And she felt just as stunned as he appeared. He was so entirely beautiful, after all. Like a god plucked from Mount Olympus. That broad-shouldered, lean-hipped line of him was as perfect in clothing as it was sprawled naked across a bed.
He thwarted Societal expectation by the fact that he clearly hadn’t shaved. His day-old scrub of stubble across his jaw only made her long to feel it brush her thighs. When he reached her, his green eyes were bright with desire but also delight, as if seeing her was some singular pleasure.
And she was warmed by him. Such an odd thing to feel.
“Good evening,” she managed to choke out without revealing too much in her tone.
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, his warm breath leaving tingles in its wake. Then he stepped back to see the full effect of her. “My God, look at you,” he murmured.
She laughed and spun around in a circle to let him see it all. She’d chosen her favorite dress for hunting, deep red, scandalously low cut, highlighted with pink silkiness. The flowers in her loosely done hair were also blood red. The gown was purposely created to make her, as she had always said,all shoulder and décolletage. Other courtesans always laughed when she said that, but they all knew the truth: what she was doing was making herself a mouthwatering treat right here on display in public.
And this was the man she most definitely wanted to unwrap her and try it all.
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
He nodded. “I’mveryglad I came now that I’m seeing you here like this.” Many men would have continued with seduction, but he seemed in no hurry. Instead, he looked around. “I don’t think this hell existed before I left London.”
Arabella pondered that. “I suppose it didn’t. I think Flynn’s opened just three years ago, but it’s all the rage. As you can see by how well attended and fine it is.”
They looked out into the hall together. Many tables were laid out in a neat pattern and every one of them was full or nearly full of patrons playing various card games.
“Are you good at cards, Silas?” Arabella asked.
He winked at her. “A cad like me? Very good. And that isn’t just me being a self-congratulating shit. I doubled my fortune playing cards, you know.”
She lifted her brows in surprise. Though the specific number wasn’t known when it came to Silas’s inheritance, whispers said it was no tiny sum. If he had truly doubled it through his skill at card play, that was impressive.
“In America?” she asked.
He stiffened a fraction, almost as if thinking of that time was difficult. “Yes. They even have these riverboats where they game. That was becoming quite popular when I left.”
“What fun,” she said. “I love the idea of sailing around, being debauched.”
“Who was the woman you arrived with?” he asked.
She smiled. “My youngest sister, Julia. She went to speak to a friend, but I’m sure you’ll meet her tonight. For now, why don’t we join a game? You can teach me a few things, it sounds like.”
He snorted as he placed a hand on her lower back and guided her through the crowd toward a table with two open seats. “Me? I doubt that. I think you, Miss Comerford, are probably very good at everything you’ve ever tried. I have pegged you for a talented bluffer and I can’t wait to see you strip every man at that table of his coin…and probably his dignity.”
She laughed even though the weight of his fingers against her spine was shockingly distracting. “Even you?”
“Probably me first,” he said, and they took their places and began.
* * *
Arabella didn’t strip him of his dignity, as Silas had teased her, but it was impossible not to be impressed by her skills at cards as he played against her. She knew how to bet, which was often more important than what to play. She wasn’t reckless, but she had few tells, so when she did bluff, she was almost always successful. She was also charismatic beyond belief. Every person at the table hung on her every word, and not just because she looked like a goddess. She was simply that good at handling people. It was no wonder she was so sought after as a lover.
And yet she was giving her time to him without expectation or demand. There was something about that which gave him a sense of…pride. She was the sun and somehow she’d chosen him briefly as her moon, and that was worth a great deal in the midst of the upheaval he was experiencing at present.
But now the night was growing long. She glanced toward the door and gave him a little smile that brought heat to his blood. He pushed back from the table and said, “I think we may have to take our leave, gentlemen.”
Lord Archibald, the second son of some earl or another, who had been playing and losing to Silas for the last hour, glared at them. “You can’t go now, Windham. You must give me the chance to win my blunt back.”
“You didn’t win it back over the last fifteen hands, there’s no chance you’re winning it back in the next fifteen and I’m finished here.” Silas barely sent the man a glance as he took Arabella’s hand and pressed it between his own. Her smile widened. It was clear they were already playing a very different game. Together they rose, but Lord Archibald got up too, banging into the table with his thighs as he did so and rocking it slightly.
“Bollocks, Windham. You’re a cheat.”
That did snap Silas’s attention to the man. There were many things he would proudly admit to being, but a cheat was not one of them. He arched a brow. “Do you want to repeat that? Or take it outside?”
