They were almost to the altar, and Nick knew Charlotte must have realized by now that her groom was missing. From the corner of his mouth, he said, "Don't panic, love. It'll be all right. I'll fix this.' Somehow I'll fix it."
They halted at the altar steps. Nick gripped his sister's hands. She had yet to speak, and he assumed she must be in shock. "Love, what do you want me to do?"
The bride pulled away from him and grasped the ends of her veil. Slowly, she raised it up, revealing Sarah's beaming, breathtaking, and beloved face. "Please, Nick. Will you marry me again?"
At that point the vicar's voice boomed, as did Nick's heart. "We are gathered here today to witness the renewal of wedding vows between the Most Honorable, the Marquess of Weston and his lady wife."
* * *
Bathed, powdered, and perfumed, Sarah awaited her husband in the master suite at Weston Abbey. They had made the journey to Nick's country house after the wedding breakfast and had spent the afternoon walking in the gardens, discussing family matters like Charlotte's elopement, Sarah's future as a wedding consultant in London, and the frequency of their visits to Texas, settling on three times a year. Nick had suggested four transatlantic trips, but since Sarah liked the idea of spending summers in Scotland, she didn't see how they'd have time to fit everything in.
As the day wore on, Sarah found herself anticipating the coming night with pleasure. To her great surprise, she wasn't in the least bit scared. It was a shame she couldn't say the same about Nick.
One would think he was the inexperienced near-virgin here tonight. For her part, Sarah would have been happy to retire to their suite shortly after their arrival at Weston Abbey. Nick had been the one to delay the matter. He'd been the one to seem skittish.
They'd shared an intimate dinner before a crackling fire in the sitting room upstairs, sipping champagne and eating strawberries. Finally, she'd excused herself and retreated to her bedroom to prepare for what was, in effect, her wedding night. She wore a clinging gown of crimson silk, something Jenny had stitched up for her while she was with the jewel cutter she'd rousted from his bed early that morning. She'd left her hair down and brushed it until in shimmered in the lamplight. Now all she needed was her groom.
The man was slow in arriving. Sarah waited and waited some more. Finally, the butterfly wings of nervousness made themselves known in her stomach, and she lost her patience. Crossing to his chamber door, she banged on the thick dark wood with her fist. "Nick, are we going to do this or not?"
"Come in, Sarah."
He stood by the window, still dressed. Mostly. His jacket and necktie were gone. His snowy white shirt was unbuttoned and hanging open to reveal a torso dusted with hair and rippling with muscles. His gaze made a slow journey from her head to her feet, then back up again. His eyes blazed, and Sarah's mouth went dry. But when the fire sank to a smolder, she frowned. "Have I misunderstood how this works? I thought you were supposed to come to me."
He sipped from the glass in his hand. "I'm slow tonight."
Milk? He's drinking milk? "Should I be insulted?"
"Savored, Sarah. You should be savored."
His words sent a shiver streaking down her spine. Blue eyes glittered as he gestured toward a tray. "Would you care for some refreshment?"
She tore her gaze away from him. Milk and cookies. The smile began in her heart and flowed to her lips. "Yes, I would."
He made a move toward the food and drink, until her next words stopped him cold. "I'd like a kiss, please,"
Nick closed his eyes.
"What's the matter, Nick?" she asked gently.
"You are a bold woman, Lady Weston."
"I'm trying."
"You're doing well."
"Kiss me, Nick."
"Damnation." He drew her into his arms and kissed her hard and quick.
Sarah melted against him. "I thought you were going to go slow?"
A reluctant chuckle escaped Nick, and this time when he kissed her, he took the time to do it right. His tongue delved into her mouth, stroked her, explored her, demanded. He tasted of milk and molasses cookies, a sweetness that flowed through her senses and made her moan. His scent was a mixture of man, magic, and moonlight that was deliriously Nick. Like always, the touch of his mouth on hers made Sarah's blood catch fire. This time, however, the restlessness inside her demanded daring. This time, her commitment to her marriage and her love for Nick demanded boldness.
