Excerpt of The Courtesan's Bed by Sandrine O’Shea

The bed was an Art Nouveau masterpiece carved in golden walnut wood, with sensuous, undulating whiplash curves that were a physical manifestation of the rise and fall and ultimate rise of sexual arousal and release. But what caught her attention were the brass rings bolted to all four bedposts slightly above the mattress. To the uninitiated, they were simply decorative. To those who sought the ultimate surrender, they restrained a lover for her master’s—or his mistress’s—pleasure.

“I must have Odile’s bed,” she said to Luc.

He stared at the rings, comprehension warming his blue eyes. “It’s as good as yours.”

She had nothing to fear from the penniless clerks and artists here solely to gawk at fabulous jewels and touch exquisite silk lingerie. The wealthy posed the greatest threat. Many of the fine gentlemen here had once been Odile de la Montaigne’s protectors and had showered her with these very jewels and furnished her apartment as payment for the privilege of fucking her. They could easily buy them back.

But Luc was wealthier than most.

She looked across the bed and caught a man staring at her. Her eyes widened, and she felt lightheaded with shock. There stood Penbry Granger, the Marquess of Blackwall himself.

Disgust flashed through her, until the red mist of anger vanished from her eyes and she took a second, harder look. This man was handsomer, younger and taller, with a lean, athletic physique. Those rain-gray eyes weren’t as cold as she remembered, the jaw stronger, the sculpted mouth finer, with a fuller lower lip that promised forbidden delights rather than lust and cruelty. Even though his gaze remained locked on hers and never traveled down to her full breasts, narrow waist and gently curved hips in insolent masculine assessment, Régine’s traitorous body responded as if he’d stripped off her dress and caressed her bare skin from head to toe with his eager mouth. The familiar knot of heat bloomed between her legs, and her nipples hardened beneath her chemise. She willed the unwelcome heat away. If he could arouse her with one deep, searing stare, what could he do to her if they were ever alone in her boudoir?

When she took yet an even closer look, she realized with blinding clarity that the man standing across from her was closer to her own age of twenty-five than Pen’s late forties.

Who else could he be but Pen’s son?

What was Darius, Earl of Clarridge, doing here in Paris, in Odile de la Montaigne’s apartment?