For Desire Alone

by Jess Michaels

  She pinched her cheeks until they had a bit of color and smoothed her dress. She was checking the status of her teeth when the door behind her opened and in the reflection of the mirror, she watched Andrew walk into the parlor.

  She spun from the looking glass with a dark blush and shoved her hands to her sides. Wonderful, now she had been caught examining her teeth like she was a horse.

  If he noticed, he made no mention of it. He only reached behind himself and shut the door to the parlor with a loud click. They stared at each other for a long moment, long enough that Lysandra shifted. Perhaps she was supposed to say something. To begin the seduction. But what?

  “Hello,” she managed and then sighed.

  Hello? That was the best she could do.

  But as silly as it was, it seemed to break the spell. Andrew took a long step toward her.

  “Hello, Lysandra. Carlsworth tells me you only just arrived yourself, but I hope what you have seen of your home thus far is satisfactory to you.”

  Lysandra blinked. “You cannot be serious in that question. It is a beautiful home, no one could find fault with it.”

  He tilted his head and there was a flash of something in his stare that she couldn’t properly read. “I ask because the home is a bit smaller than some mistresses require. I only thought that since we would only share an affair for a short time—”

  He trailed off, and Lysandra wrinkled her brow. “Of course you wouldn’t invest in a large mansion for me. And if you had, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Having so many servants and such a beautiful home to myself is almost too much as it is. Thank you, my lord, for providing it for me.”

  He stared at her, but finally nodded. “You are welcome, but I would say that you shouldn’t be overly grateful when you take on a protector. You want them to pursue you, to be driven to give you more.”

  Lysandra stared at him. “But if I’m provided for, that should be all I require. I wouldn’t be able to demand something from a person as you suggest. Why would I?”

  “The chase, my dear,” Andrew said softly as he took another step toward her. “You must provide these men with a chase, otherwise they will lose interest. And since the chase will not involve the pleasures of your body, it must involve something else. Your comfort. Your company. Your approval.”

  Lysandra shook her head. “I understand what you’re saying, but I have a hard time picturing being so demanding.”

  One corner of Andrew’s lip lifted in a half-smile. “Then there will be much to teach. But first…”

  He trailed off and moved closer, closer, close enough that Lysandra could smell the masculine fragrance of his skin and feel its heat. Close enough that when he reached out he could take her hand. Slowly, he drew her toward him and then against him.

  Lysandra shivered as her mind flashed to the intimate kisses he had rained down on her quivering body just a few days before. The body that continued to react with both his touch and the memories, tingling as the area between her thighs grew wet and hot in anticipation.

  “I didn’t kiss you the last time we met,” he said and his rough voice was even rougher. “At least, not this way.”

  He gave her a wicked glance and then his mouth lowered to hers.

  He’ll protect her with every vicious bone in his body.

  Wayward One

  © 2013 Lorelie Brown

  During her ten years at the prestigious Waywroth Academy, Sera Miller clung to a strict code of propriety to shield herself from rumors that she isn’t an orphan at all. She’s a bastard. Now she wishes she had never allowed her friends to talk her into snooping into the mysterious source of her tuition.

  Her benefactor isn’t the unknown father she dreamed of one day meeting, but Fletcher Thomas—underworld tycoon, gambling den owner, and a man so dangerously mesmerizing that he could spark the scandal Sera has worked so hard to avoid.

  Fletcher is only two steps away from leaving the life of crime he inherited from his father. First he plans to join an aboveboard railroad consortium, then claim the one thing his ill-gotten gains have kept safe all these years—Sera.

  With every wicked caress, Sera fights harder to remember society’s rules and reject the painful memories his touch resurrects. Accepting Fletcher’s love means accepting her past—a risk too great for a woman who has always lived in the shadows. No matter how safe she feels in his arms.

