“In the middle of the hallway? Are you crazy? Someone could see you, and then our reputation would be ruined!” I opened my eyes and saw the hallway was now dimly lit with a gas lamp. The rain seemed to have stopped, or perhaps it was never raining here. I followed the gas lamp past the hand holding it, up the slender arm, and to Edith’s face. She didn’t look as excited to see me as I was to see her - instead, she looked annoyed at me. “Come on, get up!” she hissed. I felt a pull on my left arm, and I looked over to see that she was indeed still holding onto it. I hadn’t imagined the touch of her, and an immediate sense of relief flooded over me. I got up, leaning into the arm to pretend that she was actually helping me up. “We’ve got to get you into my room,” she said, her voice such a whisper that I barely caught it myself. “Come on, in here.”
Edith pulled me a couple of feet down the hall and through the door to my bedroom, which I suppose was also her bedroom. Then, she closed the door so fast that I was sure it was going to slam on us. She stopped it last second, though, and closed it softly, then turned toward me. She was dressed differently than she had been last time - she was already in her nightgown, and this time, since I was in arguably a slightly less state of shock, I was able to focus on it a bit more. It was a white shift that ran to just past her knees, and was somehow both reasonably shapeless and managed to the curve of her breasts and hips. The neckline was low enough that I could almost see her cleavage if I wanted to, but my eyes flicked back up to her face, and the annoyance there snapped me back to my senses.
“What on Earth do you think you’re doing showing up in the middle of the hallway when it’s not even that late at night?” she asked. It was clear that she was upset about that, but there was something else behind her expression. It felt like, even through her annoyance, she was as happy to see me as I was to see her.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep in the middle of the hallway,” I explained. “In fact, I’m not sure how I did - I wasn’t even that tired. But then I felt you there, and I got so relaxed and -”
“Wait, you felt that?” she asked, a shocked look appearing on her face.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know you could feel that too,” she said, a small blush starting to appear on her face. “I felt something in the hallway, so I said hello, and then I thought I could hear you talking back to me faintly, and I felt a cold spot on my hand, so I just went for it, hoping it was you, and -” she stopped mid-sentence, her blush intensifying as she realized what she had said. “I mean, hoping it was you so that it was someone I was familiar with. We don’t want other types of ghosts around here, they’ll scare off the customers, and -”
She started to trail off, so I took a step forward and grabbed her hand in mine the same way it had been when she was still appearing as a ghost. She stopped silent and looked down at it, then looked back up at me. “I’m happy to see you too, Edith,” I whispered to her.
Her face turned beet red and she promptly turned to face away from me but kept her hand in mine. “This is not the day for that, Brian. There are other things that need to be attended to - first, there was a sound in the dining room, but that had gone by the time I went to investigate, and then Clara said she heard something, but then found this weird currency sitting on the ground in her room -”
“All us,” I interrupted her. “We were trying to hold a seance to see if we could discover ghost energy on our side, and we didn’t get a ton, but apparently we were being heard from over here.” I made a mental note to tell Charlie - he would be ecstatic that his methods were actually working.
“That was you?” she asked, and I nodded. Her face shifted from embarrassment to a state of annoyance. “Well, you had everyone running around in a tizzy! You’re lucky that somehow, no one saw you. Most of the women are out running around, trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry to cause that much confusion. We really didn’t know, but we were trying to force a way for me to get to come see you. After all, the last two times I was here, there was some sort of activity right before I went to sleep, and that was the only way we could think to test if I was able to bring something back with me.”
“And you didn’t think to then just wait until the next time you notice something and then grab something before you headed to bed?” she asked exasperated.
I waited for a minute, letting the idea wash over me. “I honestly had not,” I replied, deciding that it was better to be truthful than to preserve my ego in this circumstance.
Edith sighed. “And, did it work? Did you bring something back with you?”
I was frankly so excited to see Edith that I hadn’t thought to check. But my cell phone was in my hand, so I handed it to her. She looked it over, turning it upside down and examining every inch of it. “What is this supposed to be? It’s just a little black box.”
