ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  “Cold in Romania?” Though the remark may have been the hallmark of small talk everywhere, the way they were looking at each other was the hallmark of unmistakable attraction. He was a largely built man, square in body and heavily muscled in the upper body. He had the looks best associated with the roguish characters in smutty historical romance novels, the kind of brute power about him that made women swoon and try desperately to reform him.

  “Yes,” he answered, eyes snagging on her mouth. “But I find it’s always much warmer whenever there’s a beautiful woman around.”

  Mackie blushed. She actually blushed. Damn the man. Her naughty working vacation had just been kicked up a notch.

  “Why Mici,” she answered, running a hand along the smooth top of the baby Grand, “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” Was this truly coming out of her mouth? Where had she worked up the gumbos?

  Mici, however, did not think there was anything that was strange about her words at all. In fact, the smile lurking about the corners of his mouth deepened, and he looked her directly in the eyes. “No,” he told her, the syllable licking her from tip to toe, “Just the ones who appreciate the classical mixed with the badass.”

  She had to chuckle at that one, but Mici wasn’t done. “When can I see you again, ballerina girl?”

  Mackie did not know what compelled her to suggest the first place her sick, twisted little mind conjured, but apparently, all the filters were off tonight.

  “Tomorrow night at nine,” she told him, scooping up her purse and turning around to leave. “The Jacuzzi. We’ll go for a midnight swim.”

  Mici’s eyes widened just a touch, just enough to be barely perceptible. “You’ve got it, ballerina,” he said to her retreating back as she waltzed out of the lounge.

  * * *

  “You’ve been dancing since you were six? That’s insane. I didn’t even get into juggling before I was ten, and that’s only because I was the laziest lay about you ever met in your entire life.”

  After dinner, Adam had suggested a stroll around the Lido Deck. She had just finished telling him about the strict discipline of ballet.

  “All those rules and you didn’t go insane?”

  “If you asked anyone at the American Ballet Company, they’d tell you I’m pretty insane for taking this cruise job.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Let’s say I’ll be walking into the company with a… reputation.”

  “Oh, I see.” Adam was thoughtful for a moment. The wild wind picked up his sandy hair and mussed it, whipping it against the sides of his face, rumpling it in a most appealing manner. Tomorrow, they would be in the Caribbean, and the winds would be tamer, sultrier. Mackie shivered slightly, and whether it was because of the wind or the promise of tomorrow, she could not tell. Having noticed this, Adam took a step until he was directly at her side, and wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders. One of his fingers brushed against the delicate strapping of her dress, and Mackie smiled.

  “What would they say at the company,” Adam said slowly, pressing her to his side, feeling the length of her body against his, turning her just a little so that he could nuzzle the sensitive area between her collarbone and chin, “If they saw you with me right now?”

  Mackie shuddered a tiny bit at the feeling of his lips and face against the contours of her neck. “Ohhh, I’d be a bad girl. So very bad.”

  “Well, you know what they say.” Adam turned her slowly so that they were facing one another.

  Mackie tilted her chin up to him, feeling the flat of his abdomen against her palms where she was touching him. “What’s that?”

  “Go hard or go home.” And then he kissed her.

  They pressed their bodies against each other, relishing the sensations rushing through them. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders, pressing her chest onto his until she tasted his groan against her lips. He was long and beautifully sculpted, just like she had imagined, and when he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his palms into the small of her back, she felt herself being transformed. She was no longer Mackie, with her curvier friends jealously counting their calories and commenting on the thinness of her body. She was Mackenzie, nipples alive against this gorgeous man’s chest, athletic, strong, and downright sexy. She kissed his lips, ran her tongue, long and smooth against his, and traced his fantastic jaw with her mouth. She nudged one leg in between his and was just feeling the stiffness of his erection behind his pants when—

  “No.” Adam’s voice was hoarse as he untangled her arms from his neck.

  “What? Why not?” she asked, feeling rejection shoot through her like an arrow.

  “Well, for one thing, we’re standing in the middle of a cruise ship,” he laughed, trying to draw her closer. “For another, we’ve got the rest of this cruise to enjoy this. Why give away all our secrets in one night?”

  And although she let Adam Santino, the best juggler in the world, and a terrific kisser, draw her close to him, Mackenzie found herself wishing that they had taken the plunge through the metaphorical rabbit hole and landed on the other side.

  * * *

  Hot water bubbled gently against the dark line of her toned abdomen. Mackie stretched her legs out in front of her, watching them float up, the triangle of her thighs shrouded beneath a strip of green fabric. The Jacuzzi swirled frothy waves towards the puckered outlines of her breasts, and the sun was burning a dark orange against the horizon.

  The top deck of the cruise ship had emptied out two hours ago. There was nobody around except Mackie, and she was awaiting Mici with ever-increasing impatience.

  At last, his broad form appeared by the Jacuzzi’s edge. He slipped the white button down he was wearing over his head, revealing a chest smattered with the dark speckle of hair. Mackie drew in a breath. He was solidly built everywhere, and there was something about his body that brought her back to the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where Jane Russell has her pick of all the 60s athletic male hunks of the time. A throwback to another era, and with a rebellious scar on the left side of his stomach.

