A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man (31 page)

Then a wave of dizziness struck me. My heart began to pound. I think I must have sagged a bit in Lord B
____
’s grasp, for his hands tightened about me.

“It’s all right,” he murmured in my ear. “It is only the Spanish fly.”

I gasped. I could not have lived among the demimonde for five years without knowing of Spanish fly. Used as an aphrodisiac, the powder was ground from dried blister beetles. However, I had never experimented with it for it was known to be a dangerous poison if misused.

Lord B
____
must have felt my fright, for he laughed reassuringly in my ear. “Do not fret, my wanton. Lord C
____
knows his methods well. There would not be enough in the food to harm, only to titillate. You’ll like what it does to you. Or at least, if you don’t, I will.”

He laughed again, sounding hollow and strange in my drugged hearing. I did not understand the jest.

Yet, I could not deny the heat rising within me. The room spun a bit and the candle flames seemed to swell in my vision. I blinked several times to clear my sight, only to realize that the dancer had stopped before me. She stood proudly, shoulders back, one gleaming thigh cocked to show through her slitted skirts. Her chest rose and fell, displaying a sheen of sweat across her shoulders and bosom.

So outrageous. So exotic. My mouth went dry. I licked my lips.

“She likes you,” Lord B
____
murmured. “Do you like her as well?”

I did not know. I felt a dreamy curiosity mingled with the itch to taste her skin. Which feelings were caused by the drug and which by the girl?

Apparently weary of waiting, the dancer reached out a sure hand to release the tie of my neckline. With a flick of her wrist I was bared nearly to the nipples. The thin silk hung there from my rigid tips as I gazed at the girl in shock. She flashed her white teeth at me, less of a smile than a dare.

I never could refuse a dare. I reached out quickly to snatch at the closest wafting scarf attached to the belt around her waist. It came away in my hand, revealing a swell of golden hip and more of that tantalizing thigh. Lord B
____
laughed low.

The dancer bent to take the scarf from my tingling fingers. Then she straightened and stepped closer still. Then another step, until I could feel the heat of her skin against mine. I waited breathless, unsure of what I wanted to happen next.

The dancer came one more step and then brought her lips to mine. My own lips parted in surprise. At the last moment, she did not kiss me but leaned to one side, the side away from Lord B
____
. I could not honestly say if I was disappointed or relieved.

She whispered in my ear.

“Run away,” she told me in a husky, accented voice, with her breath sweet and hot against my cheek. Then she whirled away once more, moving to the drumbeat, the reclaimed scarf trailing high from her raised hands.

My heart thudded as I watched her entertain us all with her flashing limbs and hot defiance. Did anyone else even see her fury? Their eyes were glazed with their own importance. No, they only saw a half-naked woman gyrating before them. Only I had understood her.

Run away. From what? From her? From this house? From Lord B
____
?

It turned out that she meant all of the above.

*   *   *

After the dancing ended, the guests began to pair off, or in some cases separate into groups of three and even four. We watched. Lord B
____
moved us from place to place, enjoying the show with an easy smile. I felt very strange.

I was drunk on the sights around me and fevered from the drug-induced heat in my blood. When Lord B
____
stroked his hands over my shoulders and then down to cup my nearly bared breasts, I shuddered. It seemed as if every inch of my skin were on fire. His touch was unbearable. I needed it. Only my release would ease the intolerable tension within me, I thought.

“I’m going to do just as you told me,” he murmured.

I was scarcely listening. Lord C
____
held the tawny dancer astride him on the fainting couch. She rode him hard as he twisted her small brown nipples. Did he even realize that the foreign words she shouted in her orgasm were obscenities? I could hear them echo black with hatred in my mind.

Lord B
____
slid his hands down my arms to take my hands into his. I let him, dazed at the sight of a man suckling at the large breasts of a courtesan while another naked woman caned his bared bottom. His pasty buttocks were striped with angry red marks and bristling black hair. I was nauseated. Fascinated.

When my hands were tugged behind my back, I hesitated a split second too long to pull away. In mere seconds, Lord B
____
had twisted a thick cord about my wrists and pulled it tight, binding me securely.

