* * *
Bloody hell, am I truly going to celebrate Christmas Eve in a brothel?
The words sliced through the haze of wine in Daniel Raster’s mind, the Earl of Barkley, as the woman, clad in a caricature of late sixteenth-century French clothing—ruffled neckpiece, and mockery of a ribbed hoop skirt over diaphanous underthings—gyrated on the podium before him.
Sweet, drugging smoke made the air hazy; the rich scent of roses and jasmine inundated the room just as the glow of deliberately placed candles had their glow flickering over the woman’s body. It was all an attempt to heighten arousal—but all Daniel could feel was—emptiness and a little repulsion at himself.
The Atrium wasn’t the typical brothel; the women were sourced from exotic parts of the world and trained in eroticism. It took a sizable sum, proof of nobility, and endorsement from another peer to enter and partake in the hedonistic revelries the brothel offered.
All efforts, Daniel thought, were for naught.
The muted moans and groans of an orgy in the room beyond his room—where he knew his friend Linus was—briefly caught his attention, and he bleakly thought that mayhap he should have joined them instead.
For months he had felt his sense of attraction waning. A woman would catch his eye—but then, there was no urge to go after her. When he did feel the desire, the paid courtesans brought nothing out in him.
Alarmed, Daniel had pushed himself to go out of his way to feel something; to couple with pairs of women, three sometimes, but as he tried, he thought that even if he possessed Solomon’s harem, he would not be interested.
He looked uninterestedly at the woman, and without much thought, stood up and left the room. Dimly, he began to meander from the rooms and down to the dungeon where cubicles were open for public viewing.
Shameless men and women lost in the pleasure of each other's bodies; some were alone, some men had two women, and at the far end—another orgy. He stared at the mix of bodies, writhing and undulating with pure apathy.
He tried to find where one body ended, and the other began but to no avail. It was a ten-headed hydra, all head and hands but one solid body, all flexing buttocks and arching backs.
Turning, he left the corridor but paused when a woman, with dark hair and moonlit skin, approached him.
“I cannot help but notice you have not partaken of any of our…favors tonight,” she said a few feet away with her face shadowed. “Is there a specific offering you would like tonight?”
“Who the Devil are you?”
She came forward, and one look to her sea-green eyes had him almost desperate to run from her. “Never mind,” Daniel said. “There is nothing—no one—for me here.”
“Monsieur—”
But Daniel was gone, rushing out in clipped strides away from the woman who reminded him too much of…her. The woman who had once held his fragile heart in her hand and, with a callous smirk, had dropped in on the ground before stomping on it—shattering it like brittle glass.
The night was ending for him—and he knew it. Hurrying out into the cold, bitter night, Daniel grabbed his horse with the dire thought that a benevolent Christmas spirit had gone around sprinkling the gift of ardor to everyone…but had missed him somehow—perhaps by calculation—darkened his mind.
If a half-naked woman and a room of naked bodies had not stirred any desire in him, was all carnal desire dead for him?
With a grimly locked jaw, Daniel accepted that he might just have to nominate himself for a hermit life. No woman would strike that fire again—his desire was dead.
Chapter One
The ripping of the drapes had sunlight stabbing into Daniel’s tender eyes and liquified brain, tempting him to reach into his bedside drawer, take out his pistol and shooting whoever had done the atrocious act.
“Come on,” the too-joyful voice of his friend Benjamin Bradford, a barrister, taunted him from the foot of his bed. “Get up.”
Grabbing a pillow to press it to his eyes, Daniel swore, “Why in God’s name did I ever think that giving youcarte blancheaccess to my house was a sensible idea?”
“Because I am your friend, and the only one who will dare come at you when you’ve come home at the witching hour, and spent a few hours with little sleep, Raster,” Benjamin said. And even though Daniel hadn’t opened his eyes, he knew that mischief rested in his friend's eye.
“Damnation. What in the blazes do you want, Ben?” Daniel grated.
“To see your bright smile, hear you call me your best friend when I feed you coffee blacker than the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat, and to, later on, trump you in the fencing match you promised me weeks ago,” Ben said. “And I am not letting you get out of it.”
Carefully, Daniel peeled the pillow from his face, “Think this through. You’re going to force a man into a fencing match, a man, who, mind you, has just drunk half of the Irish Sea worth of Spanish wine, who will be good for nothing on his feet after five minutes sitting upright, will be suffering from the worst headache humanity had ever seen. And while his stomach will be betraying him, he will be making deals with God to spare his life—are youmad?”
“Possibly,” Ben said, and Daniel felt the edge of his bed dip—most likely, his friend was sitting on it. “How bad is it?”