  They relaxed together for a few minutes in the tub, letting the evening-cooled breeze play along whatever skin was exposed from the water, the contrast in temperatures delicious. Mici swam-walked over to her until their shoulders were just touching.

  “Where did you get this scar?” Mackie asked, reaching in the water to run her hand along it.

  Mici followed her fingers with his eyes briefly, and then said, “I fell off my motorcycle when I was seventeen.”

  Mackie winced. “Ouch.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “My father, he was always such a careful man. Scared of his own shadow. He was always telling me, ‘Mici, don’t do this, don’t do that.’ And I always laughed. And then one day—BAM. I’m on the side of the railroad tracks, a spoke through my belly.”

  “Holy cow.” Her palm stilled against the scar.

  “Yes. But I was, then, and still now, my own man. I couldn’t be any other way if I even dared to dream it.”

  Mackie watched his face, the profile sharp and jarring against the orange burst of the dying sun. He looked like he was on an island of his own, somewhere out where Minotaurs still managed to roam the Earth. Abruptly, he turned to look at her, and she melted into his eyes, burning dark against whatever light was left.

  “What else do men do?” she asked, scarcely knowing what she was saying.

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he fiercely ground his mouth against hers, and then softened. He gathered her up in his arms, weightless in the water, and she was on his groin, suddenly, wrapped in warm flesh and submitting her tongue and mouth to his onslaught, fever zipping through her like wildfire.

  “Mackie?”

  A familiar voice cut through her daze. When she broke away from Mici, she found Adam standing by the side of the hot tub. For a moment, she was horrified, but a glance at Adam’s face told her that he was not upset.

  “Well, you
’re quite the naughty girl, after all, aren’t you?” the juggler asked, face breaking out into a smile.

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Mad?” Before her eyes, Adam was stripping off his black T-shirt to reveal a smooth, sculpted chest that trailed down to a stomach that would not have been out of place on a Hollywood hunk. “This is not mine and Mici’s first cruise together.” And, pants following suit, he got into the tub with them, slapping the pianist a high five.

  Mackie was momentarily dumbfounded. Mici and Adam knew each other? What’s more, they were friends? And then Adam had swum up behind her, and she was sandwiched between the two men. As both of them began to stroke her body, Mackie, the prim and proper ballerina, suddenly found that she didn’t care about those details very much at all.

  In fact, she thought all she cared for was, quite possibly, Adam’s hands massaging her shoulders. Mici’s lips on her neck. Adam was kneading her flesh for all it was worth, unkinking every single kink in every single muscle, until she was loose and lolling against his chest. She felt the press of his penis, getting harder with every passing minute, against the crack between her buttocks, and she decided, consciously and unconsciously, that that was exactly where it belonged.

  Mackie wished she knew, or cared, who it was out of the two men who untied her bikini top. She wished she cared who it was who was sliding their hands up from the heated water to smooth them over the dark brown nipples standing like miniscule versions of children’s sucker candies off her chest. She felt warm fingers grasp them, shielding them from the chill of the night air, and gasped aloud at the sensation. Without thinking, she moved her hips, pleased to find that Mici was growing ready for her between her thighs.

  She could not say when it happened, or how, but suddenly, her bare chest and back were sandwiched snugly between Adam and Mici, and the two men’s tongues were lapping at each other, sucking on each other’s mouths for all they were worth. Well. That was an interesting development, but one that Mackie found she didn’t mind. When they broke away, Mici rotated her slowly in the water, and Adam dived briefly under; Mackie found herself soon divested of her bikini bottoms, naked in the water.

  What a strange feeling, and how free, to be skin to water. How luxurious to have hands sliding down your bottom, parting you, splaying you open to ravaging eyes and fingers. To be probed, deeply and wetly, and shamelessly, to be kissed everywhere, to be turned and stroked and petted to the point of panting, to the point where the only words that hang on the air are, “Now. Now, now, now.”

  Mackie felt Adam slide in first, split the clean pink of her with the head of his cock and push in deeper. She should have known Mici would take the back door, but in seconds, she found that logic was failing her utterly. The two men were taking her at the same time—when one drew back, the other entered, and she was sure they could feel each other pressed so intimately inside of her body. A fullness filled her, and she was being stretched in ways that she could have never imagined before. Adam was sliding against a particularly sensitive spot inside of her, and things were very compact down there, tension building inside of her, gathering until her moans clung to the naked skin of the men around her, until her vision was narrowed down to the chiaroscuro of their limbs, until her mind’s eye could only see two pink and purple-tipped cocks inside of her, the entire area between her legs and up her belly to her nipples alive with the kind of building that precedes only the most luxurious of releases.

  Mackie came first, the delight of being so wantonly displayed, of fucking in a public place on a forbidden mission mingling with the pleasure of being penetrated twice. Her nipples reached for the sky and positively throbbed as her groan climbed the night sky, long, and loud, and as satisfying as the ripples of orgasm that shot through her. So far gone was she that it took her a full minute to realize that she had floated away from them. And that Mici was now turning Adam around. And entering him from behind.

