Lily

By Rhozwyn Darius

At the height of the long, endless winter of 1816, Peter Oldham rushes his dying widowed sister to the one place in London, perhaps in all of England, where she might be saved. Suffering from a condition peculiar to Lilith’s Children, Lily Oldham Montville, is Dousing—dying from the lack of sex. She’s fortunate, indeed, that an old friend, Jack Howard and his lover, Hal Lockwood, are available for a long night and day of sex, revelation, and truth. Ignorance is dangerous for humans, but an order of magnitude more dangerous for the Children of Lilith. Gifts have prices and the Children all live on the knife’s edge of pleasure and danger.

In a timeline just a heartbeat or two away from ours, Lilith’s Children are the descendents of the goddess Lilith and the giants of old. In 1816, as a minority population, they have interbred with the Children of Adam and Eve until they are more hybrid than pure. However, the recent influx of French aristocrats running from the terror of the French Revolution and marrying into upper class British families have created a new generation of incubi and succubi who carry more of Lilith’s genes than any Children have in many generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhozwyn Darius
• Release date: May 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311889737

Rhozwyn Darius

I am an erotic romance writer currently hanging out in the suburbs with my family. I make jewelry, occasionally re-enact the Middle Ages, and spend time with steampunks, among other things. As a Neo-Pagan, I know that life is far more full of magick than we humans tend to notice. That includes the magick that we make when we allow ourselves to be real with one another. I think love comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and so do families–especially the non-traditional ones. True love is expansive, growing larger as it’s shared. Plus, I really, really love a happy ending.

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Lily

by Rhozwyn Darius

Lily

Copyright 2015 by Rhozwyn Darius

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews or critical articles. For information contact the author at [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Cover designed by Julia Ehrmantraut

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

I owe so many people that the list would fill the page. But the very first person who should get kudos is Mr. Darius. A truly supportive spouse is a prize above rubies. My children deserve some respect as well because they put up with my chronic abstraction with both humor and understanding. Amy, Jules, Lisa, Lori, Jennifer and all my writing peeps—without the cheering section I’m not sure I’d have ever found the courage to keep going. Thank you all.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE - Afternoon

CHAPTER TWO - Evening

CHAPTER THREEE - Midnight

CHAPTER FOUR - Morning

CHAPTER FIVE - Luncheon

CHAPTER SIX - Afternoon

CHAPTER ONE

Afternoon

Peter looked down at the body of his sister, his gut twisted by guilt and fear. Summoned from his club by a panicked message from Betters, his butler, Peter had ridden his horse like a madman through the ice and fog of London streets to his townhouse. Most of their servants had been with them forever, through the scandal, through the quiet years, and were very much family retainers. Betters, he knew, didn't panic. Truly, his sister must be direly ill.

He had left her in the country too long, to the end of the obligatory mourning period. He had pretended that she was fine, that the ill and halting recluse who had come home after her husband's death was suffering only from a socially acceptable grief. She would come out of mourning and he would find her a new husband and all would be well.

He looked down at her still, staring face. This was not just grief or guilt. His sister was paying for her bloodlines, their bloodlines. Like their parents before them, they were the Children of Lilith. Certain...adjustments had to be met, needs accommodated or a price would be exacted. He thought back to the lesson he’d had from the Countess, after the deaths of their parents, all those years ago. Her clear voice with its light French accent echoed from the distance of his memory.

You are of a bloodline which carries much of the traits of the Incubi and Succubi whom we call Lilith's children. For you, what I am about to tell you is most important. Sex is the fire of our bodies, but also of our souls. We therefore are more sensitive to its abuse and loss. There is a condition--called here, in English, to be Doused, that is--our fire is banked to below or almost below recall. It is to do with the energy generated and shared by the act of sex, most particularly that of the little death--orgasm. Were we mostly Eve’s children, this condition, the doctors would call it melancholia. For us, it is even more serious. Deep melancholia among normal people may lead to death, to suicide. We, we will not have to kill ourselves in such a case; our bodies die. It is very difficult to relight such a person. It takes much trust and skill because there is so little time.

Peter had led his sister into some kind of hell. If Tommy hadn’t been already dead, Peter would murder him gladly. Peter’s own fear, his cowardice, his inability to deal with the truth of who and he and Lily were. His God damned selfishness. All of it was his fault. No more. He bellowed for Betters to warn the grooms to pull out his carriage and harness the grays. He would take his Lily to the Countess and pray to God that the Countess would know what to do, knew of someone who could do what was necessary. The evil voice of hard experience in the back of his mind whispered. If it’s not already too late.

From a distance, Lily heard Peter shouting. She wondered if she should try to awaken and respond. Her strong and self-sufficient brother was so panicked and afraid. What could have upset him so? But she was so tired. Tommy had sucked most of the strength from her long ago. Guilt too. How hard she had tried to find what would most soothe his soul so that he could stop twisting them all up in his madness.

Widowhood, at first such a blessed relief, had become another isolating prison. People hugged her and then stepped away as if grief and guilt were an illness they could catch from her. Now she had even stopped caring about that. If no one touched her then perhaps eventually, she would no longer be tormented by the unending, aching hollowness of her perpetual arousal. She remembered the day she realized that she had reached that nadir of quiet. She had laughed and cried so hysterically that Peter had called the doctor and they had dosed her with laudanum. Such an irony that she had finally achieved what Tommy wanted after he was dead and couldn’t smirk with satisfaction at the sight. And now, even that black humor seemed far away and unreachable.

