1
“There’s no reason to be nervous. I’m an excellent matchmaker.”
I narrow my eyes at the tuxedoed man sitting across from me. “I’m not nervous,” I reply. “I’m regretting letting you talk me into this, that’s all.”
Mark Tintagel, former murderer and present-day monster, simply stretches out his feet and smiles at me. We’ve been driving for long enough that the New York City lights are far behind us, but his dress shoes still manage to gleam somehow. Along with his eyes, which are a dark and dangerous blue glittering out from the dark.
“I say this as your friend,” he says in a voice that could almost be called amiable if I didn’t know whom it was coming from. “But you really do need to fuck someone. For everyone’s sake, obviously, but not least of all my own.”
I fold my arms over my chest, and the silk and tulle of my masquerade gown rustles. Behind me are fairy’s wings. In my lap is a mask. All of it is green and gold, gossamer-thin, gossamer-soft.
All except—
I shift in my seat so I don’t have to think about it. “It has nothing to do with you.”
Mark gives me an exasperated look, and even in the barely-lit backseat of his limo, it’s unfairly handsome on him. “It has everything to do with me. I can’t even spend a quiet night in my own club when you’re there too, because all the sensitive subs flee into my office like terrified gazelles, and all the pain-sluts stampede toward you, even if they’re scheduled with other clients. You see my problem.”
“The submissives like it,” I say, and then amend myself. “Well, some of them like it.”
I’ve played at Mark’s club in D.C. for years, primarily as a Domme, but on one distinctly memorable occasion as a submissive.
(I say distinctly memorable, because the person I was submitting to at the time was Maxen Colchester. Yes, the Maxen Colchester, the war hero and president. It’s a long story.)
Thankfully for me and the erstwhile president, Lyonesse is known above all else for its secrecy, its utter discretion. Yes, it’s also luxurious, yes, it caters to a vast array of kinky needs with bespoke equipment and even more bespoke club submissives and Dominants. But truthfully, it’s the privacy that makes it the best club on the Eastern Seaboard, and possibly on the entire continent. What other club could boast presidents and princes among its members? Celebrities and countesses? Senators, as I once was, and vice presidents, as I am now?
I turn and stare out the window where the glowing mansions have begun peeking through the trees. I’m no stranger to wealth, but Bishop’s Landing is more than your ordinary, “well, of course I own a boat” wealth. It’s the kind of wealth that gets Great American Novels written about it; it’s Wharton wealth. Gatsby wealth.
And the mansions flashing past us are Gatsby mansions.
I close my eyes and try to lean back on the headrest, and then remember I can’t, on account of my elaborate updo and the damn fairy wings. And then I’m forcefully reminded—again—of the less conventional parts of this costume.
Why did I let Mark talk me into this again?
“My point remains, Morgan. You need to get laid. And taking out your sexual frustration on my submissives clearly isn’t helping you scratch the itch.”
Oh yes. That’s why. “I’ll admit,” I say, still staring at the sprawling houses outside, “it’s been a rougher dry spell than usual.”
“Given the state of Blanche’s ass last week, I’d say that’s an understatement.” Mark leans forward and braces his elbows on his thighs, his hands dangling between his knees. Hands that have thrilled and killed. “Tell me, old friend, about what’s been holding you back. You’re beautiful, you’re rich, you’re the vice fucking president...”
I don’t answer. I’m painfully aware of the Secret Service car behind me, of the eternally-buzzing phone in the silk-covered clutch next to me.
“Ah, is that it?” he asks. “Are you worried about taking a lover because of the potential scandal?”
“I’m not afraid of repeating my brother’s mistakes, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“Hmm,” Mark muses with a curling, monster’s smile, “but which brother? Current stepbrother president? Or former real brother president? Are we having Freudian feelings? Jungian feelings?”
“Stop psycho-analyzing me.”
Still the monster’s smile. “Then stop terrifying my submissives.”
“Fine. It’s not about Embry—or Maxen. And it’s not the vice president thing either. Are you happy?”
He leans back again, a satisfied look on his face. “Nearly. I still want to know why, and I want to know why you came to me for help. Not that I don’t enjoy playing Emma for my friends.”
“Emma was famously bad at matchmaking.”
“And still you came to me. Why, Morgan, if you didn’t trust I could help you?”
This—this is the heart of it. This is why I’m in a limo tonight headed for Bishop’s Landing and a masquerade so lavish and exclusive that it already had a security detail my Secret Service people could liaise with. This is why I’m in a costume that I didn’t choose, being stroked and caressed in places that can’t be seen by silk so expensive even I’d have trouble affording it.
I debate telling Mark the truth, and then I decide it doesn’t matter. He’ll see it eventually anyway. That is the problem with Mark Tintagel, if you really want to know. He sees too much. Especially when it comes to what people secretly want.
“I knew you’d—” I clear my throat. Fuck, this is hard to admit. And it shouldn’t be. But here I am anyway, trussed up in the silk and tulle a stranger sent me in a box yesterday. “I knew you’d find someone suitable.”
“So, you did trust me?”
“Yes.”
“This is still not an answer to my original question, Morgan.”
I don’t give him the satisfaction of a glare. “I think you already know, and you just want me to say it out loud.”
A slight hook to the corner of his mouth lets me know I’m right.
Mark and his fucking head games.
“This conversation is over,” I pronounce. “I think I’ve already humiliated myself enough for one evening.”
At that, Mark raised an eyebrow. “What, by wearing what your future paramour sent you?”
Heat—half embarrassed anger, half something else entirely—curls in my chest.
“Yes.”
Last week, I had finally admitted to Mark that I’d like to find a lover and did he know anyone—someone discreet, someone of any gender but with absolutely no connection to politics? He’d studied me in that cold, former killer way of his, and then proclaimed that he had just the person in mind.
And then came the invitation to the Constantine masquerade. Next had come the dress, the wings, the mask. The delicate, hand-sewn underthings. All shipped to my residence on the Naval Observatory grounds in a box the color of emeralds—the same color as my eyes—and shipped not from Mark, but directly from an atelier on behalf of my date.