AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As no servant offered to assist him, he lowered a small traveling valise to the floor, and then dropped the entire wallet on the mahogany table surface, rattling the trio of crystal votives.
“Am I allowed to speak of our arrangement?” he asked. As much as he despised how other men talked about her, he wondered if he was any better. If she entertained as other men boasted, Dorian knew he would be no different than her other lovers. His closest friends would hear of their sexual exploits. Last night, his friends had offered myriad suggestions to him as they’d drunk to his success. It was the way of men and their whores.
“Feel free. No one will believe you.” Her somnolent eyes smiled while her mouth mocked in a slight upturn. She enjoyed her own jest. She sipped at her drink. The money didn’t even rate a glance. She trusted her womanly powers. There was no need to count the payment. Or worry about her reputation after the fact.
“When do we begin our agreement?”
“It has already begun,” she said as she raised her gaze to his.
One blue and one green. Twice before, he had been close enough to see the rarity of her most intriguing asset for himself, but never was her gaze so intently directed at him. This close, the power of her gaze seduced him to her will already.
Isabelle let him stare into her eyes. Her mouth turned upward in a suggestive invitation.
Dorian frowned, the first hint of indecision forming in his mind. What did one do now? Now that he had the most famous, most desired, most elusive courtesan—no,mistress—in all of England? She would no longer be a whore to him. Nor would he allow her to be so in anyone else’s presence. He’d never had a whore, perhaps some remnant of his frugal Scottish heritage and his mother’s wish that he be honorable in a dishonorable world. And yet, here he was, bending the rules to satisfy a larger, more demanding need.
“I’m no ingénue. We can copulate now if you wish.”
That irritated Dorian. “No, I do not wish.” Subtle, sensual pleasure is what he bought. Not a dockside swive. Perhaps her direct, aggressive approach was part of her game, a game that, with the slightest push, she might win.
“Would you like to see your room? My home is your home,” she purred.
The implication was neat, tidy and delineated. Your home, come and go as you please. For the next thirty days only.
“Yes. I would.” He enjoyed the dance, the foreplay, the want—not a quick poke in her drawing room wearing his Sunday best. He glanced at her again, watching her unfold as she stood. Her bare feet were small. A flash of leg caught his attention before the billow of her robe and rail settled around her feet, covering her. The crystal glass landed with a clink next to the wallet.
“You may bring that along,” she said, pointing to his valise.
Isabelle floated by with an elegant, graceful stride. Her perfume, a mix of jasmine and woman, wafted upward, filling his nostrils. They hadn’t touched, not even a handshake to seal the agreement.
“How did you know?” he whispered after her. Jasmine reminded him of home. He’d always had an affinity for the flower.
“I asked,” she said, leading him to his pleasurable doom as they left the room.
He had noticed two servants hovering nearby.Guards?he wondered.
The wide black-and-white marble foyer led to a rounded staircase. His steps rang loud, hers were a mere whisper. While she had lounged in the drawing room, the length of her inky dark hair had remained hidden. As she walked up the stairs in front of him, her hair fell in wavy torrents down to the small of her back. He plucked at a curl and wrapped it around his finger before it bounced away to tease him as they mounted the stairs. The silkiness made him want to feel the satin caress of her hair all over his naked body.
At the top of the stairs, they came to an open door. Inside the portal was a man’s room fit for royalty. His domain while they transacted their business.
She pointed to an adjoining door. “My room is through there, but I think perhaps we will be much more comfortable here, don’t you?”
Draped in a navy and brown quilt coverlet, the four-poster bed stood like a schooner in the middle of an ocean. Other men had been here before him—walked the decks, sailed their Union Jack, dropped anchor. That thought turned his stomach. At times he wondered if he knew his own mind. Other men had been with Isabelle—he’d known it from the beginning and he should have no qualms now.
Just because he would not think of her as a whore did not really change the situation at all.
The bedside stand held two periodicals—The Sporting MagazineandTheNoble Science of Fox Hunting. Picking up the red leather edition, he smiled, pleased at her thoroughness. The book had been endorsed by his club, the Hertfordshire Hunt Club. He moved on, silently impressed with her quick and thorough planning.
The bed erupted with six large pillows, the same number he had on his bed at home near Green Park.
He faced her. A measure of satisfaction and a sense of disquiet competed for attention. Speechless, he gazed at her.
“Surely you did not think you paid eleven thousand pounds for a woman who did not know what her man liked?”
Her man?It sounded intimate and bold. She claimed him without any sense of doubt. He was hers to please and so far, he was not disappointed with her efforts.
She stood before him, her hands clasped demurely in front of her stomach. “Would you like me to undress for you? I wish to please you in whatever manner you enjoy.”
“No. Not yet.” He fought back the urges, even though he’d been hard from the moment he’d entered her drawing room. The rumors suggested that Isabelle liked control of every situation, just as she attempted with him now. Well, he wasn’t a flaccid old man looking for a woman to give him five minutes of her time and think it ecstasy.