“It’s a cell phone - like a portable thing to call people with, but it’s also connected to the internet.” I reached out my hand and she placed the phone back in it. I tried to unlock the screen, but nothing happened. I hit the power, and the screen just stayed black. “Or,” I corrected myself, “that’s what it does when I’m in my time. I imagined that the internet wouldn’t work here, since it’s not like you’re really set up for that, but I kind of figured it would have still turned on.”
“Regardless, you brought it with you,” she said absently, her mind clearly lost in thought. “And the handkerchief? Did you manage to bring that with you?”
“I did! It was odd, though - when I woke up, it seemed like an antique. I’m not sure if it aged with me, or if it was replaced with one from my time, but it clearly wasn’t the same.”
“Fascinating,” she mused. “But nothing is wrong with your box, save that it doesn’t have power?”
“Right, it seems fine. Definitely didn’t age at all.” She reached her hand out for it again, and I handed it to her. She turned it over in her hands examining it. For someone who wasn’t yet born when it was created, she seemed to have a basic knowledge of it - she touched carefully on the glass of the screen, then tried pressing all of the buttons.
“And your friend that you were doing the seance with, where did he end up?”
“I’m not 100% sure,” I answered. She handed me back my phone, and I put it into my pocket so that I wouldn’t forget it in the past - hopefully not turning on was just a temporary problem. “I assume he’s still in Clara’s room, since that’s where we got the most activity. We were trying an experiment to see if ghost activity triggered him to come into this world as well, or if it was something that only happened to me.”
“A worthwhile experiment,” Edith agreed, nodding her head. “Although I suppose if he does arrive, we’ll have quite a mess to deal with.”
“Maybe, but he seemed to be the most interested in, well, some of the services that I partook in, so I have a feeling he might be a little distracted if he comes here.”
“Ah, well then, Clara’s room is the perfect place for him to be showing up tonight,” she said with a mischievous smile.
“Oh, is she the greeter of the newcomers,” I joked back. That would make sense as to why she was so eager to take me in, even with a head wound.
“Of sorts,’” she agreed. She walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. My eyes followed her there, wondering if she was going to pull out something else to show me, but instead she just looked exhausted. That made sense to me - I’m sure she got about as good of sleep as I did last night, which is not much, plus she actually had to tend to the house yesterday. “I would say Clara is generally one of our most eager workers, maybe tied with Alice. Clara does have a thing for brunette’s though,” she said, gesturing at my messy brown hair.
“How many people live here in general?” I asked. I looked beside her on the bed, thinking about sitting down next to her. She must have seen my eyes, because she gestured for me to take a seat. I swiftly walked over and sat down, facing her as best I could with us both being on that side of the bed. I turned more towards her, pulling my knee onto the bed so that I could better see her expressions. My knee grazed the side of her leg as I moved, pulling her nightgown up about an inch. She looked down to notice the moment, but didn’t move to fix it.
“There are usually 11 women, not including myself,” she answered after a beat. “That’s a bit of a difficult question to answer, though. Women have come and gone through the years, so the number fluctuates a bit. There’s usually quite a few customers who stay the night as well, although one would argue that they’re not living here per say.”
“I certainly hope they’re not, or that would probably make your job a lot harder,” I said with a chuckle. “Still, that must be quite the job to keep track of everyone.”
“As well as do all the cooking and cleaning for them,” she agreed. “And making sure they actually get their money and/or keep out those people who don’t want to pay.”
“Sounds like one hell of a job.”
“It can be some days, but you’ve got to be tough if you want to make money as a woman. Marrying rich has never been in my cards, since I’d rather just try to make it on my own than marry any of the men who walk through here. Most of them are abusive assholes, and the rest are already married, but just trying to get free services.”
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I nodded, as though I knew anything about the type of work she did. Part of me felt like we should be keeping on the subject of my getting here, but there was admittedly a part of me that just wanted to know more about the house. No, not really about the house - about Edith. I had to admit, there was something that fascinated me about her in general, and it wasn’t just the fact that she was a ghost in my house. “So, is that why you ended up in this business, then? You didn’t want to get married, but you wanted to be free?”
