The Virgin's Auction by Amelia Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

skirt. At the sudden display of an exquisitely womanly shape, there were exclamations of wonder and lust. Her clothes were not enough to shield her from their imaginations.
    Even James was not unmoved. He thought of himself as civilised, but that delicate confection standing on the tavern’s excuse for a stage woke in him a response that was more than a little feral. Sardonically he measured it as two parts lust, one part an instinctive protectiveness towards the vulnerable, and a last part the competitive desire to best all others and win a desirable sex object.
    These shows were not to his taste. If the woman was truly a virgin – which he usually took leave to doubt – then she was to be pitied rather than desired. No good prospect lay before her.
    Something about this one occasion roused more than pity and disgust. He examined the woman as best he might, standing less than two dozen feet from her in the crowded and smoky room.
    Her face pale and still, only her eyes moved. They roved the room searching for – what?
    S he looked straight at James. He felt that look almost like a touch, a palpable connection. There was a pleading there in her gaze, a desperation. Suddenly he was certain this one was indeed a virgin, alone and helpless in a roomful of men who saw nothing of her but an object for their lust; nothing of the person within. One of them would take her, use her roughly, maybe brutally, and then she would be discarded, broken.
    This seemed suddenly the most heinous sort of crime against a woman of such peerless beauty. Such a creature was a treasure who should be worshipped, initiated gently to the arts of love. Brought to a knowledge of the true potential her body held for its own and others’ pleasure. What a courtesan she would make!
    He thought there was no one in this room capable of teaching her that better than he. For bedroom sport was quite the favourite of all the sports in which he indulged, and he knew how to cherish a woman and awaken her to herself. Oh, an experienced lover was usually his preference, but even those were often unacquainted with the true heights and depths of the bedroom arts.
    He was tempted, he was sorely tempted by her, and had not spent quite all his money at the table with George. He could very well answer that plea he saw in her eyes and bring her a delight the likes of which she had never known.
    He could rescue her.
    James took a step forward.
     
     
     
    She jumped when the cloak was swept away. Her arms ached to wrap around her torso, covering herself. It was as if she was naked. All those hungry, creeping eyes. The wet mouths hanging open. The stench of men pressed tight into a small space.
    Instead she bunched her hands into fists at her sides, gritted her teeth and lifted her chin in challenge.
    She scanned the crowd. Ranks of faces, the well-scrubbed shoulder-to-shoulder with the smudged and scarred. No friendly, sympathetic smile. She looked further, to the back of the room.
    There stood two men in black evening coats, literally cut from a different cloth than every other man here. Starkly dre ssed in the fashion of Brummell; clean cut, athletic figures, heads held high; they looked like another species entirely.
    The seats around them were all emptied by the surge towards her dais. They were alone.  
    She fixated on them rather than look at the prospect directly before her, the ugliness of the heaving, jeering mass almost more than she could bear, the tavern keeper’s loud voice a meaningless drone in her ears.
    Those two men were civilisation personified, belonging to a fresh, crisp morning’s walk in the park. They should be well-mounted on gleaming horses. They would doff their hats politely; dismount to offer a lady an arm as she promenaded. She could picture it and shut out everything else. Her racing heart slowed a little, no longer feeling as if it must leap out of her chest with terror.
    She examined the first of the two men, trying to view him as if