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shall call in your father’s debt immediately.”
    Angels in heaven. She was horrified. Her heart,
already beating staccato inside her breast, heaved and threatened to send her
spilling to the faded Aubusson. Suddenly, the descent of her proper life as the
Lady Clarissa Darlington was complete. She had no choice. The man would take her
prisoner. Yet there was something inside her, some rogue voice, telling her she
would not mind being taken by him. Not at all.

Chapter Two
     
    Papa didn’t offer much protestation at Pierce Foster’s
proposal that his daughter should become forfeit to such a notorious and
unsuitable man, particularly after said man stuffed a few more ten pound notes
into Papa’s open hand. And so it was that Lady Clarissa Darlington, the
one-time fiancée of the Earl of Greenwich—until her father’s reduced
circumstances became known and Greenwich begged her to release him from his
promise—found herself surreptitiously slipped into the back entrance of the
gaming hell where her father had lost thirty thousand pounds the evening
before.
    The Painted Lady, far from being the obvious den of iniquity
she’d expected, appeared clean, spacious, and elegantly appointed. Apart from
the scent of tobacco tingeing the air, one would never know it for a gaming
establishment. Indeed, even the elaborately carved back stairway outshone any
she’d ever before seen. Pierce Foster left her in the care of a stately butler
named Henderson upon their arrival with a simple explanation. She was to be
their special guest for the foreseeable future and should be given the east
bedchamber.
    She followed Henderson in awe, taking in every nuance of the
place, from its impressive murals on the ceiling to scantily clad portraits of
women and shocking nude statues. A gasp left her throat as she caught sight of
a particular bronze depicting a man and a woman entwined. It made her quite
flushed.
    She thought again of the unexpected interlude she’d shared
with Pierce Foster in Grosvenor Square and the wetness she’d experienced made a
slow return. It was frightening and yet intoxicating how a stranger could make
her feel after just one passionate embrace. But she knew already without
experience she was his. Good or bad, she would belong to Pierce Foster.
    * * * * *
    Damn, double damn, and thrice damn it whilst he was about
the business of cursing himself. Pierce Foster tossed back a glass of his best
whiskey, the Scots label ordinarily reserved for the all-important task of
parting the male members of the Upper Ten Thousand with their blunt. He’d known
about Lady Clarissa, of course. Lovely daughter to the Viscount. Her beauty was
well known, her fall from grace thanks to her perpetually soused father an
unfortunate and oft-repeated tale in the gaming hells of London. Drunk men
chatter and gossip worse than women, he’d discovered.
    He’d thought little of her, truth told. Never had he for
even the pause of one breath supposed she would have the ethereal beauty of a
goddess. Never had he supposed he’d be tempted to steal a kiss from a luscious
mouth, to cup a ripe bottom or a lush breast, or to— ye Gods —take her
home with him.
    Whiskey singed a trail down Pierce’s throat. She was too
good to be sullied by him, and yet he couldn’t help himself. He would have her.
He needed, in his very depths, to consume her. She belonged to him. And she was
waiting in his private apartment. He couldn’t wait to slide into her tight,
wet, aristocratic pussy.
    * * * * *
    Water lapped gently at Clarissa’s bare skin. A fire crackled
in the grate. For the first time in recent memory, she was indulging in lazing
about in her bath. At home, there had never been enough servants to carry
proper water. But unlike her impoverished father, Pierce Foster spared no
expense in the pursuit of luxury. Decadence was the proper word for it. He even
had a well-appointed bathroom complete with a water-closet.
    An unpacking maid had seen to her