The Chateau: An Erotic Thriller Read online

  “That was only a test,” Polly said. “She’s not really going to kill you. That’s not her style.”

  “What is her style?”

  “If she decides to break you, she won’t kill you,” Polly said with a grin that made his stomach lurch. “She’ll just make you wish you were dead. Hungry?”

  10

  At the look on his face, Polly patted his head and told him not to worry about Madame. And once he started eating, he stopped worrying. After twenty minutes at Madame’s home, Kingsley had already decided he would drag this assignment out as long as possible. The late dinner Polly provided for him was delicious. Some kind of thick vegetable soup spiced with basil, pepper, and thyme, served with a steep glass of cabernet.

  “Good wine,” he said after a sip. “Spiked? Poisoned?”

  “Madame would never ruin cabernet by spiking it. Champagne, maybe. But never the good wine.” Polly’s eyes twinkled with amusement as she sat down in the chair across from him.

  “The house is very cozy for a cult, too,” Kingsley said. “Not that I’m complaining. I was expecting a drafty castle with stone floors and dungeons.”

  “You’re in the new part of the house,” Polly said. “Built in 1910. Some famously alcoholic Edwardian architect added this wing to the old house back then. The original house is exactly what you would think of when you think of a château. Very drafty. A nightmare to keep warm in winter. The new wing is where we stay from November through April.”

  “Can I see the old house?”

  “Tomorrow…if you survive the night,” she said with dramatic relish.

  “I think I’ll make it till morning,” he said. “I’ve survived scarier sorts than you.”

  “Oh, I’m not very scary, I know. That’s one reason I came here,” she said. “I like being in charge of men, but I’m not much of a sadist. My mother was very disappointed in me for that very reason.”

  “Your mother? She wanted you to be a sadist? My mother wanted me to be a doctor.”

  “Oh, yes,” Polly said. “Like I said, I was born here, in this house. It was very different, though, in my mother’s time.”

  “Your mother lived here?”

  “For years. When she fell in love with my father who was a slave here, Madame kicked us out.”

  “Kicked you all out?”

  “It’s the rules. No monogamy. No falling in love. Unless it’s with the house.”

  “Hard rule to follow,” Kingsley said. “Not being allowed to fall in love, I mean. The heart wants what the heart wants.”

  When he’d fallen in love as a teenager, that relationship had broken fourteen rules in their school’s student handbook. Kingsley had gotten bored on afternoon and counted.

  “I say ‘kicked us out,’ but Madame wasn’t cruel about it,” Polly said. “Mom knew the risks and left on good terms with Madame. Good enough that Madame took me in when I wanted to come back.”

  “What did your parents do after you all left here?”

  “Mom took us back to Toronto and started her own little château there, just our family. My father was her husband and slave, and she had a few other men who submitted to her. My brother served, too.” Kingsley goggled at her. “It’s not like that,” she said, grinning. “It wasn’t sexual. Well, not my brother, obviously. My father, yes. He worshipped my mother. Lived in abject servitude to her and loved it.”

  “But your brother?”

  “He was raised to serve women. He did the cooking and cleaning at home. I had the paper route. You look so shocked,” she said, reaching out and tweaking his nose playfully.

  “I am,” he said.

  “All over the world right now,” she said, “girls are being raised in homes where they’re expected to serve men—first their fathers and then their husbands. The boys get the jobs outside the home and the girls do the cooking and cleaning inside the home. So many countries, so many cultures, it goes without saying that the women serve the men of the household. For some reason—sexism—when it’s reversed, when the fathers and the sons are expected to do the cooking and the cleaning, people assume we’ve all gone insane.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Kingsley said. His sister had done most of the chores when they were growing up. Polly had a point.

  “Most men don’t. They simply take it for granted that they’re kings in their castles. Then the daughter grows up and moves out and the wife gets fed up and leaves him, and the poor man who’s left behind can’t even boil an egg.”