  Warning: This book contains a do-gooder heroine, an accidentally charming hero with tendencies toward caveman-itis, inappropriate household décor and fabulous sex against a wall.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Wayward One:

  A curious weight settled across Sera’s collarbones. The tiny hairs at the back of her neck clawed upright as if she were being watched. Though it had been a long time since she’d felt hunted in such a manner, she knew how to respond. She quieted herself and made a surreptitious appraisal of the theater.

  No one in the box watched her. She turned her look outward, across the sea of less fortunate theatergoers who occupied seats in the main house. No faces turned up toward her.

  Across the way was another matter. In a tiny jewel of a theater box, a man watched her.

  Digger.

  No, he was Digger no longer. Not to her and not to anyone else. He was Fletcher Thomas.

  He stood half-concealed by the crimson velvet hangings that separated each group, entirely apart from the rest of those occupying the box. His wide shoulders filled out the black and white evening dress with aplomb, not a stitch out of place. A hugely gaudy jewel winked from his cravat.

  Yet he seemed more dangerous and wild than the lion she’d once seen at a traveling circus exhibit. That beast had stared back at Sera. The whole time she’d known it only remained behind the rickety fence by its own will. When it decided to break free, its roar would herald her doom.

  Though the distance was too great to see the pale blue of his eyes, he watched her. He even had the audacity to tip his chin in a nod. One side of his mouth bent into that half smile he’d used in his parlor three days earlier.

  Sera became angry. No, more than that—she was incandescently furious. Her fingertips tingled with the need to do harm. Her stomach wound into a sickly bundle. Sweat sprang up at the back of her neck. She would not sit there and allow him to continue such scrutiny.

  She launched to her feet suddenly and without grace. The short train of her gown caught a chair leg as she turned. “Please, pardon me for a moment. I need air.”

  To see Lottie’s wide mouth flatten with concern was unusual but heartening. “What’s wrong?”

  Sera forced herself to shake her head. If her friends went with her, she’d likely end up venting and the venting would soon lead to screaming. “I’m fine. I only need a trip to the withdrawing room.”

  “Would you like us to go with you?”

  “No, that’s quite all right.”

  It took entirely too long to cross the tiny box. Victoria’s aunt, Lady Dalrymple, was half asleep in her chair next to the door. The ostrich feathers in her headdress bobbed along with each snuffling snore.

  Theatergoers crowded the hallway. Breath and heat and musky smells pressed in on her from all sides. Away from the surge of people headed toward the refreshments, she exited toward the quiet, empty hallways leading to the exits.

  Near a curtained alcove she stopped, not wanting to venture much farther and risk censure for roving without a chaperone. She flattened a hand against the wallpaper. The flocking snagged softly against her glove. She bent her neck and dragged in heavy breaths. Life had been so much simpler a few days ago. She’d known her place. The charity case. The probable by-blow. But she’d also known how to continue in a respectable mien.

  Now she was lost.

  An arm reached through the curtains and wrapped around her waist. With a yank, she was pulled into the dark. Panic flooded her veins. She opened her mouth to scream.

  A hand covered her mouth. A heavy, large and undoubtedly male body pre
ssed along her back. His chest burned into her shoulders and his arm lay warm across collarbones bared by her low-cut evening gown. Fear overwhelmed her, but only until she smelled a spicy wash of familiar soap.

  The fingers across her mouth loosened but still didn’t release. He leaned over her, speaking quietly into her ear. “It’s me. If I release you, do you promise not to scream?”

  Fletcher’s breath sent shivers down her neck. She only resented him more for it.

  Regrettably, screaming for the pure unadulterated joy of it was not an option. Even if it were acceptable to release one’s anger in such a fishwife manner, she’d only get him in trouble and risk her own reputation.

  Finally, she nodded.

  His hand slid away. Each finger dragged across her skin. Tingles washed over her.

  Sera turned and pressed her back to the wall, but the reflexive retreat didn’t gain her much room. The alcove was little more than a curtain concealing a doorway. He loomed too near, taking up the precious air with his vitality. His mouth was a hard slash of darkness amid more gray. The tiny streams of light that arrowed around the edges of the curtain only accentuated the shadows draping his body.

