Chapter 6: The Gallery's New Spectacle
The gallery had emptied of the marquess and his prize, but the crowd they left behind still hummed with the heat of the display. Astrid felt it settle over her skin like a second corset. Her chosen nobleman's seed had dried stiff against the inner swell of her breasts, a faint crust beneath the midnight silk, and every breath pressed her bodice against it.
She had watched a Scottish girl swallow four men before a hushed ballroom and walk away with the best claim of the season. She had watched Lady Hartford take three lords to the root as though it were nothing, as though it were her due. Astrid's own conquest sat somewhere upstairs in a gallery bed, dozing with his breeches open, satisfied with one act and one claim.
One. It was not enough. It had never going to be enough.
She straightened her shoulders, adjusted the silver choker at her throat, and stepped out of the shadow of the arch.
The gallery stretched long and golden ahead of her, sconces burning along the marble, the crowd thinned here to stragglers and watchers. She walked the full length of the marble floor without hurrying, letting her hips speak for her, and felt the attention turn to her like a compass needle finding north.
Three young lords stood near the far arch with wine they were not drinking. She had marked them earlier, before the iron-grey man had claimed her. A fair-haired earl's son with a scholar's long face. A broad young viscount in pale green, his cravat already loosened, his cheeks flushed from the heat. And a third, a slim lord with dark curls and a signet ring he kept turning, who had watched her from the moment she entered the ballroom and had not once approached.
All three still had their breeches fastened. All three had spent nothing tonight. She could see it in the way they stood, restless, hungry, watching the dais like men who had arrived too late for the feast.
Astrid stopped ten paces from them. She let the silence stretch until the fair one's throat moved.
Then she smiled, slow and deliberate, and gathered her skirts in both hands.
She raised them. Past the knee, past the thigh, up to her hips, showing the gathered nobility of the gallery her bare sex and the pale expanse of her legs, nothing beneath the gown but ambition. She hooked one finger and beckoned.
"Come here," she said. "All three of you. I have watched a Scot and a countess take everything this room has to offer tonight, and I refuse to be remembered as the afterthought."
The scholar's son dropped his glass. It did not shatter; the carpet drank it. The dark-curlled lord's ring stopped turning.
"Are you certain?" the viscount in green asked, his voice cracking on the last word.
"Do I look uncertain?" Astrid walked to the low marble balustrade that divided the gallery from the sunken steps and sat upon it, her skirts still bunched at her waist, her thighs apart. "I have a dried lord's spend on my tits and nothing in my cunt, and it is not yet midnight. Which of you means to fix that first?"
The dark-curlled one moved first, after all. He crossed the space in four strides and took her jaw in his ringed hand, tilting her face up, studying her the way she had studied the room.
"I have wanted you since you walked in," he said.
"I know. You are not subtle. Kiss me anyway."
His mouth came down on hers, hot and tasting of brandy. Astrid opened for him immediately, her tongue meeting his, and she heard the other two close in behind her, felt hands at her laces. The viscount in green worked the ties of her bodice with fumbling fingers until the midnight silk sagged and her breasts came free, heavy and pale, the stiffened mark of the iron-grey lord's seed cracking across the upper curve of one.
"Christ," the fair one breathed. "Someone has already finished on you."
"Someone has." Astrid broke the kiss long enough to look up at the scholar from beneath her lashes. "And here I am, still hungry. Does that frighten you?"
"No," he said, too fast, and she laughed.
She reached for him first because he was the most frightened. Her fingers made short work of his falls, and his cock sprang out, long and pale and already leaking. She wrapped her hand around the base and pulled once, slow, and watched his eyes lose focus.
"You will last longer if you think about ledgers," she advised. "Or cold rivers. Or anything other than my hand."
"I will not last at all if you keep talking like that."
"Then be quiet and let me work."
She bent her head and took him. Her lips sealed around the crown and she sank down, unhurried, her tongue tracing the ridge of him, and the scholar's son gripped the balustrade behind her with both hands as though the marble might hold him upright. Astrid worked him in slow strokes, her cheeks hollowing, her free hand finding the viscount in green and drawing him close, unbuckling him by feel without looking. His cock was thick, ruddy, curving slightly to the left, and she stroked him to full hardness with the same rhythm her mouth used on the other.
The dark-curlled lord had not waited idle. He crouched behind her, his fingers sliding up the inside of her thigh, and when they found her sex she was slick and open and utterly unashamed. Two fingers pushed into her and she moaned around the cock in her mouth, the sound vibrating through the scholar's flesh, and he swore and clutched the stone.