  “I take it the men in this house do the egg boiling?”

  “You know how to boil an egg?”

  “If you gave me a recipe,” Kingsley said. “Although…you did serve me dinner.”

  “Dinner that was cooked by a man. And you’re new here. A baby. We take very good care of the new babies in this house. That being said, they aren’t allowed to stay babies for long.”

  He grinned at that and kept eating.

  “I came back two years ago. It was time to leave home…leave home and come home,” Polly continued. “My mother’s a force of nature. Here, I can relax. Be myself. I’ll never be the Valkyrie my mother is, and Madame is just fine with that. She relies on me. I’m her second-in-command.”

  “Are you going to command me?”

  “If you keep being so handsome,” she said, “I’ll have to. Or I’ll never forgive myself. Are you finished eating?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Did you enjoy it?” Polly asked.

  “I haven’t had home-cooked food in so long I almost came from the first bite. I live on coffee and cigarettes.” He could use a Gauloise right about now, but didn’t want to be rude.

  Polly grinned. She smiled easily and often, and he liked that about her.

  “We’ll fatten you up,” she said. “Angelo’s cooking is half the reason I stay here. And half the reason I can’t fit into any of my old jeans anymore. No one is complaining.”

  “I’m not,” Kingsley said, and Polly gave him that look women did when a man complimented them and they weren’t quite sure they believed the compliment. But she should. She had a lush, full figure. The gown and robe did far more for her lovely curves than a boring pair of jeans ever would.

  “Wash your dishes and dry them, and leave them in the rack,” she said, pointing toward the sink. “When that’s done, come up the stairs right outside the kitchen. I’ll be in the third room on the right. I need to start your bathwater running.”

  “You’re giving me a bath? Really?”

  “Baby,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Of course I am. How hot do you like your bathwater?”

  “Boil me like a lobster.”

  “Only if I can eat you after,” she said, and with a swish of silk, she left him alone in the kitchen.

  Alone. All alone. Or was he?

  Kingsley glanced around and made sure no one was watching him, no cameras, no spyholes.

  A telephone hung on the kitchen wall. He could use it right now to call his superiors. They could trace the call, find the house. He didn’t do it. So far he’d been treated with nothing but kindness. No one was holding him prisoner. If he were going to betray Madame’s privacy, it would have to be for very good reason, and so far she hadn’t given him one. Still, he did glance at the phone, checking to see if the house number was listed on it. No luck there.

  After doing his dishes, as ordered, he found the back stairs and went up. The second story was even cozier than the more formal downstairs. The hallway was covered in long red rugs and the lights were turned down low. The house had gone quiet since he’d arrived. No more voices and laughter. A sleeping house. It was late. Almost midnight. From behind one closed door he heard the unmistakable sound of a woman quietly having an orgasm. Ah, so not everyone was sleeping.

  Another door in the hallway hung slightly ajar, and Kingsley couldn’t resist peeking inside. At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The room was quite dark except for one small nightlight in the shape
of a sleeping lamb. By the window he spied something he never expected to see in this place—a bassinet, white with sheer netting draped over it. He crept to the bassinet. A small baby slept inside, lying on his back, tiny hands clenched into tiny fists, and a little square blanket decorated with leaping sheep pulled to the baby’s chin.

  “Kingsley?” came a whispered voice from the doorway. He turned and saw Polly walking toward him.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice as low as he could make it. “The door was open.”

  “It’s fine. This is Jacques,” she said as she adjusted the baby’s blanket.

  “Yours?”

  “Ah… Yes and no,” she said, smiling tenderly down at the baby boy. “Come on. Your bath is ready.”

  Reluctantly, he let her lead him from the room. He wouldn’t have minded watching Jacques sleep a little more. He hadn’t been around a baby in years.

  “What do you mean yes and no?” he asked as Polly led him down the hall.

