Page 17 of Five to Love Him
I dropped my phone on the bed next to me and stared up at the ceiling where morning light had painted a pattern through the curtains. My window faced the street, but our neighborhood was a quiet one. There was no noisy traffic here to keep me awake, and I should have gone back to sleep, but there was way too much on my mind.
Farrow’s strange job offer for one, the hive for another. And yeah, Instructor Arick had told us all not to reject any type of mating just because it didn’t conform to the current day human dating standards, but it was still weird. Looking back, perhaps my first impression of the Moonlight Diner as a place to get laid wasn’t all that wrong.
“What should I do, Bruno?” I asked the bear. “I wanted to harvest the tomatoes today. Guess that will have to wait. Should I start looking for a job myself? Secretary, hah. I don’t think so.”
I turned on my side, checked my alarm clock. It was eight-fifteen. I decided to get up and shower, make some coffee. I had that supernatural app, Hawthorne, on my phone. The app itself wasn’t supernatural as far as I knew, but it was how that world ran. I knew I had limited access with my human account, but I’d seen the job listings page. It couldn’t hurt to check it out.
eight
I handed my telephone to Conrad, who stood next to my desk in my office at St. Auguste, his lack of decorum on full display. Morning light added shading to his profile, enhancing what was already there.
I said, “Good heavens, Conrad, would you venture a guess as to what my new secretary disclosed to me?”
“No, Farr, I heard,” the cretin said. Then he proceeded to stuff my telephone—which was the newest model, I had been assured—into his ass pocket.
“Where are you putting that?”
A smile played around that tiny scar on his upper lip. Oh, I wanted to lick that scar. “You want to cop a feel?”
“Conrad, anyone might cop a feel. There are gaping holes in your trousers. It’s an invitation to leeches, much like the state of your hair makes fertile nesting ground for lice and other vermin.”
“Mm-hmm. Horny, are you? I swear, you get your clutches into some idiot human you can dazzle with your polished shoes and your nice ties, and you pretty much cum in your breeches. Why you run a school and not a theater group is beyond me.”
I glared up at him, uncrossed and recrossed my legs. Ah, at least my trousers were free of holes, and there was no chafing despite the state I was in. Conrad had got that one right.
“These young people are our future, and those humans who stumble into our world could ruin our future. That’s why someone with vision is needed to guide the two.”
Conrad pulled out his own telephone and started tapping on it with both thumbs. “And I bet it doesn’t hurt that Lord Hawthorne pays you handsomely.”
“Do you complain? It is that money that buys your moth-eaten jeans and those T-shirts that look like an entire rock band wore them to an orgy before you purchased them. And clearly, you failed to iron either.”
He looked up from his screen and focused on me finally. “You want me to take these wrinkly things off? I’m down to fuck.”
“You’re crude. Behave.”
“I’m not your manservant anymore, and I’m done taking your orders.”
“Then leave, but I will keep those clothes you wear.”
He snorted. “Willing to expose your students to my nude ass?”
I examined Conrad with the kind of incisive stare I knew he liked. “There are things to be learned from seeing you naked. Anatomy is a skill best honed by practical study.”
“You just liked the anatomists because they took the corpses you drank dry.”
“Did you not also feast with me, Conrad? Did you not straighten my coat thereafter and wipe my mouth from criminal blood?”
He rolled his eyes. “Because you are, were, and always will be a great big baby. Normal people, they go with the times and learn to get by on their own once they become vampires, but no, not you. You had to turn me.” He took two slow steps toward me, bent forward to uncross my legs with his hand, then shoved his own between my knees. “You had to turn your hot manservant too because you couldn’t be bothered to learn how to tie your own laces.”
“Cretin. I know how to do that.”
He leaned forward. My breath hitched. “Yeah? Prove it, Farrow. Show me.”
“You think you can command me? You are below me.”
“Not today, sweetie.”
My cock responded with yearning that hardened into desire in the span of a heartbeat.