"She is soaked," the dark lord announced to the gallery. There were watchers now, a loose crescent of nobles gathering at a respectful distance, the same audience that had applauded Amelia. "Soaked, and she has not been touched all night."
"Watched," Astrid said, coming off the scholar's cock with a wet gasp, her hand never stopping on the viscount. "I have been watching. There is a difference. Watching makes a girl wet."
She turned her head and took the viscount in green, stretching her lips wide around his girth, and now her mouth worked one lord while her fist pumped another and the third's fingers curled deep inside her, finding the place that made her hips rock. She gave herself to all of it, greedy and deliberate, letting the gallery see everything, letting them see that she wanted to be seen.
"Sit her up," the dark lord said. "I want her now."
"Bold," Astrid said, lifting her mouth from the viscount, spit strung from her chin. "Do you have a name before you put that in me?"
"Lord Callum Renshaw."
"Renshaw. Remember this, then. I will make it worth remembering."
He stood and shed his coat, and his cock came free of his breeches, long and dark-skinned at the crown, the veins standing thick along the shaft. Astrid turned on the balustrade and braced her palms on the cool marble, presenting herself to him over her shoulder, her skirts bunched at her waist, her breasts hanging heavy and swaying, the dried seed cracking further.
"Then stop talking and spend something worth the memory."
He took her hip in one hand and pressed the head of his cock against her entrance. She was ready for him, drenched and aching, and when he pushed in, the first slow inch stretched her so full she hissed through her teeth.
"Yes," she said. "Like that. All of it."
He fed it to her, inch by inch, until his hips met the flesh of her arse and she was full to the root, gasping, her forehead dropping to rest against her crossed arms on the marble. He held there a moment, letting her feel every vein of him, then drew back and drove in again, harder, and the impact shuddered through her whole body.
The gallery had gone quiet. The only sounds were the wet slap of his hips against her and her own broken breathing, echoing under the tall arches.
The scholar's son stood before her face, his cock still rigid and shining from her mouth, and she looked up at him with her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy.
"Well?" she managed. "Did you want to waste it on the carpet?"
He fed her his cock again and she took him down while Renshaw fucked her, the two of them finding a rhythm between her body, one thrusting deep in her throat when the other withdrew from her cunt, and Astrid surrendered to the symmetry of it. The viscount in green knelt at the balustrade's end, leaning in to take her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard as her breast swung, and the sharp bright pull of it shot straight through her to where Renshaw filled her.
She came without warning, even to herself. Her cry was muffled around the scholar's cock, her whole body clamping down on Renshaw, her legs shaking against the stone, and he groaned at the grip of her and lost his rhythm, hammering her through the spasms until she was moaning continuously, a low helpless sound that the gallery heard and would repeat in drawing rooms for a week.
"God, her cunt is strangling me," Renshaw gritted. "I am not going to survive this."
"Then spend," Astrid gasped, pulling off the scholar. "Inside. I want to feel where you finish. I want to walk out of here with three lords in me."
"Three?"
"Count. You first. Then him in my mouth. Then the viscount wherever he likes. I told you I refuse to be the afterthought."
Renshaw broke. His hands clamped on her hips and he buried himself to the hilt and spent, thick pulses of it flooding her, so much that she felt it leak around his shaft and slide down the inside of her thigh. He stayed there, gasping, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, until his cock softened enough to slip free, trailing a string of seed to the marble.
She did not get a breath. The scholar's son took her jaw and thrust into her mouth, all his fright burned away, and Astrid took him deep on the first stroke, her throat opening for him as her cunt dripped onto the floor. He lasted less than a minute. He pulled back at the last second, his cock bumping her lips, and spent across her tongue and chin in short hot bursts, and she held her mouth open and let the gallery watch it pool on her tongue before she swallowed.
"Thank you," she said, wiping her chin with two fingers and licking them. "Now the viscount. Sit down, my lord. My knees are spoken for but my cunt is not."
The viscount in green sat on the balustrade where she had begun, his thick crooked cock jutting up, and Astrid rose on shaking legs, turned, and mounted him facing the gallery, letting everyone see the descent, see her spread around the girth of him inch by inch, see Renshaw's spend run down his shaft as she took him fully. She began to ride, rolling her hips, her breasts bouncing heavy and free, the choker glittering at her throat.
"This," she said to the watching crowd, breathless, shameless, her voice carrying the way Amelia's had, "is what a debutante is for."
The applause, when Renshaw's seed began to drip audibly onto the viscount's breeches with every stroke, was long and warm, and Astrid rode through it with her head thrown back, planning which door she would knock upon come morning.