Gluttony: The Dominant Sinner (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

Chapter 1

Gregory Goodheart, seventh Duke of Argyll, legendary rake and head proprietor of Forbidden Pleasures, London’s most iniquitous gaming hell, was not just any man.

He was a bad one.

A very, very, very bad one.

Not the evil, twisted, macabre, mad sort.

But the wicked kind.

He’d slipped into the world wearing the Devil’s own smile. Destined for debauchery. A relentless reprobate. Irredeemable. With a randy, now-dead sire who’d blazed a path as England’s consummate rake, there’d only been one fate and future for him.

During his Eton years, Argyll’s father sent one of his young, nubile mistresses to school Argyll in a different sort of edification.

By thirteen, the concupiscent duke let out a separate townhouse for the next kept woman he’d gifted Argyll. Expenses paid by the lad he’d been. The late duke hadn’t been generous. With the exception of his cock, leering eyes, and wandering hands.

Before he’d even reached fourteen, Argyll knew the way and hand-selected his own paramours—no assistance from dear father required.

Argyll’s lust for life was surpassed by only one thing—uncompromising, unbridled sex.

“Shut the door,” he purred.

The blonde beauty draped in a nearly sheer white gossamer gown hesitated. Displeasure put a pinched expression on her handsome face. “Careful, Your Grace. I won’t be ordered about.”

A lady of her position and power would chafe at the affront.

But she also secretly, or not so secretly to Argyll, craved it.

Steepling his fingers under his chin, he regarded her the same assessing, detached way he did his books at the club. “No, you won’t, Your Grace. You love it.”

He’d learned of the Duchess of Argyll’s perversity in her first attempt, among many attempts, to seduce him.

“Your Grace? Such formality.” She curled her crimson-painted lips into a seductress’s smile. “My dear boy is upset with me.”

Despite his iron-clad restraint, desire stirred at the wicked game they’d played over the years.

His mahogany desk did Argyll the favor of concealing his steel-hard erection. “How should one behave after finding out his beloved stepmama attempted to partner with my former business partner and current rival?”

The reminder of the depths she’d gone to in order to take his club down swiftly killed his lust.

His stepmother tittered. “Oh, that.”

Oh, that. He favored her with a lazy, half-grin, joining in her amusement.

She’d sought an alliance with Lachlan Latimer, Argyll’s former friend, partner, and head of security, and Latimer’s new business partner, Stephen Killoran, the Earl of Dynevor, head of the Devil’s Den, and this is what she’d say?

Had he been capable of pity, he’d have felt it for his poor, embarrassingly overmatched stepmother.

Unlike his dead father’s wicked widow, Argyll had mastered the art of discernment.

Resting her well-shaped arse against the door panel, the penitent duchess leaned forward. Her pose of supplication put her hourglass figure on perfect display.

“Come, my boy, surely there is something I can do to make amends for being such a naughty stepmama.” She shifted deliberately for emphasis.

As she’d intended, those enormous globes spilled over her plunging neckline.

Not that it had taken much. With the depth of her decolletage and weight of her breasts, she’d been one more sashay away from tumbling free.

Argyll slowly, deliberately drummed his fingertips together and did a cursory study. Ripe flesh. Rouged nipples. Nothing he hadn’t seen before.

At his detached scrutiny, a flush stole across her heaving bosom.

The lady wasn’t affronted.

She was hungry for the challenge he presented.

The rapid uptick in her breathing, faint but discernable little puffs as she panted like the bitch in heat she was.

“Let me atone for my sins, my boy,” she whispered in tones schooled by experience.

The dowager duchess, near in age to Argyll, held his gaze with her lust-filled one. Never breaking contact, she curled her fingers into the sides of her muslin skirts; the noise crinkled noisily under her long, meticulously manicured nails.

Indulging her show, he reached for the crystal decanter and snifter he’d emptied before her arrival and made himself another. He and the duchess had played this game for well over a decade now. Since when Argyll’s sire was still kicking around London, taking every cunny, he could.

At that point in his life, Argyll had been young enough, that his stepmother’s games added an element of newness to his debauched ways. Young, lonely stepmama. The young, lusty son.

And oh, how she’d reveled in the upper hand over him.

Just now, the hot widow inched her damp fabric up.

Argyll sipped his drink and watched. His late father’s wife revealed calves, taut from all the men she’d fucked. Impressively thick thighs.

When first married to Argyll’s father, she’d been drearily innocent. Her fall came fast.

