If Satan himself demanded his soul for this, he’d gladly hand it over.
“I want you in my arms. I want us skin to skin. I want to make you spend and call on God and me. I want your mouth on me, your hands, your thighs around me. I want your eyes glazed with passion for me.” He took a step toward her. “I want to hear us both groan when I am inside you.”
Northword leaned against her, his cock hard and him halfway to coming because, God save him, Portia’s body was soft and curved, and he was going to make love to her until they were witless fools, and she had no choice but to agree they belonged together. She pushed up to kiss him again, and she was so very, very good at setting fire to his blood.
Lust, an unfathomable need, came from deep inside him, and it was everything he’d missed every damned time he’d had sexual relations. It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved his wife, he had. Or that he hadn’t enjoyed other lovers who came to his bed. He had. But not like this. Never. The missing part of his soul clicked into place with her, and he was whole as he had not been since the day his father had engineered their split.
Every shiver of Portia’s body, every soft sound to fall on his ears mattered to him because it was her in his arms. Failing to please her would rip him to pieces. He pushed away from her and grabbed her hand while he walked backward to the bed, bringing her along. No half measures. No caution.
Portia laughed and gave him a push. The backs of his legs hit the bed, and he sat on the mattress, splayed out to catch his balance. She stepped between his spread legs and he touched her naked backside or just stared at her breasts.
He drew her to him, hands sliding along her waist, up her back, fingers dancing down the dip of her spine. He took her mouth and she answered with a taking of her own. He cupped her bottom and brought her up until she had her knees on the mattress on either side of his hips. She gripped the top of his shoulders until she had her balance and when she did, he pulled the pins from her hair and kept going until her hair, dark, dark red, curled around his fingers.
“I adore your hair, every curl.”
“I’m glad you like brunettes.”
“My darling, you are deluded.” He took some of her hair in his hand. Light from the window nearest her reflected off her hair, turning even the shadows a rich, dark red. “Your hair is red, and I adore every lock on your head.” He slid his fingers beneath her chin and brought her face back to his. “I want you again. I want inside you now.” He leaned forward and nipped her lower lip. “Anything you want, if you’ll let me do that.”
Her smile was everything he loved about Portia. Her smile was bright and bold and for him, and her smile had been living inside him for years. A part of Crispin Hope and a part of the man who had become the Viscount Northword.
“Although, I feel I ought to tell you that I am inclined to be selfish just now.” For this slice of time, he was looking not at Portia, but solely at a naked woman whose proportions pleased him inordinately. Wickedly so. He brushed her hair behind her shoulders. In ten years, she’d become a woman. “You’re still beautiful, more beautiful and desirable than ever.” He put his palm over her mound, slid a finger between, and found slick heat. “That’s lovely.” He drew in a breath. “You’re wet for me.”
“Yes.”
“Good, because I’m hard for you.” Jesus, he wanted those legs around him. He wanted his hips tucked up tight against hers. He swept the back of his hand across her shoulder then down to her breast. “Lovely. That’s a fact.”
Her nipples peaked, and he swept his fingers across her again. His belly hollowed out. Somewhere in the house, timbers creaked. Outside, rain pattered against the windows. Then harder until it beat on the roof and windows. He held his breath until he was sure the noise was just settlement and the rain, and they weren’t about to be interrupted by a furious Hob.
He leaned close, his mouth by her ear. “What I’d like to do isn’t decent at all. It’s wicked and depraved.”
She angled her body against his. “You make it sound delicious. Is it?”
He fit both his hands over her breasts, and she leaned into his palms. He looked his fill of the sight, his hands over her, the flesh he couldn’t cover, the way her mouth parted. He pressed his lips to her shoulder; a light kiss while he swept his fingers along the underside of her breast, one, then the other, and the curve of her devastated him. He brushed a finger over her nipple and saw, felt, and reacted to the way she hardened at his touch. “I want my mouth here.” His fingertip came to rest at her mons then slid down until his hand cupped her. “And here.”
Her eyes opened wide, and she tipped her head to one side, curious. Intrigued. “There?”
“Yes. Precisely there.”
She arranged herself on his bed, her hair spread out, and her body open for him. He joined her and slid his hands underneath her bottom. One thing he’d learned was that he loved the taste of a woman. He’d had a mistress before he married, a courtesan who taught him things he hadn’t worked out on his own with Portia or some other woman who could never measure up.
Portia gave herself over to his mouth on her, and he made damned sure he didn’t bring her too fast. He adored her moans, the tension in her body when she came close, the way her hands touched his head, the tilt of her pelvis toward him. She made him feel like the best lover in the world, and the proof was in the way she came.
For a fraction of time, she went completely still, and in that space he spread her nether lips and licked along the center of her sex. She came apart, holding back none of her pleasure.
