“If I wanted to chat, I would have gone to some insipid ball.” Her gaze narrowed, suggesting that she was not as far gone as he’d hoped. “I’m randy, and I want to fuck.”
“You cannot always have what you want, Cherise.” He flicked a speck from his trousers. “Not with me, at any rate. You would do well to remember that.”
“I do remember,” she said sultrily. “I remembereverythingabout our time together.”
He gave a cool nod. “Longmere was too easy on you. That will not be the case with me.”
“I want you to behardon me, lover. Very hard. But I would hate for you to be jealous.” Her shiver said otherwise. “Longmere, God rest his soul, was never my lover.”
“Then how did he come to introduce you to the Devil’s Bliss?”
“We met through art.” Holding Ben’s gaze, she sat up and untied her robe. The material slithered off her, and, naked, she sprawled back onto the mattress in a come-hither pose. “I saw one of Longmere’s paintings: a portrait of a beautiful woman that far surpassed his other work. When I asked him about his progress, he credited it to a devilish new muse he’d found, and I couldn’t resist. You know I am game to try anything once.”
Cherise coyly touched herself. No doubt she thought it was an alluring show. As long as she kept her hands to herself and answered his questions, Ben didn’t give a damn what she did.
Then, with a stab of unease, he thought of Livy. While he couldn’t give a farthing about Cherise’s performance, would Livy consider this a betrayal? His chest tightening, he wondered how he could explain to his little innocent that Cherise’s antics meant nothing and left him entirely unmoved. He might as well have been watching grass grow.
Self-disgust roiled in his gut. If he hadn’t been such a degenerate in the past, he wouldn’t be where he was now. He was a sinful bastard, and Livy deserved better.
There’s nothing you can do about it now,he told himself grimly.Extract the information and get the hell out.
“Come join me, sir,” Cherise said in a throaty voice.
Her use ofsirmade him recoil. During sexual play, he only wanted to hear Livy address him that way. Only wanted to play with her and her alone.
“You are doing fine on your own,” he said dismissively. “Carry on.”
His disinterest perversely egged Cherise on. She lay on her back, staring at her own image in the looking glass above the bed. Her ploy to seduce him gave way to an easier path to satisfaction. For her, it was only about her own needs anyway. She touched herself with practiced ease, with a look of intoxicated pleasure that he judged was evidence of the drug taking full effect.
He pressed on. “Did Longmere tell you how he found this miraculous muse?”
“He said it was a gift. From a mysterious stranger.” Cherise was breathing heavily, transfixed by her own image. “A masked Chinese man who’d stopped him in the street one night and gave him a sample. Not ordinary opium, mind. This was a taste of the true secrets of the Orient, mystical and rare, available only to the select few who dared to take it.”
And those who could afford it,Ben thought wryly. Fong certainly knew how to set the stage for his product. He understood his audience: jaded aristocrats had a fascination with anything exotic and scarce and would pay a premium for it.
“What else did Longmere say about this man?” Ben asked.
Cherise moaned, her hand working furiously between her legs.
“Concentrate,” Ben said impatiently. “How did Longmere get the Devil’s Bliss?”
“It was part of the excitement, the thrill.” Her eyes squeezed shut as she chased her finish. “The Devil could send more of his treasure at any time.”
“Where did Longmere receive shipments?”
She shrieked as she found her release. A few moments later, her head lolled in Ben’s direction. She was glassy-eyed, her expression vacuous, the muscles of her face slack from her climax and the drug. A good thing, because he’d prefer that she didn’t remember their conversation.
He tried again. “How often did Longmere supply you with the drug?”
“Bastard wouldn’t give me more.” Her voice was slurred. “Fought with him the last time I saw him. I begged, offered more money, but the ungrateful wretch refused. Even after all I’d done for him, putting in a good word with friends at the Royal Academy, getting his bloody painting accepted into the exhibition…”
“Did Longmere say why he wouldn’t sell you more of the drug?”
“Said it was too dangerous. Said that the Devil had floated in on a Siren’s song, luring him to an inescapable death, but I could still break free…”
Her eyelids drooped, and she began to snore.
Livy eased back from the peephole. She felt shaky and feverish. Shehatedthat Ben was in the same room as Cherise Foxton as the latter pleasured herself; at the same time, Livy could tell that his only goal was to get information. Even though she could only hear snippets of the conversation, Ben’s disinterest in Cherise’s performance was obvious. And Livy now knew that Cherise had been the woman arguing with Longmere and the cause of the disagreement.