“Mostly,” she agreed. She also shifted her position to face me, her nightgown rubbing against my pant leg as she moved. “There just aren’t a lot of places for a woman in this world, and I didn’t feel like I fit into any of them until I found this line of work. So, I worked at someone else’s house until I could earn enough money to buy my own.”
“And now you get to keep track of everyone else.”
She nodded. “It’s a lot harder work, mind, but I feel like it suits me better.”
I nodded, searching for something else to say, when a sudden knock rang out on the door. A voice from outside, one that I didn’t recognize, called out “Edith? Can I come in for a word?”
Edith jumped up from the bed and smoothed out her nightgown. “Just a minute!” she called out, and then turned toward me. “I don’t think there’s any getting you out of here,” she whispered. “I think you’ve got to find some place to hide.”
“In the closet, maybe?” I suggested.
She shook her head. “Most of the time that Alice wants to talk to me, it’s about clothing advice, and I think she would be suspicious if I didn’t let her into my closet. Under the bed, maybe, if you can be inconspicuous enough?”
I nodded and rolled off the bed onto the floor, deftly scooting myself under the bed. It would be a tight squeeze, but that might make it easier for me to not move around. Edith sat quietly while I hide, assumedly watching to make sure no part of me was exposed, and then walked over to the door and opened it. “Sorry to keep you waiting, I was getting changed for the night,” Edith said.
“Oh, I thought you already had your night clothes on when you were helping us look for the weird noise?” she said. I could only see her ankles as she walked, but I watched her walk toward me and ultimately, sit on the bed. Edith did the same, and I was relieved that, while I could feel a slight pressure from two people sitting directly above me, the bed frame that seemed to be old even at that time seemed to be sturdy enough to hold.
“I did, but while we were searching, I ended up with some dirt upon the bottom of my dress, so I changed to a different one. Can’t have the bedsheets getting messy, you know.”
“I understand,” the woman said, and then as Edith had predicted, her conversation switched to a matter of clothing. Since that was something that I was not particularly interested in, I took to looking around what little surroundings I could see from my position. There was only hardwood here, whereas in my time, there was carpet covering the floor. I wondered if the original hardwood was under the carpet. If so, it could be nice to tear it out. Around the only other change from my time was the old paint on the walls - in this room, you could see that it badly needed a new coat. That made sense to me - as this was somewhere where the guests would not normally go, one would assume that it would go into disrepair the quickest. I had a fleeting thought that I could offer to paint it for her, but I pushed that out of my mind. While for some reason, I did have quite a fondness for this time, I didn’t need to be staying here any longer than necessary.
My eyes turned toward the women’s ankles. Alice’s were notably different than Edith’s - Alice’s were dainty and petite, like she’d worked hard to move as little in her life as possible. Edith’s weren’t large, but they seemed sturdy yet feminine. I looked at the curves of them, having to stop myself from reaching out to run my finger along them.
What the fuck, brain, I thought to myself. This is a ghost, and we’re in ghost time. There’s a ton of shit you still need to figure out. Can you at least keep the horniness levels to a minimum?
No, I didn’t think I was going to be able to lower the horniness levels, but luckily Alice and Edith both stood up, and I saw them walking toward the door. I quietly let out a long breath that I didn’t know I was holding. I wasn’t even sure why I was so invested in not getting caught - if we did, it wouldn’t do anything to me, but at the same time, I didn’t want Edith’s reputation to be tarnished because of me. While, from the little I know about them, it seemed like the other women in the house would be forgiving of that sort of thing, I couldn’t be positive. Regardless, Edith didn’t want the secret out, and that was good enough for me. She walked back over toward my side of the room. “You can get out now if you want. Although if you’re having a great time under the bed, don’t let me stop you.”
“I’m not!” I said indignantly.
She giggled lightly. “I know - if you’ve been around this house for long enough, you start to recognize the sounds.” She reached down to help me up, and I took her hand, holding it a beat longer than necessary. She raised her eyebrow at me, but didn’t comment.
“So, we’re in the clear?”
“Hopefully. Usually the women don’t bother me too late into the night, unless there’s someone being rowdy who needs an escort out of here. Tonight, we just have a bunch of the usuals, and they don’t cause us too much trouble.”
