Revealing Ruby (Bound and Determined #1.5)(23)

“In the way of young men I quickly found a group of friends who were all escaping from something or other. We lived wild times, working when we needed and smoking, drinking, and wenching when we didn’t. There was a constant competition between us. Who could drink the most, who could lift the most, who could run the fastest, who could win at cards. And because we were young men, of course, who could f*ck the most.”

“And you won that.” She said it as a statement. Already the dragon beneath her fingers was beginning to rouse, his tail twitching and lengthening. Three times and it was almost ready again. If he was like this now what had he been like at nineteen?

“You don’t even question.”

“I did watch you last night, and now have some experience of my own.” She ran a finger up the neck of the beast, away from the surging tail, admiring the delicate red of the scales that lined the underside of the dragon’s throat and the deep blue that colored its shining eyes. “It is exquisite work.”

“And painful, so very painful.”

“So I still don’t quite understand how…” Her finger traced the spine from end to end, this time not avoiding the tail, which now stood high and proud. She let her finger circle his cock, following the tattoo.

“They named me ‘the beast’ after I won. And I am afraid I took pride in the name, using it myself. And then I learned I was born in the Chinese year of the dragon and began to add that to my boasts. I did not realize what a buffoon I had become until I woke up in the early hours of one morning, strapped to table, still drunk and perhaps more than drunk, with the oldest man I have ever seen poking needles into my jewels. I think I screamed for hours, but they would not let me go. To this day my friends insist that it was all my idea and that I paid the man double to be sure he finished the job.”

“And you doubt their word?”

He laughed and not with pleasure. “No, not really. I was enough of an ass to have done as they said, to have thought that nothing would prove my manhood like having a dragon on my prick. I can only be thankful the man didn’t make the tail longer.”

“I do think it’s quite long enough.” She cupped her hand about his cock, running it upward, stretching the painted skin tight, lengthening the tail.

His hand came down on hers, holding it still. “No, don’t distract me. I’ve told my story, now you must tell me what you were doing at nineteen.”

Shit. She hadn’t expected to be asked that. “But you haven’t told me what you were escaping that led you to the Orient.”

“Perhaps later. Now, tell me. Nineteen?”

Well, why not? It wasn’t a true secret even if almost no one knew the story. “At nineteen I was buying a whore house. This one, to be exact.”

“At nineteen? How is that even possible?” He sat up in the bed, the dragon pulling from her hand, the muscles of his belly forming the most wonderful ripples.

Closing her eyes, Ruby considered. How much was she willing to reveal? Did it matter? Derek was a sailor and would be gone soon. Could it hurt to tell? “Madame Noir, the previous owner, was good friends with my mother. I grew up knowing about the house and how it worked. It was just another part of life. It was impressed on me that there were only four choices for a mistress as she got older. If she was unlucky she ended up on the streets. Otherwise she could move to some distant place and pretend widowhood, she could try to maintain a salon for the younger members of society’s outskirts, or she could enter the business. Madame Noir entered the business and made it clear she’d never regretted it.”

“I am still not sure I understand.”

A long sigh. “My mother died just before my nineteenth birthday. She had been my father’s mistress for well over twenty years.”

“And…”

“And when she died I discovered there was nothing left between me and my father. He had made that clear the year before. Everything she had still belonged to him, her house, her carriage, even her servants were paid by him. The only things that had belonged to her were her clothing and her jewelry.”

“So your own father left you without a home?” His voice sounded with disbelief.

“Not quite. He never had his men come and remove me. He merely had his man of business visit me with a note for five thousand pounds.”

The captain sat up. “He gave you five thousand pounds and you complain?”

“He gave me the monies on the condition that I never contact him again.” She kept her eyes closed as the memory of that dreadful day filled her. She’d had almost no contact from her father that last year of her mother’s life, but still she’d held out hope. He was her father, the man who had tossed her in the air and brought her a tiny tea set. She knew her own actions had caused the rift between them, but until that final day she’d still believed that somehow everything would be all right. “I took the money and then sold the majority of my mother’s jewelry. I still didn’t know quite what I was going to do, but when Madame Noir called with her condolences she mentioned that she was planning to retire. I made her an offer and I have never regretted it.”

That was not quite the full truth. It would have been far more honest to say that she had never doubted that she made the right decision, the only possible decision. She could never have followed in her mother’s footsteps and let one man control her whole life, but there was no place for her in normal society. There was no place that she belonged and so she had created her own situation, determined her own destiny. It might not have been the dream of her childhood, but it was not a bad life.