A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

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librarian_7
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A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

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Disclaimer: I don’t own anything you recognize from your tv screen, okay?

AN: I know it’s been awhile since I updated, and I do apologize for that. Perhaps this will make amends, in some small way. Thank you all so much for reading, and for your very kind comments.


A Game of Chess

Chapter 11

Josef

The house on Waverly Place was dark, with no lights showing as Josef slipped through the arched doorway in the early morning hours. The city was never completely dark, or quiet, but at a little past 3 a.m. it came close. Too late for those who roamed the streets drunkenly, too early for the first stirrings of workers. Only the occasional footsteps of the watching patrolman disturbed the peace of the neighborhood. Josef took a turn through the rooms of the ground floor, not ready to go yet to his rest in his basement chamber. Even now, the residual heat lay over the city, and Josef could sense the humans in his household turning restlessly in their beds.

He paused for a time in his study, idly turning the pages of a new book, leaning back with his hips resting against a windowsill, reading by the moonlight streaming in. But he was unable to engage much interest in it. The image of Rose’s white body, rising wet from the tub, wrapped so ineffectively in her embroidered blue kimono, kept intruding itself into his consciousness. He closed the book with a dismissive snap, and tossed it carelessly into a side table.

This was no good. Intellectually, he knew he had done the right thing, that establishing an intimate relationship with Rose would be a tactical error. He had no use for entanglements, and they seemed to be piling themselves on him, regardless. No matter what his mind had to say, his body had its own opinions, and the clamor for release was fast becoming undeniable. He was simultaneously annoyed at the challenge to his control, and frustrated that he had not made contacts in the vampire community to have acquired a lover or two. Human, vampire, he had no particular inclination, although he had to admit a slight preference for the embrace of warm, human flesh.

Across the room, Mrs. Davidson had left the accustomed silver tray, with a decanter of brandy and a single crystal tumbler. Perhaps a drink would blunt his cravings, or at least serve as a substitute. He knew better, but it was worth a try. The splash of brandy in crystal, the rich aroma of the liquor, distracted him for the time it took to pour his drink. He concentrated on the taste, frowning. In blood, he could discern dozens of elements. The emotion of the donor, diet, the unique signature of the individual. Blood was complex, precious, living up to every promise the scent had made. Liquor, on the other hand, was a tease. Aromas tantalized, twisted and twined through his head, like some exciting and exotic vein, inviting his fangs to pierce and drink. And ultimately, the tease fell flat. Every human tasted different. He’d had a pair of twins, once, and despite their identical appearance, he’d been able to differentiate between them easily. Every bottle of a particular vintage, however, tasted much the same.

He finished his drink in one gulp. Perhaps it would be best just to go on to his cold bed in the cellar. Oblivion was preferable to this.

In the hallway, he paused, listening once again to the household. Davidson and Fox were quiet; he heard Ned shifting in his bed, tuning and pushing the sheet aside. Tessa, Tessa was waking, and Josef caught an echo of sobs. He meant to go on to his own chamber, but without his volition, his steps took him up the stairs, to the rooms where his swallows resided.

He opened the door, the darkness within welling out. “Tessa?”

Even in the darkness, the white of the bed linens stood out to Josef’s vampire eyes, the woman’s mahogany hair spread like a blood stain across the pillows. He crossed to her bedside, fully aware of the danger but unwilling to halt, and sank down on the edge of the bed, where she lay facedown, crying as though her heart were freshly broken.

He smoothed a hand over her hair, feeling the soft, living texture give under his hand. He could get tangled up in this for hours, the hypersensitivity of his fingertips infatuated with the sensual delight of it. But this was not the way of the night, not just a vampire soothing a swallow.

She twisted at his cool touch. “You came back,” she moaned. “You came back for me.” And in a fluid movement, her arms were around him, her mouth laying kisses of fire up his chest to his mouth.

As her tongue slid over his lips, his own arms closing around her, feeling the warm pounding of her blood in the flesh beneath the thin linen of her gown. Consciousness and conscience slid away from him, with only a faint attempt on his part to stop their departure. And when she demanded, “Love me, love me,” he was lost.

It was the work of a moment to unbutton his trousers, and split second more to sweep aside the bedclothes to reveal her nightgown already rucked up to her hips, her pale slender legs parting for him. Swiftly, soundlessly, he moved over her, into her, entering the clasp of her around him, the cradle of her hips.

Her hands scrabbled at his chest, pulling aside jacket, waistcoat, shirt, to put her palms flat against his bare chest. Josef dipped his head to her mouth again, but she did not meet him this time, instead offering her throat to his fangs. He could not, did not, refuse her.

