by Thea Devine
"You can't keep doing things like that."
"Like what? Looking for a husband? But that's the express reason I'm here, and if you won't marry me, I need you not to be here, so that other eligible gentlemen may have their chance."
"Angilee—this is crazy."
She shot him a sizzling look. "It is the perfect plan. When I find a husband, it will end all my problems. The fact I was damaged goods counted for nothing, so more drastic measures were called for. Let me introduce you to my chaperone, Mrs. Geddes. Mrs. Geddes, I know it's bad form, but this"—libertine, she wanted to say, this bastard, she wanted to say—"guest," was what she said, "introduced himself to me, and surely it's bad manners to just walk away."
The dragon looked him up and down. "And just who are you?"
"Kyger Galliard, ma'am."
"Galliard—Galliard—the diamond miner who died two years ago?"
"Youngest son thereof, ma'am."
"Well, not an itinerant ne'er-do-well, at any rate," the dragon pronounced. "There was a fortune in diamonds involved, or so the gossip said."
Spread by his brother no doubt, Kyger thought. "So they say."
"And I assume you've been at the family town house since you
returned?"
He looked at Angilee, who was pointedly looking at the crowd. "Just returned there, ma'am."
She raised her eyebrows. "Well, a house in Belgrave Square is nothing to sneeze at."
"No, ma'am."
He waited, but the dragon didn't offer him carte blanche to call on Angilee. And she had her nose turned up at him altogether.
"MissRosslyn?"
"Mr. Galliard?" Her tone was frosty.
The dragon caught it. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Galliard. Perhaps we'll see you again sometime during the Season." "Oh, you may count on it," Kyger murmured. "Angilee?" She gave him a startled look. "Would you care to dance?"
He'd raised his voice slightly, too, so everyone around heard his request, and now she was trapped. Mrs. Geddes had dismissed him, and he did not want to be dismissed, and so—she could refuse him, but she was in no position to make a scene about anything. Her father, or Wroth, could be anywhere in the room. She was safer in his arms at the moment than sitting with Mrs. Geddes, waiting for someone to ask her to dance.
And it would be rude beyond measure to refuse, and it might deter any other man within earshot from asking her to partner him. She looked at Mrs. Geddes, who was also gauging the temperature of the crowd around them, and she nodded almost imperceptibly.
"I would be pleased," she answered, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her onto the floor. He put his arm around her, and she flinched at his touch, and the feel of him against her, and the memories that instantly flooded her mind and body.
Control that. "What do you think you're doing, Mr...." She couldn't quite say his name yet. Mr. Penis. Mr. Took-my-virginity and left me high and dry ...
"Dancing with you, as prescribed by custom." The orchestra struck a note, everyone stood poised, waiting for the swoop of the music, and as it swirled up around them, off they went, in graceful concentric circles around the ballroom.
"If you won't marry me, there's no point to your dancing with me," Angilee whispered fiercely.
"But we've danced before, Miss Rosslyn, hip to hip, body to body, and I haven't forgotten a moment of it."
"That's curious—I don't remember ever having met you, Mr.—" Bullhead bull...
She felt color rising in her cheeks at the thought of it, of what she'd done in desperation, in the name of directing her own fu-
ture her way, and in the name of circumventing her marriage to Wroth.
Even now, she felt terrorized by the mere thought that he or her father might be prowling around somewhere in this ballroom. For all her bravado, she knew he still had a score to settle with her, for running away, for stealing his money, for foisting her expenses off on him, for stealing her clothes and his invitation to this coveted event—
But the bull's arms around her were so strong and secure— why wouldn't he marry her?—it made so much sense, it wouldn't be forever, and he could have whatever she could afford to give him in the end ...
... except—
... had she imagined she'd heard Mrs. Geddes say he had a house in Belgrave Square ... ? And something about a fortune in diamonds? She hadn't been half listening in her pique, but she surely had heard that.. .
Hadn't she?
"You're wasting my time, Mr.—" Again his name stuck on her tongue. "I could be dancing with a man who wants to marry me."
Her single-mindedness irritated him. "You are so fixated on being married. You don't need to marry someone. There are other ways around your problem."
"But this is my way," Angilee said, scanning the crowd for some inkling of whether Zabel was there. "And your way was to say no to my proposition. We have absolutely nothing to talk about."
It was true, if she was going to be that obdurate, there was nothing more to say. But he could kiss her into submission. It was tempting to want to try. It was the wrong time and place to want to try, with Hackford hovering around the edge of the circle of dancers, and the dragon standing there with her arms folded eying him as though he was the plague.
Or the second coming, since his fabled fortune in diamonds had been right on the tip of the dragon's tongue.
Damn Lujan's hide.
"Oh, I have lots I want to talk about."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Angilee said as they whirled around to the eddying strains of the waltz. Almost over, almost there. Some prospects eying her with interest.
She smiled brightly, looking just past him. Galliard . . . whatever his name was-that could have been a lie-whoever would have thought . . . ? The man she'd paid to take her virginity— the second son of a ... bitch —
Chapter Thirteen
She was a sensation. Once the ice was broken, and someone had taken notice of her, the men lined up quickly to fill her dance card.
