Bastian’s Surrender: Regency Club Venus 1 Read online

  Much as he would like her to take his cock between her lips before he thrust it down her silky throat. The distraction of her barely concealed nipples was further cause for arousal.

  To satisfy Gail’s concern, he quickly threw two of the slimy things to the back of his throat and swallowed before resuming feeding her.

  His cock throbbed and leaked more pre-cum each time she allowed one of the mollusks to slide down her throat.

  She turned her head away when Bastian presented the seventh shell. “I believe I have had enough.”

  Bastian had chosen the food for this meal himself, and he was going to enjoy feeding every course to Gail. The torture to his straining cock be damned.

  Next came delicate pink prawns on a delicious bed of green salad and covered in a cream-colored sauce.

  Abigail frowned as a fork containing something else she didn’t recognize—another aphrodisiac?—was held temptingly in front of her. “I am perfectly capable of feeding myself, my lo—Bastian,” she quickly corrected herself when the earl’s eyes narrowed at her formality.

  “I am sure you are,” he conceded. “But as you are mine for tonight, it is for me to decide what you eat and how you eat it.”

  For tonight? Did that mean the earl had paid to spend the whole night with her?

  Abigail, with the help of several of the other ladies, had prepared her body for this evening. She had been thoroughly bathed and her body perfumed, the curls shaved from her mound, leaving it smooth and bare and feeling strangely vulnerable inside her drawers. Her nipples had been rouged a deep rose. Even her feet had received the attention of a scented lotion.

  Yes, her body was prepared, but her mind still was not.

  Except Abigail knew this had to happen this evening. It had only been a question of who with, Bastian Forbes or Lord Gordon.

  She obediently parted her lips and allowed the earl to place the succulent forkful of food on her tongue. She looked at him enquiringly when the fork remained in her mouth.

  “Tighten your lips about the fork as I slide it from your mouth,” he encouraged, his eyes so dark, they appeared black rather than blue.

  Abigail found it impossible to look away from him, remaining a captive of his fierce gaze as her lips tightened and the fork was slowly removed. She chewed the hitherto unknown food—another form of fish, from the taste of it.

  Which was when a ball of flame seemed to burst inside her mouth, followed by that heat traveling down her throat and into her belly after she had swallowed.

  She hastily picked up her wineglass and took several swallows of the cooling liquid. “What was that?” she finally managed to gasp, her cheeks feeling hot and her eyes watering. “Something was extremely hot to the tongue.”

  “It was the horseradish in the sauce.” The earl forked up another of the succulent pink fish. “Eat,” he encouraged unmercifully.

  Abigail did so but with a reluctance she knew her new role in life would not allow her to voice. Besides, she was not sure she had a voice left to speak with as each mouthful of this second course seemed to burn inside her hotter than the last. Her wineglass had also needed to be replenished by the time she had eaten half a dozen of the small fish, muddling her thought processes and giving a rosy haze to the room.

  “Enough of that.” The earl removed the glass from her fingers as she would have taken another cooling swallow of the amber nectar. “I wish you to be relaxed, not intoxicated.”

  Abigail’s bottom lip pouted. “I cannot possibly eat any more of those without imbibing more liquid.”

  “Then drink water.” Bastian filled the second glass with the cool spring water he knew Blackborne imported from Wales. “Besides, we have now come to the best part of the meal.” He rose to clear away their used plates and take out two glass plates from the cabinet beneath the trolley.

  “What is it?” Gail stared at the dark and delicious-looking concoction when Bastian placed it in front of her.

  “Chocolate cake.” He gathered up a forkful and held it in front of her now reddened lips. The chef really had gone a little overboard with the horseradish in the sauce accompanying the prawns. Not that Bastian was complaining. He liked Gail’s lips like this, slightly puffy and red as if from being kissed. It also caused him to speculate as to whether her pussy lips would be that same delectable rose color.

  Those green eyes widened. “I have heard of chocolate, of course, but I have never eaten any of it.”

