When I returnedto the world, there was a sticky wetness cooling on my thighs and a warm man’s body curled up behind my back. But it wasn’t the giant’s, Mr. Tanner.
“Sir?” I asked, my voice hoarse from crying out. Had they heard me all through the neighborhood?
“Yes, Ms. Reed?” Dr. Underwood said. His thin, gentle fingers ran over my side, sliding over my waist and up to cup a breast.
“Are they all like you at the manor?” I asked, covering his hand with mine so he would know that I didn’t mind the idea.
“Not like me,” he said after a moment. “Not exactly, but they are all… People would call them monsters.”
“I wouldn’t call Mr. Tanner a monster,” I said quickly. “He was very sweet.”
Dr. Underwood huffed a laugh, and I rolled onto my back so I could see his face. There was no hint of green in his eyes now, and I touched the dimple of his chin. Such a…a gentle man, holding such a lovely beast inside of him. I liked them equally.
“Then I think perhaps you will not mind it there so much,” Dr. Underwood said, smiling at me, eyes drooping with heavy slow blinks. “If you don’t mind that kind of work.”
I felt a little dizzy at the thought of it, but not in a bad way. My body was exhausted, but if Dr. Underwood had said we needed to go to the manor immediately, that there were more unusual gentlemen waiting for me, I would have agreed.
“I think I’ll like it very much,” I said. “I’m certainly better suited to it than service.”
Dr. Underwood snorted but hid it with a polite little cough. “Ah, yes. Were your parents in service? Is that how you started?”
“My parents were…unfit to raise me,” I said, cuddling into the doctor’s chest. “That’s what my aunt said. She raised me and put me in service as soon as I was old enough. It was never a good fit. This will be better.” I grinned up at him, hoping to brush my parents out of the conversation. I wasn’t sure where they were or who they had been. And my aunt had more or less stopped sending her letters of chastisement, especially after I was dismissed from the Teagues, my previous position to the Pickerings. The manor might end up being my last chance, but what a chance it was.
Dr. Underwood smiled, boyish and pleased, and I pulled his face to mine, pecking at his lips quick and often until his mouth slanted against mine, soothing the kiss into something long and deep and beautifully smooth.
I would have a new position to move into after all. One I was sincerely looking forward to.