“Wh—what?” I tried to jerk away from him, but he pulled me back against him.

“Is this not just as you described to me?” His hot hands covered my breasts again and squeezed. I gasped and twisted in his embrace, but he only rolled my nipples between his thumbs and fingers.

“I was to bind you and strip you,” he growled in my ear. “Then I was to lead you to the center of the room and fuck you before all their eyes. My bitch in heat.”

Hot, yes. My body did not feel like it belonged to me at all. I was nearly swooning from the fever in my blood and the burning of his torturous fingers on my sensitized nipples. My heart pounded. My cunte throbbed and moistened. I found myself grinding my buttocks back against him, seeking the rocklike rod of his erection. I found it.

Yet my heart wasn’t partaking of the lust. My mind was fogged and slow, but my spirit wanted to pull away. Part of me longed to flee these bonds and this room and this steaming midden heap drenched in power, submission, and the drugged, heartless drive to satiation.

Who were these panting monsters, these dull-eyed bulls, these shrieking, jiggling cows? What was this soulless place?

My mind fought to make sense of it all.
I am in the country house of Lord C
____
. I am here because I wanted to come. I am here because Lord B
____
wished me to come. He wants to take me like these women are being taken … like an animal … like a grunting farm beast …

I felt hot. I felt ill. I felt lust that had nothing to do with what
I
wanted. It was infused in my blood, a poison in my veins. My mouth was so dry I could not speak a protest. My feet seemed very far away from my mind’s control. I stumbled as Lord B
____
led me to the center of the room. The chandeliers dazzled my vision as if they were made of suns, not mere candles. There was a buzzing in my ears.

I am sick. Help me. Take care of me.

Take me away from here.

I don’t know if I managed to whisper the words or not. I know that Lord B
____
did not listen if he heard me. I was led to the dais where the dancer had begun her first leap. I was lifted. The room changed and spun yet more from my changed perspective.

Then I felt the first sharp tug. My bodice tore, exposing my right breast. I staggered but I was held upright as more tugs turned my gown to shreds that gaped open nearly to my waist and slit high upon my thighs. The humid air of the room was like the slime of a slug against my exposed skin. Naked, or nearly so. Bound.

Helpless.

“I do not wish this.” Yes, I had managed to speak aloud that time. I heard my own voice quite clearly. Heartened, I pulled at my bonds. I needed merely to ask to be released. Lord B
____
cared for me. He would help me if he understood. “Untie me, darling. I’ve changed my mind.”

He moved before me and simply stood there, his arms crossed over his chest and a sneer upon his handsome face. “So sorry,
darling,
but you made your own wicked little bed. Time to lie down in it.”

He jumped up upon the dais beside me and turned to the ogling crowd. “Gather round, ye wicked throng, and place your pennies on the barrel!”

His words sounded almost like those used in the beast market. With horror clogging my throat, I realized that I was the item up for auction!

He went on. “I’ve a great bloody debt to pay off, so I want you depraved lot to bid high and long!” Like a carnival barker, he smiled, he charmed, he cajoled and entertained as the bids began to roll in.

It soon became clear that one bidder was more serious than the rest. Icy malevolent eyes gazed at me hungrily and I knew that Lord C
____
had arranged the entire depraved ruse.

Horror flooded me. I wanted to vomit. My fevered mind fled back to another night when I’d been naked and bound and helpless. I’d been so filled with unbridled arousal that night, that hot, dark, beautiful night with Sir.

How could I have known that it was not the act that aroused me? How could I, in my inexperience, have realized that it was not the binding, but the man who bound me? It was not the helplessness I enjoyed, but the trust?

“Sold!” The fat man slapped his meaty hand down upon his improvised auctioneer’s bench, his companion’s jiggling buttocks. “To Lord C
____
, for the price of two thousand pounds!”

The last of the false heat drained from my blood as I stood there, chilled by Lord C
____
’s flat, cold gaze. His gray eyes were empty of emotion, but I saw him clench one fist in triumph. Or preparation.

Laughter and applause filled the room. I was not admired here. I was envied and resented.

“It is the most fervent admirers who enjoy my fall the most.”

