One-Click Buy: July 2009 Harlequin Blaze

by Julie Kenner

  “That’s three out of four,” she said, pulling him back to the reality of yet another failed husband prospect.

  “Three out of bloody four,” he echoed.

  “So, what happens if I fail to marry in the next eleven days?”

  He felt his gut tense and mouth dry in spite of himself.

  “There is still one name on the list,” he said. Not that he expected the last candidate to be much different from the others. Not that he wanted that candidate to be different. He felt a peculiar weight against his chest and sent a hand to the envelope in his inner pocket. The damned license never let him forget for a minute that she was meant for someone else.

  “Why should I believe he will be any more suitable? One was spoken for. Another was a mean-spirited bully.” She displayed the count on her fingers. “And the third was a feckless little squab with deplorable dental hygiene. I could do better standing in a town square yelling for volunteers.”

  “You can’t cry off—I’ve already paid your blessed mortgage.”

  “I didn’t say I was crying off. I just think it’s time for a different approach, that’s all. If I’m to be married within eleven days, I need to find more suitable husband candidates.” They had to pause to avoid a group of well-oiled students staggering out of a pub and stumbling arm-in-arm down the middle of the street. “That means going where men of substance and ambition gather.” She pulled him to a halt, searching some mental image. “I should go straight to London and search for my own husband.”

  London. He groaned. He had hoped to leave it to her future husband to take her there and escort her through the appointments with dressmakers and milliners and visits to linen drapers and haberdashers. Now he was not only going to have to help her shop for gloves and corsets and stockings, he was going to have to help her shop for a man!

  “And just how do you plan to carry on this search?” he said, annoyance rising to ruin his mood.

  “In a perfectly logical and organized fashion,” she said, raising her chin and striking off briskly in the direction of their hotel. “I’m going to make a list.”

  12

  “WHAT THE DEVIL do you think you are doing?” Jack demanded in a loud whisper as Mariah pulled him down the third-floor hallway—past his hotel room and toward hers. “It’s almost midnight.” He gestured to the gaslights that had been extinguished everywhere but the lobby and stairwells. “You saw the look the desk clerk gave us when I asked for our room keys.”

  “His depraved imaginings are his problem,” she said, unlocking her door and pulling him inside with her. He stood as stiff as a pole, holding his room key in a death grip, while she closed the door and lit the lamp.

  “A lady doesn’t entertain gentlemen in her room at this late—”

  “I’m not a lady, remember? I’m a widow who is about to become a ‘wife of convenience’ and a prince’s mistress.” She adjusted the lamp wick so that the room was softly lit, and she swayed toward him as she removed her gloves and let her coat slide down her shoulders. “But how sweet of you to say you find me ‘entertaining.’”

  He felt a stir of anticipation in his loins and scowled.

  “I don’t believe I said that.”

  “I’ve noticed you don’t believe a lot of the things you say.”

  While he sorted out that comment, she pulled his hat from his hands and replaced it with a pad of paper and a pen taken from her trunk.

  “What is this?” He held the writing materials by two fingers, as if they were strange artifacts of an unknown civilization.

  “Sit.” She pointed to the lone upholstered chair. “And make notes.”

  “I beg your pardon. I am not a clerk,” he said defensively. “And I refuse to participate in whatever deviousness you have in mind. It has nothing to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you.” She removed her hat and jacket, then pulled the overstuffed chair closer to the coal-burning hearth and gave the seat a pat, ordering him to sit. “Once I find a man who meets my requirements, you will have to convince him to cooperate and wed me.”

  “I can’t imagine that would be necessary.” He eyed the seat with a tightening in his belly. “You’re quite persuasive enough on your own.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” She pushed him over to the chair, opened his greatcoat, and pulled it down his shoulders. “But men can be appallingly stubborn. Sit.”

  He perched on the edge of the chair, pitched like Chinese fireworks ready to launch, and watched her hang his coat on a hook by the door. Her movements were fluid and unselfconscious, almost…hypnotic.

