A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man

by Celeste Bradley

  I frowned. “That ‘unfortunate encounter’ nearly cost me my life.”

  He swallowed. I saw the shame and regret in his eyes. “I had no idea what lengths to which he would go,” he said slowly. “I confess, I did not even wonder.”

  Pity stung me. “Mr. Wainwright, you are no more responsible for another’s evil actions than are the men who hold his debts. He might have gotten the money any number of ways, starting with not gambling it away in the first place. He lifted his hand to me, not you.”

  “That he lifted his hand at all is a crime,” Mr. Wainwright said grimly. “I do not know why you do not press charges, and I’m sure you have your reasons, but he has already paid in the loss of my daughter’s hand. Though she still refuses to believe in his brutality, she will not wed him while I live.” Then Mr. Wainwright straightened in his seat and smiled at me. “In any event, I have come to offer you any assistance I might render. I am not without influence and resources. Perhaps I might aid you in some way?”

  I tilted my head and smiled at him. “You are a good man, Mr. Wainwright, to place your daughter’s well-being above all else. Many men would sell their daughters for such favorable connections. I know my relations tried to.”

  “I spoil her, I think.” He shrugged. “My dear wife passed on three years ago. It is a sad thing for a girl to lose her mother just when she is becoming a woman.”

  I looked down at my clasped hands. “Indeed it is.” Then I lifted my chin and flashed him a smile I hoped shone through my mottled, uneven features. “Yet I somehow know that your wife was a very lucky woman.”

  He actually blushed. Adorable. “It was a mutual feeling, I think.”

  I realized that this man, this rich, handsome, good, kind man who loved his daughter, was absolutely throbbing with loneliness.

  Sir was gone. I knew he would not return. We had broken our own rules. Our friendship had changed into something that would ruin us both if we let it.

  In the meantime, I had realized that although I was not ready to say good-bye to the Blackbird, neither did I wish to return to my former heights of popularity and notoriety. I was replete with scandal and danger.

  Now Mr. Eamon Wainwright sat before me, suddenly as awkward as a boy unable to ask a girl to dance.

  A man like this would not set me aflame. He would not caper madly with me in public simply to shock the crowd. He would not twist lovemaking into something addictive and damaging.

  He would not hurt me. Ever.

  I leaned forward and let my smile warm. “Dear Mr. Wainwright, I think perhaps you should stay for dinner.”

  He stayed for breakfast.

  VOLUME III

  Twenty-seven

  Boston

  Piper’s eyes opened slowly. The palest morning light danced in the sheer canopy gathered over her bed. She felt Miss Meade snuggled up to her left hip and Mick at her right. In fact, growing more awake by the moment, she realized that Mick also was pressed against her right arm, breast, side, thigh, and ankle. His arm was thrown protectively over her torso. His deep, steady breathing was hot against the side of her neck.

  She smiled. This must be the kind of supreme comfort and safety Ophelia experienced that first time she’d awoken tangled up in Sir. Though Piper had been waking up with Mick for many weeks now, each morning felt like a sweet surprise. A lucky twist of fate. It felt like eating dessert before breakfast.

  They needed to get up and get going soon, but Piper lingered there, letting her mind wander and her body luxuriate in Mick’s solid warmth.

  The Fall Gala was three weeks away. She’d committed herself on a path that was proving more challenging every day. But she wasn’t alone, and that had made all the difference.

  And she was in love. It was that simple and that sudden. Of course she hadn’t told Mick. She felt a little embarrassed about how her love for him had swooped in the way it had, but Mick hadn’t seemed to mind. In fact, there were a few times she’d been almost certain that Mick was in love with her, too. But what did Piper know? She might have earned her advanced degree in the erotic arts, thanks to Ophelia, but she was still a novice when it came to love. She’d never experienced it before, and up until recently, she doubted it would ever bless her life.

  “Morning, love.”

  Piper shivered in pleasure, feeling Mick’s greeting as much as she heard it. His deep whisper had vibrated into her neck. His big erection was now prodding into her hip.

