Page 13 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Eileen

Skinny though he was, the American boy managed to put away a bowl of porridge with sultanas and slivered almonds, thick-cut country bacon, local sausages and toast, along with a double pour of gin on ice.

Eileen, as usual, had woken up with a headache and no appetite, so she sipped smoky peat whisky and nibbled on a biscuit, watching Adam like a hawk.

He had exceptionally fair coloring, with white-blond eyebrows, cornsilk hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks.

Eileen’s tastes tended towards dark and handsome, or brunette and pretty, but Adam was more than comely enough.

“Will you tell me about him?” Eileen asked, running her thumbnail along the rim of her glass.

“Who?” Adam asked.

“Your grandfather. You said it was his stories that brought you out here. What was he like?”

“Grumpy,” Adam said, a smile touching his lips. “To everyone except me. If I was well behaved he would take me to the comic book store, and sometimes, when I sat still enough to listen, he would tell me stories.”

“You’re the only grandchild?” she asked, careful to frame it as a question. It was essential he believed she knew nothing.

“That’s right,” Adam said. “It’s part of the reason we were so close. His health wasn’t the best there at the end, and he needed help getting around, so I would drive him to doctors’ appointments and stuff.”

“That’s very kind,” Eileen said, only half listening.

She was sizing Adam up from all angles, trying to imagine him in every room of Craigmar, standing in front of every portrait, sprawled under sweat-damp sheets in every bed.

She was doing her best to paint a meant-to-be picture in her head, to grasp for anything that might tie them together faster, more securely.

He was different than she’d imagined. But people always were.

“I’ve told you something about me,” Adam said, gesturing to himself with his fork. Then, he turned the utensil around and pointed it at Eileen. “Now it’s your turn to tell me something about you. That’s just fair play, isn’t it?”

Eileen could have purred, she was so delighted by this turn. She loved nothing more than someone rising to one of her games, but it wasn’t quite time yet to show her whole hand. She had to build the suspense first with a few bluffs.

“You don’t want to hear what I have to tell you though! You seem like quite the rationalist to me. There’s no room for fairy tales in that very big brain, I’m sure.”

She was teasing at the truth with him, sooner than she ought.

But it had been so long since she had any visitors besides the doctor and her accountant, and it was so tempting to share more than she should, if only to keep Adam – interesting, impossible Adam – in her house and under her watchful eye a little bit longer.

“Try me,” he said, curiosity bright in his unwavering eyes.

He was one of those seeker types who gnawed at information like a dog with a bone, determined to devour every morsel of truth.

Even if Adam had to crack Eileen open with his teeth and lick out her marrow to get at what she knew, he would do it.

Eileen squeezed her thighs together, shifting to alleviate the pulse pounding between her legs. She liked being looked at like that, like she was a puzzle box to be solved, even if she had to be broken open to get at the secrets inside. The breaking was often her favorite part.

“You came out here looking for something more than a little family history, didn’t you?

” she asked. Maybe it was too wide a swing too early in this game, but she had to try.

Eileen grasped her hands together to keep them from shaking with excitement.

She never got to share this with anyone, under any circumstances, for any reason.

Finley himself only knew because he was as much a part of this story as she was.

But Adam was the reason she had been waiting for.

Adam was the key. “All those stories your grandfather told you about Craigmar, they weren’t just about the house or the grounds.

They were about something ancient under the earth, something alive. ”

Adam made an expression of disbelief, but his body language betrayed him. He was leaning far forward, elbows propped onto knees, as close to Eileen as he could get without actually touching her.

“I’ve come a really long way to have someone pull my leg. And, not to insult your hospitality, this is a very strange conversation to strike up with someone you’ve just met.”

“I know we’ve just met,” she said, and her mask fell from her face for a moment, long enough for one sentence to slip out. “But I feel like I’ve known you a very long time, and I suspect you feel the same.”

Adam stared at her, lips parted in invitation, eyes glittering in that almost affronted way men had when you startled them.

“And what if I said you were right?” he asked.

Eileen never got to answer him, because a movement over his shoulder through the cathedral window caught her attention.

“Looks like we have guests,” she said.