Rocking together as her blood surged into him, he knew that she was as lost in the red haze of pleasure as he was, that bodies had usurped the rule of reason.

Dimly, he heard her breathe, “Joshua, oh, Joshua…” But it was too late, he was too far in, and he took his release and her blood, even as she climaxed beneath him.

Collapsing atop her, still wrapped in her warmth, he smoothed the hair back from her forehead with one hand. With the shock of her words, he was starting to dread the coming realization on her part that she was not in the cool arms of her lost lover.

Her eyes fluttered open; he could see the shine of them even in the darkness. “Joshua,” she said again, “oh, my love—”

“Tessa.”

At the sound of his voice, she stiffened, and began to struggle against his body, her soft hands curving into claws.

He caught her wrists, pulling her arms above her head. “Tessa. Tessa.”

She whipped her head back and forth, writhing on the bed. “Get off me,” she panted, one of her heels catching him a stinging blow on the back of his thigh. “How could you?”

Josef grunted at the impact. “Tessa, be still,” he said, putting as much command as he possessed into his tone. She went quiet, but turned her face away, breath hitching in her chest, suppressed sobs threatening to overwhelm her as Josef moved carefully off her, to stretch out by her side. He kept hold of her wrists, careful not to injure, but only to contain.

He took a deep breath, smelling the aftermath of their joining, the sweetness of blood, the bitterness of her roiling emotions. “I’m going to let go of your wrists. Will you behave?”

She nodded, her face averted, and pulled her freed hands down to wrap around her chest, curling into herself. Josef took the opportunity to arrange his clothing, then laid one hand gently on her shoulder.

“I heard you crying,” he said. “I came to see if you were all right.” He paused, but she said nothing. “I never meant—I’m not immune to temptation, Tessa.”

In response, she twisted again, turning to put her face against his chest. She wept still, but quietly. “I know,” she said. “Neither am I.”

Josef put his arms around her, prepared to hold her chastely until she slept. He knew that his actions had changed the nature of their relationship forever, and had to wonder whether it was for good or ill. For now, he took what comfort he could from the warmth of her body against his, and gave back to her what he was able, in the quiet of the summer night.


Cam

Cam didn’t bother to be quiet, letting the door bang behind him. He knew it would disturb his mother. He hoped so, anyway. If any thought of that little mouse of a wife of his crossed his mind, it crossed so swiftly it was going before it registered. To say his mood was foul was a vast and expansive understatement. He’d thought that tonight would be the night he and Coraline—Coraline, the music of the name like the beauty of her face—would finally come together. But the brandy he’d taken to bolster his courage had proved his undoing. She’d turned him away, at last, with a shake of her silken curls and an admonishment that she was not accustomed to entertaining inebriated men. The coy implication that had he been sober, the evening would have continued to a far different conclusion, was maddening. He was on fire for her, past all reason.

He drew himself up straight as he climbed the stairs. If not tonight, another time. He would have her. But his resolve, and his balance, deserted him in the upper hallway, and he had to concentrate on walking forward. The walls seemed to be reaching out, each side of the corridor in turn. A minor collision, and a vase on a console table overturned with a satisfying crash of porcelain and a wet slosh of water and soggy flowers at his passing. He frowned. Someone else could clean it up. It was none of his affair.

His room was pleasingly dim, the gaslight turned low and the hearth unlit on this summer night. Scorning his mother’s prejudice against the ills of night air, he moved to one of the windows and thrust back the heavy drapes to open the glass. The outside air wasn’t much relief, however. Cam wished he’d thought to snag a decanter from the sideboard in the drawing room below, but the thought of negotiating the stairs to go back down was far too much trouble.

Besides, there was a nagging little voice in the back of his head, reminding him that he had business on the morrow, that among other matters, that Fitzgerald fellow was appointed to come by. Cam supposed a few hours of sleep, at least, would help to sharpen his wits.

He shed his coat, waistcoat, and constricting neckcloth, tossing the garments in the direction of a chair, and splashed some water from the pitcher into the ewer, thinking that cool water applied to face and neck might relieve the oppression of the night’s heat. The relief was only momentary, and he carried on changing into a soft linen nightshirt.

He never heard the door of his chamber open, didn’t notice the thin, white-clad figure slide in, and he started when she spoke.

“Cam?”

He whirled around to her, staggering a little with the motion. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard a crash. I came to see if you were all right.”

Cam sneered. “Worried about me? Or come hoping to do your wifely duties? Still wanting a blood stallion to play broodmare for?”

Her blush glowed red even in the low light. “Am I not even allowed to show concern for you, Cam?”

