Those big brown eyes of hers grew larger yet. She looked for so long and so intently that his cock stirred. He knew he should have felt a stab of embarrassment as he grew before her eyes. Or perhaps not. This was Sodom, after all, where all manner of illicit activity happened before all manner of audience. Nothing was too shameful. Nothing private.
His response to her irked him. The stroke of her gaze shouldn’t make him randy as a green lad. Any other female, fine. Only not her.
“Gor,” a woman clucked from the crowd. “I wouldn’t mind a ride on that.”
Fire lit Aurelia’s cheeks.
She had failed. She might have won the wager, but he was the victor. She had planned to embarrass him and failed. Satisfied, he sank down in his chair.
The crowd dissipated around them. The men hastily redressed and retreated, but he remained where he was, naked in the chair, holding her gaze for a moment.
“Not so cockless. Am I?” he queried lightly.
“You’ve proven that well enough,” she replied evenly, the color in her face becoming less red and more pink.
“Do well to remember it in your spinster bed tonight,” he flung out. “Or perhaps someday you will wed and have but a puny rod to take between your thighs. You’ll think of me often then, will you not?”
“You’re vile.” She surged to her feet and started past him, but he grabbed her wrist, squeezing the delicate bones in his grip. She looked down at him, her brown eyes luminescent within her mask.
He rolled his thumb against the inside of her wrist, feeling her pulse flutter there as wild as a moth’s wings. “Don’t ever come here again.”
“You do not command me.”
“But that is what you need. A strict hand to lead you.” His gaze raked her. “Look at you. Look where you are.” He waved a hand about them.
“I command myself.”
“Do you? Very well, then,” he sneered, flinging her from him as though he could not stand the feel of her a moment longer. “Next time I’ll let any manner of man take you upstairs and claim your virtue. If, in fact, you’re still in possession of it—”
His words hit the mark. A stricken look crossed her face before disappearing and giving way to a cheery smile. “You forget yourself, Camden. You did not rescue me. It is you who lost the wager to me.”
Still wearing that bright smile, she turned away, her hips moving in a way he had never noticed before, swaying as she took small, tight steps in her black gown. A gown that he suddenly envisioned wadded up in a ball at the foot of his bed. That would be one way to command her, he thought, watching hungrily as she disappeared through the crowd of Mrs. Bancroft’s sitting room. Indeed, he could command her in his bed. Beneath him. If he didn’t find her so detestable, that would be the perfect place for her.
Chapter 2
One year later . . .
“Come, Aurelia. Must you dawdle? Usually you are the one urging me to make haste, but here you sit staring into space with half our guests gathered belowstairs.”
Aurelia feigned an innocent expression and met her mother’s blue-eyed gaze through the dressing table mirror. She had been lost in one of her drawings—a depiction of Lord Edderton with the body of an octopus manhandling several young girls whilst munching iced biscuits. She had been on the receiving end of his attentions once, during her first season out, and decided to make him the subject of one of her caricatures when she spotted him up to his old tricks a few evenings ago.
Edderton would not be the first to find himself featured in one of her notorious caricatures. What happened all those years ago with Camden, however accidental, had led her to this vocation. Cockless Camden. She winced, knowing she was to blame. His caricature had started it all, however inadvertent. It was talked about for years and had earned her his eternal enmity.