  Miss M. somehow sensed it was her time to vacate the premises and skittered off the bed and into the living room.

  Piper felt Mick’s hot and firm hand rub her belly. “Mmm. I love waking up with you.” He threw his thigh over Piper’s sheet-covered legs. “Do we really have to go to work today?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Piper said, burying her fingers in Mick’s thick curls and pressing his head in the direction of her breast. Being a man renowned for his ability to unearth lost secrets from the past, Mick had no trouble locating her nipple beneath the sheet. He trapped it tenderly between his teeth just as his hand slid across her belly, yanked down the sheet, and insinuated itself between her legs. His fingers slid up through the wet seam of her pussy.

  “Looks like another hot and humid day,” he said, tossing the sheet up and away from both of them. He pulled himself on top of her, one hand still buried in her slit, the other hand used to balance the weight of his body.

  Piper sighed, overwhelmed by the beauty of her lover, his upper body muscles working in the morning light. When Mick’s finger grazed her clitoris, she jerked with intense pleasure.

  “We really shouldn’t be doing this,” Mick said, using his knees to splay her legs further.

  “I have a lot to do today,” Piper said, raising her pelvis into the air, hungry and empty and fairly crazed with the heat of his skin on hers, the sight of her lover’s deepest blue eyes.

  “I’m feckin’ swamped, m’self,” Mick said as he pushed the rounded end of his cock inside her and slowly pressed his case.

  “Do you want the shower first?” Piper asked, her head arching back from the sheer glory of it.

  “Ladies first.” Mick moaned.

  “I’m going to come.”

  “Like I said, ladies first.”

  Piper laughed even as she felt the tide of an orgasm gathering at her core. She reached up and grabbed Mick by the neck and kissed him with everything she had in her. And she came—hard—bucking beneath him, a tide of fire sweeping through her, her toes and fingers momentarily made numb with the power of it. She screamed her ecstasy into Mick’s hot mouth, surprised at how hard and fast the pleasure had hit her.

  Mick suddenly began to thrust into her with speed and force, his kiss never easing, his arms now wrapped under her back, cradling her with tenderness even as he ravished her. He stiffened. He roared when he came. By the sound of it, Mick had been as surprised as Piper.

  They eased down together, slowly, the kiss continuing in lazy, sensual touches of lips and tongue. Eventually they lay in each other’s arms, breathing, eyes open to the bright morning light, lips smiling.

  “Jaysus H.,” Mick whispered after a few moments. “You attacked me, woman. Now I’m going to be late for work.”

  “I’ll write you a note,” she said.

  “‘Dear Mr. LaPaglia…’” Mick had to stop laughing before he could continue. “‘Please excuse Dr. Malloy for his tardiness. He was busy layin’ the pipe to your senior curator.”

  They laughed lazily, hanging on to each other. When the hilarity faded, Mick pressed Piper’s head to his chest and stroked her hair.

  “Anything on your mind today, love?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A lot of things, I guess.” Though she hadn’t planned to, she punctuated her answer with a drawn-out sigh.

  “Want to tell me one?”

  Piper pushed up onto her elbow and looked down into Mick’s face. He looked disheveled and happy. He looked like a satisfied man.

  “It’s about th
e exhibit,” Piper admitted.

  “Well, that’s certainly understandable.”

  She watched her fingers play in his chest hair as she spoke. “Lately I’ve been wishing that there was more to her story, you know? Ophelia produced a prodigious collection of letters, speeches, and essays once she got to Boston, but there were no more journals—at least that we know of—and I…” Piper raised her eyes to Mick. “I want to know her secret heart after she was married and had kids and began her work. I want to know her most intimate moments during those years. The sad thing is, I’ll never know.”

  Mick stroked her cheek. “A lady is entitled to some privacy, don’t you think?” he offered.

  Piper smiled. “I suppose. It’s not that I’m nosy, I just want to make sure everything turned out well for her and her husband. That the love lasted. That it was real.”

  “You want a guaranteed happy ending,” he said, nodding. “You’re a hopeless romantic.”

  Piper exhaled in disbelief. “I am?”

