Page 586 of Flirting with Darkness

“About what, Serafina?”

“If we fuck. Father would likely approve, too.”

Ghost felt his jaw harden more.

“Dance with me,” she cajoled. “Let me feel your cock at least while we press together. We can pretend to be brotherly and sisterly if you like… then you can lick my sex in the drawing room later, after I do the same for you.”

“No,” he said.

“But why?”

He gave her a disbelieving look. “Must I list out the reasons?”

“You will dance with me, at least,” she insisted, tugging on his hand. “I must know if my brother can dance. And how could he have learned such a thing in that dirty, backwards island with no sun? In a squalid city filled with unbathed Englishmen and pirates?”

“You will have to use your imagination, sister,” he told her coldly. “And find some other way of gaining your father’s attention. I do not think seducing me is likely to sway him one way or the other, despite what you tell yourself.”

She jutted a lip in an obvious pout.

Still, she seemed to take his words to heart.

Moving away, she changed her coy facial expression to one more practiced and friendly. She aimed a bright smile at a dark-haired, Cossack-looking male with a thick black beard. He wore rubies, sapphires, gold, and diamonds on his hands and around his neck in a thick pendant. Something about him spoke of royalty or extreme wealth or both.

He wore a suit of dark red and a furred, Russian-styled hat.

Ghost watched as the man looked Serafina over in the dress, right before a smile grew over his broad face.

“He is one of the Tsar’s sons,” a voice remarked from Ghost’s other side.

Ghost turned, staring into a face he recognized.

The youngest of his father’s acolytes stood there.

Ghost had noticed him before, while he’d been staring around at their faces. The man looked German perhaps, or perhaps Polish. He had bright green and gold eyes, a handsome face, a jagged scar down one side of his long neck.

Of all those who clearly worshipped the Count, his aura had been the sharpest and most structured of the group. His eyes reflected that same sharpness now. His blond hair shone under the candles of the chandelier, and in the firelight behind him.

He looked Ghost over in much the same way as Serafina had.

Almost like he heard him, the man smirked.

“I don’t know why you are so resistant to her charms,” the green-eyed man remarked dryly. “All of us have had her. She is quite good with her tongue.”

Ghost gave him a faintly disgusted look.

“Does the blood relationship really bother you?” the green-eyed man resumed casually, clearly ignoring Ghost’s revulsion. “It should not. We are not so hung up with such things out here. We are not so hung up on the Englishman’s hypocritical pretense at morality… or the weak conformity they display in nearly every endeavor. We do what we like here, m’lord. In time, you will learn to do as you like, too…”

The male raised a suggestive eyebrow, looking Ghost over again.

“…and who,” he said, with a very deliberate emphasis.

Ghost fought not to roll his eyes.

Instead, without saying a word, he simply walked away.

Despite his determination not to consume too much alcohol until he witnessed the culmination of the evening’s events, he found himself heading for the table covered with champagne glasses, anyway.

It was champagne, not vodka, or even heavy wine.

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