A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man by Susan Donovan, Celeste Bradley

do.”
    I turned to the mirror and tried to assess myself without bias. With the sheer gown draped over me like a Grecian toga and my hair falling free and curling black over my bare shoulders, I looked decadent and shameless and just a bit … delicious.
    I had often longed for slender grace and elegant height, like the Swan’s, yet for the first time I realized that being short and plump and curvaceous might have fresh advantages. My full bosom and my round buttocks gleamed through the sheer silk like the bountiful flesh of a pagan goddess.
    “I look—”
    “You look like every man’s dream come to life,” the Swan said without envy. “What I could have done with breasts like yours!”
    The Swan leaned forward over my shoulder and smiled at me in the mirror. “The gentleman is waiting, pet.”
    She took my hand and led me down the hall. At the end, there was a door. The brass latch gleamed in the light of the Swan’s candle. I stared at it until the shimmer of the metal smeared and ran in my burning vision.
    A man is in there. A stranger who wishes to do wicked things to me.
    I was nervous and terrified—but there was no denying the telltale heat of excitement flaring between my thighs. I was a healthy young animal, after all. It was time for desire to burn within me.
    The fact that the man was a stranger excited me more than I dared admit except in the darkest corner of my thoughts. To give myself so ran contrary to every rule of propriety I had ever learned. It was a wicked, wanton act, a blatant and shameless act.
    It was an undeniable act of free will.
    “Go in,” the Swan whispered. “He awaits you.”
    I watched as my own trembling hand reached for the gleaming blur of the door latch. My fingers were so numb with fear that the metal did not even seem chill to the touch. I heard the latch click.
    No. Wait. I’m not ready—
    The door swung open before me.
    *   *   *
    The chamber glowed with candlelight. I was vaguely aware that the room was furnished in the same sumptuous fashion as the rest of the Swan’s elegant house, but that was only a faint thought registering in my mind.
    All I could see was him.
    The man stood in the center of the room. He turned toward me and for a moment I thought a shadow obscured his features. Then a thrill of alarm ran through me as I realized he wore a mask over the upper part of his face. Only gleaming dark eyes showed through the holes in the black silk. It made him more than a simple stranger. It made him a mysterious, disturbing apparition. It made him unreal.
    It made him no one.
    I swallowed as a rush of hot blood flooded my body. He was no man. He was any man. I wanted this, I realized. I wanted the anonymity. This night, this lesson, would not be a marriage, nor even a love affair. It would be a secret encounter between strangers, two people who would remain strangers. This was about simple pleasure, pleasure without consequence or meaning beyond the moment.
    Oh, I was wicked to want such a thing! And I did want it. I was overwhelmed with the desire to reach out and touch this amazing apparition, this tall, well-built stranger in the mask who would teach me everything I longed to know. I slowly crossed the room to stand before him.
    He loomed over me as I neared. Finally, I was close enough to touch him. Gazing up into his shadowed, hidden face as he tilted his head down to gaze back, I could see his thick dark hair and square jaw.
    And his mouth. My eyes locked onto that mouth. His lips were perfect, neither too full nor too thin. With nothing else visible, his mouth took on a significance that I’d never realized. Now it was obvious to me that a fine mouth on a man was imperative.
    Without thinking, I ran the tip of my tongue over my own lips.
    The corner of that fine mouth quirked upward.
    “Hello,” he said. His voice was low and husky, hardly more than a whisper, yet deep enough to send a tremor through parts of my body I wasn’t accustomed to