Page 47 of The Good Duke
Tall and willowy, and possessed of those same midnight tresses that she now drew back sharply at her nape, it left her features almost gaunt and also stirred a longing to free those strands from their severe plait.
And more desirous thoughts came whispering forward: of him being the one to tug those pins loose and send her hair tumbling so he could ascertain once and for all whether her curls were still tight coils or whether they floated freely about her back.
And thoughts he’d absolutely no right having about his former—and only—early childhood friend took root in a too-fertile mind.
Of him taking her mouth under his again. Only this time, he’d know bloody well what he was doing.
What in blazes was wrong with him? Simon actually sat here entertaining lustful thoughts aboutPersephone Forsyth?
It’d been too long since he’d had a woman in his bed That was all that accounted for his ruminating about her even now.
“Or madness,” he grumbled.
An annoyingly wry Pruitt quirked an eyebrow. “What was that?”
“Nothing. It is nothing.” To deter his friend from putting another question to him—questions he didn’t want to answer and details he didn’t want to give about his friend of long ago—Simon took a deliberately deep swig of brandy.
A shadow fell over the table, effectively saving Simon from any further questions on his friend’s part.
Both men glanced up.
One of Forbidden Pleasures’ ravishing Cyprians stood with a flirtatious smile on her full, rouged lips. Then she placed her hand, with long, painted fingernails, at the crevice of her low-cut bodice in a deliberate invitation for their stares…and company.
She was a brunette beauty, several inches shorter than Persephone. The courtesan’s hair lacked the luster of that other woman who currently occupied Simon’s conversation—and thoughts.
“Hullo, gentlemen,” the woman purred. The faintest hint of Cockney lingered in her otherwise impressively cultured speech.
Even as she directed her greeting to both of them, the beauty’s penetrating gaze belonged to Simon.
“I am Aphrodite.”
Aphrodite? As in that Greek goddess and rival to Persephone.
“Howfitting,” he muttered under his breath.
The gods had a sense of humor after all.
The piquant courtesan cast a confused look from Simon to Pruitt and then back again to Simon.
“Thank…you?” The slight uptilt at the end of the young woman’s two words transformed her husky response into a question.
“What my friend means,” Pruitt put in easily, “is there couldn’t be a moreaptname for an exquisite beauty such as yourself.”
Despite that lavish extolment, Aphrodite’s keen focus remained fixed on Simon.
His mouth formed a wry grin.
Ah, even the serving girls and servants at his former club had gotten wind of his change in circumstances.
“You look like you are in need of company, Your Grace,” she said, her husky voice a silken invitation.
Slipping the glass from his hands, the Cyprian set it down on the table and availed herself to a place on Simon’s lap. In an instant, she pressed her lips against his neck and proceeded to nuzzle him.
His gaze went to the glass she’d relieved him of.
Another time, likely any other time, Simon would have taken what the sensual prostitute offered—and happily.More than happily, that was.
Madness must have plagued him. For instead of focusing on Aphrodite’s skillful mouth as she alternately nipped and teased at his flesh, her reproachful words whispered forward.