Angilee loved the fact there were dozens of them. She felt powerful, beautiful, wanted. And she hated being beholden to her hired penis for all the immediate and gratifying attention. She disliked it intensely that he just stood on the sidelines watching her with a stormy look in his eyes.
She despised herself for having given her body away to a stranger before she had had the opportunity to explore the possibilities of a Season as a means to find a temporary mate.
She loved whirling around the ballroom in the arms of the various gentlemen who were well-bred, admiring, eligible, charming and available.
She didn't like any of them particularly, but it wanted only one of them to be interested for her to move to the next step of her plan.
She made it a point to be extra appealing, accommodating and admiring. She spread Southern charm like it was molasses. She tilted her head beguilingly and smiled at every comment no mat-
ter how inane, and complimented her partners extravagantly on the least little thing, even to the way they kept time to the music.
It was tiring. At least with the bull, there had been no pretense. She had chosen him for a reason, one that was up front and nakedly there. And that didn't just go away because she had dismissed him: she was pointedly aware of him as she circled the floor with this partner and that, manufacturing conversation and compliments.
Why wouldn't the bull marry her? It would have saved so much time and energy. It could have been done already. He could have been two weeks into the bargain already, even if he didn't need the money, with the end in sight.
He had no right to pop up like this and make things worse, and make her want something she couldn't make possible. She wished he would go away.
Let him go away .. .
Damn him, damn him, damn him ...
"You were saying, my lord?" she murmured as she lost track of some point her partner was making.
"Would you care for some refreshment?"
"Oh, I
'd be delighted," she answered, whipping enthusiasm into her tone, as the waltz ended and the Honorable Trevor Smythe held out his arm.
The bull was watching still, standing there like marble, un-moving and disapproving.
He had no right to even look at her. He'd had his chance; he'd had his turn. He'd had her, and none of that was enough to induce him to marry her.
So let him steam and stew. Let him wish and want.
Let him look at all these other men who wanted her now.
She smiled up at the tall and awkward Honorable Trevor, and gave him her hand.
"Ah, she found another pigeon ..." Hackford, sneaking up by his side, "And that one is ripe for plucking. Good luck to her. No one knows who she is anyway. Come along now, we've got a serious game going in the back room and we need an infusion of a thousand pounds of flesh ..."
Kyger made a sound. The last thing he wanted was to leave the ballroom. Angilee was dangerous with those dark come-to-me eyes, and that curvaceous body that too many men already had held in their arms.
He knew what it was like to hold her, to plumb her, to wring from her a pure, uninhibited sexual response. That kind of physical connection was not that easily dismissed.
She hadn't forgotten, she had power now, which she didn't know fully how to wield, she couldn't be trusted, as well he knew, and she was hell-bent on finding someone to marry her—a combination that was ripe for disaster.
She was in a reckless, dangerous mood, and he wasn't even certain that the dragon would be enough protection for her.
And he didn't have the right. Or the time.
Hellfire.
He didn't care. No, he cared. Shit.
"Listen, you're falling into an abyss, my friend. You need to come with me. This is all a set piece. All the marital arrangements have already begun behind closed doors, except for those wild cards, like the American heiresses. And they're negligible. They'll marry whoever's mausoleum needs to be bankrolled. So it's hard to tell where your goddess over there fits into the pantheon of open purses. Forget her—believe me, there are dozens of willing women—you don't need her, no matter how alluring she is."
"No," Kyger said reluctantly, flatly, letting Hackford lead him away. "I don't."
I do.
They maneuvered through the throng, and it seemed as if it had increased twofold since Kyger had arrived. It was now past midnight, and the attendees acted as if the ball had just begun. There were dozens crowding into the supper room, dozens more on .the dance floor. Dozens of women swarming in and out of the cloakroom or the dressing rooms, mending torn hems, fixing their hair, checking their jewelry, stealing out to look over those who had just recently arrived in hopes it was someone fresh and
new.
And they were still coming up the steps from the reception rooms.
But back in the card room, things were quieter. Two dozen perhaps, seated by fours at the various tables.
Hackford paused on the threshold for a long moment, scanning the tables, until he found the group he was seeking, and suddenly he relinquished Kyger's arm.
Kyger looked down curiously. Hackford's arm was stiff at his side, with his hand clenched, and then slowly he moved his forefinger to point downward, and his thumb outward.
It was but a moment's worth of movement, if that, and then Hackford grasped him by the elbow and propelled him forward before he even registered that something had happened.
Or had something happened?
"These are old friends," Hackford was saying. "Billington you know. Wambley. Beston. Armitage. Here you go—Galliard the younger, full of push and vinegar and thinks he knows cards. Let's show him, gentlemen, shall we?"
He pulled out a chair for Kyger, and the one next to him. "What's on for tonight?"
What was on for the night was large losses, deliberately large on Kyger's part. And Angilee flirting around the edges of his consciousness.
Forget her.
He couldn't. She looked too beautiful tonight, too beguiling. There was something about her. Maybe it was just her single-mindedness, or the way she flaunted rules. Whatever it was, she was too seductive, and she could not be left to her own devices, and the dragon ought to know that.
