Chapter One
Top Shelf
Loren Copeland
The Marquess of Remington
Hawkvale
The City of Lincstone
Heddelly Arch
District
Avon Bordello
The Parallel
One Week Later
“I feel like I should pay you,”
the whore purred behind him.
“That can be arranged,” he muttered, reaching for his
breeches.
He felt her hand touch the bare skin of his back.
“Another go,” she whispered. And then, far quieter, “For
free.”
Her hand went away as Loren stood, pulling up his trousers.
He didn’t look at her as he buttoned them at the same time
he moved to where he’d thrown his shirt.
“Another time,” he replied.
He said this, but there would be no other time.
There were those, and she was one, where he made a call.
He’d made that call.
This time, he came.
Then he went.
And it went without saying, especially this time.
He finished with his trousers and reached for his shirt.
“I’m not…” She didn’t continue.
He didn’t much care what she wasn’t, but she was lovely and
naked and a much better view than the maroon flocked wallpaper.
Therefore, after he pulled on his shirt and in a slapdash
manner tucked it in, he reached for his waistcoat, turned to her and lifted his
brow.
“I didn’t fake it,” she said softly.
“I sense you know that wasn’t my first time,” he replied,
buttoning the three brocade-covered buttons at his lower abdominals.
She smiled.
Very lovely.
Pity she was a Come-and-Go.
“Therefore, dear heart, I know that,” he told her.
He then bent to snatch up his socks and boots.
He turned his back on her to sit by the side of the bed to
tug them on.
“I won’t tell Winnow.”
Winnow was the madam of this very establishment.
Winnow held great beauty.
Winnow had the soul of a snake.
He didn’t like her. He didn’t trust her.
But it could not be denied, she had an eye for talent.
He looked down at his companion for the evening, reached out
and cupped her graceful jaw.
“She, or one of her lackeys, watched every second of our
coupling, lovely Mayda. You’re as aware of this as I. I will get away with no
favors, no bonuses, and assuredly, no giveaways. I will pay for tasting your
lovely cunt. I will pay for penetrating your round ass. I will pay for having
you on your back, your knees, and I will pay for watching you ride my cock. I
will pay for the two climaxes I gave you. And I will pay top
tier, for you are top shelf, aren’t you, dear heart?”
“My lord—”
He put a finger to her lips. “I have a rule. When a woman
takes me up her arse, and in her mouth, not in that order, in the same night,
she’s allowed to call me by my name.”
Her eyes flared at this unusual benefaction.
He took his finger from her lips. “Now, you were saying?”
Her attention darted over his shoulder to one of the several
paintings in which, Loren knew, the walls had eyes.
A warning.
One she likely never gave another client.
Loren sighed.
It never failed to surprise him.
Give a whore an orgasm, and they became aggravatingly
clingy.
He turned from her and reached for his frock coat.
“Loren,” she said his name so low he had to turn back to her
to prove he’d heard it. “You should—”
She lost his attention when he felt how his coat bunched in
his hand.
Or, more precisely, what shouldn’t bunch, but did.
He looked at his coat, running it through his fists.
By the gods, he’d thought they’d let him through unscathed.
He hadn’t even felt it.
However, what he felt in that moment was the bed move as
Mayda shifted in it. He heard the velvet and silks of the covers sliding
against each other as she pulled them to cover her, but he glanced about the
floor just in case it had fallen out.
It had not.
“Loren, I—”
“Silence,” he hissed.
“It wasn’t my ide—”
He turned his head to her.
She quieted.
“Did you do it?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Is it here?”
She bit her lip.
And shook her head again.
That was when he heard it.
A noise in the hall.
Abruptly standing, he pulled on the coat, then he sat yet
again, swiftly. He lifted one boot to his other knee, reached to the inner base
of the heel, and hit the miniscule catch with his thumbnail.
Winnow didn’t allow weapons in her establishment.
He had his suspicions, these being why he was there at all,
but now he knew it was for this very reason.
Loren didn’t go anywhere without a weapon.
As the catch released, the hidden blade jumped out of his
heel.
Mayda gasped.
“Speak one word, you’re the first cut I make,” Loren warned,
not looking at her.
He hadn’t the time.
He transferred his other boot to his opposite knee and
repeated these actions.
The blades were broad in width, blunt in length, with
razor-sharp edges that came to a point. At the end of the short shaft was not a
handle but a narrow rod that went side to side.
With a twist and click, the blade was at crosses with the
rod.