  “We all help with the rearing of children,” she said. “He’s not my son, but he’s as much my responsibility as his mother’s.”

  “Do the men help raise the children here, too?’

  “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  Kingsley felt a knot form in his chest. He ignored it.

  “When Madame said she had a family here, I thought she meant it the way, you know, cult leaders call their ‘flock’ their family.”

  “Not quite,” she said. “We are very much a family here. Jacques is the first baby born here in a long time, but there have been other children in the house. Myself included. And several more on the way.”

  “Who is Jacques’s father?” Kingsley asked.

  “No idea,” she said with a shrug. “Not that it matters.”

  Her answer was offhand, yet spoke volumes.

  “Paying in salt,” Kingsley said.

  “What was that?” Polly said.

  “You breed the men here, don’t you?” Kingsley asked.

  Polly winked at him as she pulled him gently into the room. “Smart boy,” she said. “Now you’re catching on.”

  So…it seemed life at the château was not so tame after all.

  11

  Kingsley let Polly lead him by the hand into her bedroom. It was sumptuous and sensual with pale blue walls and a grand blue bed, with draperies hanging over the padded silk headboard and a large steamer trunk at its foot. He studied the room in silence. He must’ve been quiet for too long, because Polly squeezed his hand.

  “Don’t worry,” Polly said with a teasing smile. “I won’t use you for breeding stock.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “So you do want to be bred?”

  “Not at the moment,” he said. “I’m free for breeding tomorrow.”

  Polly laughed. “Come on, you. Bath time.”

  The bathroom, too, was elegant, if decadent. A large claw foot tub was already filled with steaming water and rolled white towels were stacked on a rough wood table by the pedestal sink.

  “Do I take my clothes off or do you?” he asked. “I don’t know the etiquette here yet.”

  “We don’t go for a lot of rules around here. The etiquette for the men is to serve the women with enthusiasm and good humor. The etiquette for the women is to treat the men with mercy. We tend to spare the rod.”

  “What if the man likes the rod?”

  “Do you like the rod, Kingsley?”

  “What kind of rod are we talking about?” he asked. “Never mind. Whatever kind of rod it is, I probably like it.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind. As for removing your clothes, I’ll do most of the work. Only because it pleases me to undress you tonight. Tomorrow it may please me to watch you undress yourself. That’s why we have so few hard and fast rules. As long as you strive to do your best to please the women of the house, you’ll do fine here.”

  “How many women are in this house?” Kingsley asked as Polly pulled his sweater off over his head and went to work unbuttoning his jeans.

  “Ten counting Colette, though she’s not officially a member of the household yet.” Polly pushed his jeans down to his ankles and he stepped out of them.

  “And how many men?”

  “Eight. Nine, counting you. Madame doesn’t allow equal numbers. There can never be the same number of men as women. Too easy to pair off. All the men are used by all the women. If you fall in love and want to be monogamous, like my parents, that’s fine, but you don’t do it in this house.”

  “Ten women and nine men…where does everyone sleep?” Kingsley asked, trying to sound merely curious while he pumped Polly for information.

  “Only the women have rooms of their own,” she said. “The men sleep wherever they’re told to. On the floor if ordered. In bed with one of us if ordered. On the lawn if ordered. Or the roof or the bathtub or wherever we say.”

  “With Madame?”

  “If ordered. Though I don’t know if she’s ever ordered one of the boys to sleep with her.”

  Kingsley stepped into the bathtub. The water was hot, very hot, just the way he liked it. The heat seeped into his wounds and his aching muscles, and he felt more relaxed than he had in months.

  “I don’t like the idea of sleeping alone on the ground,” Kingsley said.

  “In that case,” Polly said and flicked water into his face, “you’ll just have to please us, and you’ll get to sleep in a bed every night.”

  “I suppose I will. If I must, I’ll make the sacrifice.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You have to earn a place here. And you haven’t done that yet.”

  “How does a man earn a place here?” he asked.