  “Oh, most definitely.”

  “Huh.” Piper thought about that for a minute, then smiled. “If I am, it’s all Ophelia’s fault.”

  Mick chuckled softly. “Come now, Piper,” he said. “You were always who you are now, even back at Wellesley, even before you found those diaries and decided to snare me in your tender trap of seduction.”

  She giggled. “Yeah, I guess.” She sighed again. “Besides, we really aren’t very much alike, Ophelia and me. She was a normal girl trying to be outrageous, and I’m just a nerdy girl trying to be normal.”

  Mick hoisted himself up and gently placed his hands on Piper’s shoulders. “Why the feck’s sake would you want to be normal?” Mick asked, suddenly very serious. “You are extraordinary, Piper, meaning that you are not an ordinary woman. You’ve got more brains than most, more beauty, more wit, more drive, more courage. Don’t waste another second comparing yourself to or modeling yourself after someone else.” He stopped. “Please.”

  She was taken aback by the passion in his voice.

  “You know…” Mick brushed his fingertips down the side of her cheek. “I haven’t spent all this time falling in love with the Blackbird. I’m falling in love with my Piper.”

  * * *

  Mick gave Piper’s hand another tight squeeze as they reached the front door. “You’re gonna do great,” he said, leaning down and kissing her cheek. “And I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”

  Piper nodded, steeling herself. “I’ve never brought a man to dinner at my parents’.”

  Mick chuckled. “I’m honored to be the lab rat. Are little green pellets on the menu?”

  She didn’t crack a smile. “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Jaysus and Janey Mack,” he mumbled.

  Piper glanced up at him and smiled. Mick’s easy manner always seemed to balance out her anxiety. Sometimes, she couldn’t recall what it was like to go through her days without him.

  The heavy oak door flew open, catching them by surprise.

  “Ah!” Piper’s mother said, beaming. “I thought I heard voices out here. Well, come on in! We’ve been waiting for you two!”

  With Mick’s strong hand at the base of her spine, Piper entered her parents’ house. Aside from a series of unanswered phone messages and Piper’s call to confirm that she and Mick would attend Sunday dinner, this would mark the only contact she’d had with her parents since the night she screamed at them and ran out the door, under the influence of dairy.

  Piper’s mother hugged her stiffly, shook Mick’s hand, and led them into the parlor. That’s when Piper’s heart fell into her shoes.

  “You know Wallace Forsythe, of course, and his wife, Paulette.”

  “Oh!” The fury rose in Piper so fast she was seeing spots. “Of course! Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe. What…? Uh, what a surprise to see you here.”

  Bless Mick for being such a social butterfly, Piper thought, because she was on the edge of disintegration. The hand she’d just offered to the museum’s chairman of the board of trustees was slick with sweat and her greeting was an embarrassment.

  As Mick chatted up Piper’s father and the Forsythes, she flashed her eyes to her mother, who seemed enthralled with her role as hostess. Piper tried to pull herself together—her mother had no idea that Piper was in the process of deceiving the museum trustees. She’d probably invited good ole Frosty Forsythe over as a way to grease the social skids for her and Mick. Her mother surely meant well.

  “Piper? Would you mind helping me in the kitchen?”

  Noting that Mick seemed at ease serving up tumblers of seltzer water and lime, she excused herself and followed her mother. Once the kitchen door swung shut her mother smiled at her and giggled.

  “I thought it would be nice for you to spend some leisure time with the chairman,” she explained, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a platter of one of her standard hors d’oeuvres—thinly sliced cucumbers spread with a nearly translucent sweep of hummus and dotted with a single caper. (As a kid, Piper had called the creations “cucumbers with baby poop and dead flies.” Bam!)

  Her mother placed sprigs of parsley and mint on the platter along with a scant number of sliced grape tomatoes. “To brighten things up,” she said to Piper. “And anyway, your father and I thought it would make it more difficult for Wallace to sack you—should that be a decision he’s faced with in the near future—being that he’d recently socialized with you.”

