Page 28 of His Brazen Tart
“I apologize for being late,” Piers said, shattering the tense silence thickening the air.
Joan inched closer, resting a hand against his abdomen. His coarse hairs tickled her fingertips, and his skin was warm to the touch.
“There is nothing to apologize for,” she murmured, propping her chin on his shoulder. “You have more than made up for your tardiness.”
For a while, his only response was a low grunt. Then, he lay beside her in eerie silence, his gaze still pointed upward. Almost as if he avoided looking at her. Joan frowned, running a hand up to his chest and noticing for the first time how tense he was.
“Piers?”
“I should go,” he blurted, sitting upright. Joan watched with a furrowed brow and slackened jaw as he threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
“What’s your hurry?” she asked, sitting up and pulling her knees toward her chest. “You’ve only just arrived.”
Piers kept his back turned while yanking up his breeches. One shoulder rolled upward in a shrug. “I think it best to depart now that we are finished.”
The icy chill in his voice left her in stunned silence. Her head spun as she tried to make sense of this sudden change in Piers. He had come in looking very much unlike himself: wild, and out of control, and—dare she think it?—a bit sad. Then, he was in her arms, burning hot and alive, scorching her with his wants and desires. Now, he was a glacier, hardened and cold and sharp. Something was wrong, but despite knowing it wasn’t wise to pry Joan couldn’t resist. She had spent years tolerating ill-treatment from her late husband in silence; Joan would be damned before she did the same with her courtesan.
“Who said we were finished?” she asked.
Piers halted in the middle of tucking his shirt into his breeches and turned to face her with a sigh. “If you want me again, you will have to give me a moment. My cock isn’t a trained lapdog. It doesn’t sit, stand, or roll over at your command.”
Joan flinched, feeling as if she had been physically struck. The acerbity of his tone left her shocked and fumbling for words. She opened and shut her mouth twice before words formed on her tongue.
“What if I didn’t want you to stay because I wanted your cock? Are you so accustomed to being used for the flesh between your legs that you can’t recognize when someone wants your company?”
He released a harsh breath through his nostrils and ran his fingers through his hair—which had been deliciously tousled by their bed sport. If not for the fact that he was being a right ass, Joan would find him delectable in his open breeches and unbuttoned shirt. He looked disreputable and delicious, yet untouchable all at the same time.
“I apologize, madam, but I would not make very good company tonight. Besides, you led me to believe that such niceties weren’t necessary. You wanted to be dominated and satisfied. I have just done both, so unless you require another tumble, I’m afraid our time is up.”
Joan launched herself from the bed, snatching up her chemise and quickly slipping into it. “What the devil is wrong with you? If you are displeased with me for some reason, I wish you would simply say so.”
“I am not displeased,” he ground out, eyes darting to avoid her gaze. “I merely think it is time for us to return to the original parameters of our arrangement. I am certain you can understand that as a courtesan, I must protect my own interests. There need be no personal prying or emotional element to our … coupling.”
Joan could hardly believe what she was hearing. After the way Piers had just been with her—on top of her, inside of her—he was dismissing her as if it had meant nothing to him. As ifshemeant nothing to him.
“I see,” she whispered, at a loss for anything better to say. He had caught her completely off guard for the second time tonight. She hardly knew what to make of him.
“Good,” he snapped, shrugging into his waistcoat and then looping his limp, rumpled cravat around his neck without bothering to tie it. “You will send for me when necessary, yes?”
Joan crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against a bedpost, watching Piers with narrowed eyes. The longer she observed him, she began to realize that all was not as it seemed. At first glance, Piers’ voice and demeanor seemed bolstered by his usual cool confidence. However, his hands trembled as he buttoned his waistcoat, and he couldn’t seem to look directly at her. Her heart sank as she watched him toe on his shoes and begin backing toward the door.
The man was a wreck, and very obviously trying to keep Joan from inquiring any deeper.
“Piers,” she whispered. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
He finally looked at her, and the dejection in his eyes was baffling. Piers was the one pushing her away. Why did he look at her as if he were the one who was being hurt?
“Fine,” he replied after clearing his throat. “It is as I said … I’m not very good company this evening. I will attend you again at your pleasure. Good night, Joan.”
With a stiff incline of his head, he was out the door without a look back. Joan plopped onto the bed and folded her hands in her lap, brows knit tight as she thought over the whirlwind of their brief time together. If it weren’t for the scent of Piers still lingering in the room, she might have thought it all a bizarre dream.
She stared at the door long after he was gone, trying to convince herself that he was simply in a dudgeon. Having been married to a man for five years, she was familiar with their moods and how they could change at the drop of a hat. Gregory had often lashed out at her in his frustration. While Joan knew Piers would never physically hurt her, she had experienced the sharp edge of his tongue more than once. She knew he was capable of cold aloofness and understood that past experience had made him this way.
Still, the dread settling like a block of ice in her gut told Joan that this was nothing to make light of. Something had gone terribly wrong, and she had a feeling nothing would be the same between them after tonight.
Piers waitedthree days before attempting an audience with Joan following the disastrous end of their night together at Olympus. Three days of sulking and thinking over every word that had been said, as well as those he’d wanted to say but had been too cowardly to muster. It had been the right thing to do—reminding Joan of what their relationship was supposed to be. He understood that she was a woman of high passions and easy affection. Though, how she had maintained such traits while married to the abominable Gregory Durbin was beyond him. Nevertheless, allowing her to show him tenderness and warmth was a mistake. It was simply her way, but a part of Piers didn’t seem to understand the distinction. It was the part of him that had shriveled up in the face of Lysandra’s cruelty—one he had thought long dead. That tiny little piece grew and blossomed every time she kissed him or touched him in any way that wasn’t sexual, or talked to him as if he were a man instead of an object of desire or scorn.
He couldn’t take it anymore. If they continued carrying on the way they had been, Piers would never survive the inevitable end of their arrangement. Joan might be capable of concluding an affair where emotions had become involved with little to no remorse, but then, she wasn’t broken like him. She was too strong, remarkably so. She’d had to be to survive the cruelty of a man who hadn’t deserved her.
