Invitation to Ruin by Ann Vremont Page B

catch my hand
and warn me to remain polite. This man knew my father! He bent down
on his hands and knees, one fist clutching a sheet of paper.
    “May I?” he asked, his questioning gaze on
Christophe and not me.
    “Only a taste,” Christophe warned. “I do not
think she can handle more.”
    A chorus of snickers broke out at that. “We
have seen exactly what she can handle, Christophe!”
    The man who had made the inquiry had one hand
against his chest. “To hell with what the bitch can handle…I am
halfway to death’s door as it is.” He bent down then, his lips
against my cunt, and laved the length of my pussy from the top base
of my clit to the pouting rose of my ass.
    “And how does my cum taste, my lord?”
Christophe joked and slapped the man on the back in an effort to
move him along.
    All but one left then, each daring a touch or
taste on his way out, each compounding my shame until only
Christophe and a middle-aged man, the only one among them unknown
to me, remained. Preparing to leave me with the man, Christophe
bent down and shoved a folded sheet of paper in front of me.
    “Gabrielle sends her regards.”
    Mindful of the stranger’s presence, I
carefully reached out and unfolded the paper. My face, as he had
sketched it as I sucked his cock in the studio. Above that, the
words “an Invitation to Ruin.”
    I had helped Gabrielle gain title and wealth
and this was how she repaid me?
    “What will you do now, Veronique?” the man
asked as the paper fell from my shocked grasp.
    I looked up at him, my gaze still slightly
unfocused. He was smooth featured, neither handsome nor ugly…just
there. A face that might easily be forgotten if it were not for the
intense green-gray gaze and sensuous mouth. His tone was empty of
judgment…he neither approved nor disapproved of what I had done—of
who I was.
    “I do not know,” I confessed. I should have
been trembling, but I was too tired, my endurance stretched too
thin.
    He bent down, gently taking me by the elbow
and helping me to my feet.
    “Wh…what are you doing?” I asked. Was this
some fresh game of Christophe and Gabrielle’s?
    “Helping you, Veronique, if you will let
me.”
    “Why?”
    He tilted his head, a flash of compassion
crossing his features before he smoothed his expression once again.
“Because you need it,” he answered. “And because I think there
might be some profit in it for me.”
    “Profit! Of course.” I recoiled, the anger I
should have released on Christophe slowly beginning to build in my
chest.
    He did not protest, choosing instead to
mutely stand there waiting for my eventual acquiescence. I would
not give it. I would not!
    I collapsed into his arms, tears bursting
from me. I was naked, covered in another man’s cum, but he hugged
me fiercely until my sobbing stopped.
    “What am I to do?” I asked when no more tears
remained.
    He dressed me then and introduced himself
only as “Daniel.” Quietly, he laid out my options. I could come
with him, to England, and help in his “business” of gathering and
selling information from the wealthy and powerful. Or I could trust
to my family’s forgiveness.
    Fool that I was, I chose the latter. I
thought I could coax forgiveness from them…that I need not
prostitute myself—for that is the nature of his proposition—to lure
secrets when the prey is impassioned and vulnerable. To manipulate
others as Christophe had manipulated me.
    But now, I am to be forced, for the sake of
my soul and father’s name (as if he had not already bankrupted his
name much as he had bankrupted our estate on his stable of
mistresses!), to take my vows. To walk as one among these drab gray
ghosts! I will not. Father, confident in my shame, has allowed me
to spend this last week walking free (if not unwatched) in the
convent and its grounds. And so I go to Daniel! I am, I now know, a
mere novice, but I already have learned so much about the art of
deceit and betrayal this last week. In time I