All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue (The Debutante Files #2)(5)

With the blood still rushing to his head, his gaze zeroed in on Lewis’s fleshy lips. “Cockless Camden, Cockless Camden, Cockless Camden,” spilled out to the background of riotous laughter.

Max didn’t think. His fist shot out. Smashed into Lewis’s gleeful face. Bone crunched bone. Blood spurted. Tucking the pad beneath his arm, he turned and beat a hard line for the house, intent on confronting Aurelia.

Subdued laughter followed him as he stalked away . . . coupled with Lewis’s curses and the muffled mantra from the rest of them: “Cockless Camden . . . Cockless Camden.”

He didn’t have to go very far before spotting her. She was running directly for him. Only she had changed. Everything inside him seized and pulled up hard. This was the Aurelia he’d left a year ago, and yet it was not.

She was different. Gone were the plaits and girlhood frock. The deep brown hair was pinned atop her head. One fat sausage curl draped over her shoulder and wound itself down, the tip curling between the generous swells of her breasts. That bodice . . . those curves . . . those breasts. She was not a child. He could not stop himself from staring, from devouring the sight of her. She was lovely. Teeth-achingly sweet . . .

The rush of blood to his head intensified, and that only made him more furious. He felt as though he had been knocked a blow to the head. First the picture. Now this. He felt doubly betrayed. His friend was gone. This beautiful heartless creature stood in her place.

Based on the flush staining her face, he knew she could hear the vulgar chant at his back. Her fists knotted in her skirts, the knuckles white. His gaze held hers, the knowledge of her treachery digging deep.

In that gaze, he read more than embarrassment. Shame was there. She stood frozen, clenching her skirts as the color drained from her cheeks. Guilt was writ all over her face. She knew what she had done. She glanced from the pad he clutched in his hands back up to his face. She saw. She knew what he was feeling.

Without a word, he turned from the laughing boys. He turned from her.

He strode away without a backward glance.





Chapter 1

Seven years later . . .

Max knew it was Aurelia the instant she sat down at the table. Or rather, the moment she plopped into the chair across from him. The black gown she wore was so indecently tight she wasn’t capable of sinking into her seat with any standard of grace. Her ridiculous disguise could not hide her from him.

He stilled, his entire body going rigid. The dress. Her. At this table. None of it was right or proper. Familiar ice chugged through his veins at the unexpected sight of her here, of all places. The most illicit of clubs. Young ladies of privilege weren’t supposed to know places like this even existed, much less step across the threshold. He shouldn’t be surprised. Aurelia had never fit Society’s vaunted criteria for young womanhood.

The laughter and buzz of conversation faded to a dull growl around him as his gaze tunneled through copious cigar smoke to peer at Aurelia. His lip curled as though he had identified something distasteful. He tracked her every curve, missing nothing. Not the absurd wig of golden hair piled atop her head. Not the olive-hued skin. Nor the whiskey-warm eyes.

His body reacted instantly. How could it not? He was a man in possession of healthy appetites, and however much he did not care for the chit, she was thoroughly beddable in that scandalous dress. He’d known she was voluptuous, but he had no idea she had been hiding a courtesan’s body beneath her clothes these many years. And that was what every man in this room thought as they devoured the sight of her. That she was a whore for the taking. A quick glance around confirmed as much.

The backside he had glimpsed before she sat down was well-rounded, with generous cheeks that would fill a man’s hands. He eyed the narrow waist that pooled into flaring hips. His mouth dried. Her body was made for sex. No quick and gentle mating that ladies with delicate sensibilities engaged in under the cover of darkness. She would take everything a man could give and revel in it. All he could give. Rough and fast. Base and primal. She wasn’t a fragile piece of crystal that would break beneath a hard shag.

He leaned back in his seat as though needing to insert additional space between them. His hand slid beneath the table to adjust his cock where it had grown achingly hard. He huffed out a breath, furious that she should make him feel this way. He did not like her. He’d sooner take a viper into his bed than this chit who had caused him such grief.

No one called him Cockless Camden anymore. At least not to his face, but it took years to put an end to that. Even now he knew the slur was still whispered behind his back. People thought it. The repercussions of that caricature followed him still. Every time he got naked with a woman, he read the surprise in her eyes. The relief.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted, her gaze fixing on him. The taunting light in the brown depths made his skin tighten with familiar battle-readiness. “Room for one more?”

“Always room for so beautiful a lady,” the man to Max’s left replied as he shuffled cards.

What the bloody hell was she doing here? He stared hard at her, letting his gaze convey his outrage.

She smiled prettily, her plump lips curving beneath her scarlet domino. The domino was a joke. As was the wig. Anyone who was more than a passing acquaintance with Aurelia would recognize her. Which only made her ten kinds of a fool for even stepping foot in Sodom. Even right now her cousin, Declan, was upstairs.

“Thank you.” She treated each man at the table to her smile. “What is the wager, gentlemen?”