Adam craned his neck to look. Two figures were striding across the green towards Craigmar, one in bright green wellington boots, the other in a puffy pink jacket.

“Nikki,” Adam muttered, with the affection and irritation of someone inconsolably in love.

It was almost enough to make Eileen feel guilty for what she intended to do to him.

Adam fell into awkward silence as a distant door opened, and as Finley and Nicola found them in the library.

“Our intrepid explorers have decided to join us,” Eileen said, arching an eyebrow.

She had asked Finley to keep Nicola entertained for an hour or two while Eileen got a better read on Adam, but they had been gone an awfully long time, and Finley looked as guilty as a hunting dog that had killed its master’s pet rabbit.

“Finley was giving me a tour of the grounds,” Nicola said.

She was wind tossed and rumpled, blushing to the tips of her ears.

It was apparent she and Finley had been doing a lot more than touring the grounds.

You didn’t have to have Eileen’s keenly trained ability to sniff out desire on anyone to see that something had happened between them.

“Ah,” Eileen said, drawing out the syllable until she saw Finley wince.

No matter how old they got, and no matter how they promised to be better to each other, there was always a brutal pleasure in twisting the knife.

Eileen toasted Finley with her whisky. “Getting to know each other better, were we?”

It wasn’t that she held Finley’s roaming against him, exactly.

From an evolutionary behavioral perspective it was good for him to work off excess energy with other people, and he always came back doubly as desperate for her, practically begging to be allowed to bruise her, to kiss her, to even be granted the honor of unbuckling her shoes.

Eileen would wander herself, if there was any point to it, or if her ancestral anxiety would allow her to leave Craigmar for more than a few hours at a time.

But as it stood, she was generally impatient with anyone who wasn’t as finely tuned to her needs as Finley was, as well-trained in all the ways to torment and tease her.

Still, the door she kept cracked in their relationship for Finley to slip out into the night and return in the early morning smelling like sticky-sweet perfume or other men’s cologne was a concession and a compromise.

If they lived in gentler times, if they were able to be together fully in the way other people were in the unflinching light of day, maybe she would hoard him all to herself.

Or maybe not.

“I was looking for you,” Adam said to Nicola. “You look like you had an adventure.”

“Just a little one,” Nicola said, shooting a glance to Finley. Finley was staring very studiously at the patterns on the floor, but Adam caught that glance.

Finley, God bless him, tried to salvage it.

“Will that be all, sir?” he asked, probably desperate to storm back to his cottage and chop wood or scowl into a book or jack off or do whatever else it was Finley did to calm himself down.

“Oh, jig’s up, Finney,” she said, using his childhood nickname just to add a little salt to the salve for his wound. “No need to pretend on my account any more.”

“You told him?” Finley demanded, thrusting a hand out to Adam as though Adam was the one who had transgressed boundaries out there on the grounds, not Finley.

“He figured it out himself,” Eileen replied.

Finley would be humiliated if he knew Adam had seen him whipping Eileen the night before and, more importantly, that was information she might want to leverage strategically at a later date.

Besides, if he was worried about people watching he might hold back with her, and that wouldn’t do at all. “Very bright, this one.”

“Figured what out?” Nicola asked, looking between Finley and Eileen and then, very pointedly, to Adam.

“Listen,” Adam began, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture, “none of this is any of my business—”

“Eileen and I are romantically involved with each other,” Finley said in an admirable display of nerve. “We have been for years.”

“Oh,” Nicola said, giving Finley a wounded look, her rosebud lips pursed. To her credit, she didn’t look sad, only insulted. Eileen always thought women were at their most beautiful when in the throes of orgasm or righteous indignation, and Nicola wore rage very well. “You didn’t mention that.”

“Sorry,” Finley said, miserable as a raincloud. Eileen wanted to press on that discomfort like a tongue worrying at a sore tooth, just to see if he would squirm, but she resisted. There would be time for that later, when they were alone.

“Nicola, duckie, why don’t you come over here and sit next to me?” Eileen asked, patting the sofa cushion next to her. Nicola made no move to sit. “There’s no need for silly secrets any more. We’re all among friends here.”