  “Then you are in for a treat.” The heat of Bastian’s gaze remained on Gail as she parted her lips and he pushed the fork inside before removing it again minus the cake.

  Her groans of ecstasy immediately followed. “Mm. My… Oh dear lord…” she murmured breathlessly. “That is just so… Mm,” she groaned again, eyes closing as Bastian fed her another forkful.

  Dear God, those groans and sighs were the same ones he wished to hear from Gail’s lips when his cock entered and claimed her cunny…

  Bastian’s cockhead had ceased merely leaking pre-cum and was now releasing copious amounts of it, resulting in a wet and sticky mess inside his drawers.

  He took advantage of Gail’s closed lids to claim her lips with his own, his restraint at an end. He could taste the chocolate on her lips and the delicious heat created by the horseradish sauce as his tongue ventured past those lips and into the hot cavern of her mouth in the way he wished his cock to enter her cunny. Stroking. Licking Thrusting.

  Gail gave no response at first, as if she was unsure of what her reaction should be. But Bastian was aware, as he continued to kiss and claim every corner and crevice of her mouth as his own, of the moment the tension left her body and she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms moved up about his shoulders as she parted her lips farther and her tongue began to shyly duel with his own.

  That shyness caused Bastian to give a groan as he took her fully into his arms to deepen the kiss.

  Abigail battled to come to terms with the new sensations coursing through her body. A tingling of all her limbs and the rouged tips of her swollen breasts. The difficulty breathing. The heat at her core. The swelling and dampness between her thighs and the increased aroma of her perfumed body along with it.

  All those things conspired to weaken her resistance to Bastian’s seduction—

  Shaftesbury’s very deliberate seduction.

  Something he had been doing from the moment he insisted on feeding her himself.

  This was not the way the other ladies had described their nightly encounters with the men at Club Venus. Those had sounded more like business transactions, to be enjoyed by both if possible, but having nothing to do with the seduction Shaftesbury was practicing on Abigail this evening.

  She wrenched her mouth from his, and her hands moved down to his chest. She tried to push him away in the hopes of removing those restraining arms from about her body. “Let me go!” She glared as Bastian swept her up into his arms once again, his arms like steel bands about her waist. “You—you—you voluptuary!”

  The earl froze, his expression becoming stony, those narrowed dark eyes glacial as he removed his arms to sit back in his chair. “What the hell did you just call me?”

  Abigail felt the color leech from her cheeks as fear rose up within her.

  Chapter Five

  Abigail moistened suddenly dry lips, any euphoria she might have felt earlier from drinking the wine quickly evaporating. “I apologize, my lord.” Her lashes lowered as she looked down at her anxiously clasped hands where they lay upon her lap. “I spoke out of turn. I should not have—”

  “No, you fucking well should not.” Shaftesbury rose abruptly to his feet to begin pacing the room. “I realize you found me in a…compromising position early this morning.” He gave a grimace. “But there are reasons, extenuating circumstances, which have caused me to seek the oblivion of such excessive pursuits of late.”

  The ladies here had explained to Abigail that some gentlemen made requests that might seem strange to her at first. That some
did not even require a woman’s sexual compliance but only wished to talk on subjects they found impossible to discuss with their wives or families. That “a fuck” did sometimes follow those conversations, but more often, it did not.

  Abigail knew the earl to be unmarried, and as far as she was aware, he did not have any other family still living either. And there was also the benefit that if she talked with the earl, perhaps he would not wish to—wish to—

  How could she even contemplate submitting her body to this gentleman, or any other, when she could not even form the words of that subjugation inside her own head?

  “If you wish to talk about it—”

  “You will willingly listen?” he scorned.

  “If that is what you wish me to do, yes.”