He felt a fleeting regret that he could not care for her as he should, but he found it as swiftly replaced with anger. This mouse, this little house sparrow, was tied to him. Without her, he could be free to woo and win Coraline forever. If she were only out of the way, gone from his life. And she was so fragile, so inconsequential. Who would miss her?

Cam turned away with a curse. What was he thinking? He was not a monster, not capable of acting on a murderous fantasy. Maybe he couldn’t cherish her, but he could use her. “Come here,” he said, roughly taking hold of her upper arm, as she recoiled away from the stink of brandy on his breath. “On the bed.”

Even Cam wasn’t sure if he was forcing her to the bed, or she was supporting him there. In either case, a shove sent her sprawling on her back, and the knee he planted between her thighs was scarcely necessary to spread them.

She accepted him as she always had, face averted, and if she bit her lip when he entered her, he didn’t see it. He was picturing another body beneath his, a dark beautiful face, passionate and suffused with desire. In the haze of his senses, Coraline was there with him, it was her body shifting and moving under his, her body clenching and surging as he found his release.

He rolled away without a word, falling into sodden slumber as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Next to him, Mrs. Cam lay very still. She’d heard it whispered by other young wives, that it was important not to get up too soon, that she must give his seed time to find her womb, and do its work there. And as much as she wanted to flee back to the lonely safety of her bedroom, she was clutching the idea that perhaps he might have given her what she wanted.

She frowned. Perhaps it was wrong of her, but by now, this was the only thing she wanted from him. Once, she’d thought she loved him. Now, she was of the opinion that they’d both been seduced—and she blushed in the darkness at using such a blunt word—by the wishes of their families. They hadn’t known each other at all. And after the first month or so, Cam had lost interest in her. He’d not mistreated her, exactly, but she was no more important than any of his other less-highly-valued possessions. Even with his mother on her side, as far as that went, he filled his days with business, and his evenings with visits to his club. And she had no real illusions left, either, about her value to Mama Marshall, either. Perhaps it was indelicate, given how carefully she’d been shielded as a girl, but she knew what a broodmare was, and she knew that in the elder Mrs. Marshall’s eyes, as well as Cam’s, she fit the definition.

She thought she’d laid still long enough, or at least as long as she could stand. As quietly as she could, she slid out from the bed, twitching her nightgown into place around her ankles, and drawing a sheet across her sleeping husband. She’d had slippers when she came into Cam’s room, but she wasn’t about to stop and search for them now. Not and risk waking him.

Although she had to admit, judging from the snores, that she could probably have driven a coach and four through the room without disturbing him.

Her feet whispered down the carpeted hall, back to her room. She was going to lie awake the remainder of the airless summer night, she was sure of it. She was still thinking that, when her eyes fluttered shut, and she knew nothing more until the maid came in with her morning tea.
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by francis »

What a stark contrast between these two scenes, and what a striking similarity. All of them want someone else than who they are with, and end up being with the one they are with, taking a bit of comfort out of it but making things incredibly awkward.
I can see Mick in Cam. Josef would rather have Rose, and Tessa would rather have Joshua and thought it was him. Was it a form of rape to have her? I don't know. She seems to accept what happened. I feel a bit sorry for all of them, most of all Cam's wife, because she has the least means to do something about her situation.
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by RangerCM »

So much packed into such a brief amount of time! I love all the contrasts of thoughts in this chapter. From the timeless loneliness of Josef's reflections to the sad acceptance of Mrs. Cam's thoughts that her marital loneliness is a given and only in a child will she find purpose. And Cam! What a scoundrel! Love this! :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by tucutecats »

Thank you, thankyou always wonderful to have an update from you. /this is a great piece of Josph historyI always enjoy spending time with Josph
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by Penina Spinka »

Sad and beautiful, Josef's comforting the woman who loves another, then both of them confessing it was hard to resist temptation. Poor Mrs. Cam. What a bore and scoundrel of a husband. You write in very moving prose.
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

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I agree with francis - the two scenes in this chapter are like bookends, they have similarities with each of the four characters wanting something or someone and not being able to achieve it. Yet it is the cast of characters that don't make an appearance here that affect the actions of the other four. The role of alcohol adds a sad dimension to the characters' lot and actions.

Cam wants Coraline, but she rejects him because he's drunk. What he doesn't realize is the effect alcohol has on the taste of his blood. So in his drunken sulk, he uses his wife as a surrogate in his fantasy. Josef tries to dampen his own needs with alcohol, which perhaps makes his own actions with Tessa even sadder. Is either rape? In the first case, I'd say so because there was no consent, just acquiescence, but that was the mode of the time. In the second, I don't think so, but I could see it as taking advantage of the situation. But there is an awful fine line between the two.

