It’s only a restorative tonic for women. So why are the bachelors of the Ton running scared?
Aphrodite’s Brew
© 2008 Delle Jacobs
The Earl of Vailmont, a confirmed bachelor who laughs at superstition, scoffs at the rumors that a love potion is behind the recent string of improbable marriages, and he vows to expose the charlatan behind the fraud. But when Val meets Sylvia, Lady Ashbroughton, her silver-green eyes set his soul spinning as if he has just encountered a witch.
Sylvia needs no handsome earls prying into her life. If Val learns of her secret trade in potions, she will be ruined and her beloved stepdaughter will be deprived of her Season. Worse, the earl could uncover Sylvia’s most shameful secret—her penchant for handsome men. To ward him off, she protects her fragile heart from unwanted new passion by wearing her family recipe in a locket.
But neither logic nor charms can combat the stubborn love that sweeps them into a whirl of unbridled passion.
And, from somewhere in the mists of time, a forgotten, nameless god is laughing.
Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex and unexpected bursts of side-splitting humor.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Aphrodite’s Brew:
“We’ll only stay long enough to dry out and warm up.” Val looked at her face, striped in colored rivulets like crinkled ribbons from the flattened papier-mache fruit on her sodden bonnet.
He repressed a smile. “You must remove your bonnet, Lady Ashbroughton. It has utterly failed you in its duty.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
He gave a tug to the ribbons, grinning as he lifted the ruined bonnet from her hair and surveyed the damage more thoroughly. The stripes ran over her cheeks and down her neck, where they puddled into some indescribable color that stained the neckline of her dress. He chuckled. “I believe I should call you Lady Rainbow.”
Lady Ashbroughton ran for the looking glass and gasped. “Oh! How terrible! You must think me the worst of frights!”
“We share the title, I am afraid. I did not like it anyway. I have never been fond of edible garments.”
“My hair is as wet as if I had taken the dunking instead of you. Oh, I am so sorry, Lord Vailmont, you are the one who must be so very cold and wet. I should be thinking of you instead of myself.”
Cold as he was, something warmed him, and it came from her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and keep her there. But he just smiled instead. “The rain was as cold as the stream, so there is really no difference. Come now, my dear, let me help you with your pelisse.”
She had unfastened the frogs on the pelisse, and he lifted the garment, heavy with water and mud, from her shoulders and hung it on a peg. Sudden terror struck him in the gut. He had not realized. It was so heavy from the water it had absorbed, it would have drowned her, had she fallen into the stream.
“A pity,” he said, as calmly as he could. “It was the only garment you possess that I like.” At last, he removed his own thoroughly soaked coat and found a peg for it. Clarence would be in a peeve for weeks when he saw it.
“And now it is as wretched as the others.” She scrubbed at the streaks with a wet cloth.
Then she fumbled with the tapes on her mud brown dress, which in the scheme of things had at least not much changed its color, for all that it clung to her like another skin, and gave him images he hoped to remember sometime later when he was not so soaked and cold.
“Just when you were making some progress. Allow me, madam. Then I’ll go into the sitting room.”
Wincing, she turned her back to him and Val pried the rain-swollen knots loose with his fingernails. “There,” he said. “I shall go down and have an ale in the common room, perhaps see the ostler about giving the horses an extra measure of mash. They earned their keep today. I shall return in an hour to see how you are doing.”
As she held her dress front to her body, she nodded, furrows of anxiety on her brow. But of course she would be concerned, with her reputation on the line.
He went to the stable and saw to the horses. The exhausted team would not travel farther tonight, but he had known that, and already arranged to change teams. He was just glad they had not suffered too badly. Nor was the whiskey any worse for all the weather. He returned to the little sitting room, where he stripped off his coat and boots, then the mud-streaked shirt and the breeches that had once been a fine doeskin. The boots were ruined anyway, and it did not matter if they stiffened, so he set them as close to the fire as he dared. Not even his cravat was salvageable, and wherever his stockings had gone, he had no notion. The innkeeper’s wife had produced a silk banyan, a regal blue and red brocade stripe that floated as he walked.
An hour had passed, and he knocked on the door. She did not answer. Val knew he shouldn’t, but then he had said he would check on her in an hour.
He turned the handle and peeked in, waiting for a sodden half-boot to bounce off his nose.
The room was strewn with feminine garments, over chairs, on pegs, draped over tables and bedposts, spread out in odd fashion for drying. The lady lay curled up on a fainting couch pulled before the fire, wrapped in a blanket, a pillow beneath her head where it rested on the couch’s high arm, and that strange locket dangling against her extended arm. Her dark hair had been brushed upward and let to cascade over the sofa arm, straight down, touching the floor in a flowing sheen like gleaming, polished ebony.
Val caught his breath. His body hardened. If he had even a grain of sense, he would leave. Now.