  “Madame tests you. If you pass, you may stay.”

  “When will she test me? I mean, if I wanted to stay.”

  Polly lowered her voice. “Don’t look now, but you’re already being tested.”

  Before he could ask another question, she dumped a wine glass filled with soapy water over his head.

  The bath was hardly the sexual sensual affair he’d anticipated. With a rough sponge, Polly scrubbed him with a vengeance from head to toe and dunked him under water twice to rinse his hair. He needed the scrubbing after last night’s sex and the day’s long miserable public payphone vigil. Kingsley decided he liked that Polly didn’t make the bath into something sexual. That would give it a meaning he didn’t want it to have. He hadn’t been taken care of in a long time. He used and was used in return. When was the last time someone had paid him a simple kindness like a home-cooked meal and a hot bath? Too long, he decided. He hadn’t even known he missed someone caring if he had dirt under his fingernails or not. By the time she’d finished with him, he was red and raw and squeaky clean.

  “Good. Your fingernails are very short,” she said, inspecting his hands. “That’s a requirement in this house.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Kingsley said. She gestured for him to stand up, and she tossed him a plush white towel.

  “You’re very handsome when you’re wet and being a smartass,” she said. “I might have to do bad things to you tonight.”

  “Bad bad things?” he asked as he roughly dried his hair. “Or good bad things?”

  “Good bad things.”

  “Those are my favorite kind of bad things.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and leaned back against the bathroom counter. He felt good. Relaxed and clean and warm. In a house this warm, it was easy to forget that winter waited for him outside. Outside and in his dreams.

  Polly stepped close to him and unwrapped the towel from his waist and tossed it on the floor.

  “Tell me what your favorite bad things are,” she said. Then she kissed his bare shoulder. His bare clean shoulder. He could smell himself and he smelled like warm skin and soap. Polly was close enough that he could smell her—simple floral shampoo and maybe a touch of vanilla behind her ears.

  “My favorite bad things?�
� he asked. “Just this morning I was lying in bed imagining my wrists tied to the headboard.”

  “Were you hard thinking about it?”

  “A little.”

  “Nothing little here,” she said, taking his cock in her hand. “Were you alone?”

  “I was. The girl I’d brought home had already left.”

  “So did you masturbate?”

  “No,” he said. “I thought about it, but I try not to give those fantasies too much power over me. Especially if they’re not going to come true.”

  “Maybe tonight,” she said, “they will. If you’re good.”

  Kingsley resolved to be very very good. Polly ran her fingers through his still-damp hair, but not in a sexual way. Not really. She was pushing the long strands off his face.

  “There,” she said. “That’s better. You need a haircut.”

  “You should have seen my hair in high school. Down to my shoulders.”

  “Why did you cut it?” she asked.

  “I joined la Légion.”

  “They have no respect for pretty-boy hair.”

  “Should I get used to being treated like this?” he asked when she picked up a fresh dry towel and ran it over his hair again. He laughed as she rubbed it in his face, like the fun babysitter one hoped to get instead of the mean one.

  “You all get special treatment on your first night.”

  “Would you like me to give you some special treatment?” Kingsley asked as Polly dried off his thighs. She seemed to be taking her time with the task.

  “Oh, but that’s the best part of being a woman in this house,” Polly said smiling up at him. “It’s not special treatment at all. It’s just how it’s done here.”

  Polly took his cock in her hand, lightly, not stroking it, merely holding it. It felt good simply to have her soft fingers wrapped around his hardness.

  He moved in to kiss her. She put her hand over his lips and grinned.

  “Kisses are earned.”

  She gave his cock a little tug before letting it go. She switched off the bathroom light and led him into the bedroom. Instead of turning on a lamp, she pushed open the heavy curtains. The moon was bright white and full. Polly looked radiant in her white nightgown, which glowed in the moonlit dark. She turned from the window, faced him, and said, “Have you ever let a woman take you?”