Two passages I thought were spectacular. The first contrasting blood with alcohol and the alliteration:
Blood was complex, precious, living up to every promise the scent had made. Liquor, on the other hand, was a tease. Aromas tantalized, twisted and twined through his head, like some exciting and exotic vein, inviting his fangs to pierce and drink. And ultimately, the tease fell flat. Every human tasted different. He’d had a pair of twins, once, and despite their identical appearance, he’d been able to differentiate between them easily. Every bottle of a particular vintage, however, tasted much the same.
The second conveying the quiet desperation of Mrs. Cam (are you ever going to give that poor woman a name?) and her lack of self-worth
They hadn’t known each other at all. And after the first month or so, Cam had lost interest in her. He’d not mistreated her, exactly, but she was no more important than any of his other less-highly-valued possessions. Even with his mother on her side, as far as that went, he filled his days with business, and his evenings with visits to his club. And she had no real illusions left, either, about her value to Mama Marshall, either. Perhaps it was indelicate, given how carefully she’d been shielded as a girl, but she knew what a broodmare was, and she knew that in the elder Mrs. Marshall’s eyes, as well as Cam’s, she fit the definition.
So glad you updated this story, Lucky :hug: and look forward to where you take it next.
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by moonlight_vixen »

What a stark contrast in these two scenarios. Each one of them wants someone other than the one they are with, and it seems like such a fine line they all walk...

I love this passage:
Blood was complex, precious, living up to every promise the scent had made. Liquor, on the other hand, was a tease. Aromas tantalized, twisted and twined through his head, like some exciting and exotic vein, inviting his fangs to pierce and drink. And ultimately, the tease fell flat. Every human tasted different.
Another great chapter, Lucky! :notworthy:
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by cassysj »

Everyone wants to be elsewhere. Things will definitely change for Tessa and Josef. I do feel very badly for Mrs. Cam and look forward to future updates
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by librarian_7 »

Thanks so much for the lovely comments! I actually have been working on the time-line of the story, because it has some historical dates to fit into...and that's all I'm saying about that right now.

And yes, poor little Mrs. Cam has a name, and you'll find out eventually. When the time is right...

It's so good to know that people are still reading!

Lucky
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by allegrita »

Still reading???!!!

Yes, we're still reading. :smooch:

This chapter is very melancholy. I agree, it's all about not being where you want to be, and trying to make the best of it... and knowing somewhere down deep that where you really want to be is NOT a good thing. I like the way that you use alcohol in both parts of this chapter. Did the brandy Josef drank make it easier for him to ignore his conscience? It certainly is true that the brandy Cam drank both denied him what he craved, and gave poor Mrs. Cam what she longed for. Well, maybe. One can hope, for her sake. Everyone else gets a grand total of zilch out of the evening. Well, I suppose they get a temporary solace, but it's not worth the aftermath. And actually, one doesn't know at this point whether Mrs. Cam's aftermath will be worth it, either...
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by mitzie »

I am in love with this story!!! :heart: Nobody gets what(or who) they really want in this chapter. I feel so bad for Mrs. Cam, Mr. Cam does not have a heart!! :gasp: I love this story and can't wait to see if there are many consequences to these actions... :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :hyper2: :hyper2: :woohoo: :shrug: :gasp: :devil: :dizzy: :bash: :slingshot: :juggle: :nosee: :nails: :yahoo: :clapping: :clapping: :clapping: :clapping: :thud: :thud: :thud: :thud: :notworthy: :hearts: :flowers:


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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by librarian_7 »

Alle, mitzie, thanks!

It's true, this is a chapter in which people don't get what they want...and the aftermath, well, who knows? (Okay, I do, admittedly.)

Working on the next chapter....

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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by MoonShadow »

Do you really doubt that people are still reading... :gasp:

good heavens lady, we are doing our best not to pester, nag, bribe, haggle, suggest,,,, shall I continue??? :snicker:

waiting patiently :heart:
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by one.zebra »

Delicious update Lucky!
Mrs.Cam is making the best of her situation. Producing a child with help I hope.
It's sad, but freeing to give up your illusions and dreams sometimes..don't ask me how I know this....

Coraline rejected Cam, not because he was drunk, but because he is but a toy and perhaps a tool for her. I don't know how she does it..manipulating people is boring and unsatisfying.
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Re: A Game of Chess, Chapter 11 (PG-13)

Post by librarian_7 »

Thanks, O.Z!

I'm really grateful you bumped this today, as I'm just finishing up the next chapter. I'm really sorry it's been so long since I updated...I had travel, other stories, RL business, and etc. which slowed this down considerably.

Anyway, the next ch is in the hands of my lovely and talented beta, and should be coming soon to a website near you!

Lucky
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