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  Another Lover

  Eliza Lloyd

  Dorian Montgomery has one driving need, to be selected as the Westminster Whore’s final lover. The last two years, others have outbid him. This year he is determined to have her, and places the culmination of three years’ bids as his offer. Will it be enough to win her?

  Isabelle St. Hillaire has fashioned her sexual legacy—one lover a year for thirty days only—on her unusual features and her uncanny ability to pleasure men in all the right ways. She wants her last client to be the masterful aficionado she has never had. A man with an astounding reputation as a lover and an equally magnificent body. She has only one rule. Don’t fall in love.

  This year’s winner? Well, let’s just say he didn’t have the highest bid, but he had the most to offer.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Another Lover

  ISBN 9781419933318

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Another Lover Copyright © 2011 Eliza Lloyd

  Edited by Jillian Bell

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication April 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Another Lover

  Eliza Lloyd

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Westminster Abbey: The Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate College Church of St. Peter Westminster

  Chapter One

  “I have only one rule for our thirty days together,” Isabelle said.

  Dorian Montgomery nearly shivered as her voice caressed him like fine Chinese silk whispering over his soon-to-be naked body. His immediate physical reaction pulsed between his legs, but he reminded himself he’d waited this long, there was no need to throw her to the floor and spoil the anticipation of their first fuck. He forced his mind back to her statement while he had some ability to function.

  All relationships had rules. Dorian wondered if her rules involved diamonds or rubies. “And what would that be?” he asked.

  Across the room, she lounged on an Adams sofa built with sturdy lion’s claw feet. She wore a flowing white rail covered by a sheer, blousy robe. The bodice dipped low. Naturally, her breasts were displayed with seductive prominence. The silken belt hung loose. She held a drink in one hand. She swirled the liquid, dipped her finger inside and licked away the golden elixir with a slow lap of her tongue.

  “Don’t fall in love with me.”

  He laughed. Yes, she would be as entertaining as all the gossips implied. Isabelle St. Hillaire. The Westminster Whore.

  Her story mixed doses of reverent legend and ribald rumor. Supposedly, the then tender, young virgin had prayed at the Abbey for guidance when she received her first offer to be a kept woman. In the years since, no one knew where she had mastered her trade. Certainly not from the select English dandies she took to her bed.

  “Trust me, sweet. I will not.” Dorian reached inside his navy cutaway jacket. A peacock could not have been displayed in such resplendent finery as he wore today. Yesterday, he’d been chosen as the Westminster Whore’s next lover.

  And final lover, if rumors were to be believed.

  Today, he was here to settle the arrangement in the time-honored tradition of purchased goods. He had to pay cash for her services. In advance.

  He displayed a thick leather wallet bulging with all that she demanded. Currency. Crisp Bank of England notes, as she requested. She seemed uninterested in the funds.

  Everyone knew it was strictly a business transaction. He bought a mistress. A courtesan of unparalleled reputation. Her exclusivity was one reason she was so damn desirable. One lover a year. For thirty days.

  This year’s bidding had been a hopeless frenzy as she’d received multiple gentlemen callers with their written offers. Some had already purchased expensive baubles, which they gifted to her and she accepted with the demure blush of a would-be bride. Dorian offered only himself and the accumulation of the last two years’ bids. He hadn’t stayed to watch the hopeless fawning and posturing, although walking out as if he didn’t care whether he won her had been much harder than he had anticipated.

  He had spent the next day with friends, trying to douse the flames of anticipation and to kill the dread of being turned away again.

  Lust like he had never experienced tore through his groin even now, while he was fully clothed, knowing that he would get to satisfy those longings before the night was over. Every inch of his skin tingled and between his legs his cock felt heavy and uncomfortable.

  Rumors had circulated through Brooks’s, White’s, Carlton House—anywhere men gathered and gossiped—this year would be the last year the whore took a lover. One muckraker hinted that she would return to Italy when it was all over—a certain truth in the swirl of speculation surrounding her. She always went back to Italy.

  If he had to guess, she would attempt to make her final escape and remain quietly as far from England as she could comfortably live—put the past behind her.

  If that was her plan, he hoped she’d saved her money or she’d be on her back again next year. He knew from experience it was hard to give up a lucrative business venture, but for the right things, it was always possible to give up the “what is” for the “what could be”.

  Talking his business partner into managing the day-to-day affairs of their shipping company for thirty days while Dorian went off on his own had taken some persuasion. It wasn’t as if Dorian wasn’t already gone several months a year to their offices on the Continent and in Asia.

  When Dorian mentioned Isabelle’s name, his married partner raised one questioning eyebrow and muttered, “So she’s back in London.”