Only not from him.
He heard the music faintly in the distance. The dancers had broken for supper around ten-thirty, and the dancing had resumed an hour later. By custom, there would be another dozen or so dances before the ball ended, which meant that many more men Angilee might rashly proposition.
No—he was worried for nothing: the dragon would not let that happen. She hadn't encouraged him, nor Trever Smythe. The dragon would protect her, she didn't need a knight-errant, especially one who had taken her virginity and twice refused to marry her.
He needed to concentrate on the cards. On losing. On that curious hand movement. On the mission.
And he couldn't. He was as chained to the table as if he were actually in shackles. At that point, it was easy to lose, because his every thought was centered on Angilee.
He had to find her—sometime tomorrow. If she had a dragon, if she had a proper ball gown and jewelry, if she had entree into social circles, then she was somewhere in London, if not with her father.
He could find her. It might be too late, but he would find her.
And meantime ...
The game went on. These were baccarat devotees, with a side dish of vingt-et-un. They played in shifts, they played hard and steady, and they played to win.
They were winning, and he was going down for the count. But they all knew about and believed that he had a fortune in diamonds stashed away somewhere, and he was ripe for the plucking, and they'd nip and pick at him until he was stripped bare.
And then they wanted to go to the Bullhead.
"Come along, my good fellow." Hackford nudged him. "A good time is to be had by all. It'll be on our chip. Let's go."
And they went, through the still teeming crowd, both in the ballroom and those now slowly making their way to the lower level, and waiting for their carriages.
Angilee and the dragon among them? Damn it, where was she?
Thank God, the multitude moved slowly, engaged in gossip and speculation every step of the way. He had a chance to scan the crowd, to look for the telltale green gown, the elegant posture, and the chocolate hair with glittery drops sprinkled through the curls.
But all this shuffling forward made Hackford impatient, rude, and he wasn't about to wait: he was a veteran of those events; he got them through the crowd in jig time.
There were a dozen footmen, taking names, and a dozen more boys acting as runners. One by one, the carriages were called forward, according to name, from where they were parked on streets adjacent to the house.
Hackford barged up to the front of the line and gave his card.
There was a disapproving murmur behind him, but he didn't
care.
"That's the thing about these affairs," he said as they settled into his carriage and it moved forward slowly. "You never can get away fast enough."
But once the carriage was clear of the clog of waiting vehicles, they were off like the wind, arriving at the Bullhead less than an hour later; and in five more minutes, they were admitted into the lush and hushed reception room.
A woman glided out, dressed in form-fitting diaphanous black, which merely emphasized her breasts, her hips, her nipples, her shaved mound. Her hair was pulled back into a topknot, and around her neck she wore a black leather choker with a black leather rose appended.
"My lords?" Her voice was husky as if she had just had sex. Her body was luscious, her nipples tight, hard, bulbous and tempting.
Hackford was tempted. He paced around her, eying her as if she were a prime piece of horseflesh. And then he moved behind her, wrapped one arm around her waist, and encircled one breast with his thumb and forefinger.
forefinger pointed down, thumb straight. ..
Sliding his fingers down to
her rigid nipple tip where he squeezed, hard. "We'll have a night of nipples and fucking. Starting now, Mistress Nipples. Starting with your honey. Spread your legs."
She complied instantly, lifting her hem, spreading her legs as Hackford ripped apart his trousers, and in a moment, he had her backed up against a wall, and he was humping her.
"Good hot wet one, gentlemen," he panted as he spewed. "You next, Billington."
Each of them took their turn with her, Armitage and Wambley in particular riding her hard and rough, lifting her high against the wall, huffing obscenities as they thrust themselves to oblivion.
Kyger last, almost as if he were the initiate. In he went, off he went, like a trigger pulled by mistake—he shot his wad instantly, hard and heavy.
"First course," Hackford said. "She's available for the entree and dessert. Whom should we ask for?"
"Mistress Nipples will do," she murmured.
"We want nipples," Hackford commanded, "Now."
"Excellent, my lord. Come with me."
Their rooms were on the upper floor, where everything was that much more lavish. Thicker carpet, more elegantly appointed rooms—there were satin-covered beds, satin sheets, piles of plush pillows on which to ride or recline, several thickly cushioned benches, both flat and inclined to accommodate whatever position the client was inclined to initiate.
Here, a beautiful courtesan came to help him remove his clothes and warm up his body for the strenuous night ahead. Kyger felt more like a pasha waiting to be serviced in his seraglio than a randy libertine paying to expend his seed.
The courtesan was naked, but for a veil over her head which obscured her features, and the necklace with the black rose, and her fingers were like fairy touches, patting, stroking, slipping, sliding, caressing .,. and then she offered her body as his vessel, bending over the bench that was inclined, so that his engorged penis, which she had deliberately aroused to the point of expulsion, could empty into her, and ready itself for what came next.
There was no way to avoid availing himself of her nakedly accessible receptacle. They were watching. He would have wagered his fortune on it. There was nothing else he could do, no other choice but to grasp her hips, tilt her body upward, force his way into her soaking wet hole, and take her as quickly as he could manage.
