by Lauren Smith
“Sukey!” The maid flushed, then turned on him, eyes flashing. “I thought better of the Orange-and-Purples, I really did. I’m not getting married for your dratted election, so you can stop flirting with all the servants in the vicinity.”
Sukey winked at him. “Oh, don’t stop on my account.”
Nick stifled a groan. He wasn’t cut out for this. He couldn’t manage even the simplest bit of politic dealing. “Mrs. Sparks, I take it.”
Despite Nick’s dismay, he couldn’t help thinking this meant that was her shift in Sukey’s hands. Her petticoat and underthings were draped over the rhododendron behind her. Under her wet dress, right now, she must be wearing brown-and-white striped stockings, like the three pairs hanging from a nearby tree branch.
“Yes,” she said sharply, “and yes, those are my underthings you’re ogling. Sir.”
Nick straightened, collecting his wayward thoughts. “My humblest apologies, madam.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? The very humblest? Ne plus ultra?”
There was no purpose even in an ordered retreat; he had no reinforcements, no main army to rejoin. He had to stay and fix this. But first he needed to discover the lay of the land. “Did you like being married?” he asked bluntly.
“No,” she snapped, and then pressed her fist into her mouth as if she couldn’t believe she’d said it. “I mean—yes,” she amended after a moment. “Sometimes. I—it wasn’t Will’s fault. Lord, I’m a beast.”
This was interesting.
“Of course you’re not a beast, ma’am,” Sukey said. “Men are impossible to live with, that’s all.” She put a hand on her mistress’s shoulder.
As if that made her remember how cold she was, Mrs. Sparks shivered. “I’m impossible to live with too,” she said sadly. Then she shot him a glare. “Which is why I live alone.”
He sighed. “So do I. Although I’m sure it will be no time at all before my mother is trying to matchmake for me. She bullied me down here to talk to you, you know.”
He didn’t like how calculated his words were. But it worked. He could see it, when in her mind they became fellow pawns in his mother’s game. She smirked. “If this is an example of the delicacy of her stratagems, you have nothing to fear.”
“Unkind, but just.” Her lips twitched. He almost had her. “Listen—perhaps you don’t want to marry again, but do me a favor and at least come to the dinner my brother is throwing for the voters on Thursday? Meet a few potential husbands. I hear there’s to be dancing, and it will convince my mother that I’m at least making inroads into your spinsterhood.” Damn, that last bit sounded rather indecent.
She flushed, evidently agreeing.
“Why not, ma’am?” asked Sukey. “It would do you good to get out for an evening. I can’t remember the last time you wore something really pretty.”
It wasn’t meant as an insult, but Nick winced as the blush deepened into angry shame on Mrs. Sparks’s face. “I don’t own anything really pretty,” she said harshly. “I dyed my best gown black when we laid Will out.”
“There, you see?” Sukey said. “That means it was more than two years ago. Two whole years of drudgery and scribbling. It’s about time you—”
Mrs. Sparks began to vibrate like a teakettle. Nick found it inexplicably charming.
“It’s not a very formal affair,” he interrupted before she could boil over. “Pin an orange-and-purple rosette in your hair and you’ll be the height of fashion. Please say you’ll come. I’d like to know there will be at least one familiar face in the crowd.” His mother wanted him to dance. He had planned to ignore that, but now, if his leg would permit it, he found himself wanting to dance with Mrs. Sparks. Although if she stepped on his feet, he imagined she would do so very firmly.
Her face softened. He was close to success, so close. “I don’t have time,” she said, still sharply but with rather less conviction than before. “Drudgery and scribbling is time-consuming work, and unless you wish to do my washing and piece a quilt for the Gooding Day auction, the rest of my week is—”
“So if I help with your washing and make a donation to the auction, you’ll come to the party?”
A word from her lips can bring him to his knees.
The Corrupt Comte
© 2013 Edie Harris
The Bourbon Boys Quartet, Book 1
Gaspard Toussaint is known throughout 1820 French society as the “molly comte”, a foppish throw pillow of an aristocrat. But his entire life is a twisted mass of secrets and lies as a spy for the Crown. His final covert act will have him fleeing his broken country forever…but before he can escape, he needs the power and safety that only money can provide. And no one has more money than English heiress Claudia Pascale.
