Sutton's Spinster (The Sinful Suttons 1)

There was nothing to stop him from lifting her onto his desk, raising her skirts, and burying himself in the welcoming wetness of her drenched cunny.

Nothing except the repeated knock on the door, which finally pierced the haze of need surrounding him.

On a groan, Jasper tore his mouth from hers and stepped away.

“Sir?”

It was Randall’s voice calling from the other side of the portal. An unlikely savior arriving in timely fashion to stop him from committing further folly. Trying to quell his ragged breathing, Jasper told himself to look away from the sight of Lady Octavia, cheeks flushed, mouth dark red from his kisses, looking wonderfully in need of ravishing.

He bit out a curse and dragged a hand through his hair to distract himself. “What is it, Randall?”

“Beaumont is at the tables, sir. Thought you’d like to know,” his guard called.

Of course he wanted to know. The viscount was a terrible gambler. Or at least, he had been until a month ago, when his luck appeared to have changed. Suddenly, Beaumont scarcely ever lost. He was flush in funds.

Jasper always knew the sort of cove who cheated.

And Beaumont was one. But catching the bastard at his games was another matter.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you for alerting me. I will be out shortly.”

“Aye, sir.”

Jasper waited until the sounds of his man’s heavy footfalls could be heard departing. “Hugh will see you ‘ome,” he told Lady Octavia grimly, despising himself for his lack of control where she was concerned. “Do not return.”

“But you did not listen to my proposal,” she objected.

“There ain’t going to be one,” he snapped. “And if there were, my answer would be the same. No.”

He turned away from her lest he give in to the temptation to stay. To kiss her again. To raise that hem to her waist. To run his hand along her pale inner thighs until his fingers found the center of her and he parted her slick folds to…

No.

He forced himself to stop the thoughts.

Being Lady Octavia Alexander and the human equivalent of a splinter in his big toe, she followed him, clinging to his coat sleeve in an effort to make him remain in the chamber. “You do not know what I was going to ask, Sutton.”

He shrugged away from her touch, trying to ignore the fresh wave of longing that washed over him. “Don’t need to.”

Today was not the day he was going to drown, curse her. Besides, he had bu

siness to attend to. The Sinner’s Palace was his family’s livelihood. He could not spend all night kissing a virgin in his office while Viscount Beaumont fleeced them blind.

“I have more than half the funds required to begin my journal,” she said in a rush as he reached the door. “All I need is a small investment from you to help at the beginning. I will split all the revenue with you.”

He turned back to her. “I mean what I say, my lady. You do not belong here. There are print shops with scandalous caricatures aplenty.”

“But there is nothing like the journal I wish to start,” she countered, confidence in her expression and her tone.

Like every nib, she thought the world was hers for the taking.

Because it was.

But Jasper Sutton wasn’t.

And she would do best to remember that.

“Forget about this nonsense, Lady Octavia,” he said, his voice emerging harsher than he had intended. “I ain’t giving you funds. There won’t be a journal. The East End is no place for you. Go back to Mayfair and your drawing rooms and balls and your gossiping matrons.”