for a hand towel and rubbed her face dry. “I’ve finally figured it out, Mick,” she said, smiling.
Mick shook his head, waiting for her to provide a few more details—like what the hell she was talking about.
“Sorry. The exhibit. The primary visual for Ophelia’s story.” Piper turned around to face him. She slipped her arms around his neck as he grabbed her bottom and lifted her to the edge of the sink. As if it were the most natural thing in the world now, Piper opened her thighs and welcomed him closer, clasping her ankles around his firm butt.
“I had a dream. It was so real,” she said. “And I know what to do with Ophelia’s exhibit now. I realize I’m running out of time and I’ve got, like, no budget, but I don’t think I have a choice about this—”
“Slow down. You’ve lost me.”
“I have to go to Charleston, Mick. South Carolina. I have to see it with my own eyes.”
Mick brushed a wet lock of hair from her face and smiled kindly at her. “I’m still lost, love.”
She nodded. “It’s the narrative thread of Ophelia Harrington’s story, her fight against human bondage, in any guise. She refused to be sold off as chattel to a man she didn’t love, right?”
A crooked smile appeared on his face. “And her refusal led to her life as a courtesan.”
“Yes, and the sex slave auction—I think it changed her forever.” Piper kissed him quickly. “But it wasn’t until 1856 that Ophelia began her crusade to end slavery. Her first public speech came after she returned from the Charleston slave auction. The site is a museum now. I need to see it.”
“Then we’ll go.”
Piper let go with a surprised laugh.
He leaned toward her, and that’s when Piper felt his erection poke against the open center of her body. “Why don’t you allow me to give you the trip as your birthday present, since I seem to have missed it by only days?”
Piper’s first instinct was to say no, but she stopped herself. She liked the way it felt to have a ma
n be so generous with her. It made her feel special.
“You’d really go with me?”
“Of course I would. We could make a weekend getaway of it.” He smiled down at her, puzzled. “I plan to be with you every step of the way on this, Piper.”
Mick’s words seemed so heartfelt and tender that her chest filled with heat. He’s going to be there for me. He made a promise.
For an instant, Piper stared at him in wonder. Her lips opened. She was on the edge of asking him what she wanted to know more than anything in the world: Why? Why are you willing to stick around for all this craziness? Are you falling in love with me?
But she didn’t ask. She wasn’t Ophelia. She was Piper. The new-and-improved version, sure, but Piper all the same.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you, Mick. That makes me happy.”
“Good. I like making you happy.”
With a sly smile, Mick slid inside her body, his mouth covering hers as she cried out from surprise and pleasure. Before Piper realized what was happening, Mick picked her up—still embedded inside her body—and carried her to their disheveled bed.
Twenty-three
The pilot had just announced their descent into Charleston, and Piper still had her face buried in her laptop. She’d been working nearly the entire trip, even during their layover in Washington. From what Mick could tell, she’d been leaving notes to herself, making lists, and tweaking (and retweaking) the design elevations.
He’d given her the space she’d needed—and took the time to catch up with his own work—but he noticed that as each day passed, she became more focused on the exhibit and less focused on him. It was part of the package, he knew. He was a big boy. He’d survive.
But on more than one occasion, Mick thought about good old Mr. Harrington, Ophelia’s saintly husband. As Piper had explained, the fellow always supported his wife’s efforts for abolition and women’s rights, even when she became a target for derision, his business was threatened, his manhood brought into question, and his family received death threats. Piper had said that Ophelia once wrote in a letter to a friend that she’d gone to her husband and offered to stop if he wished. His answer was to kiss her and say that he might as well command her to stop breathing.
Mick had to hand it to the guy—he was way ahead of his time. And he’d set the bar quite high for every man who would ever find himself involved with a driven woman.
Mick leaned over and kissed Piper’s cheek. Her eyes flashed at him at first, then she sighed and closed her computer. She let her head fall back against the airline seat.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I’m going to lose my job, you know. Probably right there on the spot.” Her words were flat. “And there won’t be a lot of choices for me afterward. The museum world isn’t exactly clamoring for over-budget, renegade feminist curators these days.”
Mick slipped an arm around her shoulders. “But the world is always in need of women brave enough to fight the establishment.”
She looked up at him sideways, a small smile touching her lips.
“Besides, I was hoping you might consider working with me on the reality show.”
Piper sat up straighter and pulled away from his embrace. Her expression became quite serious. “Do you have news to tell me?”
Mick shook his head. “I wish,” he said.
As he’d already explained to Piper, Mick’s agent and producers now seemed to be at an impasse. The cable network claimed it was because of temporary production schedule conflicts and budget approval delays, but Mick was feeling more jacked around with every hour. “We still haven’t gotten the green light. It’s maddening.”
“I don’t think I could work for you, anyway,” she said.
Mick laughed. “I didn’t say work for me, Piper, I said with me.”
She shrugged. “I’m a museum curator, Mick. It’s the only job I’ve ever wanted. It’s what I love. I’m not sure working for you on an archaeology reality show would be the best use of my education and skills.”
“With me.”
“Right.” She sighed. “Anyway, thank you for the offer, but I can handle my own career.”
