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“Not really,” she admitted. “I hate floating around rooms full of people I don’t know.” Dreading some stranger coming up to make small talk about the subway stations or the weather or some other mind-numbing topic. “Especially when they’re drunk.”
“Everyone is often drunk at Abigail’s parties,” he told her.
Gwen smirked. “Did Barith really run around naked through the garden?”
“He did,” Sirus replied, without a trace of amusement.
She laughed openly, and he turned to look at her. His stern expression only made her laugh that much more. “Come on,” she challenged him through her giggles. The idea of Barith all large and lumbering and naked, frolicking in a garden of roses. “It had to have been funny to watch?”
Sirus’s gaze lingered on her for a while before he turned back down the path. Gwen could hear the fountain on the other side of the tall hedge wall ahead of them. “It was to some,” he told her. Gwen rolled her eyes. Of course he didn’t find it funny. “Though watching him swim naked in the fountain was a sight,” he added as they came around the corner.
Gwen’s laugh caught in her throat when she got a look at the fountain in question. Her cheeks burned as she took it all in. Three voluptuous nude women were posed seductively on a pedestal in the center, each of their full breasts spraying water down into the mouths of a group of clambering and very aroused naked men. Scattered throughout were several other figures caught in various positions of ecstasy.
“You wanted to show me this?” she hissed, not able to tear her eyes from the fountain despite how much she wanted to. It both mortified and didn’t shock her in the least that Abigail had something this—scandalous on her property. Gwen was far from a prude, but did it really have to have so many damned penises?
“She often fills it with champagne at her parties,” he told her, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
It struck her all of a sudden what the strange shapes of the topiaries along the path were. Erect penises. All of them. Gwen’s blush grew even deeper. “Can we go?” she moaned, turning away. “I didn’t realize I was walking in the Garden of Phalluses.”
“Come,” he told her, leading her along a different path, away from the fountain. Gwen followed quickly behind and was relieved when the light of the lampposts grew dimmer in the distance. The topiaries were still shaped like penises, but they weren’t as overbearing when she couldn’t see them.
He stopped when they reached a little secluded alcove surrounded by tall hedges and high lattices covered in dark red roses. Another fountain sat in the middle. This one had a naked woman too. But it was only a depiction of the goddess Venus. Gwen mindlessly put her hand under the chilly water flowing out from the half-shell beneath the statue’s feet, and she relished the cold it brought to her hot skin.
“Did you do that on purpose?” she grumbled finally. “To try and embarrass me?”
“Are you embarrassed?” he asked.
Gwen scowled. She couldn’t tell if he really was that detached or if he was toying with her on purpose. “No,” she replied tartly.
Sirus stood sentry at the arbor that led out of the far end of the alcove. “I was curious what you would think of it,” he admitted.
Gwen flushed anew. He was curious what she thought of that? “Why?” she bit out.
“It’s one of the gaudiest things I’ve ever seen,” he told her. “You missed the twelve-foot portrait of a woman being pleasured in her main foyer.”
Sirus said it so flatly, Gwen was beginning to wonder if anything fazed him at all. She guessed not. He’d probably seen it all at this point. Done it all. Sirus was probably into weirder stuff than Abigail. The fountain could have been full of real people doing all those sexy things, and she doubted Sirus would have batted an eye. A rush of nerves fluttered through her chest. All this talk of pleasuring, along with the ominous, dark shapes of topiary penises, was starting to make her feel something between nauseous and breathless.
“It’s a bit too on the nose for my taste,” she clipped, trying to act like she wasn’t bothered in the slightest.
“I agree,” he said, watching her closely. There was a darkness in his voice that made a jolt spread over her skin. A predatory awareness.
Gwen turned back to the fountain and stuck her hand in the cold water again. She just needed to cool off. That’s all. All this tension was just in her head.
“Do you care for art?” he asked.
She snorted. “I don’t know if I’d call that art.”
“Abigail does have eccentric tastes, but they are her own. There’s a great deal of art at Volkov.”
Gwen turned to face him. “What kind of art?” she asked cautiously.
Sirus stepped further into the alcove, and she knew it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “All kinds,” he told her.
Gwen glowered at him. Always with the half answers. “Anything specific?”
He shifted to the edge of the alcove, along the carved stone arch lined with hedges. “There are many pieces spread throughout the castle. I keep a particular piece in my study. An Impressionist painting I am fond of.”
Well, damn. Apparently the brooding, dark vampire had layers. And he liked art.