  Piper nearly laughed. The near future? No shit—the Fall Gala was a week away, which could very well coincide with her getting sacked.

  “That was nice of you, Mother,” she said.

  After returning to the parlor and enduring another half hour of chatting, the group adjourned to the dining room. Under the table, Mick reached for her knee, and heat spread through Piper’s entire being. His hand felt so big and warm and real—so completely out of place in this house with these people.

  She glanced up at him and tried to smile.

  Things went relatively smoothly for most of the meal. Everyone complimented her mother on the presentation of the food—raw cranberry and orange relish, asparagus juice, and sautéed tempeh and green beans sprinkled with sesame seeds. Piper winced as her mother dished out precise half-cup measurements of food onto the Forsythes’ dinner plates.

  “Of course, you are welcome to have as much as you like,” she explained. “We always offer a precise serving size for accurate data gathering.”

  Wallace Forsythe glanced down at his plate and back up to Piper’s father, bewilderment on his face.

  Piper heard Mick stifle a snicker. She kicked him under the table—if he started laughing, they were both doomed.

  Conversation wound its way to Mick’s coup in snagging Ben Affleck for the public service announcements. Forsythe commended Mick for bringing in new corporate and individual accounts. “I have a feeling the gala is going to be something else this year,” he said, raising his asparagus juice.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Piper said. This time Mick kicked her under the table.

  Forsythe continued in that vein, asking Piper for more details about the Ophelia Harrington exhibit. “Our hope is that it has some real zing to it, you know, something flashy that will grab the attention of the press and patrons.”

  Piper raised an eyebrow, thinking that Frosty would be getting some zing, all right.

  Her father cleared his throat. “I think what Wallace is getting at is that everyone hopes this exhibit will be more interesting—more compelling, shall we say—than last year’s switchboard operators.”

  Piper blinked. No, she thought. Her father did not just bring that up. Why would he, unless he wanted to cut her down?

  Her mother smiled at her sweetly. “We’re only hoping you’ve saved some energy for the exhibit and not squandered it all on your makeover.”

  It was so quiet in the dining room that Piper figured everyone could hear the pounding of her heart.

  “I thin
k you look fabulous,” Paulette said. “Your hair is gorgeous.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I love your bag.”

  Piper gently put her fork on her plate. Mick started to say something to her but she lightly touched his forearm. “I’ve got this,” she said, standing.

  “Oh, now, don’t be so sensitive,” her father said, laughing uncomfortably. “We’re just teasing you.”

  Piper shook her head. “No. No, you’re not. This is not about teasing. It’s about being threatened by me.”

  Her mother leaned back in her dining chair, as if suddenly hit with gale-force winds.

  “You can’t stand it that I’m coming into my own, can you?” Piper paused, noting the frozen shock on everyone’s face—everyone but Mick, anyway. Mick was suppressing a smile. “You’re threatened by my appearance. It just screams lust, doesn’t it? A lust for food, for sex, for being fully alive.”

  Paulette gasped.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Forsythe,” Piper said. “I have no plans to get profane. I just needed to make a point.”

  Her father stood up. “That’s enough—”

  “I’m not even warmed up, Father.” Piper motioned for him to return to his seat, and in doing so, knocked over her tumbler of asparagus juice. The green stain spread through the white linen tablecloth, and Piper suddenly had the mental image of roast beef sliding down the wallpaper of a London dining room so long ago. She laughed out loud.

  Thank you for showing me how to do it, Ophelia.

  “Mother and Father, I am not an extension of you,” she said, her voice much softer now. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me as my parents—provided me with a home and a superb education and exposure to music and art and culture. But I don’t owe you my soul. Do you understand that?”

  Forsythe cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should be going.”

  “Don’t bother. We’ll be leaving soon,” Piper said. At that point, Mick stood next to her and reached for her hand.

  “Please listen to what I am saying to you.” She glanced from her mother’s blanched face to her father’s angry eyes. “Finally, at the age of thirty, I am becoming my own person. My own woman. I am blossoming on all levels—professionally, emotionally, and sexually. I am exploring everything I am and everything I’m destined to be.”