The only child of a wealthy tradesman, Claudia has continually failed to catch a husband—due in large part to her uncontrollable stutter. Spurned by a dashing French lieutenant and desperate to escape her parents’ household, she joins forces with the seemingly harmless Gaspard to learn how to properly ensnare a spouse: through seduction.
All too soon, Gaspard’s lessons in delicious domination and sinful submission make Claudia suspicious that he is not what everyone believes him to be. And Gaspard realizes his quest to possess her is becoming less about her dowry…and more about the woman herself.
Warning: Contains an aggressive Frenchman with extremely loose morals, a determined heiress who can’t refuse a dare, and bedroom games where boundaries were made to be crossed.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Corrupt Comte:
“Bon s-soir, my lord.” Regardless of the stumble in speech, there was no trace of uncertainty in her husky tone.
Euphoria sprinted along his nerve endings. “Do you have something to tell me?”
She tilted her head to the side but said nothing.
“Oh, kitten, do not test me tonight.”
“And what was t-tonight, if not a t-test?”
How many people had dismissed Claudia as slow because of her stutter? She was quick, quicker than anyone gave her credit for, and a sharp spike of adrenaline slithered down his spine. She was going to fight him, even though she’d already implicitly offered her surrender by seeking out Gaspard in the ballroom and not Sabien.
Not. Sabien.
He inhaled deeply, catching the faint scent of tea leaves clinging to her. He found the fragrance as pure and refreshing now as he had in the linen closet. “Clever girl. But I know you want to tell me something.” Hesitation wrote itself across her face, but Gaspard wasn’t about to allow her to hide in silence any more than he had done at the first moment of their meeting. “Last night, I said to decide,” he prompted. “Did you decide?”
Her gloved hands flattened over her middle. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
The muscles at the back of her jaw bunched and flexed. “I p-prefer you.”
It wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for, in terms of declarations, but it was progress. “Prefer, or choose? We do not want you changing your mind later.” Or ever.
“Fine. I choose you.” She rolled her eyes at him, something he doubted she would have dared to do at any other man. It seemed that a couple of orgasms from him had given Claudia confidence.
His body tensed at the thought. “Prove it.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Prove you chose me. I dare you.”
Her glare was full of frustrated heat. “I’m st-standing in front of you, not him. I d-don’t know what more p-p-proof you n-need.” Anger colored her cheeks, turning her pretty blush splotchy with each rise and fall of her chest.
“Simple.” There was nothing simple about it, really, but the euphoria sluicing through his veins had turned him slightly mad. “Return the favor I did you last night.”
“F-favor?”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
Realization was not a trickle but a flood across her now-familiar features. “You c-cad.”
“Do not say you
have not thought about it.”
She moved to stand at his side, her back to the guests, and turned her head to glance up at him before scowling down at the floor.
With his gaze on the crowd, watching for any undue interest in their conversation, he inched his body closer to hers. Leaning in, he traded wicked, whispered words for the chance to inhale her warm scent, a scent which both comforted and aroused. “Do not tell me you are not curious about licking my cock. Sucking it.” Drinking him dry.
He barely stifled a shudder of longing.
Her gasp told him how reckless he was being, and perhaps a better man would have retreated, averse to scaring or intimidating a woman he needed to woo. But Gaspard had neither the time nor the patience for wooing, not with the culmination of five years’ worth of covert efforts taking place tomorrow night.
Besides, Claudia wasn’t scared. Frustrated, yes. Irritated with him, probably. Excited? Nervous? He supposed those were normal reactions for a sheltered virgin raised in a wealthy household. But he didn’t feel fear from her, and Gaspard knew himself to be a master of fear, manipulating it at whim. He brokered in fear, his sense of it as finely tuned as that of taste and smell, and nothing in her right now called to that dark, sick part of him.
He didn’t want her afraid, he realized, his gaze locked on the whirling rainbow of dancing guests. He just…wanted her.
She sighed, and he almost smiled. She stood at the edge of his vision, a miffed pastry frosted in pink satin, and his mouth watered with the urge to nibble at her. “I hate you,” she muttered.
“I am certain you believe you do.”
There was a pause as she pondered that. “Wouldn’t you rather d-dance?”
He bit back a scoffing laugh. “No.” No man, no matter his sexual preferences, would ever choose waltzing over willing lips wrapped wetly around his member.