  Bastian waged an inner battle against the temptation to confide, alongside the caution not to do so. He was not a gentleman given to confiding in anyone. Gabriel was and had long been his best friend, and the two men held no secrets from each other. But he already knew Gabriel’s opinion of his predicament, and it did not coincide with Bastian’s own feelings of guilt and blame for a child’s well-being. No matter what Gabriel reasoned regarding that situation, Bastian still felt responsible, damn it.

  But to discuss it with a woman he had known for only hours, to bare his soul to a woman who intended selling her body for a living—and perhaps the information confided during those encounters—was just as unacceptable.

  “I do not,” he clipped.

  “I see.” Her lids lowered as she rose to her feet, long lashes brushing against her creamy cheeks and hiding the expression in her eyes from him. “In that case, would you like me to undress now?”

  In truth, Bastian’s desire was now as dead as he believed the Rafferty child might be. His cock had deflated completely with the return of his tormented thoughts of the fate of Rafferty’s child.

  But he was also aware of the alternative. Lord Jonathan Gordon was the voluptuary Gail had called Bastian, if ever there was one. The elderly man was reputed to require acts from the ladies he paid to spend time with which, Bastian believed, considering her virginity, might shock Gail. He knew that by the time Gordon had finished taking his money’s worth from her, she would no longer be a virgin in any of her holes.

  If Bastian did not take her innocence, then Lord Gordon would do so tomorrow, and in a much more intrusive manner.

  Even so… “I believe Lord Gordon has made a request to purchase your virginity?”

  Gail gave him a quick glance before those lashes lowered again, the color that had returned to her cheeks once again retreating. “The duke informed me such was the case, yes.”

  Bastian nodded abruptly. “Then it appears you have the choice of your first lover being either myself or Lord Gordon.”

  Abigail doubted there was much of the lover about either gentlemen. A lover implied someone who actually cared for her and wished to seduce and claim her for his own. Both Shaftesbury and Lord Gordon merely wished to take her virginity before moving on to the next woman they found desirable.

  Abigail had learned only too clearly these past few months how unfair the world was, in that a lady, of whatever rank or standing, was merely a commodity to be used in whatever way a man might require of her. For the lower class, it was invariably of a sexual nature. For ladies of Society, it could be sexual but was usually financial. Love, the sort of love Abigail had dreamed of during the happier years of her childhood, before her mother remarried, rarely played a part in either of those transactions.

  Besides, she had already made her choice earlier between having the young and handsome Shaftesbury or the elderly and obese Lord Gordon as being the first man to claim her body.

  Bastian became very still as Gail stepped out of her slippers before unfastening the front of her gown and allowing it to slide down her body and fall at her feet, leaving her clothed in black stockings held in place by black garters decorated with red rosebuds. A black corset pushed up her breasts until they almost tumbled fully out of the top of it, and pulled her waist in so tightly, he believed he might easily span that width with his hands. Black lace drawers were joined only at the waistline, revealing the bare mound beneath.

  Bastian’s cock immediately surged back to life to tent the front of his trousers. “This is your choice?” His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears.

  Green eyes met his unflinchingly. “Yes.”

  He stepped forward until he stood only feet in front of her. “You were visited by Dr. Winter yesterday, I believe?”

  Color brightened her cheeks. “Yes.”

  Bastian frowned at the sight of that blush. “Were you wearing these undergarments when he examined you?”

  She gave a shake of her head. “They were only delivered to me earlier today.”

  That was something, at least. Benedict Winter might be a friend of his, but Bastian found he did not at all like the thought of that handsome bastard seeing Gail dressed so provocatively. Nor had he thought too deeply before of the manner in which Winter might have assessed Gail’s sexual arousal. He thought of it now. “Were you otherwise clothed when Dr. Winter confirmed your innocence?”

  A delicate blush moved up her cheeks. “I was not.”

  His jaw tightened. “Why not?”

  She swallowed. “He wished to check the health of my breasts and abdomen as well as…as well as…”

  “Remove your corset and show me the way in which he touched you,” Bastian bit out harshly.

