love, no one will. There are few rules among Ihe Heavenly Host, apart from 'Do What Thou Wilt,' but one that remains sacrosanct is that all acts must be agreeable to every partner, and no one is to interfere or criticize a member's choice, be it an unusual act or simply to watch. No one will touch you, darling. I promise."
Charlotte glanced down at the bright white ribbon she'd tied around her arm. "I'll be perfectly fine, Lina. Don't worry. I have complete faith," she said. And wondered if she lied.
Adrian stood off to one side, watching the ceremony. He hadn't bothered with monk's robes or any of the other ridiculous trappings the Heavenly Host liked to indulge in. He preferred his sinning to be flagrant—the idea of hiding behind robes and secret passwords was anathema to him. He liked to think there was nothing he wasn't willing to do, and no one he wasn't willing to let know about it.
Including his esteemed, disapproving, hypocritical father, who'd indulged in the same excesses at an even more advanced age than Adrian's twenty-eight.
His mother was a different matter. She worried way too much, but he could rely on gentlemanly restraint to keep most people, including his father, from spreading too many tales.
She wanted him to marry, to give her grandchildren, and he supposed he'd do so, eventually, simply to make her happy. His mother's happiness was one of the few things he cared about, aside from his own determined pursuit of pleasure.
She wouldn't be at all happy to know he was at a gathering of the Heavenly Host. This would have stopped a better man, but, then, he was a very bad man, as Cousin Etienne cheerfully assured him, a rake and a libertine, a seducer of the worst kind. He said it as if conferring a great honor, but Adrian felt no particular pride. In general, he felt nothing at all apart from the pleasure of the senses.
The small death of an intense orgasm, the sweetness of the opium pipe, the wild absinthe dreams that could fuel his more intense couplings.
And that was why he was here, despite all the folderol, the Latin which was hardly up to the standards of his classical education. He came for the sex, in all its most unbridled variations, he came for the total lack of inhibition and restraint He came for the motto emblazoned across the stone arch that led to this outer garden: Do what thou wilt. He intended
Montague was up on the dais, an ironic smile on his lined, elegant face as he exhorted the motley crowd. He looked paler than usual, weaker, and Adrian knew with a sudden, sinking despair that Monty was getting sicker. He lifted a shaking hand to hold aloft the phallus-shaped goblet they were all supposed to drink from, some sort of profane communion. Adrian himself always avoided that part of the festivities—he was much too fastidious to share a cup with some of the worst degenerates in Europe, and he had no great faith in what exactly lay in the elixir of ergot rot had sent the entire party into hallucinations of sometimes horrific proportions. Pawlfrey had never recovered; he'd ended locked up in one of his family's country estates, raving mad.
Adrian had more faith in the strength of his own mind, but he preferred to make his own decisions when it came to the ingestion of drugs. He knew how well he tolerated absinthe or opium and regulated his use. The thought of someone else drugging his wine was unacceptable.
He could see Lady Whitmore on the other side of the avid group of nuns and monks, with the occasional bishop's miter thrown in. She was looking fetching, as always, in her habit. She was undoubtedly one of the great beauties, and she'd made it more than clear she was willing to lie with him. All he had to do was nod her way and she'd be on her back, or knees, in minutes.
Something stopped him. For all her flirtatiousness, her languid glances and casual touches, she left him with the feeling that she derived no real pleasure from the actual act. Even the well-paid courtesans he usually cavorted with expressed more enthusiasm.
No, he'd as soon bed her stiff-necked, virginal cousin, Miss Spenser. In fact, that particular fantasy had invaded his dreams recently. Only last night he'd been alone for a change, half asleep, and he felt his body harden at the thought of someone's mouth.