But she slept on. He eased into the chair across from the fainting couch and settled into its comfortable cushions, just to watch her. Silk the color of the half-consumed glass of claret enhanced the ivory delicacy of her skin, colored her cheeks and lips with rose, made him ache to touch the glorious fall of hair. He could almost feel its sleekness slipping through his fingers. He wanted to run his fingers over her cheek, catching the edges of the silken crescents formed by her dark eyelashes. He had never noticed her lashes before, so mesmerized had he been by her wonderful pale jade eyes.
His lurid thoughts spiraled downward, down, into the dismal pit of sexual desire, thoughts deserting rationality, that didn’t care if she was a lady or not, thoughts demanding fulfillment and would not go away, would darken until they took control, until they got what they wanted.
He was a man who was always in control, who managed his life within a hair’s breadth of a second. He should stop it. Must stop it. Yet he could feel his control slipping away like a slide down an icy slope, first creeping, then escalating to a hair-raising, scream-making ride into Hell. And there was nothing in his will, his power, not even his desire, he could muster to change it.
There was no question. He was bewitched.
***
A hot breeze touched her face. Sylvia blinked awake. It was his breath as he knelt before her, only a kiss away from her lips.
“Tell me to go away,” he whispered. But his eyes, dark, so dark she could not find his soul in them, begged something different.
“Tell me to leave.”
Sylvia couldn’t move. She could only gaze into the unfathomable depth of the eyes with their indefinable darkness, black or charcoal, or something darker than the midnight sea, yet with a fire that burned with lustful longing. From somewhere she found the strength to lift her hand, to touch that shadowed roughness of his cheek that had so intrigued her.
“Slap my face, Sylvia. Make me leave.”
But she was helpless. He lit fires inside her she had nearly forgotten could exist. She wanted to feel the lips that changed from harsh to gentle, that flexed with sensuality. She slipped her hand behind his neck.
His lips found hers, touched in aching tenderness, then touched again, harsher, demanding, powerful, suddenly deeply invading. She gasped and hungrily met kiss for kiss. Eagerly tasting. Eagerly returning his invasion.
He leaned over her, the blue and red striped silk falling open. She slipped her hand beneath the
sensuous fabric, her fingers threading through crisp hairs, tracing muscles on his chest, and up to expose thickly muscled arms. It glided away to the floor like falling water, baring skin tanned golden to his waist. With a growling moan, his hands plunged beneath the blanket and bunched up the red banyan above her thighs, up and over her head. He slid atop her, hands once more cupping her face, running down beyond her shoulders to her breasts.
“Witch,” he said, mumbling into her mouth as he drew her into another deep kiss.
“No—I’m not,” she murmured back. But the words were lost in the rush of wild passion flowing through her, igniting flames that shot through to her core.
“Sorceress. You’ve bewitched me,” he replied.
“I think you’re afraid, Vailmont.”
“No.” He kissed her again as if he meant to devour her.
“I’ll make you a potion,” she gasped between his kisses. “Angelica and hyssop. To ward off witchcraft.”
“Nothing could ward you off.”
Her arrival stirs something deep and dark. Perhaps even deadly…
Face of the Maiden
© 2008 Emma Wildes
Celia Fairmont’s new home on the wild coast of Cornwall is a sprawling ancient mansion steeped in history and deep, dark secrets. From the first night her dreams are plagued by images of clandestine meetings with a handsome, reckless lover. The man in her visions looks disturbingly like the oldest son of her new guardian, the Earl of Ashbourne, but there the resemblance stops. Phillip Leighton is practical to a fault and too preoccupied with estate business to even notice her presence.
Phillip Leighton does not have time for illogical romantic fantasies about his father’s young ward. The very lovely Miss Fairmont is unsophisticated and innocent—not at all suited to be the next Countess of Ashbourne. And besides, he is practically engaged to a titled widow. But erotic dreams disturb his nights, and by day she preoccupies his thoughts, and he finds himself fascinated against his will.
Phillip can’t seem to keep Celia out of his head—or out of his arms. When a series of puzzling accidents begins to happen, he knows with chilling certainty that their future is on a collision course with the past…
Warning: This title contains explicit sensual love scenes, sexy ghosts, violence, some bad language in a polite Regency way, and a devilish wayward rake or two.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Face of the Maiden:
The mist sent long tendrils like ghostly fingers out of the darkness to cross the path. It hung in gray banks over the trees, shrouding the surroundings and making everything seem still and dead. As she ran along, something moved in the black shadows to her right, snapping twigs and rustling leaves. She paused, her heart beginning to pound the blood through her body in a rush, panic rising on a knife-edge of control, when some creature shot out of the bushes and streaked into the night. Her breath went out in an audible whistle of relief and she caught up her heavy skirts in her hands, hurrying forward.
She was late. Again.