“Glad to hear it,” I replied.
She nodded, then folded back the covers of the bed and slid herself in. When I didn’t move right away, she cocked her eyebrow at me - I had to admit, I found that trait pretty endearing, as it was something that I hadn’t run into in a woman for a long time. “Are you going to come to bed or not?” she finally asked.
“I just wanted to make sure I had permission,” I answered with a shrug, walking over to the other side of the bed and crawling under the covers as well. I couldn’t help but notice that she made no comment about having a pillow between us this time, and I wasn’t about to be the one to bring it up.
“Well, you seemed to be able to behave yourself fine last time,” she joked, rolling to face my direction. I rolled to face her in kind. The bed was small, and though we both fit easily, our faces ended up no more than 6 inches apart.
I stared into her eyes - they were a sharp blue, almost piercing, that matched her personality perfectly. “Of course I did. Seems only right to show you some respect, doesn’t it?”
“You’d be impressed by the number of people who don’t,” she answered solemnly. “But not you. Is that some sort of a future thing?”
I shrugged. “Maybe just a person by person basis,”I admitted.
She chuckled lightly. “Well, I’m glad it’s you that I found in my room, then. And I’m actually glad to see you again, which is not something that I was expecting.”
“I’m glad to be here again, too,” I admitted. “So what do we do with that?”
Edith reached out and placed her hand on my chest. I could feel the warmth of her hand through my shirt, and it made me want to lean into it, but I could tell from the gesture that that was not what she was aiming for. “I think for now, we can’t let anyone know about this, just to keep the situation safe. Other than your friend, of course - I assume you think he’s trustworthy?” I nodded. “And I won’t tell anyone that you’re here. I have to keep my reputation spotless, because that’s what about half of this business is built on.”
“I understand,” I responded. And I did understand it - at her time, a woman having a man in her bed would be a huge scandal if she wasn’t listing herself as a working girl in the brothel. Her customers might not be too thrilled if that situation were to change and she was still not offering herself to them.
“Good. Then while you’re here, you won’t leave this room except to use the washroom, and if someone sees you at that time, you can just say you’re, oh, I don’t know, helping me line up my finances or something.”
“I’m clearly the best auditor that this town has ever seen,” I agreed.
Her eyes traveled down my chest and to my waistline, her lips growing into a cocked smile. “Yes, in that outfit, you might just be odd enough for that lie to work.”
I smiled at her joke, and her eyes returned to my face, landing on my lips. I scooted forward an inch, to let her know I was willing to kiss her, but wasn’t going to make the first move if she wasn’t comfortable with it. Her smile turned into a frown of contemplation for a moment, trying to figure out what she wanted to do. “Oh, fuck it,” she muttered to herself. She pushed herself forward so that her lips met mine. She tasted faintly of wine, as though she’d been drinking some right before I’d arrived (which might explain her more relaxed nature tonight, I realized). I reached over and pulled her closer to me, our bodies touching through the sheet and our several layers of clothing, but I would still feel the warmth radiating from her. And she, well, she could probably feel my cock starting to harden as we kissed.
She broke off after about a minute, gasping for air. I reached over and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “You okay,” I asked, looking into her piercing blue eyes. “I’m happy to continue, but this is all up to you and what you’re comfortable with.”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said with a smile. “It’s just been a while since I’ve been with someone that I actually had any interest with. Much less someone so…” she faded off, running her hand down my chest.
“Well then, we might as well make it better,” I said. I sat up and pulled my shirt over my head. She watched me with a clear hint of anxiety in her eyes, but I just threw my shirt to the side and laid on my back, pulling her hand to my chest. She looked visibly relieved for a moment, but then a hunger grew in her eyes as she traced the shapes of my chest and stomach. I admit that I wasn’t in the absolute best shape, but apparently I must have been better than she was used to.
I swooped my hand under her and pulled her up onto my chest. She looked confused for a moment, her eyes widening, and then when she realized that was all I was doing, she relaxed, letting loose a huge smile. She placed both of her hands on my chest, using them for stabilization as she flipped her leg over me into a straddle. “You future boys really like the lady to do all of the work, don’t you?” she joked.