  Adam’s face contorted in what looked like pain, but could have only been enjoyment. Because he had grasped himself by the shaft and was working himself up and down as Mici placed a hand on his shoulder and hip and speared him repeatedly. Mackie watched, almost lazily, as the two beautiful men engaged in what could only be described as the most absolutely correct joining she had ever seen.

  And when they came, Mici’s carved face wrenching in pleasure with a sharp outcry, and Adam shuddering his release, Mackie felt a sense of wonder and peace settle over her.

  It was going to be quite the adventure.

  THE END

  Untamed Billionaires

  Hilda was entering what would be a new phase of her life. She was excited to be starting college and hoped it would rescue her from a life of boredom and monotony. She was starting her freshman year, and she was determined to make it work - make it her time to shine. She was excited for what was to come, and she was ready for the new adventure that this new experience would give her. Hilda wondered curiously what the future had in store for her, but all she knew was that something interesting, something unusual and exciting was just around the corner, that was for sure. She could feel it deep within her, all the way to her core.

  She entered the college campus on a rather cool and blustery fall afternoon, looking for the biology department. That was where her first class was, and she looked studiously at her schedule, noting that she would go to a biology class before going to her math class. Although she was wrapped up in the details of being on time, finding where her classes were, and navigating through crowds of new faces, she rather preoccupied and lost in her mind. Her thoughts often took her to places far away from the present. She fantasized and dreamed about exciting romantic adventures and finding that one guy. She yearned for that one special gorgeous man that would swoop in and rescue her from the painful monotony of everyday life. What she really wanted more than anything in the world was a meaningful relationship.

  When she became oblivious to the outside world and completely consumed by the detailed stories and images concocted by her wildly imaginative mind, she often wondered if there really was any man out there hopefully , or hopefully even in this college that would truly enjoy her and her body. She was a bit bigger than most girls, with a few extra pounds here and there. But what didn’t work with her weight was made up by her pretty face. She had beautiful, glowing skin with fine features and a narrow jawline despite her weight. She also had beautiful blue eyes that radiated joy, hope and warmth. Her blonde hair was normally tied back in a long ponytail, which cascaded in curls down her back.

  Hilda was feeling different than usual as she walked the halls of the college buildings. She felt more confident, at ease, more alive than she ever had before. She didn’t know if it was just her imagination, but she felt that people were looking at her, noticing her, not in a harsh and judging sort of way, but rather in glances of acknowledgment, wonder and admiration. Finally, for the first time ever, Hilda knew with ever cell of her being that there would be a man at this college for her who could satisfy her every urge and desire. Just the thought of a hot frat guy lavishing her with attention and enjoying every curve and line of her body sent tingles under her skin and a slight smile to her face. Yeah, this new direction in college was going to be a good one; she felt it in her bones. She was determined to find Mr. Right, and she would use whatever it took to find him. Hilda would find a man who would enjoy her, one that would be able to see the beauty that she had. Hilda was ready for this, but she honestly didn’t know where to start. Definitely not your average girl, she was a bit nerdy and loved animation. Above all, she loved school, learning and knowledge more than anything. She was ready for fate to step in and guide her toward her destiny.

  Hilda walked for a bit, still distracted by looking at her schedule, looking down at the printed out timetable and occasionally glancing up to be sure she was still heading in the right direction. Suddenly, she abruptly bumped into a tall, broad chested guy, who was hot as hell. She dropped her timetable and scrambled to pu
t herself and her belongings back together. Her face got hot as she blushed, hoping that she didn’t make a damn fool out of herself.

  “Hi there. I’m so sorry!” she said. She tried to hide the redness in her cheeks that was becoming increasingly obvious. It didn’t help though, especially when she got a good look at the fine man standing before her.

  He was perfect, simply perfect. He had black hair that went down to his shoulders, bright blue eyes, and a gorgeous frame. He dressed like her, which was kind of in a nerdy, yet punk-rock fashion. By simply making eye contact with her, Hilda could feel herself being swooned by this guy. She felt a building sense of excitement starting to course through her body. She loved this rush of electric lust, and could already feel a growing sensation of arousal permeating every inch of her being.

  “Hey there. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, it’s the first day,” he said with a friendly chuckle.

  Hilda felt like she was about to die from embarrassment. She didn’t mind the friendly comment, but it still made her a bit uncomfortable, that was for sure.

  “Okay. Sorry, I wasn’t looking. Sometimes I do that. I didn’t mean to be so stupid,” she said.

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. You’re cute, so it’s okay,” he replied as he grinned and picked up one last paper off the floor that had fallen out of Hilda’s binder.

  Still blushing, Hilda looked toward the floor and then again back into his clear blue eyes, unsure of what else to say. She was actually really shocked at how nice this guy was. Normally, in her experience, most people would tell her to fuck off or something, but this one actually cared about helping her out. She thought this was a joke. It had to be, people were never this nice.

  “Okay. I’ll try not to run into people,” she replied.

  “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mind at all. I’m Ryan, by the way,” he said.