Page 40 of Pride: The Rogue
“Y-you…” she choked out, but couldn’t get out the rest.
Sex and sin?
“I own a gaming hell, Miss Lovelace. A very wicked, very scandalous, and very sexy, gaming hell.”
Oh, my.
Chapter 7
That should send her fleeing.
Any polite, respectable, decent, lady—of which this one absolutely was—would hightail it away from Latimer as fast as her bluestockinged legs could carry her.
Hell, that’d been the whole point of his bluntness—to send her running.
The last thing he wanted in his life was a virgin.
The last thing he needed in his life was a tempting, spirited, vixenish virgin eyeing him with those big, innocent, desire-filled, eyes of hers.
He waited for her to go.
And waited.
Several minutes later, he found himself continuing to wait.
Instead, she sat peering at him, with a question in her revealing eyes; eyes that did an obvious and thorough search of Latimer.
Her lips twitched. “You’re just saying that to scare me.”
His profession was the least scary thing about Latimer or his past. “Doesit?”
“No.”
She spoke so quickly healmostbelieved her.
“Liar.”
The lady lifted her chin and continued to hold his stare. “Very well, tell me about your club, Lachlan.”
His club.
Forbidden Pleasures. It’d been his way out of hell. That club had been the only home he’d ever known, and had been built from money he saved as a street fighter. One chance meeting with Argyll who’d observed him at a fight club had changed the course of his existence.
With Argyll and DuMond’s recent betrayal, Latimer found himself trying to rebuild.
“Either you’re too much a gentleman to shock me with details, Lachlan,” she said, misinterpreting the reason for his silence, “or you aren’t, in fact, the owner of any such—”
“Forbidden Pleasures,” he cut her off.
She went big-eyed. “Oh.”
It was Latimer’s turn to smile. “By your breathless response, I take it you’ve heard of it.”
“I…have. Only as my sister has cover—” She closed her lips and cleared her throat. “Collected newspaper articles about your…establishment.”
“You mean gossip,” he said dryly.
Livian frowned. “My sister does not concern herself with gossip.” Her brow deepened further. “Nor, for that matter, doI. Rather, we have an interest in those who operate outside the constraints of Polite Society.”