“I mean, I don’t mind it,” I said with a laugh. She rolled her eyes and ran her hands down my chest, stopping right at my waistline. She couldn’t go any further regardless, as her seated form was sitting directly on top of my package. My cock, now as fully erect as it could be while still in pants, twitched at the thought. All that separated it from her was a few layers of clothing, and that was a fact that I was acutely aware of.
She looked down and smiled, apparently well able to feel the movement of my cock against her. Slowly, teasingly, she started grinding slightly, her eyes locking back on me. “Oh, so you’re having a good time, I see.”
“Yeah,” I managed to gasp, before Edith swooped down, locking her lips on mine. Her tongue slid its way into my mouth, exploring every corner. I reciprocated, winding my tongue around hers in a twisting dance. My hands, which I hadn’t even remembered putting onto her hips, worked their way upward, landing on her chest. I felt her hand move to greet mine, and I froze for a moment, thinking I’d gone too far, but her hand squeezed on mine, clearly happy that it was there. I squeezed the perky mound of flesh, feeling the nipple grind into my hand as she squirmed about.
Edith sat up suddenly, jerking me to reality for a moment. She swept her nightgown over her head, exposing her bare flesh underneath. Her hairy mound writhed against the crotch of my pants, and I felt my cock ready to burst from my jeans at any moment. My hands reached up to her breasts again, and I groaned at the pleasure of flesh on flesh as they filled my hand. I pinched her nipples lightly, twisting them around in my hand as she mewled. Her hands reached down to my belt, fumbling with the unfamiliar clasp. After what felt like forever, though, she was unable to undo them, and she slid off to the side so that she was able to run down the zipper. I shuttered as her hands passed over my cock, already rock hard from all of our fun.
I quickly helped to push my pants off, noticing her stare hungrily at my cock as it freed itself of its pants prison, and then I laid back, happy to let her decide what she wanted to make of it. She stared for a beat, as though deciding whether this was ultimately the right move for her reputation, then swiftly grabbed my cock in one hand. She rubbed the length of it, paying special attention to the head, as though it were an experiment that she was trying to figure out. I moaned in pleasure and leaned up on my elbows to get a better view. When she saw me looking, she smiled, and swiftly replaced her hands with her mouth. With her other hand, she reached up and slowly rubbed my balls in slow circles, as though trying to coax them to let go of their fluids faster.
The feeling of her hot, wet mouth around me, her fingertips on my balls working in sync with her lips, and the taboo nature of having to hide the entire situation added up quickly. She was barely five strokes in before I started to feel the pressure mounting in the pit of my stomach, knowing that I was about to cum. “Edith,” I moaned, “I…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, but she let out a quick “mmhmm” to let me know that she understood. She didn’t move her mouth from me, though, as I felt the pressure come to a head. Then, the explosion, as I spilled my seed directly into her mouth. I watched, although not fully in my head out of the bliss of the moment, as she stroked down my shaft quickly once more, as though to get every last drop, then removed her head from my still engorged cock and quickly swallowed what she had received.
I fell back onto the bed, panting heavily, and Edith crawled up to lay next to me, looking content with herself. “I’m sorry,” I panted out, “that I couldn’t last longer. You’re just so -”
“No, you’re fine, I know I’m good at what I do,” she bragged. “Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve had the taste of cum in my mouth.” Had I been a younger man, I think my cock would have stood up, ready for a second round, just at that. “But if you’re really sorry about it, you can always make it up to me later. Or next time you show up, I suppose,” she said, clearly noticing me already starting to nod off.
“I don’t want to go yet,” I complained, trying to fight off the automatic tiredness that always happened after sex. “It feels like I was just starting to get to know you. And this,” I said, gesturing up and down her body, “is an excellent perk that I was definitely not expecting when I showed up today.”
She giggled, clearly pleased with her own work. “Well, next time you come around we’ll just have to do it again, then. And we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other - after all, apparently death doesn’t stop us, so time won’t either. Now, go to sleep - I think we both need our rest after that.