  The first thing that popped into her mind then fell out of her mouth. “You were in the Earl of Linsley’s box.”

  Somehow he managed to infuse arrogance in a single nod. “That I was. Are you surprised?”

  She slid her hands behind her back, the better to hide their nervous twisting. The rear seam of her bodice abraded her knuckles. “In all honesty, yes. You said you’d taken over your father’s interests. I didn’t think Linsley was the type to…dabble.”

  “He’s not. More woe to me for it.” He rubbed a hand across the top of his head. “It might be easier to crack his consortium if he were,” he muttered, so low that Sera barely heard him.

  “Consortium?”

  “Railroad.” He waved a hand. “No matter. I’ve come to find out if you’ll take the money.”

  She narrowed her eyes but saw him no better for it. She’d pay the entirety of the sum to read his expression. “Did you intimidate Mrs. Waywroth in some manner?”

  He flattened his hand against the wall next to her head and leaned near. “Define intimidate.”

  “To frighten or scare in any manner.”

  The air pressed close. If she breathed too deeply, she’d brush against him. “Do I seem like a man who could intimidate, Seraphina?”

  She swiped her tongue across her lips as she tried to see past the shadows and memories. He was different now. Not the boy she’d once known. Despite that, she couldn’t help but wonder at his true motivations. Why pay for years of schooling for a girl he’d known for a matter of months? He’d taken her from the gutters and designed his own lady. But why?

  For the price he’d paid, there was no telling what repayment he expected.

  “If it served your purposes, I think intimidation is well within your purview.”

  His head lowered farther, until her world narrowed to the wash of his breath across her jawbone. “And your precious Mrs. Waywroth? Do you think I said frightening things to her?”

  “I don’t think you had to.” She refused to show her fear by running away, but her shoulders pressed more firmly against the wall. Anything to sublimate the urge she had to touch him. The wallpaper was cold against the nape of her neck, bared by the meticulously intricate hairstyle Victoria’s maid had created. “I imagine it was an endowment. For the library, perhaps?”

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your ability to look within people.” The darkness prevented her from seeing his hand move, but she certainly felt it. A whisper of motion along the outside of her arm. The shock of touch.

  “And you? Am I supposed to be able to look within you?”

  The barest hint of a chuckle colored his rich voice. “I certainly hope not.”

  A notorious rake is about to make the ultimate faux pas—fall in love with his own wife.

  Unforgivable

  © 2013 Joanna Chambers

  Gil Truman has eyes only for the beautiful Tilly—until he is forced to marry plain, sickly Rose Davenport to reclaim the lands his father foolishly gambled away. After a disastrous wedding night tainted with his bitterness, he deposits Rose at his remote, Northumbrian estate, soothing his guilt with the thought that she need never lay eyes on him again.

  Five years after the mortifying wedding night that destroyed all her romantic fantasies, Rose is fed up with hearing second- and third-hand reports of Gil’s philandering ways. She is no longer the shy, homely girl he left behind, but a strong, confident woman who knows how to run an estate. And knows what she wants—her husband, back in their marriage bed.

  Gil doesn’t recognize the bold, flirtatious woman he meets at a ball, with or without her mask. Yet he is bewitched and besotted, and their night together is the most passionate he has ever known.

  But when he confesses his sins to the beautiful stranger, the truth rips open the old wounds of their blighted history. Threatening any hope of a future together.

  Warning: Contains a flawed hero who can be redeemed with the right woman—the one who’s been under his nose the whole time. Ain’t that just like a man?

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Unforgivable:

  “Are you quite sure this is the best course of action, cara?” Lottie asked carefully. “Your husband has refused to come to Weartham all these years, and while I’m sure he’ll be gratified to see how beautiful you’ve grown—after all, the man is horribly shallow—I fear the shock of you turning up on his doorstep unannounced might cause him to do something foolish, like send you home before he’s taken a good look at you.”