  He shook himself more alert.

  “Where to start?” She paced a few steps away and traced her lip thoughtfully. “Tall. Definitely. Somewhere near your height. With a manly frame and bearing.” She smiled as her gaze drifted over him.

  “What the devil are you doing?”

  “Making a list of things I want in a husband. Muscles. I do like muscles on a man. Not the hammer-wielding-blacksmith or beefy-field-hand sort. More the rowing-archery-expert-horsemanship kind.” She startled him by taking hold of his arm—“You don’t mind, do you?”—and feeling it up and down. She lingered with a pleased expression over his tensed and bulging bicep. “Muscles very like yours, in fact.”

  As she released him, his arm ached from greatly increased blood flow. That vigorous circulation spread through the rest of him, causing pressure in body parts that were going to get him in trouble if he stayed much longer.

  “And let’s not forget good teeth,” she said with a wicked chuckle. “Nothing worse than having to kiss a man with rotten or missing teeth.” She made her buck-toothed face again, drawing a startled laugh from him. Then she pulled his gaze into hers, eyes twinkling, and bit that luscious lower lip of hers. “And you know how fond I am of kissing.”

  She was wrong earlier, he thought, watching her resume pacing up and down the room. There wasn’t a man in Britain who could resist her when she was determined to be irresistible. As she was now.

  “As for hair, I’m not fussy. Any color, as long as it’s plentiful.” As she passed, she reached over to rake her fingers through his dark waves. His scalp tingled and every hair on his body came to attention. “And soft. I love the contrast between soft hair and hard muscles. And I do love to curl my fingers in a man’s hair when I—” She gave an exaggerated shiver. “Are you getting all of this down?”

  She moved to peer over his shoulder at the empty pad in his hands.

  “Oh. No wonder you’re having trouble writing.” Her voice lowered as she slid around him in such a way that she pressed against him the whole time. “You still have your gloves on.”

  Standing before him, she seized his hands and bit the kidskin at the end of one finger, tugging it with her teeth. The pad and pen he held tumbled to the floor as his whole body went rigid. One by one, she bit the tips of his glove fingers and slowly, with provocative leisure, drew them off. By the time she reached for his other hand, his body was as taut as a bass string and vibrating with arousal. Then she raised his naked hand and nibbled the pads of his fingers with those perfect teeth and ripe lips.

  He clenched his jaw and his indrawn breath turned into a hiss.

  This was nothing short of torture.

  What had he done to deserve this? He had kept the prince’s hunting revelries within bounds and seen to it that Bertie always made it to his bed and…usurped the prince’s enjoyment of a woman he had clearly intended to bed.

  That sobering thought threw him one last lifeline of sanity.

  “I can’t do this.” His voice was an octave lower as he dragged his tingling hand back and pushed to his feet. She didn’t give an inch; he had to make room to stand by forcing the chair back with his legs. On his feet but badly off balance, he had to fight the pull of those forget-me-not-blue eyes.

  “On the contrary.” She shifted, brushing against the bulge in his trousers with knee-weakening accuracy. “You seem quite capable.”<
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  He groaned. “Don’t do this, Mariah.”

  “Don’t do what?” The humor in her face gave way to a compelling earnestness. “Respond like a woman instead of a commodity? Don’t presume to take pleasure and passion where I can? Don’t try to steal a bit of joy and companionship before I go into a harness of carnal obligation?”

  Pleasure, joy, companionship; each word struck like a chisel, engraving itself on his heart. But it was the word steal that proved sharp enough to pierce his conscience.

  “You belong to the prince,” he said thickly.

  “Not yet, I don’t. Until I marry and go to the prince’s bed, I belong to no one but myself.”

  She slipped her hands around his collar, pulling his head down so that his mouth hovered above hers, so that warm breath and the incidental brush of lips against lips added to the persuasion of her words.

