Madness At Noon {COMPLETED}

Cherry Milk Tea 1/3

To everyone who submitted questions, I thank you a thousand times for a thousand years! Some I truly did not expect and I really had to channel my inner Noon to dig out her responses. I hope it is worth the wait :D

I loved the way it filled my hands. Long and smooth and firm, power itself rippled beneath my fingertips. I could not stop touching it, tracing the hard edge with my thumb, down the long curve, to trace the pointed tip, feeling its weight, its bulk, trying to contain the rising rush in my veins as my heart pounded faster and faster.

"My God," I breathed, "they do not make them like this anymore. It is a thing of beauty."

The young reporter of Vexus Virtues had the decency to blush, smiling sheepishly. "I'm glad you approve, Mistress Noon. It is yours to keep, a gift of my appreciation."

It took a lot to impress me. I was, after all, quite the experienced woman. But this was quite a prize.

A brazen bull.

I had never seen one of these in person before.

My fingers itched. Oo... I wanted to test it out... To light the fire beneath the belly of the giant bronze bull, watching the smoke pour from its nostrils, then open the door on the side and throw someone in to roast them alive.

The bull was huge, made to mimic the size of the animal. It had taken seven men to haul it inside my front door. A few spots around the hooves and the base of the horns had turned green with age, but the metal had been polished and gleamed like gold. It was a true thing of beauty.

They said... They said the device was built in such a way that the screams of the victims were transformed into the bellowing of a bull. How ingenious. How absolutely delightful!

It was all I could just to keep my voice calm and not just up and down and clap my hands like a schoolgirl getting asked out by the sexiest boy in class. "Very good, Mr. Corbin," I said, running my hand over the bull's thick horn. "I may not have to kill you after all." Or I may need a victim to test this beauty out...

Damian Corbin turned a pale shade of green, but he did not run. So far, he was doing far better than any other reporter who dared enter my home. He was polite, but not groveling. He had not bombarded me with questions the moment he crossed the threshold. And he even came baring gifts.

Such a gentleman.

At a glance, I put him at twenty-two, still a babe. He was the textbook definition of a too-curious-for-his-own-good young man, coming to my door with a smile on his face exactly at four o'clock Thursday afternoon, clutching his clipboard like a Holy Witness eager to share the Better News. He wore a brown tweed jacket with dangling sleeves and rolled up pants legs tucked inside shiny, but clearly over-worked, black shoes. I had to give him points for trying to dress to impress, but the poor boy was like a child wearing his father's clothes; nothing quite fit.

He had greased back his muddy brown hair but it kept falling in his face, and when I finally managed to tear myself away from the work of art in my foyer, the deeper we traversed into my abode, the more he tugged at his wrinkled tie as if he could feel the noose tightening around his neck.

I led Damian to the smaller drawing room on the second floor where I entertained casual guests. It was an elegant space, decorated in soft greens and golds. Warm light came from two open windows shaded with white lace curtains. Two Victorian couches and an armchair surrounded a marble coffee table in the center of the room. A pot of tea waited on the table, steam wavering from the spout.

The room smelled of lilac, coming from no less than thirty-five crystal flower vases scattered around the room, the blooming lilacs swaying in the breeze. Damian shivered at the extreme cold. But while winter still reigned outside, this room was spring itself.