He carried Alethea toward the stairs, the indecent smile on his face announcing his intentions. The mullioned windows of the house might require glazing, but moonlight still managed to pierce the unpolished panes, and, well, if there were any bats in residence, they had gone into temporary hiding.
He unfastened her cloak with one hand, then the sleeves of her gown even before he’d borne her to the landing.
“Gabriel,” she said with a soft moan, inflamed by the sinful heat in his eyes. “I want you.”
“Don’t say that again until you’re in my bed,” he warned her. “Or I’ll be taking you right here on the stairs, bats and servants be damned.”
“What a way to talk to your wife,” she said in a breathless voice. “Anyway, it’s almost morning. I prefer a little privacy myself.”
Her cloak slipped off her shoulder. She should have protested, but instead she kissed his strong brown neck and unknotted his neckcloth with her free hand. His iron-muscled body felt warm and inviting. He shifted her weight. The hard bulge of his erection pressed against her rump.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said with a grin.
She closed her eyes. “Hurry, or I shall faint.”
He gripped her firmly. “You won’t faint until I give you good cause.” His eyes devoured her. “Which I will.”
A fever raged in his blood as he entered their chamber and laid her upon a bed made with a freshly washed counterpane and crisp sheets redolent of rosemary sprigs and lavender soap. Her smile invited his seduction. She had become uninhibited in his bed, but he had other lessons in sensuality to reveal.
Apparently, she did, too.
She lifted her hand and sketched her fingers down his chest, unfastening both linen buttons and links as she went. Her descent continued past his waistband, whereupon she made quick work of unbuttoning the leather that bound him.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” she asked, tracing the length of him through his loosened trousers.
“It feels…I can’t…”
For a moment his throat closed so that he had to struggle to breathe in a normal fashion. Or perhaps he would quit breathing altogether and survive on sheer joy. Angel. Gypsy. Lady. Of all the images he had held of her over the years, none brought him the rush of raw pleasure that thinking of her as his wife did.
He rendered her naked between slow breath-stealing kisses, studying her soft, rosy body as if he were unwrapping a long-awaited gift.
“May I finish undressing you?” she whispered. And she pushed his shirt from his shoulders without waiting for his permission.
“In a minute,” he muttered, trapping her hand in his. His tongue circled hers with such erotic skill that her hands dropped to her sides in surrender. “I mean to erase every memory that made you sad.”
“But I want to touch you,” she whispered stubbornly.
“Scars and all?” he asked, already at her mercy before she raised her hands again, this time tugging over his hips.
“I mean to make you forget how you came by those scars.”
He pulled off his coat and shirt and threw them in the direction of the Jacobean wardrobe against the wall. Swinging around briefly to remove his boots and trousers, he shuddered as he felt her hands wander down his spine.
“I have scars everywhere,” he said, rising briefly, the moonlight accentuating the hard angles of his body, his erection.
Her breathing became shallow, uneven as he stretched out between her legs, one hand slipping under her hip. “To think I fell in love with Helbourne’s most wicked son.”
He traced her delicate nipples with his tongue until she bowed her spine in shivering pleasure. “A good thing for me you weren’t really an obedient girl.” He worked his other hand between her thighs, his fingers deft, subjecting her to a sensual agony that enslaved her every sense.
“Perhaps,” she whispered, her dark eyes taunting him, “I won’t be an obedient wife.”
“Only a well-pleasured one. Obedience is secondary.”
“I love you, Gabriel.”
“I love you more than you love me.”
“I’ve loved you longer.”
He laughed. “Then I shall have to love you stronger.”
“Love me right now,” she whispered, running her heel lightly down his hard-muscled leg to his foot.
But he was in no particular hurry on this night, his time of homecoming, of honeymoon. He treasured every moment, relished each detail, the cold wind that howled but did not penetrate this strange house, the warm-blooded woman who had waited seven years for him. Let her wait a little longer. He’d make it worth her while. A gambler, he had known the first time she kissed him that the odds were in his favor.
Read on for a taste of Jillian Hunter’s next irresistible romance,
Wicked at the Wedding
Coming soon to bookstores everwhere
All the talk at the costume ball marking the final fortnight of London’s Little Season was of a notorious personage known as the Mayfair Masquer. His escapades had invigorated a year remarkable only for debts and hailstorms.
The ladies who braved the masquerade that foggy October night professed alarm that sightings of him had become more frequent. Their escorts vowed to protect these cherished gentlewomen in the event that the blackguard dared to appear in one of their bedchambers.
Which meant, as a consequence, that these gallant young men must first be ensconced behind closed doors to catch him in the act.
The act of what exactly was not understood.
No one knew what the cheeky scoundrel wanted….
“Gabriel,” she said in a whisper. “You are in my brother’s house, and as such—”
“I love your hair loose,” he said quietly. “I never dreamt it was that long and lustrous. Why don’t you wear it down more often? You look like one of those Italian princesses in a painting.”
“A lady of our time observes certain rules,” she managed to get out, “and a gentleman today does not—”
“—take advantage?”
Which he did, rubbing his closely shaven cheek against hers before he claimed her mouth in a hard, unapologetic kiss. And then another until her mouth softened under his gentle aggression. His hand locked around her waist, pulling her against his body until she felt herself yield to his strength.
Dangerous? Without a doubt.
But like a fire in the midst of winter, the heat he offered beckoned. And if she burned herself, would that not be better than the cold isolation of the past year?
Also by Jillian Hunter
THE SEDUCTION OF AN ENGLISH SCOUNDREL
THE LOVE AFFAIR OF AN ENGLISH LORD
THE WEDDING NIGHT OF AN ENGLISH ROGUE
THE WICKED GAMES OF A GENTLEMAN
THE SINFUL NIGHTS OF A NOBLEMAN
THE DEVILISH PLEASURES OF A DUKE
Wicked As Sin is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2008 by Maria Hoag
Excerpt from Wicked at the Wedding by Jillian Hunter © 2009 by Maria Hoag
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming edition of Wicked at the Wedding. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-50758-7
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