Page 6 of Scary In Love
Mason
The Tavern is the spot guests arrive in immediately after exiting the haunt. It’s a place to decompress after the horrors of the main event, and I’ve pulled old furniture from all over the house to make sure they can relax and enjoy Halloween-themed drinks.
It’s also where I’ll spend most of the night, a base to make sure everything is going as planned.
The cast and crew have rehearsed each scene often enough that I’m confident it will take guests one hour to make their way through all our rooms, but tonight I can’t focus.
I’m too busy watching the door, hoping the mystery beauty from the bottom of the stairs will walk through it soon.
It’s still early.
She’ll turn up eventually.
Staff in the Tavern wear 1920s outfits: tweed suits, club-collar shirts, and flat caps.
With bloody faces and an assortment of weapons, we’ve obviously been brawling, though it’s not clear if we’re the victims or the instigators.
Our well-rehearsed lines should keep guests guessing until the doors close at eleven sharp.
My weapon of choice is an axe with a long wooden handle, a dummy prop that makes a great addition to the bartending experience when I smack the butt down on the bar top, or serve carefully balanced shots off the flat side of the head .
Sammy has a pistol, Lulu has a blade hidden down the front of her corset, and she’ll do a great bit, whipping it out when it’s time for customers to pay up.
Given how much an alcohol license and security cost, I’m hoping we’ll make plenty of extra cash through the bar, and we want people to stay as long as possible.
Everything is on schedule until my radio earpiece sparks with the one thing no haunt director ever wants to hear.
“Medical assistance required in the drawing room. Medical assistance required in the drawing room.”
I push the button to talk and grab a first aid kit from underneath the bar. “On my way.”
My pocket watch is an authentic part of my costume, which luckily still works. We’ve only been open for twenty minutes. How can we have a first-aid incident already? And in the drawing room, of all places? All guests have to do is walk in and sit down.
My brain whips through the details of the room. Two sofas, one table, no trip hazards, one—
Oh shit. The fireplace.
When I drew up our risk assessment, necessary for both a safe experience and insurance purposes, I knew the open fire would be deemed high risk.
But I have safety protocols in place; a fireguard, extinguishers, and a room crew who know to keep guests away from open flames.
That brought the risk down to medium, but if someone’s been burned, I’ll never forgive myself.
It’ll be the end of haunt season, and my time here too.
First-aid instances aren’t unheard of in scare houses. Usually, it’s a fainting guest, and we take them to a bright, modern room for a cup of tea and reassurance that it was all made up and everything will be absolutely fine .
If it’s not a burn, and Clarissa’s made someone faint in the very first room, then she deserves a bonus.
“Ron, hold the next group until I give you my word,” I say through my earpiece.
“Copy that.”
In his role as Jessop, the butler, it’s Ron’s job to greet our guests and help them enter the house on time. He sets the scene for the story, but he’s also a master at making stuff up on the spot, and I’m sure he can entertain them for a few minutes.
It took a while to learn the layout of the house, but I know every inch now, even in the dark. I weave through the corridors that are closed off to the public and get there in under thirty seconds.
As per protocol, the team has turned the lights up, and stepped out of character to support our guest. Though in these costumes, you wouldn’t know it.
Every room has a mix of interactive actors, the ones who tell their part of the Miller family story, and scare actors.
Their role is fairly self-explanatory. One of those will be the room lead, and it’s their responsibility to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Through rehearsals, they form a tight-knit crew who will scare and reset, over and over again, every night for the three weeks we’re open.
When I burst into the drawing room, I find Clarissa and Matteus, our Lady Miller and our scare actor, huddled around the sofa but no sign of Mikey.
They step aside to reveal the guest, reclining on our sofa, clutching her knee, chest heaving as she breathes deeply.
Her.
The woman at the bottom of the stairs.
The most beautiful woman I have ever seen .
It takes great effort to pull my eyes away, but I scan the room for signs of blood, or hazards that could injure someone else. She’s clearly breathing, and nobody is on fire, thank fuck.
“It’s her knee, boss,” Matteus says, stepping aside to let me crouch in front of her. My hands reach into the kitbag for an instant icepack while I attempt to check her over.
It’s a top-to-bottom process, starting with scanning for a head injury, but my thoughts get lost in the long dark waves spilling over her shoulders, and the bleached blonde streaks that frame her face.
Just like before, my instinct is to curl them around my fingers and pull her close, but I focus on squeezing the pack, shaking it to activate the cold while I keep going.
My gaze travels from her dark brown eyes to full, pouty lips, then down to where the buttons on her cardigan strain against her cleavage. It’s cropped, revealing a band of bare skin above the pink skirt she’s paired with black ankle boots, and those fishnet tights.
I’m fucked.
Fishnets are my weakness.
Not only do they look incredible stretched over her gorgeous thighs, but they’re the super sexy kind with big, wide gaps. The perfect size for me to hook my fingers into and rip apart.
Always wanted to. Never had the chance.
The tights caught my eye when she first walked in. Instead of hiding her body, they beg me to look, and the rest of her is just as stunning. Motioning for her to spin around for me wasn’t strictly part of my act. I did it without thinking and hadn’t expected her to actually do it.
“You…” she whispers.
“Yeah. Me.”
Women have been the last thing on my mind while I’ve been preparing for tonight, but this one has my full attention .
I can’t look away, and she’s looking back, her eyes bouncing around my face as she checks out my makeup. The bruised eye, busted nose, and bleeding cheek, all fake of course, but convincing enough thanks to lessons from the specialist make-up artist I hired to train the cast.
“Can I?” I ask, holding the icepack closer to her knee. She nods and pulls her hand away. Her skin looks red and tender.
I cup the back of her calf to hold her steady, and press it gently against her. She hisses at the contact, then throws her head back with a breathy moan that’s probably pained but definitely sounds like pleasure.
Still on one knee, I watch as her lower lip disappears behind her teeth, and she moans again. I press harder. Goosebumps prickle up her thigh, and the tip of one of my fingers slips beneath a strand of her fishnets.
She squeezes her eyes shut. Her legs part ever so slightly. I stroke the soft skin at the back of her knee. She shudders, and time stands still, until Clarissa coughs behind me, snapping out of whatever the fuck I’m doing here.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell our guest before reluctantly dragging my gaze away from her to talk to the crew. “What happened here?”
“It wasn’t me.”
A balaclava-clad face appears beside my thigh, and Mikey rolls himself out from underneath the sofa. It was his idea to use a car creeper, a board on wheels that helps him slide in and out, and it was a damn good one.
“Really, it wasn’t their fault,” she winces, her lips pinched together as she breathes through the pain. “Your cast are excellent. It was my date. He freaked out and kicked me.”
I look around the room for the dickhead who did this to her .
“Then crawled out of here on his hands and knees looking like he was about to piss himself,” Matteus says.
The woman laughs, a beautiful sound, then winces as she tries to sit upright.
“Well, in that case, job well done, team. I’ll take it from here.”
They hurry to reset the room, ready for the next group.
“I’d really love to check you out a bit more.”
She smiles at the unintended innuendo, and my brain short-circuits for a second, picturing her lying back, skirt hiked up, with me on my knees for other reasons. I squeeze her calf one more time, reluctant to let go.
“Your knee, I mean. Check it out in our first aid room? It’s not far. Do you think you can walk?”
“I can try,” she says, taking hold of my arm and pushing up onto her feet.