  “It’s spring.”

  “A waste of good money,” he said then walked away.

  Married or not, his partner was well aware of Isabelle’s reputation and what it might be costing Dorian.

  For the moment, Isabelle ignored the leather wallet and the money that belonged to her. Her gaze searched the length of his body. Not his eyes though. She hadn’t yet looked into his face. Dorian refused to blush at his evident excitement, his arousal only partially hidden by his trousers. Nor did he change his pose. He would be as much hers as she would be his.

  When he’d read the missive from her informing him that he was expected at her townhome, he’d sat in his chair for nearly an hour staring at the note and its feminine handwriting. Shock paralyzed him. He’d foolishly hoped Isabelle would be his this year. He’d believed that last year and the year before too. For several years, he�
��d watched in morbid fascination as the fools panted after her. For the last three years, he’d joined the fools with his silent pursuit. In the past, he’d been outbid. This year, he offered over three thousand pounds more than last year’s winning bid.

  And he’d won her favors.

  He’d wanted her in the hopes she might be his equal or at the very least be interested in some of his varied and prolonged pleasures.

  She’d arrived in London a month ago and he’d been without a woman since that day. For what he was paying, he wanted to enjoy every ounce of pleasure she could coax from his body. He was primed and ready to fuck her. He hoped she could keep up.

  Dorian’s steps rang hollow in her spacious drawing room. With a few strides, he stood over her. A small table containing a book of poetry and candleholders nested against the settee. Byron, he scoffed. A courtesan with a romantic bent. How novel.

  As no servant offered to assist him, he lowered a small traveling valise to the floor, and then dropped the entire wallet on the mahogany table surface, rattling the trio of crystal votives.

  “Am I allowed to speak of our arrangement?” he asked. As much as he despised how other men talked about her, he wondered if he was any better. If she entertained as other men boasted, Dorian knew he would be no different than her other lovers. His closest friends would hear of their sexual exploits. Last night, his friends had offered myriad suggestions to him as they’d drunk to his success. It was the way of men and their whores.

  “Feel free. No one will believe you.” Her somnolent eyes smiled while her mouth mocked in a slight upturn. She enjoyed her own jest. She sipped at her drink. The money didn’t even rate a glance. She trusted her womanly powers. There was no need to count the payment. Or worry about her reputation after the fact.

  “When do we begin our agreement?”

  “It has already begun,” she said as she raised her gaze to his.

  One blue and one green. Twice before, he had been close enough to see the rarity of her most intriguing asset for himself, but never was her gaze so intently directed at him. This close, the power of her gaze seduced him to her will already.

  Isabelle let him stare into her eyes. Her mouth turned upward in a suggestive invitation.

  Dorian frowned, the first hint of indecision forming in his mind. What did one do now? Now that he had the most famous, most desired, most elusive courtesan—no, mistress—in all of England? She would no longer be a whore to him. Nor would he allow her to be so in anyone else’s presence. He’d never had a whore, perhaps some remnant of his frugal Scottish heritage and his mother’s wish that he be honorable in a dishonorable world. And yet, here he was, bending the rules to satisfy a larger, more demanding need.

  “I’m no ingénue. We can copulate now if you wish.”

  That irritated Dorian. “No, I do not wish.” Subtle, sensual pleasure is what he bought. Not a dockside swive. Perhaps her direct, aggressive approach was part of her game, a game that, with the slightest push, she might win.

  “Would you like to see your room? My home is your home,” she purred.

  The implication was neat, tidy and delineated. Your home, come and go as you please. For the next thirty days only.

  “Yes. I would.” He enjoyed the dance, the foreplay, the want—not a quick poke in her drawing room wearing his Sunday best. He glanced at her again, watching her unfold as she stood. Her bare feet were small. A flash of leg caught his attention before the billow of her robe and rail settled around her feet, covering her. The crystal glass landed with a clink next to the wallet.

  “You may bring that along,” she said, pointing to his valise.

  Isabelle floated by with an elegant, graceful stride. Her perfume, a mix of jasmine and woman, wafted upward, filling his nostrils. They hadn’t touched, not even a handshake to seal the agreement.

  “How did you know?” he whispered after her. Jasmine reminded him of home. He’d always had an affinity for the flower.

  “I asked,” she said, leading him to his pleasurable doom as they left the room.

  He had noticed two servants hovering nearby. Guards? he wondered.

  The wide black-and-white marble foyer led to a rounded staircase. His steps rang loud, hers were a mere whisper. While she had lounged in the drawing room, the length of her inky dark hair had remained hidden. As she walked up the stairs in front of him, her hair fell in wavy torrents down to the small of her back. He plucked at a curl and wrapped it around his finger before it bounced away to tease him as they mounted the stairs. The silkiness made him want to feel the satin caress of her hair all over his naked body.