Mick didn’t say anything right away. He had to make sure his next move was a good one. “There are a lot of similarities between your profession and this reality show,” he said, taking one of her hands. “Think about it. What is the purpose of a museum exhibit?”
Piper chuckled at the rudimentary question. “That depends on the specialized curatorial mission of the museum, of course.”
“Fine. So how about at the BMCS?”
Piper pursed her lips. “Installations at the Boston Museum of Culture and Society must educate, entertain, and ignite a curiosity for how the city’s history is connected to its present and future.”
“Aha,” Mick said, smiling.
“Aha?”
“Same for Digging for the Truth with Mick Malloy. We want to educate, entertain, and inspire an interest in the past.”
Piper shrugged again and looked out the window. “I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job of that without me tagging along.”
Mick let it drop. But he heard loud and clear what Piper left unsaid: she didn’t want him leaving Boston, but she wasn’t about to go chasing after him.
* * *
Mick had experienced his share of oppressive heat before—the summer he spent at the Bronze Age dig site in northeastern Thailand quickly came to mind—but the six-block walk from their downtown hotel to the city’s infamous indoor slave market had him dripping with sweat.
He and Piper walked down a slate sidewalk along the cobblestones of Chalmers Street, part of Charleston’s celebrated historic district. Lovely row houses in brick, stone, and clapboard lined the narrow lane, flower boxes bursting with welcoming color and Southern gentility.
“The scenery is as charming as the history is ugly,” Piper commented. It was just what Mick had been thinking.
They arrived at the brick façade of what was once part of Ryan’s Slave Mart, which had opened for business on July 1, 1856, shortly before Ophelia had made her journey there from Boston. Not coincidentally, the four-building compound opened on the day outdoor slave auctions were outlawed in Charleston. It seemed street auctions attracted abolitionists, and citizens were concerned the constant ruckus took away from their reputation as a “genteel city.”
The instant Mick and Piper walked inside, the air-conditioning slammed into them. And so did the heavy sadness of the building itself.
It didn’t take long for Mick to realize that touring a museum with a curator was a whole new experience. Piper missed nothing. She commented on every aspect of the design and display of information. She listened to every audio segment, including the powerful Depression-era recordings of former slaves’ firsthand accounts of the auction block. She paused to consider and analyze everything she saw. She took notes and drew sketches.
On more than one occasion, Piper sat quietly in whatever chair or bench was nearby. She stared at the ceiling of what was called the “showroom,” where slaves were told to strut and dance and hop on one foot, where their teeth and eyes were examined, and where an auctioneer skilled in salesmanship would get the highest price possible for their flesh.
Piper studied the door leading to the “barracoon,” a jail that housed slaves ragged from their journeys, where their chains would be removed so their wounds could heal, where they were examined by a doctor, and clothed, fattened up, and exercised to tone their muscles, where young girls’ hair was oiled and old men’s beards were dyed.
Piper cocked her head and gazed at the auction block, as if it were speaking to her. It was then that Mick saw the moisture in her eyes, the hard set of her jaw. He approached her, not speaking, not touching her. He only wanted her to know he was there.
Piper returned several times to one particular display, a British journalist’s account of a young woman being sold by one plantation owner to another, a man infamous fo
r his brutal treatment of slaves. The girl had stood on the auction block, looked the owner right in the eye, and said, simply, “I will cut my own throat from ear to ear before I’d be owned by you.”
Though the museum was small—just two floors and probably a fifth the size of the Boston Museum for Culture and Society—they spent three hours inside its walls, and another half hour conferring with the museum’s executive director.
Back on the roiling hot street, Piper was silent at first. When they reached the manicured city oasis of Washington Park a few blocks away, Piper collapsed onto a wrought-iron bench in the shade of towering live oaks draped in Spanish moss.
He sat down next to her.
Eventually, Piper spoke. “Did you know Ophelia forced her way into that miserable place, though women were forbidden? She insisted her husband see for himself. She wanted him to end all business dealings even remotely connected to slave labor—rice, cotton, tobacco.”
Mick’s eyebrows went up. “I just bet he did, too.”
“As soon as they returned to Boston,” Piper said. “And it cost him half his fortune.”
Piper looked up into the tangled canopy of leaves above their heads and when her lovely green eyes met his once again, they were alive with a sudden fierceness.
“What are you thinking?” he whispered.
Piper chuckled to herself. “The truth?” she asked shyly.
“Lay it on me. I can handle it.”
She nodded. “This exhibit is going to kick some serious ass, Mick.”
“It most certainly is.”
* * *
Piper stood in the middle of the museum’s south gallery, leaning over a makeshift plywood table as she reviewed elevations with the exhibit’s lead carpenter. She had to yell to be heard over the buzzing saws and pounding nail guns.
“Are you hungry?”
Piper looked up, and laughed in surprise. In the glare of the stark lighting stood Mick, Brenna, Basil Tate, and bed-and-breakfast owner Nanette Benson. Piper hadn’t expected them until much later in the day.
Mick held up two huge paper sacks, imprinted with the logo of Piper’s favorite Indian take-out. She gestured with her hands for them to meet her in the museum café.
A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man Page 22
