Argyll buried a devil’s smile.
No, he wasn’t.
The wretched thing.
But this, he could entertain.
“Stop,” he said coolly.
Head bowed, she submitted.
“Approach.”
She heeded Argyll’s command, artful in the sway she put into her hips.
When the seductress reached the foot of his desk, framed between the pair of leather armchairs, she kept her head bowed and clasped her hands in prayer.
His stepmother knew very well the prurient game they played.
He didn’t bother to hide his cynical amusement. “Have you come to discuss business or seduce me, Your Grace?”
“Why can it not be both, my boy?” Her voice thrummed with raw desire.
“Those I work with are masters,” he paused. “Andmistresses of self-control.” Long divested of his jacket, he further loosened his already haphazardly tied cravat. “I fear you aren’t capable of the level I demand from my…partners.” Argyll, equally capable with both hands—an advantageous skill when it came to debauchery—sipped from the glass in his other.
“Oh, but I am, Argyll.”
Lust burned bright in her revealing eyes. That unseemly eagerness turned the lady into a liar.
“Sit.”
In her haste to comply, the duchess fell gracelessly into the folds of the armchair.
Argyll removed his cravat and tossed it to the other side of his bench.
“Now,” he said, collecting his club’s books from where they sat. “Let us begin.”
Argyll opened a ledger. “Part your legs so I can see your cunny while we discuss business.”
An earthy moan spilled from the sensual widow’s throat.
After she’d gotten into position, he dragged his chair closer to his desk. “Unlike The Devil’s Den, on the matter of Forbidden Pleasures, I am not looking for new partners.”
“Ah, that’s right.” She continued moving her fingers within herself. “You edged Latimer out and brought Kilburn in.”
“That is certainly how Latimer saw it. His arrogance and pride will be his downfall.”
She found her window. “And in not entertaining my offer, Argyll,youwill be making the same mistake.”
To the duchess’s credit, her speech remained conversational.
He felt his first stirrings of interest.
The duchess touched herself in a particularly favorable spot. He knew that one. She’d let him stroke her a number of times.
“Did you fuck him?”
Her eyes glittered. “Jealous?”
