Page 64 of Doxy for the Ton
“Shall we retire to the bedchamber?” she asked.
He shook his head and, without speaking, retreated, pushing past the surprised butler as he strode toward the front door and let himself out.
Curse her!Why should she makehimfeel sordid whenshewas the doxy?
Perhaps it was the dignity with which she carried herself. But a small voice in his head had whispered of the hope that she was warming to him.
But no—to her, he was merely a means of earning an income.
He crossed the street and entered his house, responding to the footman’s greeting with a grunt. Then he made his way to his study, where a bottle of brandy awaited. At least the bottle wouldn’t stare at him with doe-like eyes to prick his conscience. It merely awaited his consumption—without judgment or admonishment.
By the time he’d worked his way halfway through the bottle, the pain in his heart had dulled—but it refused to disappear.
Perhaps Whitcombe’s right—Ihavegot it bad.
But it—whateveritwas—was a mere passing fancy. By the time their business was done, he’d have rutted his obsession with her out of his system. With even greater luck, she would have succumbed—as all his women did—to his talents in the bedroom. Then she’d know what it was like to want something that was unattainable. All he needed to do was make her body scream with pleasure and he could enslave her as thoroughly as he was beginning to fear that she’d enslaved him.
He lifted the brandy glass to the light.
“Fuck, that’s strong stuff if it’s turned me into such an elo—eloquent phil…” He shook his head, struggling to voice the word. “Phillo…philosopher.”
Philosopher. That was it.
“I’ll have you, Mimi,” he said. “All of you. It’s only a matter of time.”
He strolled toward the window and pulled back the curtain, and his gaze was drawn to the house across the square. He leaned against the window frame and exhaled, his breath misting on the glass. Then he lifted his finger and traced the letterM.
A movement caught his eye, and he saw a figure emerge from number sixteen. Though she wore a cloak, there was no mistaking her. She climbed down the steps then stopped and glanced about—as if she carried a guilty secret. For a moment she glanced toward his house, and Alexander shrank back, clutching his brandy glass, even though she’d never be able to see him.
Then, with a glance over her shoulder, she set off.
So—she turned away from him in fear when he attempted to kiss her, but she was content to spread her legs on the streets to earn an extra coin or two.
Once a whore, always a whore.
As she disappeared out of sight, he tipped up the brandy glass and drained it. Then he turned, drew his arm back, and flung the glass into the air with full force. It struck the wall and shattered into shards on impact.
Chapter Fifteen
Mimi drove herneedle into the hem of the gown, then pulled the thread through. She repeated the gesture and her mind drifted, no matter how hard she tried to banishhimfrom her thoughts.
The Duke of Sawbridge.
Less than a month into their arrangement, she had almost succumbed to the temptation to let him kiss her.
Pleasure had been within her grasp. But pleasure was like laudanum—it soothed the ache, but with each application, the ache returned, more potent than before, until the craving became a need for survival, a dependency that would ultimately destroy her.
She had no intention to draw pleasure from their coupling, but she could no longer deny her professional pride at his groans of ecstasy while she rode him—or while he rutted her in the parlor in full view of the street outside, the danger heightening his pleasure, evident in the short, sharp puffs as he came to completion.
But despite his evident physical satisfaction, disappointment gleamed in his eyes when she turned her lips from him.
Oh, Sawbridge, if only you knew how greatly my own disappointment surpasses yours.
She was standing on a precipice—at the brink of her own destruction. The slightest transgression into pleasure and she would plunge into the abyss.
But she couldn’t silence the voice in her mind that whispered of the prospect of taking her pleasure with him.
Alexander…