  Pathetically, Rose found herself seizing on the least relevant part of what Lottie had just said. “Do you think he will find me much changed?” she asked hesitantly, staring into her chocolate cup.

  Lottie sighed. “Cara, I doubt he will know you.”

  “Really?”

  Lottie rose and held out her hand. “Come here.” She drew Rose over to the seat she’d recently vacated in front of the dressing table, facing the mirror, and sat her down. Then she lifted one of the silver-backed brushes and began to draw it through Rose’s dark hair, still loose round her shoulders from being brushed out last night. After a brief silence, Lottie said, “Do you recall what your hair was like when you married?”

  “Short,” Rose replied.

  “Yes, just a covering really; this long.” Lottie held her finger and thumb an inch apart. Had it really been as short as all that? Rose touched her head as though to check, but of course, her hair was long now, long and thick and luxurious, dark brown tresses that spilled almost to her waist.

  “I remember it well,” Lottie went on, still brushing. “You were very poorly when I met you, and your hair was growing slowly. Your body had more important things to mend first.” She looked up, meeting Rose’s gaze in the mirror with those expressive black eyes that showed a depth of emotion that Rose hadn’t been able to understand back then. “You almost died.”

  “Yes,” Rose whispered. She remembered the worst of it not at all, and much of the rest only dimly. Seemingly interminable days of fever, the days and nights running into one another, the hallucinations more real to her than the world around her.

  The physicians had glumly told her father she would die; and she would have done so if left to them.

  “But you saved me, Lottie,” she said, smiling at her friend in the mirror.

  “Pshaw!” Lottie scoffed. “Anyone could see what you needed: rest, food, care. Those doctors would have had you in a coffin while you still breathed! But look at you now—so beautiful.” She beamed. “No, he won’t know you. On your wedding day, you weighed little more than a bag of feathers, and your skin was a mess. But look at you now! The marks are all gone!”

  “Not quite,” Rose countered lightly. “I have a few scars.” Not merely physical ones either. She tried to dismiss the memory of a night in an inn long ago
; a girl in a pink dress, a pink ribbon in her hair. A memory that still made her feel like that girl all over again.

  “You call those scars?” Lottie retorted. “Those little moon-marks?”

  There were hardly any scars on her face, which was amazing, considering how awful they had been. They’d been everywhere, even on her eyelids and inside her ears. But she’d been left with just three scars on her face, three little white circles at her left ear, her hairline and her chin. They were tiny, almost unnoticeable, the silvery scar tissue just a few shades lighter than her creamy skin.

  There were a few more obvious battlefields on her body. A little ring of them on the back of her neck, like the interwoven links of a necklace; another clutch on the backs of her knees. A few other isolated ones here and there, on flank and thigh and arm. But none of them were unsightly, just little silver indentations in her flesh. They had long ago lost the power to make her feel ugly. Indeed, they made her feel proud now, to have survived.

  Rose looked into the mirror and saw a woman who was beautiful. She saw her own beauty with satisfaction and joy and defiance. The gaunt, skeletal face of five years before had filled out to one of heart-shaped prettiness. The sad little cap of thin hair was now a thick, glossy mane. Her skin glowed, and her eyes shone with health.

  “He won’t know you,” Lottie said again, but this time, the tone of her voice was almost wondering. “Not immediately. And certainly not masked.”

  “Masked?”

  Lottie smiled, a wicked slashing smile. “Have you ever been to a masked ball, cara?”

  “What? No, of course not. They’re hardly de rigueur in deepest, darkest Northumbria.”

  “Would you like to go to one this evening? I’m sure your husband will be there. And don’t you think that would be a much better place to meet him? Just think, instead of turning up as petitioner at his front door, asking for an audience, you set the time and place. And then you let him see your beauty, perhaps flirt with him a little—flirtation is the best language for your husband, cara, trust me. He responds to it better than English.”