For some reason, her pretend outrage sparked Rawden’s irritation. ‘Come now. Don’t play the fool, Romola. I never made any promises,’ he said coldly. ‘We enjoy each other. That is all we have or will ever have. Have I not been honest with you from the start?’
‘Brutally so, yes.’
‘Generous too.’
‘Yes, but all the same, I am fearfully angry with you.’
‘Then let me be kind, not brutal. I will be your slave, Romola. Let me worship your beauty.’
She squirmed in his arms as he stifled her protests with kisses. He hesitated for a moment, bitterness curdling his loins. Romola had other lovers. Many gentlemen of pleasure roamed the streets around Covent Garden and hung around the theatre doors, waiting for her favour. He had no illusions that his money brought either loyalty or affection, just this urgent carnality, an itch occasionally scratched for both.
‘I hate you, Rawden Voss. You smell like a gin shop wed to a barracks,’ she breathed against his mouth, even as she grabbed him closer.
Rawden smiled into her fragrant neck and released her from his embrace. ‘Alright, then. If I offend you, I will go and find comfort elsewhere.’
He turned and grabbed his jacket off the bed, and even before he got to the door, she cried, ‘Stop, Rawden.’
He turned with a smirk. ‘I knew you couldn’t resist my charms. Come here and do my bidding,’ he snarled.
‘You do not have any charms. You are an unfeeling lout, and I will not come to you,’ she replied, darting around the side of the huge bed with a glower. He caught her easily enough because deep down, Romola wanted to be caught, and they fell in a flurry of breathless kisses onto the bed. Her hand went to the buttons on his breeches and opened them to release his manhood, raging with lust. She wrapped her cool fingers around it, arousing him further.
‘Oh my!’ she exclaimed as Rawden pulled down her bodice. He filled his hands with her smooth, ripe flesh, and in a frenzy of hitched-up skirts and moaning, he plunged inside her welcoming body. Her fingers clutched at his hair and back, nails digging in painfully, and she wrapped her legs around him, pinning him to her and writhing provocatively.
Soon, Romola’s little gasps of pleasure filled the room, growing louder the harder he thrust inside her. ‘Don’t stop, Rawden. Go harder,’ she squealed.
‘If it pleases you, Madam,’ he snarled, withdrawing and tossing her onto her belly. He hoisted her hips off the bed, growling with desire at her pale, rounded buttocks. Rawden entered her quickly and fisted his hand into her hair. Romola flung her head back and moaned, meeting his thrusts with her own. Rawden’s fingers wandered between her legs, and they met their mutual release quickly - her screaming her pleasure into the night, and he stifling his with gritted teeth.
He eased himself from her body and fell back on the bed, staring at a dark patch of damp shadowing one corner of the ceiling. The room was stuffy and stale, with no order to it. Various pots and ointments were strewn across a dressing table, and a collection of scarves and dresses were thrown over a screen, its lurid pattern long since faded. Romola’s lair was a mean little place, and he felt a flash of pity for her situation.
‘You were different tonight,’ she said, laying on his shoulder and trailing her fingers down the hair on his chest.
‘How so?’ he said as his eyelids grew heavy.
‘More ferocious than tender, hurrying to the end, rather than savouring the moment.’
‘Did I hurt you?’ he said, turning to her.
‘Just enough for me to like it,’ Romola whispered, her voice so husky as to be almost a cat's purr. ‘What sparked your ardour?’
‘It is nothing - an encounter tonight. Do not pry, Romola.’ He lay staring at the ceiling. Now that his raging lust was spent, he wanted only to sleep, but she wasn't having it.
When he did not answer, Romola continued. ‘We are old friends, you and I. We are not fresh, dewy-eyed fools. You would not nurture that kind of ferocity for little old me. You have scented fresh meat. Who was she, some shy debutante with vast estates you wished to plunder?’
‘The debutante or the estates?’ he said, smiling down at the top of her head, but she did not see the jest.
‘Both, I should imagine.’ She sat up and lifted her hair up and pinned it where it had come loose, which made her breasts jut out most becomingly. But, of course, she knew that, which was why she did it. Rawden’s loins stirred, and he reached for her. Romola slapped him away. ‘I must be up and about my business.’
‘It is the middle of the night. What business could you have?’
‘My own and none of yours,’ she replied, shuffling off the bed and enclosing her voluptuous body in a silk robe. ‘Off with you now.’
‘Your beauty stirs me anew. Come back to bed, and let me be tender.’
‘No. I will not be a substitute for the little innocent.’
‘She was nobody, a nothing from whom I stole a kiss, that is all. It was beneath me. I should not have done it.’
‘And what you just did abed with me? Should you have done that?’