Though her lips might not be so willing. Part of him—a very small, dusty, hidden-away part of him—hesitated, but when her gloved fingers tangled discreetly, tentatively, with his… She didn’t try to hold his hand, to clasp or grip or squeeze, but satin scraped against the calluses on his fingertips, and the lace at his cuff shifted over his scars as she wandered and explored.
A stroke down his middle finger, and he instantly hardened, as if she had given the same slow, purposeful touch to his cock. “Claudia.” His fingers clenched around hers.
“You sh-should know…I’m choosing th-this. You.” He heard her swallow. “You’re not f-forcing m-me, and it’s not a game, like the c-c-closet.”
“This is no game to me.” With his hold on her hand, he led her away from the partygoers, walking backwards and keeping an ever-watchful eye on their surroundings. It wouldn’t do for people to notice. This dare was for her alone, and voyeurs were not invited.
She followed, and he felt her stare on him as they trod a course plotted in his mental schematic of Max’s home. He backed silently through a doorway, listening for chatter and laughter and instinctively rerouting them away, until they reached a secluded corner—a dead-end, darkened hallway that was nothing more than useless architectural space between two rooms. Frivolous, wasted footage, he’d always thought.
Until now.
Gaspard’s shoulders hit the rear wall, pulling Claudia with him as the shadows cloaked them. “So this is your choice.”
The faint glow of lamplight from the sconces in the main hall crept through into their dark corner, glinting in the facets of her bourbon eyes. “Isn’t that what you w-wanted?”
It was, but he was greedy over her, constantly wanting more—the next splintered confession, the newest sensual discovery, the higher leap and greater fall. He needed to push her further with each word from her hesitant lips, his gut whispering, Nip her, and she’ll bite back. Swipe a paw at her, and she’ll claw your world to shreds.
His justification in singling out Claudia Pascale was nothing elegant or calculated, after all, and it was time he admitted that to himself. This was the bestial, desperate instinct that had kept him alive in the bowels of hell. Instinct called him to action the very first moment he saw her, and instinct had him by the balls now.
This is how you survive.
She tugged at her hand, still caught in his, but he didn’t release her. “M-my lord—”
“Tell me what you did in your bed last night. After I left.”
She glanced over her shoulder, as if worried someone lurked nearby, someone who would overhear. But she was safe in their corner, and she couldn’t escape his demand. A huff of air left her nostrils in a rush. “D-don’t m-m-make m-me.” Her stutter grew more pronounced as her frustration mounted.
“This is your choice, yes?” She hated talking, had every reason to hate it—but as he’d told her in the linen closet, he would never accept silence from her. Not when he could see she had so much to say.
“I thought I was g-going to…” She gestured toward his groin.
Christ. “You are. But first, I want words. Your words.” Where once desire had stemmed from his need for dominion over her—and what heady power it was, turning a mute into an orator—now he livened to the sound of her voice. Husky from lack of use, vibrant with checked emotion, with painfully precise Englishness rounding every consonant.
Each word from her was special, because each word belonged to him. Gaspard. He owned them.
Wicked Designs
Lauren Smith
The League of Rogues takes what they want—but have they taken on too much?
For too long Miss Emily Parr has been subject to the whims of her indebted uncle and the lecherous advances of his repulsive business partner. Her plan to be done with dominating men forever is simple—find herself a kind husband who will leave her to her books.
It seems an easy enough plan, until she is unexpectedly abducted by an incorrigible duke who hides a wounded spirit behind flashing green eyes.
Godric St. Laurent, Duke of Essex, spends countless nights at the club with his four best friends, and relishes the rakish reputation society has branded him with. He has no plans to marry anytime soon—if ever. But when he kidnaps an embezzler’s niece, the difficult debutante’s blend of sweetness and sharp tongue make him desperate for the one thing he swears he never wanted: love.
Yet as they surrender to passion, danger lurks in Godric’s shadowed past, waiting for him to drop his guard—and rob him of the woman he can’t live without.
Warning: This novel includes a lady who refuses to stay kidnapped, a devilish duke with a dark past, and an assortment of charming rogues who have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into.
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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, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Wicked Designs
Copyright © 2014 by Lauren Smith
ISBN: 978-1-61921-745-4
Edited by Noah Chinn
Cover by Kim Killion
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: January 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
League Rule 4
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
C
hapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Back Cover Copy
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