The Viscount's Pleasure House (Irresistible Aristocrats Book 1)

by Suzi Love

  He yearned to have her back in his arms in any, and every, way possible.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Justin sucked in a raw breath at the sight of the lady who entered through the doors of the Sultan’s Palace. He’d deliberately retained ownership of this house of pleasure for one last night, though he’d restricted entrance to all but his special guests. And to the beautiful and desirable lady crossing the greeting parlor.

  When he’d planned this, he’d not expected his first glimpse of her to suck the air out of his lungs in quite such a dramatic fashion. He’d imagined being excited and aroused in her presence, though he’d not imagined seeing her would send his well-known control skittering out the door. With effortless grace and a regal air, the red-gowned lady swept past him. She ignored his frozen immobility, and open- mouthed awe, and strode toward the receiving room to greet her friends.

  Wafting perfume filled his nostrils and he inhaled, drew her essence into his lungs like a drinker sucking up his first ale of the day. His senses filled and swam with the sight and smell of her. Damnation, he acted like a mindless idiot around her. Scurrying after her, he caught her arm to pull her to a halt. But his steps faltered, slowed, and ceased all motion. He gulped, stared down at her neckline. Christ, once again the lady had out-witted him.

  “What … what … did you do to that gown?”

  She glanced down at herself, gave a nonchalant shrug, spread her arms out wide. The gesture sent the slashed to the waist gown even lower on her bosom, where the fabric caught and held on her nipples alone. A deep slice of bare skin shone, tempted and taunted, between the two sides of fiery red silk.

  “This old thing?”

  She wiggled and tilted forward to smooth down an imaginary crease on the skirt but he noticed the gleam in her eyes before she bent. Ah, a deliberate move then. This time, she’d kill him for sure. From his higher angle, his view was directly of her nipples, twin ruby peaks barely held inside the rich red silk of her bodice. The two rounded buds wavered for ten long seconds, as if deciding whether to retreat and hide or tip out into his waiting palms.

  Closing his eyes, he threw back his head and moaned. “Why me? Why am I destined to be tormented this way?”

  “I do hope, my darling,” she said, touching his face to bring his gaze back to hers, “you’re not going to waste precious time doing that groaning thing again.” She softened her words with a smile, stretched up to her toes to touch his lips, butterflies wings flitting softly. “You know, those pleas and moans you insist on directing at angels frolicking across your ceiling.”

  For the first time in weeks, he relaxed his tensed muscles and let a true grin split his face. He understood the significance of her slashing a piece out of the already daring neckline of the red gown. Or at least, he hoped he interpreted her meaning correctly.

  Lady Christina Wellsby wanted him and was sending him a clear signal, one even an obtuse idiot such as himself couldn’t fail to comprehend. He chuckled. Perhaps she also sent another message, one to tell him he’d stupidly missed too many cues before. Misunderstood the depth of her feelings for him when she’d given herself to him, body and soul, in the harem tent at the Pleasure House.

  Bloody hell! He cursed slow wit and the time he’d wasted. As notorious Hawkesbury, he’d prided himself on grasping every nuance of women’s convoluted thinking and had believed his best asset to be an instinctive knowledge of how best to respond, or act, to gain whatever suited him best. And yet now, when it mattered most, he’d wasted precious weeks prevaricating. He’d sat in the fields with his sisters as, like playful children, they’d sung an old song and plucked petals from daisies. She loves me, she loves me not.

  A huge grin split his face. “Cupids,” he murmured, glancing once again at the sheer fabric inserted across her bosom in the place of impenetrable lace and ruffles.

  One layer of red organza wasn’t nearly enough to hide such bountiful assets from a rogue’s eager eyes. In fact, his eyes were so eager to devour every inch of this magnificent woman they could have penetrated several layers of this flimsy fabric.