  He could see Gail’s fingers were shaking as she untied and then undid the fastenings at the front of her corset. His breath caught in his throat as she removed the garment completely to stand before him wearing only those scandalous drawers that revealed more than they hid, and black stockings.

  Her breasts were uptilting and tipped with what Bastian recognized were rouged nipples. Those nipples filled and elongated even as he looked at them, the color deepening until they resembled wild raspberries.

  “Show me,” he invited gruffly.

  Abigail’s cheeks blazed with heat as she raised and then cupped her hands beneath her breasts, closing her eyes as she squeezed and manipulated them in the way she remembered Dr. Winter doing yesterday, looking for she knew not what. Her teeth bit down into her bottom lip as she took a firm grip of her nipples to roll and pull on them so that they grew even bigger and longer, instantly sending heat down into her core.

  “Winter did that to you?” Shaftesbury rasped.

  Her eyes flew wide, and she abruptly removed her hands from her breasts, although she was still conscious of her swollen and throbbing nipples. “He did,” she confirmed.

  “What else did he do?”

  “I would need to remove my drawers and lie down on the bed to show you that,” she said uncertainly.

  “Then do so.”

  Abigail had never removed her drawers in front of a man before—well, apart from Dr. Winter, and surely that did not count as he was a qualified physician. Even if her body had betrayed her in a quite shameless manner during the doctor’s examination.

  These silk drawers, however, were designed in such a way as to reveal more than they hid, making it easier for Abigail to unfasten the ribbon at her waist and allow them to slide down to her ankles.

  “Remain as you are,” the earl instructed as she would have stepped out of them. “Was your cunny bare like this when he saw you?”

  “My…? No.” The heat deepened in her cheeks as his meaning became clear. “The ladies helped me to do that after I had bathed earlier.”

  Bastian’s cock now ached as well as throbbed as he took in Gail’s appearance: those bared breasts with the plump nipples, her slender waist, and that smooth and bare cunny. The silk drawers about her ankles and the black silk stockings added to her look of debauchery.

  “Take down your hair before you lie on the bed,” he said gruffly.

  As he had imagined, the release of those golden tresses, as they tumbled free down Gail’s spine to her
bottom, gave her the look of an angel bent on sin and seduction.

  Watching her plump arse cheeks as she walked over to the bed made Bastian wonder if he had been missing out by not indulging in Lord Gordon’s reputed enjoyment of a woman’s bottom.

  He caught a tempting glimpse of Gail’s darkened rosette as she climbed up onto the bed before lying down on her back, her hair spread out on the pillow behind her, arms stiffly at her sides.

  Bastian carried one of the candles to place it on the bedside cabinet. “What did Dr. Winter do next?” he prompted.

  Abigail moved her hands tentatively down her rib cage to her waist and then lower, pressing into the soft swell of her belly as the doctor had yesterday. Again, she had no idea as to the reason for it, but the doctor had seemed pleased with what he found there.

  Before his hands had moved lower still.

  “I told you to show me,” the earl bit out forcefully as she hesitated, his gaze moving to between her thighs as she bent her legs at the knees and allowed them to fall apart.

  Abigail only hoped that touching herself in the way the doctor had touched her yesterday did not result in the same tumult of sensations.

  She moved farther up the bed so that the pillows might allow her to look down and see what she was doing as her fingers parted the bare petals of her pussy to reveal the opening. “He inserted some sort of metal instrument inside me here so that he could look inside.” Abigail was consumed with embarrassment at having to reveal herself so intimately to Bastian’s heated gaze.

  A nerve pulsed in his clenched jaw. “And next?”

  She drew in a ragged breath. “He touched me here.” Her fingers moved higher, to hover over the nubbin hidden in her folds. A hitherto unknown nubbin, which had given her such forbidden pleasure yesterday during her medical examination, she had ached to touch it again last night herself. Her resistance to indulging in such wickedness was one of the reasons she had been awake and wandering about early this morning and so discovered the earl strapped helpless and naked to a bed.