Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(85)

But Ewan seemed unable to look away from it.

What was he thinking?

Her stomach flipped at the possibilities, not all of them good. “You are staring, my lord,” she offered, hiding her concern behind a teasing tone.

He did not look to her. “The men are not all guests.”

She watched his profile as he realized that 72 Shelton, besides being one of the finest clubs in London, was also one of its finest pleasure houses. “No.”

“And when you say pleasure . . .”

“However it comes.”

A little grunt. Understanding? Distaste? Disdain? Something else? “And when the men who are neither clients nor staff see what this place has to offer, how are they persuaded to keep it a secret?”

She heard it then. Fascination.

Something loosened within her. He wasn’t displeased. He was intrigued. And something else. He sounded . . . impressed. She smiled. “Once they are here, they quickly reveal their particular pleasures . . . which makes it easy for them to keep secrets.”

“Particular pleasures like what?” he asked, turning to her.

She exhaled, part relief, part shock. Because there, in his eyes, she finally saw what he was thinking, the dark centers of his amber eyes blown wide with desire.

He liked it, this world she had built.

He wanted a taste of it.

And that was something she understood.

“Pleasures like the one you are experiencing right now,” she said, softly, now more than willing to accommodate him. “Would you like to find a room and explore it?”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “I don’t want to watch them.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

Her brow furrowed. Nearly a decade of working in and around sex had made her something of an expert in knowing what clients wished. She was not usually wrong. “Would you prefer to be watched?”

He shook his head. “Not unless you would like that.”

A thrum went through her at the invitation. At the willingness to explore it with her. At the desire in his darkening eyes. She lifted her hand, brushing a lock of blond hair back from his brow. “What, then?”

Something shifted in him, freeing him, and when he leaned in, his voice was low and dark at her ear. “Watching these women take their pleasure here in this place that you have built . . .” He wiped a hand over his mouth, and Grace thought that she might never have liked anything more in her life than that. “It makes me want to watch you take yours.”

The words struck deep in her core, and she suddenly wanted that, too.

Needed it.

She didn’t hesitate.

She wove in and out of the rooms, where more acrobats and musicians and bawdy songstresses performed, and a teeming mass of people drank and ate and writhed in revelry. They pushed down a long hallway where two separate couples were locked in embraces, and into the theater space, where Nastasia Kritikos had taken to the stage, rolling and trilling an aria that would have made her the muse of Mozart himself.

She looked back, expecting to find Ewan watching the diva, but instead, he was watching her. The moment her eyes met his, he tugged her around, pulling him to her. Stealing another kiss along with her breath and her thought. When he released her, she was clinging to his lapels.

“Show me what else you have built here.”

There were a dozen places for them to go: elaborately appointed rooms upstairs, each designed to evoke a particular fantasy; the catacombs beneath the building, wine cellars and cheese cellars; the hot house on the roof.

But she didn’t want to take him somewhere that belonged to the club.

She wanted to take him somewhere that belonged to her.

So, she pulled him through a small card room; a collection of aristocratic ladies was gathered round a table where a Frenchwoman Grace had discovered in the market square turned elaborately decorated cards and divined their futures. The cards were hand-painted and beautiful, but they were no match for the woman herself, who seemed able to look directly into her audience and read their deepest desires.

Rapt, not one of the women in the room looked up as Grace pulled Ewan past, heading for the corner, where she pressed the hidden latch on a barely visible door, and pulled him from Dominion into a back stairwell.

She closed the door behind them, and they were instantly shrouded in quiet, the sound of the wild celebration beyond immediately muffled. The stairwell was dimly illuminated, candles lit at distant intervals, and she was instantly aware of the sound of their breath. She looked to Ewan, now so close that if she leaned just an inch toward him, they would touch.

He took in the small, crowded space and then gave her a crooked smile. “I was thinking something a bit larger, but—” And then he took her face in his hands and kissed her, pressing her to the wall at her back as she gasped, wanting nothing more than his touch.

She let him kiss her, deep and thorough, reveling in him—his broad shoulders, the low growl of desire in his throat, the scent of tobacco threatening to consume her.

He pulled back, just enough to speak. “Mmm. This will do.”

Before she could respond, he was kissing her again, one hand sliding down to her bodice, stroking over the straining skin of her breasts above the suddenly too-tight gown. He dipped a thumb beneath the fabric, finding her nipple, straining for him. She cried out, and he kissed over her jaw to her ear, repeating that single, maddening touch over and over as he spoke to her. “This gown is sinful.”