  He swallowed again, hard, before risking a quick sniff near her neck. “Ah! A lavender day. My favorite.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Mere mutterings of a besotted idiot, my dear. Ignore them.” Taking her red-gloved hand, he raised it to his lips for a kiss. “However, my beautiful lady, before I can allow you to enter my harem tonight, I fear I must correct your misassumption. On the ceiling in all my rooms, I have cupids painted. They symbolize purity and innocence and joviality and … “

  A finger trailed down his cheek, making him shiver, as she leaned closer to whisper, “And love? I’ve always sensed love when I stand under your cupids. Do you remember the first night when I came to your library and you appealed to your sage cupids?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I remember everything about us. Every moment and every touch. And, Chrissie, I want more, lots more.” Their gazes met and held and something passed between them, something intense, wonderful, and special. Everything faded except the reality of the two of them begin together again.” I notice your red gown is still too small.”

  She glanced down again and drew his eyes down with hers. Unable to help himself, he ran his

  fingers over the puckered nipples pouting through the sheer red fabric. Backwards and forwards, until her breath came in short pants and his arousal swelled painfully. She pushed her groin against his and in the space of a breath, his control slipped faster down the slippery slope toward insanity.

  “Tell me why, my love. Why you’ve come to me as you were before, with your breasts spilling over your bodice and begging me to take them into my mouth. I need to hear you say it.”

  “When I first read your letter, I immediately thought no, no, no. I’m far too old to risk marriage again. Too settled in my spinster existence to enter an unpredictable, yet permanent, relationship. My biggest worry was that I might rob you of the chance to have a child. Or children, lots of them, as every man with your titles is expected to do.”

  “Chrissie, if we cannot have a child of our own, there are many, many children we can take into our lives and create a family with. The most important thing to consider is us, and what will make us happiest.”

  “That’s why I came here, Justin. I tried really, really hard to convince myself marriage wouldn’t be good for either of us. Most especially for you. But I discovered that deep down I’m not a good person—”

  “Chrissie, you’re amazing,” he said, taking her hands in his. “The most wonderful person I’ve ever encountered.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m selfish. I want you. Far too much to do the right thing and give you up. You’ve no idea, Justin, of the thoughts that now rush through my head. All hours of the day and night. Of all the things I want to do to your body. To do with you.”

  He snorted. “Believe me, my love, I’ve a fair idea. I’m continually distracted from my accounts by picturing how you’d look bent over every piece of furniture in my office. I go to bed and wish you were there, tied to my bedposts. Never able to escape. Never wanting to escape. Begging me to plunge inside your dripping pussy and fill you to the hilt. I can’t even hide it anymore. Bart and Thomas think it’s amusing that my balls ache all day and that I’m reduced to using my hand each night to relieve myself.”

  She smiled. “Really? And I imagined I was the only one suffering. Though I should warn you, I’m likely to be voracious, to resemble a gluttonous pig in my need for you. The thought of any other women having you in their lives, or in their beds, is too much for me to contemplate.”

  She ran her hands, now divested of gloves, around his bare waist and under his embossed red vest. Her nails dug into his back, an exquisite pain, as she clasped him in a demonstration of her need.

  “So, I thought if I could become the sort of woman you wanted, the wild, barely there red- chiffon type, you may be prepared to overlook
my many faults and flaws. Ignore what a greedy, grasping person I’ve turned into since encountering you again.”

  Justin threw back his head and laughed, relief making his body go limp, before he recovered enough to slide his arms around her waist and tug her as close as possible to his eager body. Widening his stance, he pulled her into his crotch and let her feel his arousal, his own need and want.

  “No. I don’t think I can overlook your greed. Not if it means you want to be with me as badly as I need you in my life. Oh, my love,”

  he dropped his head to kiss her, “I want nothing more than to have you, faults and all, as long you’ll accept me with all of my past indiscretions.” Keeping hold of one hand, he dropped to his knees before her. “I love you, Chrissie. So much. Will you please, please, marry me?”