  At the top of the stairs, they came to an open door. Inside the portal was a man’s room fit for royalty. His domain while they transacted their business.

  She pointed to an adjoining door. “My room is through there, but I think perhaps we will be much more comfortable here, don’t you?”

  Draped in a navy and brown quilt coverlet, the four-poster bed stood like a schooner in the middle of an ocean. Other men had been here before him—walked the decks, sailed their Union Jack, dropped anchor. That thought turned his stomach. At times he wondered if he knew his own mind. Other men had been with Isabelle—he’d known it from the beginning and he should have no qualms now.

  Just because he would not think of her as a whore did not really change the situation at all.

  The bedside stand held two periodicals—The Sporting Magazine and The Noble Science of Fox Hunting. Picking up the red leather edition, he smiled, pleased at her thoroughness. The book had been endorsed by his club, the Hertfordshire Hunt Club. He moved on, silently impressed with her quick and thorough planning.

  The bed erupted with six large pillows, the same number he had on his bed at home near Green Park.

  He faced her. A measure of satisfaction and a sense of disquiet competed for attention. Speechless, he gazed at her.

  “Surely you did not think you paid eleven thousand pounds for a woman who did not know what her man liked?”

  Her man? It sounded intimate and bold. She claimed him without any sense of doubt. He was hers to please and so far, he was not disappointed with her efforts.

  She stood before him, her hands clasped demurely in front of her stomach. “Would you like me to undress for you? I wish to please you in whatever manner you enjoy.”

  “No. Not yet.” He fought back the urges, even though he’d been hard from the moment he’d entered her drawing room. The rumors suggested that Isabelle liked control of every situation, just as she attempted with him now. Well, he wasn’t a flaccid old man looking for a woman to give him five minutes of her time and think it ecstasy.

  He wanted a woman with the body and the will to take him for the long hours he liked to play the game. He’d paid to fuck himself senseless and believed Isabelle was the answer to his perpetual erection.

  His only concern involved the complete loss of his dignity if she performed anywhere near as well as rumors suggested. He’d never been good at begging.

  * * * * *

  Dorian Montgomery stood in her home, in the chamber where she planned to learn those sensual secrets that had escaped her.

  He wasn’t the typical man she selected for a lover. He wasn’t a peer, but his success at fitting in with all but the most snobbish of noblemen had impressed her. That he had a long-running dispute with the reprehensible Marquess of Dane only added to Montgomery’s appeal.

  Isabelle breathed slow and steady, trying to still the wayward beating of her whore’s heart. Elegant, powerful, rich enough for her and handsome in an out-of-doors, rugged way, Dorian exuded the raw sensuality her other lovers had not. Those lovers brought only one thing to bed with them, and it wasn’t their impressive manhood.

  Isabelle did not sleep with men who could please her. She slept with men who could afford her.

  She had plotted the conclusion of her story with what she hoped would be a satisfying end. Her happily ever after would come when she was able to live
in quiet obscurity watching her brother build his family. Her own dreams for the future had never gone past her next lover, but now that she was taking her last lover, her imagination had started to provide tantalizing glimpses of what her life might be like.

  Over the years, she had built a substantial nest egg including profitable investments, all of which now allowed her the luxury of freedom.

  In Italy, she was respected. Everyone knew her to be the daughter of a successful cobbler who’d made the finest shoes for fussy English ladies and wealthy gentlemen. It was there she would live out the rest of her life while arranging a marriage for her younger brother, caring for her grandmother and eventually, marrying a successful merchant or perhaps a minor impoverished Italian gentleman.

  Only her brother knew the truth of her affaires and he was of an age where his protective instincts demanded that she give up her sordid little pastime.

  She wasn’t acting on his demands though, she had played the game long enough. The whoring had paid for a better, brighter life. She didn’t want to jeopardize her brother’s future now. And she was ready to begin living her life, as it should have been in the beginning.

  So this final time, she had had to make sure Dorian bid on the opportunity again, as he had done the past two years. It was much like the last performance of a grand opera with a famed diva—a bel canto with extraordinary elegance—everyone had to attend, though only one man would get to come backstage for her grand finale.

  But for the third year in a row, someone had made a higher offer than he had. Three men had outbid him, including the Marquess of Dane—the arrogant, aspiring fool. She’d live in poverty before she’d succumb to his vile offer. Keeping his gift of the teardrop diamond necklace would be her pleasure. Perhaps she’d even wear it when Dorian took her out tonight.