Page 53 of A Treacherous Trade
“Look around you, Fiona—my patrons are not only men. That one is most popular amongst women, actually. Women like you.”
What did he mean,women like me?
I refused him the satisfaction he’d glean from me asking that very question. “You—you don’t say.”
I stared at the golden god with a very different sort of interest. A man that beautiful could be bought?
“You could afford him.” Jorah’s breath caressed the shell of my ear as he read my thoughts. He was the Devil on my shoulder, in a place no angel would venture. “I know I pay you well enough—if he is what you want, I will fetch him for you.”
I cleared the intrigue out my throat and threw a fractious glance over my shoulder. “I’dnever.”
His chuckle washed me in shivers as I found his face much closer to mine than I’d realized. I took a step forward, and then another, creating the space I needed to clear my head.
“Never?” The Hammer tutted down at me as he straightened, seeming not to notice or care that I’d retreated. “Does it disgust you that he could be bought?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. I just…” I paused, affording myself one more glance at the lad before I turned and gave Jorah my full attention. “It’s not that Icouldn’tpay,” I explained. “I don’t think I could pretend—no—that I could forget thathewas pretending. That he wasn’t with me because he desired me, but because I paid him to act as if he did. I don’t know how you men can pay for so many women and ignore that they don’t care about you.”
Somehow, when Jorah looked at me, he could seem both mild and avid all at once. Lean and predatory, he stood as erect as a yeoman, hands clasped behind his back in a most unthreatening posture.
His voice, however, was utterly dangerous as he said, “It is unkind to assign to me the attributes of most men.”
I could think of nothing to say to that. In truth, he was like no one I knew or knewof. He was bold but not reckless. Neither young nor old, but somewhere in the middle. In that span of two decades considered prime and powerful for a man. He was ruthless but proper. Cruel but elegant.
A gentleman gangster, I often called him. An elegant monster.
“Follow me, Fiona.” He gestured toward the grand stairs.
“Actually, I’m here to speak to someone…”
He was already walking away, as if he knew I would go along despite my protestations.
I hated that I did exactly that. However, the fact that the suddenly muted ballroom was paying us undue attention sent me scurrying up the grand staircase after him.
We didn’t stop until he led me up two more stories and down a long hallway into a room I’d only been in once before. The Shiloh Room, he called it.Shilohmeaningpeacein the language of his people.
During the years we’d worked together, I sometimes had need to meet in the office he received in downstairs, decorated to match the blood he spilled and the people he sold.
Red. Always red.
Here, not a drop of crimson could be found. In fact, the walls were papered in gold, the carpets white and strewn with lush rugs done in tranquil colors. His furniture was so delicate as to be feminine, but for the imposing desk along the back wall and a few overstuffed chairs next to the fireplace.
Half study, half sanctuary—I understood that the Shiloh room was a place very few knew about, and even fewer had the privilege of visiting.
The last time I was here, I’d awoken from being accosted in an alley by a man pretending to be Jack the Ripper. The Hammer had stitched a wound on my neck with the precision of a physician, explaining that his father had been one in Russia.
“You’d only lie with a man if he desired you?” Despite the intimate question, Jorah had put the desk between us, spreading his fingers on the surface and leaning on them, rather than claiming his seat.
I shrugged, doing my best to seem unaffected. “Terribly unworldly of me, I know, but I suppose that would be part of the… excitement for me.”
He returned my shrug with one of his own. “People want what they want. And you want to be wanted. Nothing unworldly about that.”
“You surprise me,” I blurted, claiming a familiar chaise in the middle of the room. Not close to his desk, but not far enough away to offer offense.
“I do not take your meaning.” His brow furrowed with new lines, and I realized he appeared older than the scant few months since I’d seen him last. Paler, perhaps. Not diminished or ill. But tired.
It wasn’t my place to wonder why. “You’re a man surrounded by sex every day. I imagine you are privy to all sorts of deviancies and proclivities. Compared to most, I must seem absurdly unsophisticated.”
“In my trade, I have learned that tastes are vast and varied, and change through time and experience. I think you are sophisticated enough to know your mind about an experience you’ve never had.” As he spoke, he made a slow and lazy assessment of my person, his eyes lingering everywhere they ought not to. “There are plenty of men who desire you, Fiona. I can name a handful of my own friends and enemies.”