  As he raised his gaze to hers, two fat tears plopped from her eyes onto his cheeks. His heart ceased beating. Did this mean he’d upset her again? Would she refuse him even now when he’d laid bare his soul for her?

  With a loud sob, she fell to her knees in front of him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her shoulders heaved as she cried, loudly and wetly. His chest tightened and his heart skipped another beat as he forced himself to wait. He’d misinterpreted her motives, her actions, before and he was determined to not make the same mistakes. Beneath his titled head, he felt her give a small nod, and then she nodded again, and again until they were both nodding and shaking and holding onto each other for support.

  “Are you saying …,” he said, his voice sounding wispy and uncertain. “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes, yes. A thousand times yes.”

  He clasped her face between two hands and kissed her deeply, his lips moving with hunger over her open and eager mouth, his tongue searching for and finding hers in an age-old mating game. Their breaths rose and fell in unison, short pants between bouts of kisses he didn’t want to end. Their upper limbs were entwined and their lower bodies pressed together, his hard penis pushed so tightly into her groin she’d be left in no doubt of the desperate state of his arousal. He slid one hand behind her derriere and tried to push her against him even harder still, anything to relieve a little of the incessant pulse and ache in his shaft.

  Visions of the beds above them swam into his mind, if only he could summon the where-with-all to stand with her and carry her there. He wanted to lay her back on the red carpet and spread the flimsy bodice apart so his eyes could truly feast on the offerings of her breasts. So his mouth could feed on her cherry nipples, so his hands could wander over bare skin, soft and pliant.

  He wanted— oh, God, he wanted everything at once.

  Loud clapping sounded from behind them. Startled, they pulled apart a few inches and turned to the noise. Damnation. Only then did he remember the group who hovered in the outer room, only then did he realize they’d moved closer into the drawing room to watch them. He’d been so caught up within their small arena of love he’d completely forgotten the rest of the world existed.

  He gave a self-derogatory laugh as he helped Chrissie to her feet. “When you walked toward me in that indecent gown, I forgot everything else. Completely forgot about the romance part of this evening I’d planned.”

  He waved his hand to indicate their audience and the room decorations. Red flowers overflowed huge vases, and rose petals strewn down the center created a trail to take Chrissie from room to room. “We didn’t get past the receiving room. Even my poorest paying customers advance to the larger drawing room.”

  Her head was still partly buried against his chest, yet he heard muffled chuckles that grew from giggles into loud laughter. Around them, her friends joined in with a chorus of happy laughter as Gillian and Anna rushed forward to hug them.

  When he was finally able to get a word in over the chatter of the excited ladies, he said, “I’ve arranged dinner, and performances, and even Matthew. Anything and everything I could think of to mellow your mood, Chrissie. I wanted you relaxed for the end of the evening when I proposed to you, so you’d be content, blissful, and ready to accept me as your husband.” He looked around and groaned. “Yet here we are, standing in the entrance of the last brothel I will ever own and I have a fiancée whom I adore.” He sucked in a long slow breath and spoke directly to his new bride-to-be. “And it’s the happiest moment of my life.”

  She smiled at him. “Mine too, my lord. Mine too.”

  Unable to help himself, he kissed her again and another loud cheer broke out from their audience. “Do you want to see the performances?” he asked, half afraid of her answer.

  He wanted Chrissie to experience every sexual adventure she’d missed in her life, and yet, at the same time knew jealousy would make him long to rip the arms from the sockets of any other man who touched her body. He swallowed hard, forced himself to continue. After all, this was the grand finale, the big climax to her evening of pleasure.

  “I’ve had the entire staff costumed in red tonight in deference of you, and to the red room, the one final room in my house of pleasure you’ve not visited.”

  Chrissie grinned cheekily but before she answered, Anna called out. “You’re correct, Justin, much to our regret you whisked us away before we’d completed our tour of the rooms.”

  Thomas exclaimed, “I say, Anna, I thought in light of our recent— “

  “Friendship?” Bart asked with an ironic lift to his brow.

