STORY EXCERPT

She might not know much about men, but she knew she had let it go too far. When pushing against his shoulders brought nothing but the exquisite torture of whatever he was doing against her that caused those unspeakable pangs of pleasure, she used one hand to slap him, hard.

He caught it in the air by the time of the second slap, holding her wrist out from her, and letting her go with a long slide against his body as he did so. With his dark hair tousled and his eyes glittering blue and his lips wet from their kisses, he looked completely different to her from that “horrible” Mr. Banks.

“This…this is what I’m thinking of when I look at you, Ava.” He sounded breathless, and she realized she was breathing hard as well. He dropped her wrist and ran a hand through his hair, turning away slightly. She stumbled back, grappling with the pantry door and pushing it open to tumble out into the kitchen, and he followed.

And it was then that he saw it, adding to her humiliation twenty-fold.

He laughed. “It’s you.”

* * * *

Sinjun didn’t know what it said about a man that the way the woman he desired looked after he’d kissed her silly reminded him of the way she looked when she was chucking her guts out, or trying extremely hard not to. But there it was.

Of course, she never actually had lost her guts, which he was now recalling he’d admired the poor thing for in the end, annoying as it was to have to sit across from her all that time, of course.

“It is you. The girl from the carriage.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered.

He wagged his finger at her. “Now, now, don’t try that with me. We spent how many enjoyable hours together in that carriage, you sweating like a prize fighter, all green and moaning and holding your midsection and hiding under the folds of that horrible cloak, and me, well, me trying politely to ignore it. How could I ever forget that?”

Biting her lip—a gesture that caused a reminder of its own as to what they’d just been doing, their lovely carriage ride together aside—she seemed as if she was debating whether to further continue her denials. But then she snapped, “But you did forget, didn’t you? Well, what of it?”

“So that’s why you dislike me so much when we’d just met! I couldn’t figure it out.”

“You conceited oaf. I have reasons plenty to dislike you. I don’t need, er…”

“What? Embarrassment? Because that’s it, isn’t it? You’re embarrassed!”

“I am not.”

“The lovely high and mighty Miss Wilson is embarrassed that she spent the whole carriage ride sick as a dog and I witnessed it.”

“If you were any kind of a gentleman, you’d pretend you’d forgotten.”

“I did better than that. I had forgotten. At least, I hadn’t realized it was you. You should really take it as the highest form of compliment, Miss Wilson, that in your current form you bear absolutely no resemblance to the writhing, pale as a ghost—”

“I thought I was green!”

“Well, the hue varied with the landscape actually. For the smooth parts of the road you were deathly white, but the rougher portions rendered you a most particular shade of green.”

“Oh, shut up! I’ll have you know that my uncle is teaching me to ride a horse, so I won’t be put through that indignity again.”

“Well, since I now know you just got here, the lessons can’t be very far along. I’d like to teach you to ride as well, Ava.” He laughed, the double entendre lost on her it seemed, as she responded quite calmly.

“No thank you. And besides, I was only so ill in the carriage because I had just gotten off the ship from Boston. My er, my constitution—”

“Oh, don’t be shy. You can say stomach in front of me.”

She ignored that. “—had not sufficiently settled. I’d be fine going in a carriage ride now.”

“If, for example, Lord Winslow invited you.”

“Yes!” she said defiantly.

“I should hope so, Ava, because if you put on the spectacle for your aristocratic would-be beau that you did for me, he might not be so forgetful of it.”

“You cad.”

“Whereas I’m willing to put it out of mind altogether and start anew. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“No!”

“Well, if you insist, I can keep that image of your greenish tint and all in the forefront of my mind.”

“You cad.”

“You said that already.”

ADULT EXCERPT

If he was going to be a cad, he wished he could be more cold-blooded about it and not feel so damned guilty.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Ava?”

She popped up and accused hotly, “You don’t want to, do you? Just say it!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He pushed her back on the bed as she tried to make her way past him and came down on top of her a moment later. Holding her hands above her head, he kissed her, roughly, thrusting his tongue in as greedily as he wanted to, holding nothing back. When he finally let her up for breath, he wedged one leg between her own in her long skirts, rubbing the top of his thigh against her pussy, though she probably barely knew what that was. She sucked in a breath.