“More, Crispin.” Her voice shook. “More.”
He pulled himself over her, his mouth by her ear. “You have all of me. There’s nothing more for me to give.” He touched her once and she flinched with unsatisfied passion. “You have everything.”
He moved down her body and before long, she devolved into an incoherent cry. He spread his fingers over her belly while she came back to earth and then pulled himself up enough to dip his tongue into her navel. He lifted his head, and when she was looking at him, soft-eyed with pleasure, he thought his heart would burst as past and present emotions warred in him. As they did in her, too.
Northword spread his fingers over her stomach again. He had to work to keep his voice steady and then decided the battle wasn’t worth fighting. “Portia.” Her name came in a whisper. “I wanted you to have my child. I still do. I want it enough to beg you for another chance. We were young. You’re right about that. But I wanted us. And our child.”
“I know. I know. I know.”
“Say you’ll marry me, Portia. Promise it.” He stared at her stomach, fingers sliding, but tipped his head so he could see her face, too. Eyes closed, lips edged with white. “We can have the child we make tonight. Marry me. Please. I’m a better man, a wiser man. I’d be a proper husband to you and a loving father. Magnus knows I want to marry you. He doesn’t think you will, but I don’t give a damn for his opinion.”
“Crispin.”
He took her hand and moved over her, one leg across hers. The slide of his skin over hers heated his blood, the very marrow of him, and he pushed her shoulder until she was on her back. She opened herself to him. He pulled himself over her and thrust inside.
She was hot and slick, and he got harder being inside her, and inside, her soft body barely gave. He put his forearms above her shoulders and kept still, giving her time to adjust to him. “I couldn’t bear the thought of that man touching you.” He drew back his hips and pushed forward. “Nor the thought of you touching him. Nor that you might fall in love with him.”
She put her hands on either side of his face and arched her pelvis toward him. “Hush, my love.”
He drew back and pushed slowly in again, and it was heaven. Tension sang between them and, for him, it was the certainty that he could do exactly what he wanted, what would please them both, and the fact of her woman’s body that sent him into sensual paradise. He stroked in her steadily, and before long he knew he wouldn
’t last much longer.
He stopped moving and that nearly killed him, holding back all the urges of his body. He took her head between his hands, weight on his forearms. “Marry me.” He drew back his hips and pushed forward enough to make his balls go tight. He stopped moving because otherwise he couldn’t think. He had to work to marshal his thoughts.
“Marry me because I love you. Marry me because you love me. We’ll have children. Us. God, Portia, please. I want what slipped away before. I don’t want to live without you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
With the last of his wits, the last bit of his coherence, he waited.
She put her hands on either side of his face. “I love you, too, Crispin Hope. I always have.”
“Marry me.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips and bit his ear lobe once. “Yes, you fool. Yes. Now do this properly. The way you promised me or I shall know you’ll never be a proper husband for me.”
And so he did.
One Starlit Night - Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Carolyn Jewel
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Cover design © by Courtney Milan.
Cover photography credits © Zagorodnaya | Shutterstock.com, and ©Yeko Photo Studio | Shutterstock.com
ISBN: 978-1-937823-09-2
All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.
About Carolyn Jewel
Carolyn Jewel was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has three cats and two dogs. Also a son. One of the cats is his.
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Books by Carolyn Jewel
Historical Romance
Reforming the Scoundrels Series
Not Wicked Enough, Book 1
Not Proper Enough, Book 2
The Sinclair Sisters Series
Lord Ruin, Book 1)
Other Historical Romance
One Starlit Night, Novella From the Midnight Scandals Anthology
Midnight Scandals, Anthology
Scandal, RITA finalist, Best Regency Historical
Indiscreet, Winner, Bookseller’s Best, Best Short Historical
The Spare
Stolen Love
Passion’s Song
Paranormal Romance
My Immortals Series
My Wicked Enemy, Book 1
My Forbidden Desire, RITA finalist, Paranormal Romance, Book 2
My Immortal Assassin, Book 3
My Dangerous Pleasure, Book 4
Free Fall, Book 4.5 (a novella)
My Darkest Passion, Book 5
Other Paranormal Romance
A Darker Crimson, Book 4 of the Crimson City series
DX (A Crimson City Novella)
Excerpts
Midnight Scandals Anthology
What Happened At Midnight
by Courtney Milan
“John.” She shut her eyes.
“Swear to me that you don’t know where he is.”
Like everyone else, he was thinking only of her father. But unlike the others, at least he believed her. For now. Mary’s thoughts went to her trunk, to the ache in her arms.
“If I had to guess,” she told him gravely, “I would say that he went straight to hell. He left me—” All that angry fury raged within her for a moment, startling in its heat. No place to put it now; she had too much to do.