  Thomas glared at him. “I was speaking of my close relationship with Anna, in light of which I’d rather Justin didn’t show her the red room.”

  “Oh, how intriguing,” Gillian said. “May I, as a married woman, see it?”

  “No,” Edward said with a snap. “I shall gladly demonstrate, at home, anything you might see there.” He held up an imperious hand. “Not that I’ve ever viewed the infamous red room, mind you. I wouldn’t do that to you, Gillian. We are married.”

  “Yes, Edward, and we will remain that way if I have anything to say about it,” Gillian announced smugly.

  Justin rolled his eyes and stepped forward to interrupt. “If you don’t mind, this night is for Chrissie— my fiancée.” He rolled the word over his tongue and savored the feel of it. It felt wonderful. He grasped Chrissie’s hand tighter, reluctant to ever let go again even for a moment. “I still worry someone as wonderful as Chrissie will realize her mistake, and renege on our betrothal if I give her a moment to contemplate it. Therefore, I’m in a hurry to move the evening’s entertainments along.”

  He turned back to Chrissie. “Now, my darling, I have Matthew ready to show off his talents with several of my female performers. I even coerced him into a harem uniform, although he refused to dress like a eunuch.”

  She laughed. “I can well understand a man of his size and reputation being reluctant to be viewed as dismembered.”

  He grinned. “And the other rooms are set up with the girls at the ready. Name your pleasure.” He sucked in a breath and braced himself for the jealousy sure to follow. “And, of course, you must feel free to join any of the entertainments this evening, even Matthew’s. After we marry, I’ll be too possessive of all your lush curves and tempting crevices to let any man near you, but for tonight, I intend making your every fantasy come true.”

  She sighed, tilted her head to the side in consideration, and then shook her head.

  “No, my deepest love, my only lover. My fantasy for tonight is not to view any of your entertainments, no matter how arousing I’m sure they’ll be.” She waved a hand to her friends. “They shall want to see them, however.” She turned back to face him. “I don’t need to see other men’s naked bodies, nor do I wish to use them, or be used by them.”

  He drew in a sharp breath in anticipation. “What then?”

  “You!” She reached up to kiss his mouth but he held perfectly still, holding his breath, waiting, needing to hear it all. “I want you, Justin. You alone.”

  He groaned, a thankful groan, and swept her up into his arms.

  “Oh, but there is one more
thing I require to make my night perfect.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Anything, my love, anything.”

  She giggled, leaned closer to his ear. “I want you, naked, tied with those red silk cords to the biggest bed, the one in nearest approximation to our shared divan in the tent at the Viscount’s Pleasure House.” She waved a languid hand to indicate the brothel they stood in. “I want you to perform the role of my sex slave in the infamous Red Room.” She licked her lips. “I want to test for myself the much fêted stamina of the Virile Viscount. All night long.”

  He didn’t hesitate, but scooped her up and strode for the door. As he walked, he called over his shoulder to their amused friends. “Please feel free to entertain yourselves in any fashion you wish. My future wife and I are going to be occupied in the Red Room where I intend on introducing my inquisitive bride-to-be to as many exotic forms of pleasure as I can possibly imagine.”

  He smiled down at the bundle of woman lying trustingly in his arms, and dipped his head to brush his lips over her pursed ones. She smiled, a siren’s smile of feminine knowledge and anticipation. He laughed.

  What a pleasure it would be teaching beautiful Chrissie all the tricks of his former trade.

  About the Author

  I’m Suzi Love, also the author of The Viscount's Pleasure House, and I’m trying to make history fun, one year at a time. History for me is never dull or boring, but vibrant and alive and filled with characters whose stories may sound stranger than fiction, but who really did conquer oceans and travel the world.

  I am an Australian author whose lifetime fascination with all things old, weird, or exotic led me to travel extensively and to then write about all the exciting things I’ve discovered along the way. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the journey with me.