The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sit

In her office Sam proves who he is by reading the crown's inscription and naming its dent, and Lucy kisses him and makes him come in her office chair with his hands on the armrests.

"Sam," I said again.

It came out rougher than the first time, and he closed his eyes.

"Get up," I said. "My office. You're going to prove this."

I took him through the dark gallery and into the light behind it.

My office is small.

It has a desk buried in catalogue drafts and a green carpet worn thin by the door.

The office chair has padded arms, and I bought it myself because the museum's chairs hurt my back.

On the wall above the desk hangs a photograph I took of the inside of the crown's band.

There is a line of Tessarine script cut around the inner edge, forty-one characters, and I have read it a hundred times.

I put my finger on the sixth word.

"Everyone translates this as 'for the sun's chosen,'" I said. "I've never believed it. The word is wrong. It's the wrong shape."

I tapped it.

"Read it."

Sam leaned over my shoulder.

He was close enough that I could smell soap and cold air and old wool, and I made myself keep looking at the picture.

He read the line aloud.

I do not speak Tessarine, nobody does, but I know its sounds from tapes made by a professor who died in 1971.

What Sam said did not sound like the tapes.

It sounded like a man talking.

The words were quick and soft, with a roll at the back of the throat I had never heard from a recording.

Every one of them fit the shape of the letters.

"This word," he said, and put his own finger beside mine, "is not 'chosen.' It means brother-in-law."

"Brother-in-law."

"The whole line says, 'Mine until I am dead. From the goldsmith's brother-in-law, who would like to be paid.'"

He sounded embarrassed on the goldsmith's behalf.

I laughed.

It came out of me in a helpless bark, and I put my hand over my mouth.

I had been wrong about that word for nine years, and the answer made perfect sense, and it was funny.

"Nobody put that in a museum label," I said through my fingers.

"No," Sam said. "The emperor did not want anyone to know the crown had a bill."

I took my hand down.

He was looking at me, not at the photograph, and he was not smiling.

His eyes had a warmth in them that had not been there in the gallery.

It was the look of someone who had just been laughed with.

I understood in that moment that I believed him.

It was not a decision.

It was more like a floor tilting under me, and finding the new angle held.

"You're real," I said.

"I have been told so."

"You're seventeen hundred years old."

"Seventeen hundred and six."

"And you took a night job."

"I wanted to sit near it." He glanced at the dark gallery.

"I did not wish to wear it. I wished to sit in the same room, and be paid eighteen dollars an hour."

I should have had a hundred questions.

I had one thing in my body, and it was louder than all of them.

He stood in my office, enormous, with his too-small blazer pulling across his chest, looking at me.

"Sit down," I said.

He looked around.

I pointed at the chair with the padded arms.

He sat, and the chair creaked under him.

"Hands on the armrests."

He put them there, wide palms flat on the padding, and his knuckles pressed pale.

"Don't move them."

"No."

"Not until I say."

"No," he said, and his voice dropped. "I will not."

I stood in front of him.

My heart was going.

I took off my glasses and put them on the desk, and he watched my hands.

Then I put one knee on the chair beside his thigh, and then the other.

I sat down on his lap with my skirt riding up.

He made a low sound in his chest.

I took his face between my hands.

His beard was soft, softer than I expected, and under it his jaw was hard.

"Look at me," I said.

He looked.

I kissed him.

It was not a gentle kiss, because I did not feel gentle.

I opened his mouth with mine, and he let me, and he tasted of cheap coffee and mint.

I bit his bottom lip, and he groaned into my mouth.

His hands stayed on the armrests.

I could feel how much it cost him.

I could feel it in the whole length of his body, tight as a drawn bow beneath me.

"Good," I said against his mouth. "That's good."

He shuddered.

I hadn't known a word could do that to a man.

I pulled back and looked down at him.

He had been an emperor, and his hands were on an office chair and his mouth was wet from mine.

"Say you want this," I said.

"I want this. I want it badly, Lucy. I have not wanted anything this badly in my life, and my life is long."

I smiled.

I unbuttoned the navy blazer, and then the white shirt under it, one button at a time.

His chest was broad and smooth and warm, with a scatter of black hair.

Across his ribs ran an old white scar as long as my hand.

I put my palm over his heart.

Forty beats.

It was so slow.

I slid my hand down his stomach, and he sucked in air.

His belt buckle was cold.

I opened it, and the button, and the zipper, and he lifted his hips for me without being told.

"Good boy," I said, and I felt him jump.

He was hard already.

He was long and thick, the head dark and wet, and when I wrapped my fingers around him I could barely close them.

"Lucy," he said, and it was almost a prayer.

I stroked him once, slowly, base to tip.

His head fell back against the chair.

"Eyes on me."

He lifted his head with an effort and fixed his grey eyes on mine.

I did it again, with a twist at the top.

"Is this what you wanted, Sam?"

"Yes."

"Tell me how it feels."

"Like being hit by a ship." His voice cracked. "Like forty years of nothing, and then this."

I laughed breathlessly and kept stroking him.

My skirt was bunched at my hips, and I shifted forward until my bare thigh pressed against the hard muscle of his leg.

My underwear was soaked.

I rolled my hips against his thigh, slowly, and the pressure shot through me.

"Oh," I said. "Oh, that's good."

"Take what you need."

"I will."

I rode his thigh and worked him with my other hand, and the chair groaned under both of us.

He watched me.

He watched my face and my mouth and my hand moving on him.

His fingers dug into the armrests, and I saw the padding crumple.

"Lucy. I cannot..."

"You can."

"I will not last."

"I don't want you to," I said, and I tightened my grip. "Come for me."

I felt the pleasure climbing in me, hot and hard, and I ground down against his thigh and stroked him faster.

"Look at me, Sam. Look at me. Now."

He came with my name in his mouth.

He came hard, hot and thick over my fist and his open shirt.

He shook from his chest to his knees, with his hands white on the chair.

The sight of it tipped me over.

I cried out and pressed my face into his neck.

My own climax went through me in long waves, grinding against his leg until I was shaking.

When I could breathe again I was slumped against his chest, my glasses on the desk, my skirt wrecked, his heart beating against my cheek.

Forty.

It was still forty.

"You may move your hands," I said into his skin.

His arms came around me at once, big and careful, and held me.

We stayed like that for a minute.

Then I pushed myself up and looked at the clock on my desk.

It was twenty to four.

I reached for tissues and cleaned us both up with brisk, shaking hands.

He let me, and I could feel him trying not to smile.

"Tomorrow night," I said. "Ten o'clock. Bring your keys."

"Yes, curator."

I looked at him, at the open shirt and the wild shaved head and the chair he had just ruined.

"You're going to be a problem," I said.

"I have been told that too."

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