“You prefer spirits to me?” Perdita asked, rounding his desk and invading his space.
Her breath smelled of onions. What the devil had she eaten for luncheon? Had it been luncheon yet? Blast, he couldn’t recall when he’d last eaten.
Her hands were on his chest, caressing. All four of them.
Why the devil was she here again? Ah, yes.
He had been waiting for his carriage to be readied when Perdita had sailed past him in the great hall. On a whim, he had invited her to accompany him, thinking her the perfect pawn for his plan. If Rhiannon knew he had left with another woman, she would be less likely to come after him. He hated the very idea of hurting her, but he knew without a doubt he was doing what was best for her.
She deserved happiness.
A husband who could give her everything she wanted.
One of Perdita’s hands settled on his cock, massaging with firm insistence.
He shoved her hand away. Why had he thought it a good idea to invite a bloody octopus to Villiers House anyway?
“I want to get drunk,” he informed her, taking a swig of his bottle for emphasis.
The gin burned down his throat, hardly a soothing elixir. What he ought to have done was drag King from his bed and demand some of his potions. Those would have had him thoroughly and diabolically passed out by now. Perhaps he would have even been so disguised that he might have given shagging Penelope a try.
No, that wasn’t her name, Penelope. Was it?
He blinked owlishly, trying to make his blurred vision distinct enough that he could see the woman’s face. Mayhap then he could recall her actual name.
She settled in his lap, pouting once more. “But I want to be properly fucked. That’s why you brought me here, is it not? I’ve heard so many delicious stories about you, and I simply must know if they’re all true.”
Her eyes were brown and gold, her lashes long. Her breasts were ivory mountains, quivering over the edge of her brazen décolletage.
“Persephone,” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I shall be your Persephone. And you can be my Hades, spiriting me away as you’ve done.”
So that wasn’t her name, then. He knew it. Her name was on the edge of his brain, sharper than a needle, poking and prodding.
Phillipa?
No, that wasn’t it.
Proserpina? No, that was the Roman equivalent of Persephone.
Priscilla?
“I’ll take this,” she was saying, plucking his gin from his fingers and settling it on the desk. “You won’t be needing that for now.”
“Yes, I will be,” he argued, reaching for it again.
“No, you won’t, naughty Hades,” she said, taking his hand and setting it upon her breasts, which were suddenly bare.
No, they had already been bare. Chrissakes, was that her areola peeping from her bodice? What time of day was it?
Aubrey turned toward the windows, where the heavy curtains had been drawn, and found sun streaming through a crack. Surely it was too early to be dressed thus.
“You’re indecent,” he groused, thinking that perhaps she was cutting off all the blood to his cock, for he was limp and useless beneath her.
Her breast was cool to the touch and as uninspiring as a pillow. He withdrew his hand.
“I want to bemoreindecent,” the woman in his lap was cooing into his ear, and damn him, but he still couldn’t recall what her name was.