He was her husband. Legally and morally. Resolved, she ignored the butterfly wings of nervousness and doubt fluttering inside her and brazenly reached toward his trousers to touch him.
He tore his mouth from hers. His eyes were hot, hungry, and a little wild. "Damnation, Sarah!"
An exhilarating sense of power swept over her, and she laughed. She fitted her hand against him as he had done to her that night in the garden, and when he groaned low in his throat, instinct and the driving force of passion swept every other thought from her mind.
She skimmed her hands beneath his shirt and over the rippling muscles of his back. Wildness streaked through her, and she arched against him, softness to steel. She ached. A hollow, glorious aching that shuddered through her bones.
As if sensing her need, Nick pressed his hand to her lower back and brought her against him. She gasped at the hard, heated length of him, at the zing of pleasure such pressure provoked.
And she wasn't afraid.
He bent her backward, trailing his lips downward to the sensitive skin at the base of her neck. A low moan, almost a growl, rumbled from Nick's throat and he nipped at her gently. Sarah shuddered. "Nick, take me to your bed. Make love to me. Now, please."
"Oh, lass," he said, the brogue of his youth thick in his voice. "I dinna want to rush you."
She offered him a wide, heartfelt smile. "Ten years is not exactly rushing, my love."
With that, he picked her up, carried her to his bed, and lay her gently upon his mattress. Then he stepped away, his eyes hungry as if feasting on the sight of her.
Sarah stretched sensuously against the sheets, once again feeling the force of a woman's power over a man. Was it different this time, or had she missed it the first? "Take off your clothes, Nick. I want to see you."
"You're a temptress, woman. A wicked siren," he said as he flung his shirt to the floor. Then he stripped off his trousers and rose above her on the bed. "I plan to thank God for it every day."
Her gaze locked on the proof of his desire, and she felt a frisson of nervousness. From out of long ago came her mother's words, and they spilled from Sarah's lips. "The Rod of Steel."
In the process of slipping the straps of her nightgown off her shoulders and revealing the full, round globes of her breasts, Nick froze. "What did you say?"
"My mother's instruction on lovemaking." He frowned down at his erection. "Oh. Now I remember. No wonder you panicked."
"I'm still a little nervous. May I touch you and get accustomed to the feel?"
"Lass, if you don't touch me I think I'll probably die."
He was steel, but velvet, too. She ran her fingers over him, around him, learning him. The weight of him felt lovely in her hand, and the way he sucked his breath past clenched teeth created a rush of power and desire within her.
"Enough," he said in a raspy tone, closing his hand around her wrist and pulled her away from him. "I'm hanging on by a thread here."
She gave him a saucy look. "A thread. Hardly."
“Seductress." He grinned and lay down beside her. "This isn't what I anticipated from you, you know.”
"I'm surprising myself, too. What's the difference, do you think?"
He lifted her hand and gently kissed her palm. "Love." Kissed her wrist. "Mature love." Kissed his way up her arm to her shoulder. "You and I are woman and man now. Not girl and boy like before. Our bodies were ready, but our minds still had some growing up to do."
"I'm all grown up now."
"You won't see me arguing." He leaned close to kiss that sensitive
skin just below her ear.
She arched her neck to offer better access and purred. "What will I see you doing, Lord Weston?"
He lifted his head and stared at her. The teasing light in his eyes had died and was replaced with somber sincerity that she knew came straight from his heart. "You will see me love you, now, always, and forever. I won't lose you again, Sarah. You are my heart, my soulmate, my friend. I will cherish you and honor you all the days of my life."
These, too, she thought, were his marriage vows, as much as those he'd spoken in church that morning, and certainly those he'd repeated to her a decade ago. She lifted her hand to his face, stroked his cheek, gazed deeply into his eyes, and made a vow of her own. "I will go where you go, Nick. I will make a family with you, a home for you, and it will be filled with happiness and love. I offer you my heart, my body, my faith, my trust. I love you, Nick. Now, please,' finally, make me your wife."