“Did he tell you where the money was?”
“Not a word.”
“What are your plans? Is that your trunk over there?” His tone was curiously flat as he spoke to her—not devoid of emotion, but withdrawn, as if he’d turned away from his own feelings.
She hadn’t dared to look at the massive steamer trunk where it lay. It had followed her from Southampton to Vienna, and then back for more holidays than she could count. It was large enough to fit all the many components of a lady’s wardrobe, and that made it very large indeed. The rope she’d used to lower it was still fastened to one handle; the brass fittings dented where it had banged against the ground when it had gotten away from her. She glanced over, bit her lip, and nodded.
He didn’t rush over and open it. Thank God.
“Do you have anywhere to go?”
“My father’s second cousin lives in Basingstoke. He’ll take me in.” The lies came easier now.
“And you have a plan.” He nodded. “I wish…” His voice was still flat, but his lips pressed together.
She turned away. “Don’t wish. You’ll only say something that we’ll both regret. After last night, anything more is impossible.”
And yet the possibility of that more kept intruding on her. Was it so little, then, that they’d had between them? She had liked the look of him, the way that he laughed. He’d liked the look of her. That was all. A few months’ acquaintance.
A few kisses, a few conversations—not much, but enough to spark a lifetime of hope. Enough that she’d chosen the possibility of him and family over…
No. She couldn’t let herself think that way any longer. Those memories belonged to another woman entirely—Miss Mary Chartley, the daughter of a respected member of the community. She wasn’t sure who she was in this skin any longer, but she’d ceased to be that person. No matter what she and John might once have been to one another, it wasn’t enough to survive the cataclysm of discovering that her father had taken thousands of pounds from their partnership.
She took off one glove, removed the ring from her finger, and held it out to him.
His flat façade finally cracked. His hand slapped against his trousers, and he turned his head from her. “God damn it.”
“Set it against my father’s debt.”
His jaw worked. It took him a few breaths to regain his composure, but when he turned back, he didn’t take the ring from her. “You’ll need help getting to the station.” Before she knew what was happening, he was reaching for the handle of her trunk.
She couldn’t let him touch that. If he tried to lift it, he might wonder what made her luggage so heavy.
“Really, John,” she said sharply, stepping in front of him. “I should think you’ve done enough.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Doesn’t it? Say you love me, that you would marry me without any fortune, with my father in disgrace. Say your sister would welcome me into the family, knowing that my father stole her son’s future.”
He met her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw reflected there. Regret? Anger? “You’re right,” he finally said. “I can’t say anything of the sort. But—”
“I don’t love you, either. If I did…” She slipped the ring into his hand. “If I did, surely I could not give you this with my head held high.”
If he’d put her in mind of thunder before, that flashing look in his eyes was the lightning, spearing her through in one instant. For one second, she thought he was actually going to grab hold of her. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even frown. He simply took a deep breath and shoved the ring into his pocket.
“Well, then.” Another breath, and he looked away. “Good riddance.”
More about Wh
at Happened at Midnight by Courtney Milan
A Dance in Moonlight
by Sherry Thomas
Summer 1896, Somerset, a few miles south of the Exmoor hills
THE WOMAN WAS BACK.
Ralston Fitzwilliam had seen her once before, two days ago. He had been on the tail-end of a fourteen mile walk, up and down hills so gentle they were barely bumps in the ground, across rain-swollen streams, and alongside green, sheep-dotted pastures.
Given that dark rain clouds, so low he could almost touch them, had crowded the sky from horizon to horizon, he should have gone straight home to Stanton House, set at his disposal by the Duke of Perrin for the few weeks a year Ralston spent in England. But the walk had not been sufficiently tiring for a man who wanted his limbs aching and his mind blank, so he had traversed Beauregard’s farm and headed up the slope at the top of which sat Viscount Northword’s country seat.
Only to have the rain come down hard halfway uphill. He veered toward Doyle’s Grange, a smaller property of the Northword estate. It was vacant at present, and he could take shelter under its ivy-covered portico without being fussed over and lectured about the foolishness of being abroad in such weather, without even an umbrella. As he approached the garden gate behind the house, she had appeared on the garden path, a young widow all in black.
She was beautiful—tall, regal, her hair as dark as the beads of jet that trimmed her hat. But what had truly caught his eye was the story of her life that had been written on her otherwise exquisite face.
It had not been the easiest of lives. There was an air of fragility to her—not an inborn timidity, but the residual fear of someone who had been burnt by the vagaries of fate.
He recognized himself—as he had been for many years, and perhaps even as he was now.
She hurried into the house without noticing him. But he thought of her as he waited out the rain beneath the eaves of the garden shed, for the entirety of his walk home, and when he extinguished his light at night.
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