Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

Giana blinked at his bald question, but Lucienne laughed delicately. “I fear not, my dear Alfredo.”

Señor Alfredo sighed heavily. “I fear that the only virgins left in the world are so ugly that only a blind man could enjoy himself.” He paused a moment, darting his pink tongue over his thick lower lip. “I’ll take her in any case, Lucienne. She is a beauty, and what a lovely mouth. A skilled mouth, I trust.”

Facing a man who wanted to buy her body, a man who was quite open about it in fact, as if he were purchasing a bottle of wine, made her want to disappear into the thick carpet beneath her feet.

Lucienne laughed again. “I fear you can only enjoy her charming company, Alfredo. Her services have been bespoken.”

“Such a pity. She is so young and fresh-looking. Well, little Helen,” he continued to Giana, “perhaps some other night I can possess you.”

Giana kept her eyes downcast, and felt Lucienne’s elbow against her ribs. “You are in Rome long, sir?”

“Not long enough, I fear,” Señor Alfredo said. “Where do you come from, Helen?”

“From Paris,” Giana said.

“Ah, then you must have a beautifully skilled mouth.”

Giana looked up at him with incomprehension. “Thank you, señor.”

“You are quite right, Alfredo, and I know that is of particular interest to you, isn’t it, my friend? Come, let us have a glass of champagne.”

Giana dutifully followed in Lucienne’s wake toward the sound of men and women laughing in the drawing room. She wondered what that leering old man had meant about her mouth.

She felt his hand on her bare arm, and felt gooseflesh rise where his fingers caressed her. She was on the point of slapping him away, but she saw Lucienne’s narrowed eyes. She lowered her head and allowed him to lead her into the main salon.

“You like my touch, little one?” Alfredo asked her, grinning.

“I am thirsty,” she said in halting Spanish.

“Ah, she speaks, and in my tongue. How very delightful. Have you visited Spain, Helen?”

“No,” she said, so numb with humiliation that she did not at first see Signore Salvado.

“What have you here, Alfredo? Ah, the new girl Lucienne was telling me about.”

Giana felt Alfredo’s fingers tighten possessively about her arm. “Are you the one who has bespoken her services for the night, Carlo?”

Giana looked up at him in astonishment. Luciana’s husband—here, and quite at his ease in a brothel. She felt a moment of terror that he would see through her disguise, but when she forced herself to meet his hungry eyes, she saw no recognition in them. She thought of Luciana, his wife, not terribly attractive, to be sure, but nonetheless his wife.

She heard Signore Salvado say, “No, I am not the lucky man. But look around you, Alfredo, at all the lovely ladies. Come, my friend, with all the negotiations we conduct during the day, you mustn’t be downcast because you cannot have your first choice at night.”

Alfredo was looking at her as a dog would a prize bone. “She even speaks a little Spanish,” he said.

Signore Salvado grinned, and before Giana could react, he reached out his hand and rubbed his open palm over her breasts. “Dio,” he said, “I would not care if she were deaf and dumb.”

She shrank back, unable to help herself. Carlo Salvado frowned. “Mind your manners, girl,” he said, a glint of anger in his dark eyes.

“I am thirsty,” Giana said again, this time in Italian.

“A pity that she is not hungry,” Carlo said. “What I would give her to eat . . .”

“I must go,” Giana said.

Lucienne watched Giana lurch back and saw Carlo Salvado’s lips tighten. She swayed gracefully toward them, her servant, Draco, close behind her with a tray of drinks. She said in a coquettish voice to Carlo, “You are such a mouthful, signore, that all of my girls become limp with pleasure at the thought of you. But look, gentlemen, Emilie and Jeannette are most interested in what you have to offer them.”

Carlo Salvado took one last, lingering look at Giana’s breasts, shrugged, and walked away, Señor Alfredo with him. “Perhaps another night, Helen,” Alfredo called over his shoulder.

“Little ninny,” Lucienne hissed at her. “A whore, or a wife for that matter, must not show disgust. If the gentlemen want to touch you a bit, you will smile and pretend that you enjoy it. Do you understand me?”