Read Online The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky (Includes Lady Luck, House of Dolls, The Reluctant Bride, A Woman on Top, plus a bonus story!) by Eden Myles - Free Book Online

look surprised at all.”
    “ The men here are well-heeled, unlike most gentleman,” he explained. “There are no facades here, Lucky, no games of false propriety. We are men and we know what we are here for.”
    I was about to ask him a plethora of questions when Tiberius stopped me at the door and laid his hands alongside my face. His eyes were penetrating and very serious. “I’ll be along shortly, but I would dearly love for you to get to know the ladies of the Dollhouse.”
    “ Are they in the other room?” I asked. It wasn’t so unusual to divide the sexes, even among my enlightened circle of friends.
    Tiberius smiled fondly upon me, drew me close, and kissed me. His hand moved up my side and he boldly squeezed my breast. I immediately flushed at the realization that the other gentlemen in the room could see us and broke his warm, wet kiss first. “You shouldn’t be so shy, my filly,” he said low in my ear, the warning in his voice raising gooseflesh all along my neck. “It won’t serve you well later.”
    “ What comes later?”
    “ You’ll know later.”
    More mystery! I went into the other room, realizing that so far, no disaster had befallen me. It was so very odd, but it almost seemed like my bad luck fled me when I was in Tiberius’s presence!
    ***
    The room was long and starkly white, filled with the candlelight from five gigantic wagon wheel chandeliers. They illuminated the mirror-polished, black-and-white checked parquet floor and the great portraits hanging on the walls. But immediately after I glanced at them, I found myself looking away. Hundreds of portraits of various sizes covered the walls, and every last one of them were of nudes in compromising positions. I thought once more of Jeremiah Hampton, a man driven from his home in England because of his libertine thoughts, and because those around him thought him a witch for having them, and finally realized what the aims of the Society were. Namely, pleasure.
    What had Tiberius said? We are men and we know what we are here for.  
    I stood there in my court gown and wrap, feeling very foolish and ridiculously unworldly, and looked upon the small clutches of women scattered around the room, chatting amicably amongst themselves. I thought there must be fifty in all, all of them elegant and sophisticated, like members of Cinderella’s ball. Slowly, the women noticed me, and I blushed. Some I recognized. A few were the wives of successful businessmen back in Smithtown, and a few came from the surrounding regions, women whose pictures I recognized from the ladies’ magazine and society papers. Powerful women. Proper women. Unlike me. They drifted toward me, and I felt naturally awkward and hunted. Then they had surrounded me, no escape, and they smiled and started asking me questions as if I were a natural part of them, had always been a part of them. These were the wives of some of the most powerful men in New York, and I…well, for all my father’s former glory, I was just a country bumpkin. But I did my best to answer their questions and not sound like an unlearned child.
    They told me that I was very pretty, that they were looking forward to my play, whatever that meant. A few inquired about who my gentleman was, a few others admonished those ill-informed women for being so terribly out of the gossip loop. Of course, they were interested in the witch’s curse, and I proved it when one of the women offered me a glass of punch and I, of course, dropped it to the parquet flooring.
    But before I could make excuses for my clumsiness, the door opened and the men started filtering in. “You’ll do wonderfully, little one. You’ll be a triumph tonight,” one of the women told me, then surprised me by kissing me fully on the lips before slipping away and finding her gentleman. I had no idea what she meant.
    A few moments later, Tiberius found me and slid my arm into the crook of his elbow. His eyes were bright and fierce, as they often were