The Courtesan's Bed Read Online Free PDF

and Regina had left Maxim’s, and as he’d hoped, it led him right to her house, a charming little place, surely a gift from some man grateful for services rendered.
    He’d watched them disembark and go inside before he got out of the cab and took his post across the street.
    He shivered and stifled a deep yawn. What in the hell was he doing standing in a dark doorway at three a.m. on a cold, wet Parisian morning?
    He must be mad.
    No, obsessed.
    When he’d arrived in Paris several days ago, hot on Regina’s trail after long fruitless years of searching, he’d gone to a Left Bank café for a celebratory drink and had once again seen the poster plastered in every café in the city, an advertisement for a brand of absinthe, the potent green liquor beloved of bohemian artists and poets and reputed to rot the brain if drunk in excess. Done in shades of absinthe green, the poster’s only spots of color were the auburn of Regina’s long, sinuous hair and her arresting blue eyes regarding the glass she held with anticipation.
    When he’d asked his waiter about the poster’s model, the man told him the artist Alphonse Mucha had chosen the famous grand horizontal Régine Laflamme to embody the Green Fairy, said to hide in the green liquor’s depths until released into milky whiteness with the addition of ice water. She was a beguiling sprite who lured men to insanity and death.
    Regina was certainly beautiful enough to lure men to their doom. When they’d first met all those years ago, he couldn’t get her out of his mind no matter how hard he tried. And he had tried. He threw himself into his studies, trying to forget her, but she continued to haunt him. Once he graduated from Oxford and established himself in London, adding considerably to his own fortune through an aptitude for finance, he took a string of voluptuous, redheaded mistresses, but all were pale copies of Regina Willett, and their liaisons were usually unsatisfactory and short-lived.
    He had to find her, no matter how long it took, no matter how much it cost.
    Somehow, she had vanished.
    Now, after years of persistent searching, he’d found her again and would never let her go.
    Fatigue seeped deep into his bones. His eyelids drooped. He caught himself and took several slow breaths to clear his foggy brain. He’d been burning his candle at both ends since he’d arrived in Paris to check out his latest, most promising lead regarding Regina, and now that he’d found her, he could allow himself the luxury of restorative sleep.
    He stepped out of the doorway to search for a cab, when Regina’s front door swung open, and her companion emerged. By the glow of the porch light, the old gent had the smug, contented expression of a well-pleasured man. He hobbled toward his waiting carriage like a man twice his age.
    A stab of jealousy struck Darius right in the balls. Regina must’ve screwed the poor bastard so hard, he could barely stand.
    Darius swore under his breath. He should be the recipient of Regina’s favors, the one to lie in her arms sexually sated after a wild ride between her thighs.
    He watched as the driver opened the carriage door, pulled down the steps and physically steadied his master, whose features were twisted in pain as he tried to hoist himself inside. He finally succeeded. His driver shut the door, climbed into his own seat, and they ambled off, the soft clop of hoofbeats filling the night.
    Darius watched the carriage disappear down the street. He looked up. Regina’s bedroom window was now dark.
    He hoped she rested well because tomorrow he intended to call on her and end their game of cat and mouse once and for all.

Chapter Four
    Madame Soubrise’s crowded, dimly lit parlor smelled of smoke, cheap perfume and lust.
    Ivy Doucette sauntered down the main staircase with one hand lightly on the banister and the other arm in arm with Coco, the brothel’s only