“You silly girl,” he chided her. “Feel how much I ‘don’t want to do this.’” He arched his rock hard cock against her. “You want to know about relations between a man and a woman? The first thing you should know, after the kissing that is, is that it’s called fucking.”

Her hazel eyes widened in such a way as to suggest she sensed the naughtiness of the word even if she had never heard it.

“And when a man wants to fuck a woman, like I want to fuck you, his cock gets hard so he can push it in…here.” He demonstrated the point with a deliberate nudge of his leg between her thighs. Her breathing was coming faster now. “And the woman,” he leaned off her a little to pull her skirt up and bare her long legs, “the woman gets wet between her legs to prepare for him. Shall we see if you really are ready for me?”

The skin of her upper thighs was silken soft as he inched his way up slowly to the edge of her drawers. Slipping his fingers beneath the cotton, he felt the dampness right away, her soft curls fairly drenched with it. He smiled and kissed her neck, murmuring, “Oh, what a good girl. You’re so wet and ready for me, aren’t you?” When his finger got to the delicate lips of her pussy, her eyes closed suddenly. So he was able to explore with one finger massaging her engorged bud without seeing whatever apprehension she may have been feeling in her eyes.

And whatever apprehension she did feel, she did not keep him out, true to her word, but lie there and let him have his way with her wet depths. When the drawers became too restrictive and he wanted them off, he sat up and flicked her skirts all the way up to her hips. Her eyes flew open as he took the waistband of the drawers in both his hands. “Lift your arse,” he instructed, and she did. He slipped the drawers off and threw them to the stone floor.

He hadn’t decided yet how far he would go with this. But he promised himself he wouldn’t take her virginity. Not technically anyway. He would just make her see exactly how much she was wanted and how good that could feel.

Her bottom half completely bare—she must have removed her stockings and shoes before coming up here—he stared down at her, mesmerized.

“What?” she finally said as he sat back on his haunches between her legs.

“Nothing.” He pushed the long white limbs farther open to him. “I’m just looking at how beautiful you are.” He resumed touching her, completely open to him now, resolved to at least give her an orgasm. He slowly pushed one finger up her pussy and her eyes dropped shut again. With his other hand, he reacquainted himself with her breasts, running his fingers from one tip to the other, molding them, caressing.

He pulled his fingers out of her. “Sit up.”

She did, slowly, seeming almost in a trance, and he reached behind her to unbutton her dress and swiftly lift it off her.

“I want to see you completely naked.” And when he did, he took just a moment to drink in the sight. My, she was so very lovely, just as he had suspected. Her tits were full and looked even more so against her tiny waist and slim hips and long legs. The nipples were pale pink and puckered, and he brought his tongue to delicately lick one.

She moaned. “What about you?”

He transferred his tongue to her other tit. “What about me?” he murmured against her silky skin.

Her hands went hesitantly to his still fully clothed shoulders. “I want to see you, too. Don’t you need to be naked, too?”

She was calling his bluff, and indeed his cock exulted at it. Yes, he would like to lie down next to her, on top of her, spooned behind her, whatever way he could, completely naked, his hard cock having full access to her wet, tight pussy.

But he couldn’t. He shouldn’t.

And then her hand dipped to his lap.

What man alive, at least one not inclined like Winslow, could feel a naked woman’s touch on his cock and not react? He was only human, after all.

He’d let it out to play, just a little.

Unbuttoning his breeches swiftly, he nudged his own drawers out of the way and, still sitting back on his haunches, pulled out his cock. She looked at it in awe.

“May I touch it?”

Oh Christ, he was going to hell. He really was.

“Yes,” he could not stop himself from saying, and she ran her fingers down his length. He sucked in a breath, trying to regain control. But it was pretty damn hard. Why the fuck had he put himself in this position to begin with? To make her feel better?

He’d make her feel better all right.