Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

“Oh, we’ll just live here, then. In the stable.”


“It’s my stable. We can do what we like here.” She didn’t know, he thought. She didn’t know what this meant to him, how shocking it was to feel he was home after ten years at sea with nights spent dreaming of stripping her naked and burying himself inside her.

She gave him a push, but she was already retreating from him, and he didn’t know how to bring her back. “Obstinate as ever, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t changed.”

She looked away. “That’s not so.”

He dipped his head to her ear, nipped her there and said, “Except, I think my prick is bigger, don’t you?”

That made her laugh, and then him, and that was just like them, to be bawdy and find it amusing, as if they were the only lovers ever to speak crudely to each other. She turned her head to his chest, shoulders still shaking. Well. It was a fine joke, wasn’t it? He kissed her again and realized it wouldn’t take much for him to be ready again.

She pushed at his shoulders. “We should go. It’s late.”

With a sigh, he pushed away and fumbled to get himself decently back into his breeches. When he’d done that, he helped her arrange her clothes, too, or would have except that she lay on the blanket with her hair beginning to dry and glint with indisputable red, and her pale legs exposed and her lower belly, too. He thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful than her sex. A bit of the old guilt nipped at him, and he embraced that, too. Fucking his friend’s sister was wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at this moment. Not then and not now.

He set his palm on her thigh, and then on the inside of her thigh. He’d scraped her there during their frantic coupling. When he thought to look at her face, he found her watching him with eyes that killed him. He slid his fingers upward, covered her sex, and, still watching her face, slid a finger inside her, one then two. “I’m no green boy, now,” he said. She was getting slicker, and his two fingers moved in her easily. “If we didn’t need to get home, I’d prove that beyond your ability to speak.”

She pressed her head back because he’d pushed his thumb between her folds and along the flesh there. Her breath caught but she managed to say, “You could try.”

“Anything for you, my love. Anything.”

“What’s this?” She put a hand on his breeches. “Are you rising to the occasion, sir?”

“I think I am.”

And she gave him a wicked smile that melted him inside, and made him forget about Magnus and the fact that she was going to be married, and he didn’t stop her from unbuttoning the fall of his breeches nor say a word when she took him in hand and drew back his foreskin. “You once liked me very well on my knees.”

“Yes.” He sat up, then stood and stared into her eyes and understood that this was to be their very last time. “Please.”

He buried his fingers in her hair when she took him in her mouth, and he let her bring him that way and all the while he told himself that if she could walk away from this, then by God, so could he.

Afterward, they tidied up as best they could, at last feeling the cold and damp, and they headed for the Grange. The sky hadn’t cleared, though it wasn’t raining, and the ground was thoroughly soaked. Dozens of tiny puddles lurked in the thick grass and made the footing uncertain. At the stone fence, he lifted her over again and did not put her down as quickly as he should have. He leaned in and kissed her, hard and fast before he released her.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t do this.”

Since she knew the way, he followed her through the fields. The path was muddier than when he’d tromped through here heading the other way, and the clouds were getting that heavy look while the air turned colder and thicker. They gave up trying to keep themselves out of the muck and just trudged through the field.

He kept a hand around her waist because that was what a gentleman did when he was escorting a lady across treacherous terrain. Before he was quite prepared to return to reality, they were at the Grange. Fat drops of water hit them as they dashed for the front of the house, running now and laughing for no reason other than it seemed right. The very moment they reached the path to the door, the rain became another torrent.

At the door, Portia turned, face to the sky and thrust a fist into the air. “Curse you, god of rain, curse you!”

He fumbled with the door, and when he got the thing open he grabbed Portia’s other hand and pulled her inside, they were still laughing.

Until he turned around and saw Mrs. Temple standing in the foyer, a look of utter betrayal on her face.





Chapter Six