Sin. Sharon Page

kill your father? I would say that he deserves some anxiety.”

      But that would only cause her more, so she could not agree. “I believe if I go, I can understand what kind of woman Mrs. Harcourt is. And plead with her not to ruin my family.”

      He sauntered over to a bookshelf, with his long predatory stride, and pulled out a slim volume. “A Gentleman’s Choice,” he read off the spine. “Or a Guide to the Fashionable Impures of 1818. Anything you wish to learn about this Season’s courtesans can be found in here. Lydia Harcourt is featured.”

      “Someone publishes an annual guide to courtesans?”

      “Illustrated as well.”

      Given her own pictures, why was she blushing? “Do you select your mistresses from descriptions in a book?”

      “You disapprove?”

      Well, she did, but she had no right to.

      “But you know how enticing a book can be. Here, take a look.”

      She found Lydia Harcourt’s picture near the back of the volume, a voluptuous woman shown wearing only a corset. Large breasts pointed boldly at the viewer, her legs were crossed to hide her quim but to reveal her full thighs and generous bottom. The sketch was ink, in black and white, depicting Mrs. Harcourt with a pretty face and masses of black curls.

      “Lydia Harcourt was once the Queen of London’s courtesans,” he said. “But now she is nearing forty, her charms are fading, and the men she once entranced are seeking out new, younger lovers. Rumor has it that she raved at the publisher of that book for placing her at the back and blackened his eye before he had her thrown out. Under her veneer, she’s a coarse scrapper who will do anything to survive.”

      “Not very sympathetic, then.” She read the text that accompanied the picture. Magnificent forty-inch breasts…most skilled mouth and clever hands…conquests include the Duke of Montberry, the Earl of Brude…Rodesson’s mocking pictures…

      “My father painted her picture.” She hadn’t even thought to look.

      Trent nodded. “Several unkind ones that revealed Lydia’s origins as a coarse butcher’s daughter and mocked her aspirations to bed dukes.”

      Venetia frowned. Yet Lydia had still let Rodesson come to her bed. Why? Had revenge been Lydia’s goal all along and her father had stupidly played into her hands? Venetia closed the book. “Then I shall have my father write out an apology and take that to her. Surely that will help.” Now she understood—Lydia wanted her father to suffer, she wanted to torment him by threatening to ruin his daughters.

      “You can’t go to an orgy, my dear.”

      “I want to see what an orgy is really like,” she protested. “It would be…an adventure. I don’t wish to be good and proper and pure anymore! I want adventure. Even if only for once, I want to be part of the world I draw.”

      “Have a love affair then, sweetheart. Do you ride horses?”

      That surprised her. “Not well,” she admitted.

      “Would you want to climb on the back of Zeus, my horse, and race him down the Row?”

      “Heavens, no.”

      “Then your first sexual adventure should not be an event that exhausts even London’s most experienced and randy men. At Chartrand’s orgy, you would be seriously out of your depth.”

      “I know what happens at orgies. I’ve drawn them!” Venetia cried.

      Marcus picked up Venetia’s book, Tales of a London Gentleman, and flipped the pages until he found an orgy scene. Rodesson had drawn dozens of such scenes and his father had insisted he look at every one. For his sixteenth birthday, his father enacted his favorite at a brothel. A bloody wretched night it had been, he reflected. Six young ladybirds had sprained their ankles, three of his father’s friends were laid up for a month, and he’d spent the entire occasion fucking one woman with his eyes shut, embarrassed by the wild, heaving display—

      Venetia Hamilton’s orgy scene was unique, set amongst gods and goddesses in a temple in the clouds. She had succeeded in turning a tangle of naked human bodies into something playful and undeniably romantic.

      He looked away from her picture and sighed. “My dear, you have a very starry-eyed view of an orgy.”

      She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I am well aware that reality does not sell books, my lord. After all, when is the hero of a romantic story ever balding, pot-bellied, and riddled with gout?”

      He laughed. God, she was enchanting. And mulishly stubborn.

      “Besides.” She stuck out her chin. “Some Rodesson paintings are more humorous than erotic. A set of plump buttocks sticking up, a gentleman’s tilted sword, a lady tumbled on her back with legs waving in the air. All very silly.”

      His throat tightened. His cock began to rise. “At the orgy, would you announce to your host that he has a virgin in his midst, one who has delivered herself willingly to the wolves? Do you have any idea what Chartrand would do with you the moment he discovered a virgin had come to his party?”

      Hazel eyes wide, she licked her full lips.

      “He would introduce you to the darkest pleasures but first he would make you compliant by stripping you naked before his guests and spanking your nude derriere with a riding crop to teach you obedience. He would be the one to plunder your virginity, likely in public—”

      He wanted to frighten her—to protect her—but she stood with a straight spine and a fiercely determined expression.

      “I would pretend to be a jade,” she said, “I would go masked. And if you will not escort me, I can hire a bodyguard to do so.”

      “Chartrand’s orgy is a weeklong event. A week of men fucking any woman they can get their hands on.”

      Her nostrils flared. “A week…they have…they rut for a week? How many encounters do they have?”

      “Many.”

      “Don’t they…tire?”

      “The men, certainly. Women can enjoy, or endure, many partners. At the last one I went to, Chartrand wagered that a woman could not service one hundred men, and he paid a jade to do it.”

      “One hundred men are there?”

      “He rounded up fifty—she had each man twice. One of his favorite games is to assign six men to pleasure a woman at once—especially if the woman is a novice.”

      Her startled look encouraged him to press. He lifted her hand to his lips. Kissed her middle finger. “One man’s cock in your cunny.”

      He kept his tone casual, as though he was speaking of the latest Drury Lane play, not sex. If he lectured, she’d close her ears. Presenting sin so calmly would shock her all the more.

      A light flared in her vivid eyes. Lust, desire, interest. A bewitching fire. Her breasts heaved in the most endearing and enticing way. He pressed his lips to her index finger. “One for you to pleasure with your mouth.” Kissed her thumb and baby finger. “One prick each for your hands to explore and one to explode and shower your breasts with come. And the last, of course, to be buried deeply in your ass.”

      “I must be completely wicked…because I’m aroused.” To Marcus’ surprise, she turned the tables on him, sensually stroking his lips.

      “The words excited you…the reality would be very different. Would you wish to lick the cock of a man you don’t know? Would you be willing to kiss his rump? Would you like to be tied up by a woman like Lydia Harcourt and have her kiss your quim?”

      Her moan rippled down his spine. “I…I don’t know. You’ve enjoyed such adventures. You attend orgies.” Her soft voice teased his cock into painful hardness.

      He fought to stay distant. “I used