And so he did. Sweetly, tenderly, and gently—and finally—Nick breached her maidenhead with a minimum of pain. While her body adjusted to the novelty of being filled, he feasted on her breasts, kissing and licking and sucking until she felt the pull of desire deep in her loins and her inner muscles gripped him. "Mmmm..." he murmured against her. Then he moved inside her, and Sarah gasped with pleasure and once again caught fire.
Soon she whirled in a storm of sensation, the musky scent of arousal in the air, the salty taste of sweat on bare skin, the sound of one heart calling out to its mate.
A wild, primitive force took control of her, and Sarah met Nick thrust for thrust, her nails sinking into his back as she arched and drew him deeper. Ribbons of lightning sizzled along her nerves and tension coiled in her womb. His breathing was ragged, her own whimpering, aching, needy gasps.
It went on forever, but not nearly long enough.
The pressure within her built slowly, fiercely, hotter and hotter and higher until she wanted to scream. "I love you, Sarah," he said, repeating it in time with his strokes. "I love you... love you... love you."
She screamed. She shattered. A great quaking spilled from her womb, the inner tremors gripping Nick, milking Nick, until he gave a cry of his own and emptied his life force inside her.
They fell together back to earth. Nick collapsed, then rolled to his back, taking her with him. He tucked her head against his chest and held her, his hand gently stroking her hair. Contentment enveloped them like a cloud, and for a short few minutes they lay together without speaking, cherishing the moment and one another.
Then Sarah lifted her head and looked at him. "That was, by far, the most thrilling moment of my life. Can we do it again, please?"
"Now?"
"Right now."
Nick's Rod of Steel stirred against her stomach. "Damnation." He laughed, rolled her on her back, and settled himself between her legs. "Get ready, Lady Weston, tonight is your lucky night. Your Good Luck Wedding Night."
"Yours, too?"
"Mine, too. Because every night for the rest of my life, I will be sharing a bed with you."
He brought his mouth down to hers and gave her a swift, hard kiss. "That, my love, makes me the luckiest man on earth."
The End
Page Forward for more by Geralyn Dawson
Excerpt from
Sizzle All Day
Bad Luck Abroad
Book Two
by
Geralyn Dawson
© 2000, 2011 by Geralyn Dawson Williams
Chapter 1
Scottish Highlands, 1884
Jake Delaney was a man on the run.
From his mother.
"It's embarrassing," he told the small dog sharing the saddle with him. "I'm thirty-four years old. I'm my own man. I've driven cattle from Austin to Wichita. I've fought a gun battle with bandits in the West Texas badlands and won a knife fight with card cheats in a San Antonio whorehouse. I took my first drink when I was ten, loved my first woman at fourteen, and bought my first property at eighteen. I truly believed I had my share of sand."
The dog snorted.
So did Jake. Sand, hell. He'd taken one look at that matchmaking light in his mother's eyes and had run for the hills. The hills of Scotland, that is.
The dog gazed up at him with liquid brown eyes, her long ears flopping in cadence to the horse's gait. She'd been a good, if unexpected, companion on this trip north. Jake liked females who listened well and didn't wear out a man's ears with talk of hair styles and fabrics and fashion.
That's all he'd been hearing of late. He'd spent the past few months escorting his mother around London. Elizabeth Delaney had returned to England after more than twenty years in Texas, thrown herself into the welcoming arms of a blue-blood society, and decided her son needed to follow suit. Literally.
"A bit of wenching is fine, don't get me wrong," he told the dachshund he'd christened Scooter. "But I'm not about to marry one of those simpering English misses. If I did want a wife—which I don't—I'd want a female with some pepper in her. I like heat in my women."
And in the weather, too, he silently added as the dog whined and burrowed her way inside his coat. Here it was the middle of summer, but the day was cold as a dead snake in an ice house. Think of how miserable he'd feel had he made the trip during the winter months. That's when he'd first learned that the missing copy of the Republic of Texas's Declaration of Independence was likely hidden in a castle in the Scottish Highlands, and he'd been elected to go get it.
