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Excerpt:
Mastering the Marchioness
Chapter One
HANGING FROM A HOOK, her toes barely touched the floor. Instead of the mask worn by many of the other guests at Madame Botreaux’s Cavern of Pleasures, the young woman wore only a silk red blindfold. The rest of her was laid bare for all to see.
Vale Montressor Aubrey, the third Marquess of Dunnesford, circled around her like a predator examining its prey, occasionally running the tip of a riding crop languidly over her nipples. Once or twice he pulled the riding crop back and flicked it against a breast. She gasped, then groaned.
“Please...please, Master...” she pleaded.
Peering at her thighs through his black and silver mask, Vale saw the telltale glisten of moisture at her mons. This one never took long.
“Your punishment has hardly begun, m’dear,” Vale told her.
“Please...forgive me...I was weak.”
Suppressing a sigh, Vale pulled back the crop and lashed it at her buttocks. It was unfortunate. Her body was beautiful—with full ripe breasts that quivered when punished—but she had indeed proven weak.
“I leave you to contemplate how you can do better,” Vale said with another swat of the crop.
As he headed toward the stairs, past a number of men and women engaged in various forms of coupling, a masked woman threw herself at his feet.
“Take me—I would be a far better submissive than she,” the woman declared.
Vale looked down at her. His half-mask did not cover his frown or the hard set of his jaw, and she crept away in shame.
“Pray tell that is not boredom writ on your face?” asked Lance Duport when Vale joined his friend and Madame Botreaux in the balcony from where they could view the activity below, much like patrons in an opera box.
It was the favorite spot of Penelope Botreaux. She rarely ventured onto the floor of the Cavern of Pleasures—so-called because the large assembly area existed practically in the basement of her residence. Unfinished walls left the ground rock exposed. As there were no windows, only the dim glow of a few strategically placed candelabras penetrated the darkness.
“I let you have the beauty when I could have made her mine,” Penelope declared from the settee upon which she lounged like a Grecian goddess, wearing a thin transparent gown over a body that time and a few too many glasses of ratafia had made plump in various places.
“I regret your generosity is wasted on me,” Vale replied, removing his mask and looking over the balcony to where he had left the young woman. “Perhaps I am too old for her.”
Penelope snorted. “I am over forty and hardly consider myself old. You are barely five and thirty.”
“And you could best any of the younger men here,” added Lance as he raked an appreciative gaze over Vale’s body.
An active life of riding, hunting, fencing, and an occasional bout in the ring kept Vale’s physique in admirable shape. His stockings encased calves that were the envy of his peers. His simple linen shirt opened to reveal a broad, strong chest. His tight breeches covered muscular thighs and left little to the imagination.
Lance turned to Penelope. “You know half the women here—and men—would give their right buttock to be partnered with Vale. He needs more than a neophyte.”
“Would you give your right buttock?” Penelope returned.
Lance curled his thin lips into a salacious grin. “I would give both my buttocks. Do you remember Demarco?”
“Ah, yes, how can I not? He was a beautiful brute. A Samson with that lush head of hair.”
“And cocky as hell, but Vale had him writhing in submission within the hour. After such a conquest, I wonder that Vale should wish to trifle with the weaker sex.”
Vale smiled. “Despite all appearances, women are not the weaker sex.”
“Well, what the devil are you looking for?” Penelope prodded. “Apparently not men, nor women of unsurpassed beauty. You have spurned both novice and skilled submissives. Only Lovell Elroy has had more partners than you.”
Vale pressed his lips into a grim line as he looked over the balcony at a man wearing a red mask flogging a woman. “Lovell is malicious. He cares nothing for the women he is with. I wish you would throw him out, Penelope.”