Page 89 of The Hangman's Rope

He got in on the driver’s side, and started it up and I swallowed hard. He shifted gears, working the pedals expertly and when he took his hand from the gear stick, he placed it on my knee every time.

I liked that touch. It seemed to steady me.

I suddenly wished I had asked him to put a harness on me under the dress, wondering if it was too late – wondering if it would ruin the line of the dress.

“What are you thinking about so hard over there, Sweetpea?” he asked me.

I smiled and it felt brittle, even to me in the moment and I told him.

He looked surprised and then pleased.

“I think when we get there, I might be able to cook something up,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Anything for you, babe, and especially this. You know how much I like to play with you.”

I smiled then, genuinely, and it wasn’t brittle or scared.

I loved the way this man tended my spirit and how he loved to watch me flourish.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hangman…

The manse was in fine form by the time we reached it. The party hadn’t started, the caterers under direction of Torment were scurrying like ants, and some of the guys were standing around with drinks – they’d skipped the beer like I had and had gone straight for the liquor.

“Oh, no thank you.” Lorelai blushed and waved off the caterer who had held up the bottle of wine to silently ask if she wanted some.

I eyed him and put my lips to Lorelai’s ear and murmured, “Have some now, before the party guests arrive, then carry a glass of champagne. You don’t have to drink from it, but carry one to blend in and keep a motherfucker from pestering you to drink.”

She nodded a bit apprehensively and I kissed her temple and whispered, “Stay with me, I’ve got you.”

She looked up at me and there was a sheen of grateful tears across her luminous silvery eyes. I tucked her under my arm andshe leaned into my side and I caught Reaper staring as he usually did when there was something pretty and female nearby.

He was ever stoic, but his eyes gave him away from behind those ever-present round blue lenses… He studied the women we were with as though he found them fascinating creatures, and there was something else in there twisting behind his eyes. What that something was, was anybody’s guess. If anyone knew, it would be Grim, but Grim wasn’t telling.

None of us understood why Grim had taken on the project that was Reaper – we didn’t have to get it. All we had to do was understand that those two were as thick as thieves and in their own world, sometimes speaking their own language that none of us could hear.

Lorelai caught Grim’s eye and he winked at her, then she shyly tucked herself a little harder into my side when she caught Reaper’s eye on her.

He was honestly enough to make any one of us uncomfortable, but I think it was a macho point of silent pride among the guys to put up a front like he didn’t faze any one of us – but I knew better.

He gave every single one of us the fuckin’ creeps at one time or another. Some of us it took a little more some of us a little less, but all of us had felt that cold finger of fear run itself down our spines in his presence at one time or another.

None of us were immune.

It took women a hell of a lot longer than any guy to warm up to the dude. Madisyn seemed the least fazed out of the women that were with the club or hung around us with any regularity.

They had a strange sort of little friendship bond thanks to her art that’d developed into a brotherly/sisterly type of relationship or friendship.

I don’t really think Lore and Reap had fully come to an understanding yet – but that was something they had to workout in their own time and that I couldn’t fix or facilitate unless one or the both of them came to me for that sort of thing.

As of right now, Reap was Reap and doing that thing where he studied everyone in the room like he wondered what they looked like on the inside, while Lorelai remained shy and close to me.

There was a sort of comfortableness to the uncomfortableness of it all – and one that both could seemingly live with for now. That was alright by me.

We hung around talking, went through the main sitting room that’d been turned into a temporary gallery with Min-Syn’s paintings suspended from racks and contraptions that were artfully lit and draped with a black but also somehow shimmery material, making the paint colors pop and lending a magical and ethereal look to the paintings which images depicted Lorelai sitting at a table among some of the graves I recognized from Bonaventure, but seated opposite her, his own cup of tea in his bony hand, sat death itself, face shrouded from view, cowl deep and void of any guess at its features.

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