The Problem with Seduction Read Online Free

In the three years on and off that she’d spent as his mistress, she’d learned precisely how far she could go without driving him to a physical response. Not that sex wasn’t a physical response, a form of punishment for riling him past reason, but he’d never laid a hand on her that she hadn’t secretly wanted.
    Her mouth tasted sour now, thinking of his hands on her at all. What a fool she’d been.
    She hadn’t expected Lord Constantine just now. And after he left, she knew better than to let her guard down again. She was more prepared to maintain her composure when Nicholas did arrive, shortly after Lord Constantine was tossed out on his backside. Literally tossed, for she’d enjoyed watching from the window as Rand had ejected him from her rented townhouse into the street.
    Rand tapped lightly on her door to inform her of Nicholas’s arrival himself. Unlike with Lord Constantine, this time she did give Oliver to his nurse. Though Nicholas had never manhandled her, she couldn’t risk him taking her baby right from her arms.
    She paused to check her reflection. The redness in her eyes couldn’t be helped, but she pinched her cheeks to restore some of her natural glow, and twirled her fingers through the curls framing her face to restore the carefully-tonged locks as best she could. Vanity was a courtesan’s primary weapon. Without it, she’d never be able to hold her head high enough to look down her nose at the men who sought to use her.
    She made her way to the drawing room. The entire length of the house, she steeled herself against the man she was about to receive.
    He stood in her vestibule, looking impatient. She paused at the foot of the stair. Once, her heart had seemed to stop every time she saw him. Nicholas Finn was tall, and possessed of the confidence found in a man who’d scrounged the money to buy a commission, then gone on to earn honors reserved for Britain’s finest men. His wavy brown hair appeared windblown, a careful effect he took pains to perfect. And he was handsome. Of all the men she’d taken into her bed, he’d been the one with the broadest shoulders, the most satisfying to pleasure, with the slightly-too-heavy weight of a man in good health and the strong hands of a skilled lover.
    Now when she looked at him, she felt only her own revulsion.
    Nicholas waved for her to precede him into her drawing room. Her spine stiffened. “This is my house,” she reminded him, angry that he would attempt to direct her in her own home.
    He sighed. His fine brown eyes were weary. “Must you always think I’m out to get you? I merely came to discuss my son.”
    She entered the drawing room and turned her back to him while she collected herself. He’d never loved her. Not even a little. “He’s not yours,” she lied.
    It wasn’t that she wanted to keep Oliver from his father—the very thought made her want to weep, for she’d lived the last ten years of her own life without a word from her own father. But Nicholas had no use for her, the mother of his child, any more than he’d had use for her affection when it had been just the two of them. He’d been content to send her out on her ear almost the moment he had Oliver in his possession. He’d not even cared that she’d spent her first week after in a haze of grief, barely able lift herself from the lumpy mattress of a room she’d let above a common tavern. If he knew she’d been forced to return to Celeste’s cottage in Devon and the staff keeping house there, he’d never given an indication. He simply didn’t care about her.
    The door closed behind them. It seated like the hollow thump in her chest. She didn’t turn to face him. How could she? He’d broken her heart. Taken her son without a single thought for the agony it would cause her—like having her own arm, or her very heart, ripped from her.
    “Tell me it’s rubbish.” His voice was low. Not menacing. Hurt, possibly. As if it stung him to think she might have