.

frightful mess. Hadrian had better be enjoying this; she wanted to cry suddenly, now that the pleasure was gone, now that she was sticky everywhere. Tears dripped to her cheeks.

      “There now, lass,” said the man on top of her as his softened cock slipped free. The man below her grunted and withdrew also.

      She felt a fool as he helped her up, but no one offered her a cloth to clean herself. Finally one picked up a white handkerchief, and she reached for it gladly, too embarrassed to look at any of the men. She focused on that white cloth—

      It pressed sudden and hard into her face. Over her nose and mouth. Juliette clawed at the giant hands holding it there. She couldn’t breathe!

      Hadrian!

      Was this part of the game?

      A man grabbed her arms and wrenched them back. Rope wound brutally around her wrists, clamping her hands, biting into her skin.

      Were they going to force her? Rape her? Why, when she had been so willing?

      A black cloth jerked over her eyes and was pulled tight. Someone knotted it, capturing her hair, pulling at her scalp.

      No—!

      Notation in Winslow’s Volume for Wagering at Winslow’s Gentlemen’s club, the upstart of such clubs: Fifty pounds that the widowed Lady F—, who has been missing from Mayfair for two weeks, has run off with a footman rather than share the bed of Lord H—.

      1

      “You spend a night allowing a woman to drip molten wax on your chest, and afterward everyone casts you as the villain.” Dashiel Blackmore, Lord Swansborough, leaned back into his leather club chair and grinned.

      His friend, Sir William Kent, Bow Street’s magistrate and a gentleman who could remain composed while handing down a sentence that sent a youth to a prison hulk, blanched in shock and embarrassment at this casual remark.

      “Good lord, you’re depraved, Swansborough.” Sir William shook his head as he lifted his brandy and drained the last half inch. He adjusted his spectacles over intense blue eyes, his fingers brushing the long-healed scar from a footpad’s attack. “What sort of madness was that about?”

      “The anticipation of each burning drop.” Dash crooked his fingers, then made a snuffing motion, and an obedient, well-trained girl immediately leaped to do his bidding.

      Winslow’s, the newest of London’s hells, combined the tradition of the gentleman’s club—venerable location, card tables, a strict control of membership, a slab of beef for dinner—with the pleasure of London’s brothels.

      Ironic that Sir William had tracked him down to this place, had used his name to gain entrance.

      The girl, a plump temptation with honey-blond curls, approached, carrying a candle. Around the crowded, smoke-hazed room, two dozen whores bestowed their charm and favors on various gentlemen. All the women were blondes, all voluptuous with lush mouths and succulent tits.

      Wearing a hopeful expression, the girl sashayed toward Sir William and him. She pursed her rouged lips suggestively and gave a tiny puff of breath—enough to set the flame flickering and the pooled wax spilling.

      Turning back to Sir William, Dash gave a devil’s smile. “Care to explore dangerous sex?”

      “Bloody hell, no.” Sir William waved the girl away. She gave a pretty pout and spun, setting her shortened skirts whirling around her plump thighs. He leveled a serious gaze, filled with fatherly censure. “Still dressed head to toe in black, I see. Even a black cravat. Swansborough, are you the villain of this piece?”

      It never ceased to be strange to hear Sir William use his title. Sir William had known him since he was “young Dashiel,” had sometimes teased him by using his middle name, Lancelot. He picked up the brandy bottle to refill their glasses. “If you believed me to be the villain, wouldn’t I be in Newgate by now?”

      Sir William raised his glass briefly in agreement. “Where were you on that night?”

      “Tied to a bed, I expect. I cannot remember.”

      “Four witnesses saw you on the Dark Walk just before the woman disappeared. One insists she saw you dragging a reluctant woman with you—a woman hidden by a black cloak.”

      Dash leveled his gaze at his friend, the one man who had believed his story about his past, his unbelievable tales about his uncle. He took a long drink of the brandy. “I do not kidnap women.”

      “Was it part of a game? A bedroom game?”

      “I was not at Vauxhall. But I can offer no proof of it.”

      Sir William raked back his white hair and studied him, without speaking, with the cold, impartial gaze of justice.

      Beside them, the blond girl with the candle returned and flung herself back onto a hard-backed chair and drew up her frilly skirts. A black leather harness was strapped to her hips and her thighs, and a long black rod rose from the juncture between her creamy thighs. A brunette woman straddled her, her skirts caught up in her hands, and she began pumping on the dark dildo, moaning and cooing with abandon. The brunette caught Dash’s eye and ran her tongue lavishly around glistening, rouged lips.

      His cock stirred, lengthening, thickening. Hell, he was being accused of abducting women to use in perverse pleasures, and he was growing aroused by the calculated display of prostitutes.

      He watched the brunette on top, her breasts heaving beneath her snug bodice, her face reddening. Her sexual scent filled the air like candle smoke. The other lass clutched at her breasts, tweaking the nipples through taut silk, thrusting her leather-bound hips.

      “I need details,” he said even as he watched the courtesan close her eyes in ecstasy and grind mercilessly on the thick, false cock. Blond and brunette curls bounced. Both pretty faces flushed pink. The gasps and moans were like squeezing fingers around his shaft. “The names of these witnesses. The names of the family of this woman. I was not there. Why would my name be used?”

      “Reputation?” Sir William suggested.

      He knew Sir William had pursued these thoughts himself, but was allowing Dash to talk—to either reveal evidence of his innocence or drape the noose around his own neck. “The woman. What was her name?”

      “Juliette, Lady Farthingale.”

      “Hadrian’s mistress.” Dash drank deeply again, listening to the brunette courtesan’s anguished cries. Her head lolled back, her fingers clutched the other girl’s shoulders, and her lover drove up from the chair to spear her.

      He noticed that Sir William had turned his seat so as to avoid the view of the copulating women, away from the display that could wipe all rational thought from a man’s head. Fantasy presented on a silver salver, the promise of escape for the price of a few coins.

      He could bid farewell to his friend and lose himself in that pleasure, but Dash forced himself to ask, “What did Hadrian have to say? If he believes it was me, why hasn’t he called me out?”

      “Hadrian claims he was watching his lady indulge in some sport; he was hidden in the bushes along the Dark Walk. He heard a sound behind him, something smashed into the back of his skull, and he woke with the dawn—wet, bloodied, and alone.”

      “And who does he think is responsible?”

      “He thinks the…er…five men employed to ravish his mistress are the culprits.”

      “Five men? So whoever has copied Lord Chartrand’s erotic scavenger hunt is trying to be as inventive.”

      Sir William gazed awkwardly ahead—at the safest scene in the club, a group of men playing cards, too intent on deep play to entertain women.

      “Oh, sweet heaven, I’m going to come!”

      The blonde’s cry ripped through Dash, igniting lust. His hands clenched to fists;