Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

After a moment of resistance, she leaned toward him. He eased closer and tightened his arms around her. “Better. Much better.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back. She rested her head against his chest, and he slipped his hands underneath his greatcoat and rested them in the small of her back. He wanted to tell her he’d forgiven her, that he’d never forgotten a moment of their time as lovers, but that seemed…unwise.

After a moment or two of standing like this, she lifted her head and stared at the waterfall sluicing off the roof. The courtyard’s central gutters overflowed. The noise was near deafening. “I don’t think it’s going to stop.”

Like her, he stared at the water. “We can wait a while yet.”

“Hob will worry,” she said. “Magnus, too. They’ll wonder where we’ve got to.”

He continued to stroke her back. “Five minutes. Then we’ll go even if it’s no better.”

With a sigh, she settled against him, tucking her hands between them. Five minutes later, the rain hadn’t let up.

He forgot all about the cold and the damp as he brushed away a tendril of dark red hair that had stuck to her cheek. She pushed away, and he did the strangest, most contradictory, selfishly male thing imaginable. He brought her close instead of setting her back. She lifted her chin and gave him a quizzical look. The world dropped away. This was Portia. His Portia, and whatever had happened between them, no matter how they’d changed, nothing had changed at all.

He lowered his head to hers.





Chapter Five





FOR THE SPACE OF half a heartbeat, he told himself he wasn’t going kiss her. It would be stupid and wrong of him, and it would destroy the safety of the friendship they’d carved out for themselves during their years of letter writing.

His chest was so tight with tension, he could scarcely breathe. He was seventeen again, and his brain was overset with lust and desire and emotions too big to name. His cock was hard with the joy of holding this woman in his arms and at the prospect of being inside her. At long, long last.

Northword didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Nor did she. In no way was that fact lost on him.

Her mouth brushed his. Barely there. For an instant, he didn’t react. He couldn’t. Surely, she had not meant that invitation. She was going to marry someone else, wasn’t she? Except she didn’t step away, and he didn’t want her to. She relaxed against him and she made a sound that was not quite a moan yet was soft and edged with need.

Almost no contact between them, yet his blood pounded in his ears. Their first time had been like this. Needful. Soul shattering. He burned in the moment, in her, in the heat of having his arms around her again. Familiar. Blazingly alive. She felt good in his embrace. Right. For the first time in years, he was whole.

She rested a hand on his upper arm, light at first, then fingers gripping. It was sweet, the way she leaned against him, sweet in his arms, and he wanted her so badly he hurt. Jesus, she felt good, and he’d been too long without sexual satisfaction because he was imagining doing a good deal more than her practically chaste kiss.

That condition could not and did not last, a kiss that did not reflect the tension zinging between them. In the initial days of their relations, they’d kissed for hours, what seemed like hours, before he’d brought himself to touch a hand to more than her cheek. It wouldn’t be the same now. Couldn’t be. The soul-stealing pleasure of his first time was just that. First. And therefore memorable. He knew about women, now, thank you very much.

Even during that year between, he’d known how the world worked. So had Portia. They knew what it meant for her to be Portia and him to be the future Northword. He’d been to bed with her, they’d been lovers, and in his thoughts, he was already imagining sexual relations with her.

There was nothing innocent about his desire. Nothing at all. There never had been, not since that long ago day he’d realized his feelings for Portia were more than friendship. Not since the day he realized she felt the same.

She kissed him again, her lips parted this time, and he took what she offered. Somewhere in the back of his head he had the thought that she hadn’t opened her mouth in order to invite more from him, but to draw breath. At the exact same time this was flitting through his thoughts, his mouth was open, too, and he was kissing her without restraint. Not in the least politely. Her mouth softened underneath his, matching, accepting him, answering him.

He knew a great deal more about kissing than he had ten years ago, but he was trembling just as he had then. They fit together, the two of them. He was taller since the last time she’d been in his arms, but she was still a good height for him, and she still made his heart too big for his chest.

The next thing he knew, the last of his restraint melted away, and he had her pressed against the stone wall of the archway, her head between his hands, his tongue in her mouth. Desperate for her. Desperately aroused. She kissed him back, her fingers gripping his upper arms in order to bring him closer. Familiar heat spiraled through him.

This.