Page 9 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
Yes, society’s strictures and the laws which bound them dictated that Cressida’s decisions and life didn’t belong to her, but rather to the men who ruled her life—her brother and her eventual husband.
To hell with them all. She would not allow a man—or any woman—who wanted her for those twisted reasons to be the one to take her virginity.
Wresting back the last shred of control she had over her life, Cressida tossed her head back, tipped her chin up, and glared. This time, a new round of approved murmurings went up, and from different spaces and corners of the club. Although she’d lose her virtue to a gentleman who bid on her, at least he’d be one who appreciated a woman who was strong and did not cower before him.
Cressida’s triumph proved short-lived. Her body had been turned into a weapon to be used against her.
Her need for some relief proved greater than her pride. Cressida, no longer able to care that a crowded room of theton’smost powerful watched on, rolled her hips at the empty air. It didn’t help.
“As you can see, gentlemen, the lady’s longing to have a cock buried deep inside her tight, untried cunny proves greater. It iswhat brings this innocent, virtuous lady to the most depraved club—her need to have an itch she doesn’t understand scratched. To have a lover make her come for the very first time.”
The auctioneer’s deep voice, as much as the words he spoke, set her afire and raised the temperature in the room to scorching levels.
They were words she’d heard before, at least in various ways and forms at the Mismatch Club. The older, experienced women with knowledge of carnal acts explained the difference between tupping and lovemaking—two areas about which Polite Society preferred young and old women alike to remain ignorant. The words the auctioneer spoke painted a mesmerizing image of that act, and she could see herself being fulfilled in the ways her friends had spoken of.
She’d become a woman possessed. Cressida pressed a hand against her breast.
“For the love of God,” a spectator cried out. “She’s bloody hot for it. We all are. Would you start the bloody thing already?”
The auctioneer looked to one of the private tables at the center.
Panting softly, Cressida, equal parts hungry for some sort of relief from the sensations ratcheting inside her and desperate for the show to stop, looked to the gentleman whose approval he sought.
The Earl of Dynevor sat watching the stage, watching Cressida with a hard, merciless expression. Any hint of softness she’d thought she’d seen in him must have been imagined. Unable to look at the man who ruled this vile, debauched empire, she slid her gaze away…and it collided with that of another.
Cressida froze.
They were eyes she knew. She’d remembered them after their first meeting. She thought of them during the day and dreamed of them at night.
Her breath caught, but this time for reasons different than the incessant ache at her center.
Maybe whatever drug she’d ingested that left her desperate to be touched and pleasured also affected her mind.
Benedict Adamson, the Earl of Wakefield, the one man she’d secretly adored and loved, was here at The Devil’s Den. His stare locked on her.
For the first time that night, Cressida’s throat filled with some emotion other than fear.
Hope.
“Let the auction begin!”
Chapter 2
Having been born to a faithless father, the previous Earl of Wakefield—who’d been rot with money, loose with his affections, and possessed a muddied name—Benedict Adamson, the current Earl of Wakefield, vowed to never become like his father. And he hadn’t.
With the former earl’s failings, he’d left such a shameful legacy, Wakefield had been determined to restore the Adamson name, connections, and fortune. He’d managed to set aside societal expectations and do actual work.
When he’d first begun growing his fortunes through finance, manufacturing, and resource extractions, he’d been met with whispers and top stories written in the gossip pages. It’d flown in the face of what Polite Society deemed respectable, yet that was what he’d spent most of his hours on.
Until thetonbegan to take note and as his fortunes shifted, he’d conducted himself in an upstanding way, at least by the standards of the peerage. Eventually, the disdainful words spoken about him shifted. Lords and ladies, particularly those without fortunes and with daughters of marriageable age, began to take note and…make exceptions for Working Wakefield, as he’d been mocked and dubbed at university and in the papers.
Wakefield not only built back the fortune—and then some—that his late father squandered, he’d also carried himself in a way that was beyond reproach. He didn’t gamble. He only drank a respectable amount of the finest spirits, and never to the point of overindulgence. No, he prided himself on his self-restraint.
His good name and reputation being more precious to him than all the gold he had to his name, Wakefield never set foot in the wicked gaming establishments his friends frequented. Or,in the case of his recently married former best friend, previously frequented.
Somewhere along the way, Wakefield proved himself in such a way that it no longer became a matter of theton“making exceptions” for Wakefield. Rather, the nobility, from those with the oldest, most venerated titles to the fellows who’d made his life hell at Eton and Oxford, curried his favor and desired his presence at all their most exclusive affairs and respectable clubs.
Alas, it’d been strictly business that brought Wakefield here this night to The Devil’s Den.