  “In eleven days I’ll be married again, and indentured to the bed of a prince who values his carnal pleasures above my feelings, my personal worth and my freedom. But right now if I choose to share my bed and body, that is my decision and mine alone.”

  She was right; the prince neither knew nor wanted to know about her distaste for what he required of her. That acknowledgment went straight to his core, illuminating the shameful fact that his abstinence was not inspired by true virtue or in consideration of his patron prince. Rather, it was but a tool of his own ambition. His self-denial was both self-serving and a sham.

  “Just once, before I go into that miserable servitude, I want to make love because I desire it. Not because I am coerced or because it is a marital duty or even because it is the prudent thing to do. I want to make love for the pure joy and pleasure of it.” She ran her hand tenderly down his cheek. “And I want to do it with someone I like very much.”

  She liked him.

  When she stretched up to press her mouth against his, he’d have had to be made of hammered steel to resist kissing her back. And despite what his old tutor had said, he was not made of anything half so incorruptible. He did, however, manage to resist pulling her against him…

  …until she ran her tongue between his lips with such deliberate provocation that he felt as if he had just been dropped into a blast furnace. Heat enveloped him; his arms enveloped her; and a heartbeat later they were as close as paper and sealing wax.

  He trembled with the need to plunge his hands into her warm-honey hair and pull it loose, to bury his face in it and rub it all over his bare chest and naked body. He ran his hands feverishly over her, seeking out every line, texture and curve he had mentally claimed in the last three days. Images of stockings and bare ankles and the tactile memory of naked thighs made his skin come alive with a hunger for that same kind of stimulation.

  More. He wanted more.

  When she broke off that stream of kisses, he was mildly shocked to find his bones felt as if they wouldn’t support weight or movement. As he scrambled to recoup, she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the bed.

  EVERY PARTICLE of her body was vibrating with need. But not a garden variety, take-a-brandy-and-it-will-pass kind of urge. This was a bone-deep, part-of-me-is-missing kind of feeling…a hunger that reached all the way down into the soul and stretched and shoved and rearranged inner furnishings until it made room for something life-changing.

  More. She wanted more.

  She wanted to feel his weight bearing down on her, his heat searing her flesh, his passion filling her until she couldn’t breathe or think.

  With her blood singing in her ears, she trapped his gaze in hers and began to work the buttons of her blouse. The starched cotton slid down her bare arms and dropped to the floor. Her belt and skirt went next, falling into a dark pool at her feet. She stood in petticoats and corset, sensing his hunger and praying desire would exert its inscrutable force.

  “I’m offering, Jack,” she said, her heart thudding as she reached up to remove several pins and let her hair tumble over her shoulders. He seemed to have turned to stone, standing there, watching her as she ran her fingers through her hair and let it fall into a hedonistic tangle.

  “Enjoy me. Let me enjoy you. Before it’s too late.”

  With a muffled moan, he bore her back onto the bed and sank onto the soft mattress over her.

  Electricity arced along her nerves, unleashing desire, making every movement, every action a rebellious celebration of freedom. She wrapped her arms around his neck and opened to his penetrating kisses as she arched and pressed her breasts against him, urging him to release her.

  Moments later her laces were free and she lay in a tangle of half-shed garments, beckoning him to a sensory banquet. He rubbed his face in her light hair and inhaled, murmuring his findings.

  “You smell like heliotrope—” he breathed her in “—and jasmine and honey. Damn me if you don’t smell downright edible.”

  She gave a throaty laugh as he ripped off his coat and vest and flung them aside. With trembling hands, he peeled away her chemise.

  Her breath caught as he buried his face between her breasts and rubbed his hot face over her cool skin. As his kisses and caresses trailed down her body, pleasure radiated into every curve and crevice. Soon he was grazing her with his teeth and she felt a drawing sensation in her sex that started a familiar chain of responses.