Loren curled his fists around the rods, the blades
protruding through his fingers.
He did this with his hands in front of him, his back to the
various views to the room.
And he curled his hands carefully into the sleeves of his
coat as he walked to the door.
He heard a noise, a wordless call.
His advance on the exit was noted.
The order was made.
Therefore, he was not surprised when the door burst open and
two of Winnow’s large, lugubrious henchmen entered the room.
“Leaving without paying, your grace?” the one in
the lead asked snidely.
“You return the wallet one of your staff lifted from my
coat, I’d be happy to do so,” Loren drawled.
“We don’t operate that way at Avon,” came the reply. “And we
don’t give pussy away for free.”
This was tiresome.
It always was.
He was rich.
He was titled.
His father was richer.
And his title was better.
Loren was not at fault for the happenstance of his birth.
But what never failed to infuriate him was that he knew just
looking at them that neither of these men had stood proud for Hawkvale.
Neither of these men hunted the dying, but irritatingly
prolific, bands of Middlelandian true believers.
Neither of them found their fourteen-year-old scout with his
throat slit and a strip of his scalp taken as a prize.
Neither of them witnessed their best friend take an arrow
through the throat.
Neither of them held his friend’s mother in their arms as
she wept when he returned her son’s possessions.
He didn’t expect pussy for free, not as a veteran who put
his life on the line to keep their country safe, not as the son of a veteran
who did the same, or the latest in a line of many men who did just that.
He didn’t expect pussy for free because of his title or his
connections, either.
He didn’t expect anything for free.
He paid and he paid well.
Though one could say he liked games.
But only those he wished to play.
So Loren had no patience at all for this shite.
In five seconds, both men were on the floor, their blood
flowing freely into the silk rugs.
They would never again take their feet.
Mayda whimpered.
Loren stepped over them and into the hall.
In the end, he was vaguely disappointed it wasn’t much of a
challenge.
Patrons and workers alike were shrieking and falling over
themselves, as well as slipping on blood and bodies, in order to get out while
Loren held Winnow against the wall of her office with his forearm.
“Where is it?” he asked mildly.
Her green gaze flicked to her desk.
He transferred one bloody blade to the other hand, still
held at the ready, took her by the side of the neck and pulled her to the desk.
“Fetch it,” he ordered.
With trembling hands, she took the keys that dangled from
the ribbon that served as a belt, bent to the bottom drawer, and Loren stayed
vigilant and alert as he watched her open the drawer.
She came out with naught but his wallet.
But he saw what else was inside.
He took the wallet from her and slammed the drawer shut with
the toe of his boot.
“I hope my message has been made clear,” he began. “It will
be ill-advised that you ever do this again.”
He then moved his hand to the back of her skull and slammed
her forehead down on the desk.
She slithered, unconscious, to the floor.
Through the now quiet and deserted space, Loren sauntered up
to Mayda’s room.
Standing at the foot of her bed, where she was pressed to
the headboard, covers to her mouth, weeping silently, he asked, “It’s fifteen
normal, twenty up the arse, five for the suckling, five for eating, no?”
She stared at him in horror for a moment before she slowly
nodded her head.
Loren rifled through the paper notes King Noctorno had instituted several years ago, one of his many
brilliant ideas.
Carrying coin was burdensome.
This was far better.
He tossed three twenty-pound notes on her bed, then regarded
the dead men on her floor.
As such, he pulled out another two bills, both hundreds, and
threw those down too.
“Thank you for a memorable evening,” he said.
And then he walked away.
The Next Morning
“Loren, I simply cannot believe I have to
tell you again, you are not at liberty to kill people willy-nilly,”
his father admonished.
“They’d stolen my wallet.”
“Yes, that happens at Avon Bordello. Everyone knows that,”
Ansley Copeland returned. “As such, you have two choices. Don’t go to Avon
Bordello. Or don’t go to Avon Bordello.”
“I sense, Father, that they will not be stealing another
man’s wallet in order to extort a higher charge for their services as they
detain him and expose him to his wife, his children, his employers, his
commanding officer, or simply detaining him from his life until he agrees to
pay for his own release. All of this on the weak excuse they provide to the
constabulary that he intended to partake of their services for free, when he
had no such intention at all.”
“It’s my understanding the constabulary was as aware as
everyone else about this situation and working to sort it,” Ansley retorted.
Briefly, Loren thought about what he knew the constables
would find in Winnow’s desk.
He then replied, “I’ve saved them that trouble.”