Tempt the Devil Read Free Page A

night,” she murmured, staring into the fire as Perry closed the door behind him.
    God help her indeed, although instinct whispered that both she and Erith were beyond heavenly help.
    She hadn’t told Perry the real reason she’d selected the earl as her keeper.
    When she looked into those cold, cold eyes, she’d seen a man without a soul. Who better for a woman who was herself without a soul to choose as lover?
    Â 
    Erith arrived at Lord Peregrine Montjoy’s town house precisely at four. As he handed hat, gloves, and cane to the butler, he surveyed the gaudy decorations. Mirrors, gilded candelabra, ormolu, painted plasterwork, naked classical statues. All male and none sporting a concealing fig leaf over their exaggerated genitalia.
    Had Lord Peregrine chosen the decor to advertise his houseguest’s profession? Olivia Raines didn’t need to resort to such blatant measures. Her air of conscious sensuality was apparent to any man with blood in his veins.
    The house was gorgeous, although overdone. It could have been an expensive brothel, if not for the fact that everything was the highest quality and beyond the purse of even the most successful madam. Strangely, he’d imagine his prospective mistress would prefer more restrained surroundings. Perhaps that dramatically plain crimson gown yesterday was the aberration.
    While he cooled his heels on a fiendishly uncomfortable chair in the hall—the wench certainly wasn’t making a fuss of him to soothe his vanity—he puzzled over the fabulous Miss Raines.
    What was she doing living here, openly under Lord Peregrine’s protection? And if Montjoy was her long-term lover, why tout for trade elsewhere?
    From what Erith had learned, she always returned to this house after a liaison ended. Did Montjoy operate asher benevolent pimp? What did Lord Peregrine have that brought her back? What did she seek that she inevitably left again?
    Perhaps she was merely another faithless jade. Although gossip indicated that once she accepted a man’s carte blanche, she remained loyal until she tired of him. So far he’d yet to hear of a man tiring of her .
    He’d met a few lucky fellows who had shared her favors. Well, perhaps lucky wasn’t the precise word. It was perfectly clear all would relinquish their hopes of heaven for a chance of one more night in Olivia Raines’s bed. Her paramours had spoken of her with awe, almost as if she possessed supernatural powers. A more sentimental person than Erith would say she spoiled her lovers for other women.
    One thing he’d noted was that not a one of them seemed quite man enough for her. So either her voracious passions sapped the poor beggars of their masculinity or she chose spineless samples of manhood in the first place.
    If that was the case, she was due for a surprise when she took on the Earl of Erith. He glimpsed his dark face in a gold-framed mirror on the opposite wall and straightened from his slouch. Julian Southwood might be justifiably confident but he never smirked .
    Still, his blood heated pleasurably as he contemplated the unspoken challenge she’d issued yesterday. Their encounter had sparked with edgy awareness and lightning shifts of power. Oh, yes, he’d enjoy himself mightily before he finished with Olivia Raines.
    â€œThis way, your lordship.” The butler appeared and showed him upstairs to a small room quite as gaudy as yesterday’s salon.
    Erith caught the eye of one of the many rampant young men filling the room’s murals. Naked and improbably endowed wrestlers in a classical setting surrounded him on three walls. The fourth wall was lined with windows facing an immaculate parterre garden.
    â€œLord Erith.” Olivia Raines rose and curtseyed with a poise that wouldn’t have discredited a princess.
    He stepped forward and took her hand. No gloves today, he noticed with a ripple of pleasure. He bent and grazed his lips across her