The Swan had understood this. In my blithe, willful ignorance, I had chosen to disbelieve it. As I looked around me at the gloating gazes and sneers, my final faint hope of rescue died in my soul, leaving a black, gaping hole. I would not escape this.

As I looked into the deadened gaze of the man who claimed to own me, I was not even sure I would survive it.

As Lord C
____
triumphantly dragged me away toward his bedchamber, all the orgy participants gathered around in a sort of grotesque shivaree to see me off to my doom.

The dancer, dark and bold and savage, stepped out of the crowd that surrounded them. She stalked directly to me and raised her hand. I thought she moved to strike. Oddly, this notion hurt more than all the derisive enjoyment of the crowd. However, her hand slowed just before it reached my face. Her fingertips trailed down my temple and cheek, passing lightly down my throat and over my chest. Her palm, hot and callused, came to rest over my exposed breast.

“Pretty whore.” Her accented voice was husky, her black eyes unreadable.

Lord C
____
’s gaze flicked back and forth between us as the onlookers grinned and jeered. “Kiri, do you want her?”

Kiri did not respond to him at all. Instead, she tilted her head and let her eyes follow her other hand up to push back the lock of my hair that had fallen over my face in my struggle. Her fingers lingered in my hair, combing slowly down. Then she stepped closer. I could feel the avid spectators hold their breath. I, on the other hand, cared nothing at all. This creature’s inoffensive exploration was nothing compared to the threat of my looming violation by Lord C
____
.

Her kiss was dry and brief, although more than a peck. Her lips were full and soft. I remained still and simply waited for her to finish. I imagined an abrupt decrease in the mental facilities of every man in the room as their imaginations stiffened their cocks and deprived their brains.

When she pulled away, I saw Lord C
____
narrow his eyes in consideration. He tugged at my bonds, urging me into the bedchamber. Kiri followed, though I saw no sign of invitation from her master. When the door closed behind the three of us, I felt no relief from the avid eyes of the guests. There was nothing in me but a numb horror and a powerful need to flee.

My captor pushed me hard and I fell onto the bed, unable to catch myself with my hands tied behind me. In seconds, Kiri was on me. She lay half atop me, pressed bosom to bosom. Her small quick hands played over me like fluttering bird wings as she buried her face in my neck and began to moan with desire.

My own interest in her had been quite squelched by the minor matter of being sold at auction to a sadist, so I daresay my response was somewhat less than she’d hoped for. All I could feel was Lord C
____
’s icy gaze running over me as he moved closer to the bed.

Then Kiri muttered a foreign word in my ear that had the unmistakable ring of “Idiot!” She also managed to give me a solid blow to my thigh with her knee. Her message became clear an instant later when I felt her roving hands at my bound wrists. She was counterfeiting every second of her lust in order to distract his lordship from his intended ravishing.

I am not the cleverest of women but I am not a fool, at least not usually. I immediately began to writhe and sigh against her. “Oh yes … ooh … um, ooh…”

I have ever been a heartfelt lover, so the moment became extremely odd—two women, ludicrously caressing and tangling limbs, with no intent beyond escape. In some corner of my mind, I laughed even as I silently screamed in panic.

My wrists parted, the ropes gone slack between them. I remained lying half atop my hands, while Kiri turned from me to beckon to Lord C
____
. “Tear the dress off.”

Apparently the notion of watching Kiri spread herself fully upon me naked was more than he could bear to pass up, for he obeyed her instantly. As he bent to grasp the remaining shreds of my gown in both hands, Kiri moved out of his way. My view of her was blocked by him, but I caught a glimpse of something swift and menacing bearing down upon his skull. He fell upon me with a wheezing grunt.

Kiri stood over us with an ebony bookend in her white-knuckled grip and a look of maniacal triumph in her wild eyes.

Mad,
I thought. Then, when Lord C
____
stirred upon me, not entirely lost to consciousness, I found myself go a bit uneven in the mind as well. Taking my bonds into my hands, I wrapped the silken ropes around his throat before I could even imagine myself doing so. He gagged and tried to grapple with me, but Kiri’s weapon descended again.