She suspected that she was dying and couldn’t really find the energy to care. There was no one to whom her life mattered. She had no needs any longer. Even her body demanded nothing of her. So there was no one to please. No need to eat or drink, bathe and dress, and certainly, no need to fuck.

Peter wrapped Lily in a blanket and carried her down the marble stair, passed Betters and the footman and into the coach. Vaguely, he was aware that the driver was one of the grooms that Lily had brought with her from Tommy’s. Two grooms and her maid, people she owed she’d said distantly. He’d never asked more, like the prick he was. He hadn’t wanted to know the details of what would be undoubtedly painful information. He opened the carriage's shutter and shouted the address of the Countess’ gambling house. Connected to the gambling hell, as such places were often called, was a private club for people of the bloodlines. Men ostensibly of course, as women supposedly didn’t require clubs, but there was a subterranean side entrance that led from a respectable women’s charity.

He looked down tenderly at Lily. Was she still alive? She was breathing and her eyes were open, but they were blank. Oh God, had Lily ever looked at him without any emotion, no matter how cold and distant he was? He slammed up the shutter window again and said, Spring ‘em! Don’t kill us, but get there as fast you can, Patrick. If he didn’t need to hold Lily, he would have driven them himself, but he didn’t dare put her down, afraid she would die before he got her to the Countess, praying that in some way she felt his love for her. He’d always kept himself at a distance because she was more potent even then their mother. He felt no desire for her, thank God, as it seemed that close family were immune to pull of one another. However, their bloodline required some sort of self-discipline or they were doomed to spiral into self-destruction. Their parents had certainly proved that truth to the scandalized entertainment of the Ton. He had needed the distance to fight the desire to spoil her rotten. Now, if she lived, he would let her do whatever she wanted. No matter how scandalous it might be.

He kissed her cheek. It seemed to him that her breathing grew less labored. Unwrapping the blankets, he pulled her completely into his lap and then draped them around them. He stroked her hair and put her ear to his chest. Without a waistcoat, she had to be able to hear his heart and breath. Live Lily, please. Please live. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I was wrong, I was always wrong. I trusted Tommy. I tried to control us both so we wouldn’t repeat Mother and Father and Papa’s mistakes. Please live, sweetheart. You can do whatever you need to. I promise. Hear my heart. I’m so worried, all that is love and worry for you. I care. Don’t die and leave me here. Don’t leave me.

He sounded like a boy, the boy he’d been when they died, but it didn’t matter. Only Lily mattered right now. He muttered stories of their childhood. He was so much older than she was that most of it was his memories of her tagging behind him and his friends. Songs, and her favorite stories, snatches of shared moments. Pitifully few, he thought. He no longer knew how she felt or what she thought. He had stopped asking. Oh, he deserved this--but she did not. She had never done anything but try to make herself into what their world expected, what he wanted, even though it ran completely contrary to her nature.

Lily did hear Peter, fitfully. He sounded pitiful, grieving, and sorry. Well, he should be! Talking her into marrying Tommy at eighteen. He hadn’t wanted her to have a Season. He was afraid, she knew. Afraid of another scandal, or worse, because he did love her, she knew, of another tragedy. Maybe he was also afraid that she would be hurt by whispers and assumptions. Gossip could hurt horribly...In another life, she had worried about things like that too--at least a little.

Tommy had taught her that words could do more than sting. They could leave lasting scars on the heart and soul that crippled. Tommy had taught her a great deal--almost all of it painful. The very worst was that she could see, dimly, where without Tommy, much of what had happened in that house could have been joyful. Tommy distorted everything with his pain and his hate, his rage and fear. Self-loathing was like an evil disease, she thought, changing everything around it, sometimes so subtly you didn’t realize you’d been infected until people fell apart in your hands.

She was feeling things she realized. She had been numb for a while, maybe a long while. She could feel Peter’s openly expressed panic, fear, grief, and love. It was a profound stew of emotions--particularly from Peter. Peter played the icy aristocrat with an underlying desperation so obvious that she had often wondered why no other person seemed to notice. People so often saw only what they expected or wanted.

She wanted to respond to Peter, she did, but she couldn’t seem to find the energy to do so. She wanted to tell him that she loved him and worried over him too. She wanted to tell him that she was furious, deeply furious with him. That his mistakes and choices had wounded her profoundly in ways that were difficult, if not impossible, to heal. She wanted to scream at him, finally able to curse and shriek her anger out. Then she wanted to forgive him because, after all, he was damaged too.

Without the energy to express herself, she listened to quick beat of his heart and his panicked breathing. She tried to stir herself, to find the energy to berate him.

Eventually, they came to wherever Peter was taking her. The carriage jolted to a halt.

That was fast. She heard Peter say. Thank you Patrick, I’ll add something substantial to your pay packet.

Thank you my lord. Is the lady alright, my lord? She heard Patrick say. He was taking a risk. Peter was not as high in the instep as some of the upper ten thousand but he could have taken Patrick’s inquiry as insolence. Peter wouldn’t take it badly because he knew the value of treating your servants well but Patrick couldn’t know that yet. Servants had been there when Peter and Lily had been alone.

"I don’t know, Patrick. I don’t know. Go round to the front. My livery should get you in. Speak privately with the majordomo; his name