He grinned as he tugged her back down and resettled her across his knees. “Madame Chambon has trained you well. Now I suppose you’ll tell me you’re a virgin.”
She nodded vigorously. “I am, sir. Indeed I am and—”
His scowl made her stiffen with apparent terror. Oh, she was good.
“Really?” He reached for the cutlass that had fallen from his belt and now lay at his feet. Idly he stroked the blade, stained with the dead dog’s blood, while he contemplated her. She was indulging in the charade perhaps a little too enthusiastically but then, as he narrowed his gaze and saw how frightened she really seemed, it occurred to him that every whore had to be broken in sometime and perhaps Madame Chambon had decided to play a little trick on him.
She’d told him he needed softening. That the effects of the opprobrium directed at him since poor Margaret’s death had stripped him of his humanity. Perhaps tonight was the time to cultivate his more tender side.
“A virgin?” Before, he’d spoken with blatant skepticism. Now he would allow that she could be telling the truth.
She nodded, her eyes riveted on the blade he was now using to clean his fingernails.
“So this will be your first time with a man?”
She drew in a trembling breath and repeated stupidly, “First time with a man?”
He tried not to sound irritated. There was only so much of the playacting he could take. “Madame Chambon obviously selected you on account of your innocence. She knows my proclivities and that experience is my preference but I can be gentle. I won’t hurt you.” He grinned as he was struck by the responsibility of breaking
in a virgin. One who would always remember her first time with him, no matter how many paying customers she serviced in her working life.
He licked his lips as he watched understanding dawn, adding as he traced the edge of her décolletage with his right forefinger, “In fact, I promise that you’ll quite enjoy the experience. God knows, you’re going to endure enough during your career, so you might as well start off on a good note. Now, shall we begin?”
“Oh sir, I don’t know what to do!” She twisted in his lap and stared frantically at the door.
Chuckling, he whisked her into his arms and tossed her, not roughly, onto the bed, caging her body with his and staring down into her frightened face.
Poor child, he thought, wondering briefly what had brought her to this. But then, it was her choice. She might not have desired this life but she’d chosen it in preference to honest toil, and she was lucky her procuress hadn’t given her to any number of brutes he knew of who would initiate her in far less gentle fashion than he intended.
In what he hoped was a sufficiently reassuring tone, he murmured, “Just do as I say and I won’t hurt you.”
She gasped, nodding, her terrified gaze following his hand, which reached down to grasp the hem of her gown.
Madame Chambon spared no expense on her girls and this one was dressed in finery to equal that of any daughter of the peerage. No doubt she’d been taught to speak like a duke’s daughter. And to behave with fitting grace and decorum if required. Aubrey recalled with amusement the occasion he’d taken Jezebel—renamed Lady Anne for the occasion—to visit his mother when the dowager had been hell-bent on allying Aubrey with some horsey-looking cousin, saying his twelve-month mourning period was over and it was hardly as though Margaret had been a good wife. That the time had come to sire an heir.
Jezebel, though she’d been born in the gutter, had given as good an account of herself as any peeress.
He sent the girl beneath him another appreciative glance. He needed diversion and a pair of arms to sink into. Someone who’d at least pretend softness and comfort at the end of a difficult day. A difficult day? Every day was a battle. Almost convulsively his mind was drawn back to the difficulties pressing upon him with regard to his blackened reputation, before he returned his mind to the task at hand, and his hand to the girl’s warm, soft thighs, which yielded at his gentle pressure to part them.
“That’s right,” he murmured. “Slow and steady. Just let your knees go slack and I’ll start off doing what’s required to break you in, my sweetheart, just like I promised. I want you to give a good report of me to your madam when you return.”
“Sir, I—”
But when he frowned in answer to her possible objection, her words died on her lips. She must have understood she was overstepping the mark though she certainly didn’t disappoint when she jerked into awareness as he probed the folds of her sex. She was damp but not wet as she needed to be when he breached her defenses, so to speak.
He stifled a sigh. He’d have to work harder. No doubt Madame Chambon believed he’d pay a premium for the privilege of breaking in a virgin when, if given a choice, he’d have balked at the notion.
Lowering his head, he gently touched his lips to hers, tracing her upper lip with the tip of his tongue before breaching the seam, roaming over her teeth, exploring her mouth.
He was surprised by her drawn-out sigh and the way her body went slack so quickly. As if she truly relished the kiss. He was surprised, too, by the extent to which he was affected. He drew back to study her more closely.
She couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen. So young, but the age at which respectable girls were married off. Had she been born into more fortunate circumstances she would be mixing with the throng downstairs, not closeted in a gentleman’s bedroom learning how to pleasure a whole lineup of them.
The poor child was destined for a hard life but the least he could do in exchange for taking her virginity was to show her what pleasure could be had. He’d only broken in one virgin, his beautiful wife Margaret, and she, who’d been terrified, had come to relish the act. Well, until that bastard Debenham, as he now was, had returned to haunt her. Sir Aubrey forced the thought from his mind. It would drive him mad if he let it.
He licked his finger before finding the swollen nub between her legs, massaging her rhythmically, gently, in her most intimate parts, enjoying her sudden breathlessness and the changes in the feel of her body. She was growing wetter by the minute.
“Oh…my lord,” she breathed, gripping him more tightly.