  Her body tensed, her lips swelled, her pupils dilated and her sex began to burn with a thick, slow-swirling flame. Trembling with escalating pleasure, she directed his mouth over her shoulders and breasts until he reached her nipple and tongued and sucked that pebble-hard flesh.

  When she couldn’t stand the longing anymore, she pushed him up and reached for his shirt buttons.

  “Clothes…now…off,” she said, barely able to string words together. “Feel…all…you…over…”

  A minute later, his shirt was gone and his chest descended on her like a living wall, crushing her breasts, giving her the weight and pressure she wanted. Air escaped her on a ragged moan. She raked his bare back with her fingernails and savored the way he responded with deeper, harder kisses.

  As he ran his hands up the insides of her legs, she parted them and raised her stocking-clad legs on either side of him, wanting to wrap them around him. Then his fingers found her hot, wet core and she shivered, startled by the intensity of the sensation. His hand was firm but gentle as he read her reactions and adjusted his touch.

  Time seemed to stop as he toyed deliberately with her, tracing lazy circles on her slick, heated flesh, bringing her to the edge of climax. She moaned with both pleasure and need, pressing against his hand, seeking a deeper, more satisfying contact. When his fingers slipped inside her, she tightened around them, relishing the rush of pleasure it released.

  Gripping his back, she rode mounting waves of excitation, rising, expanding, then crashing through sensory boundaries into pure pleasure.

  For a moment she couldn’t see or feel, could only float within a steamy cloud of mingled presence. When she opened her eyes it was to a pair of molten bronze disks, glowing with appreciation and desire.

  “You do have the touch, Jack B. Nimble,” she whispered, pressing against him, more energized than sated. “Let’s see what else you have.”

  She pushed him back and sat up, abandoning her garments as she rolled him onto his back. Straddling him, she swept her hair across his bare chest and laughed at the way he sucked air. She dragged her breasts up the midline of his body then she reversed course and retraced that path.

  He twitched, tensed and then relaxed into a groan of pleasure. When she reached his trouser buttons, he grabbed her hands.

  “You don’t have to,” he said hoarsely.

  “Don’t have to?” She registered the anxiety that had entered his expression. “I want to give pleasure as well as receive it, remember?”

  The look in his eyes as he released her made her pause for a moment. Did he not believe her? Not trust her? For a moment she wondered what kind of sexual experiences had led him to impose such limits.
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  “You make me feel alive, Jack. And wanted.” She stuffed every bit of her longing and gratitude into a smile and aimed it straight for his heart. “I want to do the same for you.”

  This time when she worked the buttons of his trousers, he didn’t object, but she felt him go taut as she slid down and rubbed her face against the still-covered ridge of his erection. He gasped as she caressed him through the fabric and then slowly nudged his trousers aside.

  She ogled, eyes widening.

  “That is truly a thing of beauty, Jack.” She dispelled his anxiety with a beaming smile. “Remind me to put one of those on my list.”

  13

  IT TOOK a second to register. His jaw dropped. Then he caught the mischief in her grin and pulled her up so she was face to face with him.

  “You and your damnable list. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you making me the prototype for your future husband. I conveniently seem to have everything you’ve mentioned, thus far.”

  “So you did notice,” she said with a wicked edge. “I was beginning to think you were a little thick, Jack. And not where it counts.” She bent her knee and drew her leg up his body, sliding it pointedly over his erection.

  He laughed in spite of himself and seemed a little shocked to find himself doing so.

  “You’re a jade, you know that?”

  “A circumspect and socially appropriate jade,” she corrected, giving him a look that was half virtue, half vice and wholly unrepentant. “I was trained by a master. My well-traveled squire could have taught Sir Richard Burton and his Kama Sutra a thing or two.”

  His jaw loosened again.

  “The Kama—y-you know about that?” His surprise deepened at the glint of knowledge in her eyes. “You’ve seen it?”

  “Seen it, read it and improved on it.” She giggled at the shock on his face. “Want me to show you one of my favorites?”