Jake believed it to be a worthy quest. When the state capitol burned four years ago, Texas's lone copy of the historically significant document was lost to the fire. Recently, research by the Historical Preservation Society in San Antonio confirmed that in 1836, five copies of the Declaration had been penned and sent by courier across Texas in order to inform citizens of the official creation of a new republic. What, then, had happened to the four unaccounted-for copies? The Society had made it their objective to find out. They would locate the lost Declarations and bring them home to the people of Texas.
Jake became involved because at that time, his mother had been an officer in the organization.
Originally, Cole Morgan—Jake's brother-in-every-way-but-blood—had been charged with the task of retrieving the copy rumor had placed in England. Cole's search proved to be quite an adventure, netting him in the end one wife—Jake's sister Chrissy—but no Declaration, only a lead about where to look for it next. Supposedly, a lost copy of the Republic of Texas's Declaration of Independence could be found in the Scottish Highlands, in a place called Rowanclere Castle.
"So here I am," he murmured. "Cold enough to spit ice."
Jake might have been born in Britain, but he was South Texas bred. He thrived in the sizzling heat of a Texas summer, and he wasn't cut out for cold. He was more than ready to reach his destination, recover the Declaration of Independence for the people of Texas, and start living his own life for a change.
Jake had plans. For years now he had spent his time fulfilling responsibilities to family, friends, and country. But now his sister was blissfully married to his best friend, his mother happily reconciled with her British family, his land sold, and his law partnership in San Antonio cheerfully disbanded. As soon as this last duty was accomplished, Jake would be free to shake off the clay that had long weighted down the wings on his feet.
He craved adventure. The wilds of Africa, the islands of the South Pacific, and the mysteries of the Far East were lures he need no longer resist. He couldn't wait to see it all, experience it all. To live it all.
Thinking about it spurred him into picking up his pace. A short time later, his horse rounded a bend and Jake spied the end of the current trail. "Rowanclere Castle," he murmured, reining his mount to a halt so he could study the place.
He scratched Scooter behind the ears as he blew a soundless whistle of appreciation at the sight of a fairy tale come to life. Turrets and towers and thick, weathered walls of stone rose high above the deep blue waters of a narrow lake—or loch, to use
the vernacular. A colorful flag fluttered from the long pole reaching up into the sky from a tall, square keep. The rest of the castle was a hodgepodge of gabled roofs and towers and crenelated lines that softened the keep's imposing facade.
Jake had visited larger castles since arriving in Britain, but this was certainly the most beautiful. Rowanclere possessed an air of welcome lacked by the others he'd seen along the way. This castle was no forbidding hunk of stone and mortar, appropriate as a setting for one of Shakespeare's tragedies. Rowanclere was more a light-hearted, fanciful romance, a place for a princess to dance with her prince.
"Princess?" Jake muttered aloud. Hell. The cold must have frozen his brain. Next thing you know, he'd be composing poetry.
He'd better get his head on straight. Castles were historically places of intrigue, and the search for this lost document had already come close to costing his sister Chrissy her life. Besides, he didn't want to die before getting a good look at those bare-breasted Tahitian women.
Tucking that warm image pleasantly in mind to combat this wretched cold, Jake snuggled Scooter close to his chest, signaled his horse forward, and headed for the castle by the loch.
* * *
Gillian Ross stood at a tower window and watched the broad-shouldered man guide his horse across the small stone bridge spanning the burn. The wings of a thousand butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she sent up a silent prayer for the success of the plan she prepared to put into action.
Mr. J. A. K. Delaney of Texas had sent word to expect his arrival today. How would he react to what he found at Rowanclere Castle?
"I am having second thoughts," her twin sister. Flora, insisted as she nervously twisted the wedding band on her finger. "We should not do this."
"We have little choice at this point."
The Bad Luck Wedding Night, Bad Luck Wedding series #5 (Bad Luck Abroad trilogy) Page 30