by Laura Parker
Philadelphia was incredulous. ‘You bought them at the auction?”
“I thought you knew that.”
She shook her head, looking down at the pearls once more. “I couldn’t abide knowing which of my father’s detractors bought them so I didn’t watch the bidding. I’m glad it was you.”
He lifted her face with his fingers. “You are making me do all the work, menina. Have you nothing to say?”
She met his black gaze and felt again the fire, and the love, and the joy that she had thought she would never feel again. “You are wondering why I ran away.”
“I know why you ran away.” He brushed the tip of one thumb over the fullness of her lower lip. “But you are done with running. Sim?”
“How—how did you find me?” Why was he watching her mouth like that, like he would like to take a bite out of it?
“You may thank your employer, though she did not choose the most direct route to locate me. She sent private investigators to find me and I, suspecting them to be agents of MacCloud, avoided them quite well. If I had not happened to surprise one of them as he was going through my luggage in Chicago last week, I might not be here even yet.”
He slid his little finger under the curl covering her ear and began rimming its shell. The thrill of his touch made her softly gasp. “Three months is a long time to be without you. I have not slept well at all. How could I, when I can remember how perfectly you fit against me in bed, how your lovely spine curves so sweetly against my belly, and the pressure of your shapely buttocks against my loins makes me eager to awaken?”
He stepped up so close to her so that his lapels touched the rounded curves of her bodice. The fingers beneath her jaw turned her face up so that his breath brushed her lips with his next words. “Tell me what you remember, menina.”
“You. All of you.”
He kissed her then and she thought her heart would stop from the joy of it. He tasted of exotic music and tropical sunshine, of jungle darkness and lush wild fruits bursting with ripened nectar. Dark rich rivers began to flow within her. Deep and life-filled and urgent currents flooded her.
Finally, the gentle hands that had drawn her to him held her a little away. His bittersweet chocolate gaze was so penetrating that her world ceased spinning. “Have you nothing to say to me even now, menina?”
“I love you.”
He played his words against her mouth. “I know that.”
“I will marry you.”
“That is what I came to hear.”
He took the pearls from her hands and set the case on a nearby table. “Now come here, menina.”
She went with him to the sofa without a thought for their circumstances or for propriety, or the chances of being caught. She was astonished at his ability to rid himself of the essentials, and even more surprised that she let him free her of her gown. And then she was in his arms, his glorious warm copper-skinned embrace, and she forgot that she was in the Ormstead mansion parlor, on Fifth Avenue, and even that it was eleven fifteen on a Monday morning in November. There was nothing but the pulse of Brazilian music in the exquisite power of his love to fill her senses.
He took her to dark and passionate places, showed her jewel-filled midnight skies, brushed trade winds over her skin, and dressed her in his earthy scent.
Hedda Ormstead was not a gambling woman. She had known exactly what she would see when she opened the drawing room door. Still, it came as something of a shock to find her best camel-hair sofa being so freely abused. If she had not already been making wedding arrangements for the past week, she would have been thoroughly outdone.
She shut the door discreetly and set herself before it as guardian. It would not do at all for the footman or parlormaid to know that she was permitting such goings-on beneath her roof. She had trouble enough keeping her staff in order.
Age had its privileges, and one of them was the right to be improper, and imprudent, and to revel in it. And to think, she was actually playing cupid at her age!
More from Laura Parker
Caprice (The Masqueraders Series - Book One)
Hadrian Blackburne returns to London from the war. Thought to have been killed at Waterloo, he soon wishes he were, instead bored to tears by his unruly family and his role as Lord. He misses the spy games of Persia, where he was a master of intrigue. His attention is snared by a ravishing, veiled beauty who has swept into London’s Regency society on a cloud of exotic mystery.
Who is this Princess Sultana el Djemal? Hadrian must know, even if playing the game of love could cost him body and soul.
Clarissa Willoughby’s harmless deception was designed to open doors for a widow ready to shed her weeds. Once Hadrian begins his pursuit of “Sultana,” his passionate seduction makes Clarissa jealous of the exotic temptress she herself created. The game of love becomes more perilous than way when Clarissa sets out to win Hadrian’s heart, battling again his suspicions and her alter ego.
Mischief (The Masqueraders Series - Book Two)
One night of passion can build a world. One memory can tear it down.
As Napoleon invades Persia, clever but shy Japonica Fortmon is chosen by the ailing English Viscount Shrewsbury to arrange his escape from Baghdad. To get him out, Japonica must enlist the aid of the infamous Hind Div, a man as mysterious as he is ruthless. Whispered to be a spy, an assassin, and even a sorcerer, Hind Div agrees to help Fortmon, and all it will cost her is a night of passion.
A year later and the war is over. Freshly widowed Japonica arrives in England, wishing only to settle her unruly step-daughters with Devlyn Sinclair, the new Viscount, and to return to France, and the son conceived on that one night of surrender. She is stunned to recognize the new Viscount, for he is none other than Hind Div, only scarred by war and missing any memory of the merciless man he once was. If his memory returns, he could claim back his son and destroy Japonica. She must live with this man who once ignited her passions, and has started to once more, and to restore to him a sense of pride, of honor, of identity, even if it costs her everything.
Emerald and Sapphire (The Masqueraders Series - Book Four)
He’s known as Merlyn Ross, an actor and petty thief. He’s a handsome commoner who wears a leather eyepatch, his other eye a piercing emerald green. He’s also known as the Comte de Valure, a dashing French nobleman who wears a grey wig and a silk eye patch, his other eye an chanting sapphire blue. Admired by men, adored by women, no one suspects that Merlyn and the Comte are one and the same, or that both men steal more than kisses when setting out to seduce London’s wealthiest women.
But one night changes everything.
Cassandra, a highborn lady, is the target of a robbery, and the victim of amnesia. Locked away as a vagrant, she is sold for one night’s pleasures to a prisoner who has been condemned to death, a man with an emerald eye. One year later, as Cassandra’s memory has been partially restored, her child, conceived on that fateful night, is being held hostage by her father-in-law. It is only here that she meets the Comte and realizes who he really is. Determined to keep the woman he fell in love with on their night together in that dark prison, Merlyn must pull off the heist of his lifetime against a formidable foe, and he must become the one singular man worthy of his one true love.
The Gamble (The Masqueraders Series - Book Five)
She’s ready to risk everything for a man with nothing left to lose — except his heart.
Jack Laughton was a viscount who one night traded his life of leisure in order to masquerade as a notorious highwayman: “Black Jack” Law. Nothing could touch this conniving rogue’s soul…until his eye fell upon the beauty whose stagecoach he attempted to rob. Now he is willing to do anything to make this alluring woman his — even abandon his wicked ways.
Sabrina Lindsay has a knack for defying social conventions. Her endless escapades in London society have enraged her guardian who wants nothing more than to marry her off to a prominent nobleman. But it wi
ll take much more than threats to bend Sabrina’s stubborn will. Sabrina vows to do whatever it takes to save her brother Kit, imprisoned by their guardian to insure her obedience…even if that means making a pact with the devil himself, “Black Jack” Law.
It’s a gamble when the dazzling and daring Sabrina and the handsome rogue Jack join together, but the true risk comes when it’s her heart he’s trying to steal.
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