The duchess had teased Argyll. Taunted him. Subtly at first. A flash of skin. A deliberate stroke of a finger along her indecent neckline. The fleeting but noticeable squeeze of his arm.

Then came the sinfully placed foot beneath the dining table.

That moment everything changed. With the duke—her husband and Argyll’s sire—seated between them, prattling on about the details for a planned libidinous ball, the duchess pressed her bare toes between Argyll’s legs.

She stroked him to hardness. Rubbed. It’d been the closest he’d gotten to coming in his trousers since his Eton days.

The forbidden thrill speared his ennui.

She kept him hard. Wanting. Denied. Trapped in anticipation.

And yet, even that exquisite torment lost its flavor.

Her power over him ebbed. Argyll learned, at some point, his interests waned.

His appetite was too great. To keep carnality from descending into monotony, it required a constant escalation. He required variety.

With that understanding of basic human nature, he’d built Forbidden Pleasures.

Throwing her head back, the duchess yanked her dress up the remainder of the way and let her well-fleshed legs splay.

A feral cat’s smile played on the duchess’s rouged lips. “I know something that might please you,” she said, in a sing-song voice.

He quirked an eyebrow.

For valuable information, he would play the game, a bit longer.

“Duchess,” he drawled, “surely you do not take me as so dull a man as to be impressed by your shaved cunt. I’ve seen all this before. Yours included.” Argyll swirled his brandy in a smooth circle. “For all the years you’ve spent testing my restraint, you will have to do better than that.”

The sin-soaked widow accepted Argyll’s challenge. Languidly, she freed the lace ties at the front of her gown. The filmy material slipped from her body in a diaphanous waterfall.

He scraped an assessing glance over her buxom frame. She’d always been a lush thing. Time had since added a layer of cushiony softness to her middle, and, in equal measure, to her breasts, which had always been abundant.

Aware of his scrutiny, the duchess rolled her shoulders back and put those big orbs on even better display.

“You never did suck them.” With a coquette’s smile, she teased a long, thin nail over the disproportionately small tip.

She rested the flat of her back against the panel.

“I have thought of you biting them and pulling them with that clever mouth of yours, Argyll.” Then, using her spare hand, the wanton palmed her cunny.

The sounds of jagged breathing filled every spare space in the room. The duchess slipped three fingers inside her well-used channel and indulged in a solitary pleasure.

Did she truly believe him that desperate to have her?

How contemptible.

He wanted for nothing. Certainly not eager bed partners.

He’d been wrong before.

He was capable of pity after all.

Argyll buried a devil’s smile.

No, he wasn’t.

The wretched thing.

But this, he could entertain.

“Stop,” he said coolly.

Head bowed, she submitted.

“Approach.”

She heeded Argyll’s command, artful in the sway she put into her hips.

When the seductress reached the foot of his desk, framed between the pair of leather armchairs, she kept her head bowed and clasped her hands in prayer.

His stepmother knew very well the prurient game they played.

He didn’t bother to hide his cynical amusement. “Have you come to discuss business or seduce me, Your Grace?”

“Why can it not be both, my boy?” Her voice thrummed with raw desire.

“Those I work with are masters,” he paused.

“And mistresses of self-control.” Long divested of his jacket, he further loosened his already haphazardly tied cravat.

“I fear you aren’t capable of the level I demand from my…

partners.” Argyll, equally capable with both hands—an advantageous skill when it came to debauchery—sipped from the glass in his other.

“Oh, but I am, Argyll.”

Lust burned bright in her revealing eyes. That unseemly eagerness turned the lady into a liar.

“Sit.”

In her haste to comply, the duchess fell gracelessly into the folds of the armchair.

Argyll removed his cravat and tossed it to the other side of his bench.

“Now,” he said, collecting his club’s books from where they sat. “Let us begin.”

Argyll opened a ledger. “Part your legs so I can see your cunny while we discuss business.”

An earthy moan spilled from the sensual widow’s throat.

After she’d gotten into position, he dragged his chair closer to his desk. “Unlike The Devil’s Den, on the matter of Forbidden Pleasures, I am not looking for new partners.”

“Ah, that’s right.” She continued moving her fingers within herself. “You edged Latimer out and brought Kilburn in.”

“That is certainly how Latimer saw it. His arrogance and pride will be his downfall.”

She found her window. “And in not entertaining my offer, Argyll, you will be making the same mistake.”

To the duchess’s credit, her speech remained conversational.

He felt his first stirrings of interest.