Excitement and anticipation grew, overcoming some of her fear over the solitary walk in the eerie fog. Ahead she could see vague shapes begin to take form, squares suggestive of human mortality, and she swallowed down a quick shiver.
She should have insisted on a different meeting place, she thought, weaving her way through the headstones. Discretion was one thing…this flair for the dramatic was another.
Almost there.
A dark figure detached itself from the swirling gray.
The materialization was unnerving, startling, and even though she had expected him…a cold ache of fear twisted in her stomach. The black edge of his cloak flapped in the wind as he stood still.
He outstretched his hand slowly in unspoken command and invitation. She ran into his arms and he wrapped the cloak around them both as she buried her face in his chest and clung to him.
“For a moment,” she whispered breathlessly, “I…I wasn’t sure it was you.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, my love.”
She snuggled deeper into his embrace, her heart still jerking erratically in her chest. He lifted his hand to stroke her hair and she felt the ripple of muscle under her cheek, relishing his strength, the strong clasp of his arms around her.
Reproachfully, she said, “Meeting in a graveyard sets the mood for a good fright, would you not say?”
His laugh stirred her hair. “I didn’t order the mist, my sweet. It was a gift from the gods themselves. And as for our meeting place…think of us as ghosts, as would anyone who might see us here.”
She was silent. He was only too right. It was an unfortunate reality; this necessary secret that sent them creeping to each other among the sleeping dead.
His heartbeat had quickened already under her ear. So impatient, she thought with a small smile, always so ready and impatient…
“Come.” He released her and took her hand, picking his way through the headstones.
This time it was past the silent church, toward the sea. A squat shape loomed through the trees and she remembered it. The old sexton’s shed, abandoned for years. He opened the door and it swung outward with a protesting keen of rusted hinges.
A scrape and a flare. A wavering light played about the tiny room. The floor was bare but recently swept, and there was a pile of soft new blankets and a shaded lamp which he knelt to light. The soft glow sprang forth, revealing the sheen of moisture on his dark hair, hollows under his high cheekbones, and the slow sensual curve of his mouth. He stood in a smooth, fluid movement, with that controlled grace that was so much a part of him—part skilled swordsman, part dancer, part muscular animal.
“What do you think, lady mine?” His sweeping hand indicated the interior of sagging roof and rough walls. Reaching to his throat, he unfastened his cape and tossed it aside.
“Elegant, sir. With every luxury at the ready. You spoil me.” She arched a brow and let her own cape slide free, shaking out the dampness from her skirts.
She was instantly sorry for the jest. His long fingers stopped in the act of removing his neck cloth, his dark brows snapping together. He said tersely, “Would that I could spoil you, madame, and be rid of this accursed secrecy.”
In remorse, she moved forward and touched his arm, looking into his sapphire eyes. “Floor or bed, with you it matters not.”
His hand came upward, cupping her cheek and he said huskily, “I want you.”
“And I you.”
“Loosen your hair.” It was a command.
Obediently, she lifted trembling hands to pluck the pins from her long hair and let the golden strands tumble down her shoulders and back.
“Perfect,” he muttered in approval, tangling his fingers in her loose tresses and tugging her head backwards.
His mouth came down, hot and hungry, to cover hers. She kissed him back fiercely, possessively, and offered no protest when he unfastened her dress and pushed it from her shoulders, letting it pool at her feet in a heap of lace and satin. He lifted his head and his breath went outward in an audible hiss.
She wore absolutely nothing underneath. Blushing slightly under his heated gaze, she said shakily, “We have so little time. I hate to waste any fumbling with corsets and my chemise and…”
“I’ve never agreed with you more.” A low laugh escaped him. Then he scooped her up in his arms, moving a few feet to lower her to the makeshift bed. His gaze locked with hers as he removed his clothing and boots.
It always shook her. The depth of his desire to have her. His cock stood erect already against the taut plane of his stomach, the tip beaded with semen, the prominent veins pulsing slightly with the beat of his heart.
Then, naked and aroused, he lowered himself over her. His hands roamed freely over her skin and he sought her right breast, taking the nipple deeply into his mouth. Desire shot through her whole body and she moaned, threading her fingers through his hair, feeling the faint abrasion of his beard on her tender flesh. He suckled, swirling his tongu
e, his hand sliding at the same time between her legs. She parted for him, eager for the pleasure he gave her so generously, for the slick penetration of his skillful fingers. His thumb brushed her clitoris in a persuasive motion and she arched into the caress, a bolt of rapturous sensation making her quiver.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
It’s all about the story…
Action/Adventure
Fantasy
Historical
Horror
Mainstream
Mystery/Suspense
Non-Fiction
Paranormal
Red Hots!
Romance
Science Fiction
Western
Young Adult
www.samhainpublishing.com
Devonshire: Richard and Rose, Book 2 Page 27
