Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

This was Luke.

The man who’d years ago held her, kissed her, and left her in the morning without so much as an adieu. The man who saw no reason to marry her now. He was just going to do it all again. Hold her, kiss her…then leave her alone and yearning for him. Forever.

She pushed against his shoulders, breaking the kiss. “Luke—”

“Cecy,” he murmured, his mouth falling to the underside of her jaw. He burrowed into the curve of her neck, licking her pulse, catching her earlobe between his teeth…

“Luke, no.” Her voice was thick.

His hand slid up to roughly clutch her breast, and he nipped her ear, hard. Pain and pleasure shot through her, and she dug her fingernails into his neck. For a mad moment, she wanted to bite him too. To punish him, mark him…to taste him one more time.

“Stop.” She fisted her hands in his hair and tugged. “Stop.”

He froze, then slowly raised his head. His lips still held the shape of a kiss, and she slapped his cheek hard enough to make them go slack.

“Stop,” she repeated clearly. “I won’t let you do this to me again.”

He blinked, slowly relinquishing his grip on her breast. Then releasing her entirely.

Cecily knew better than to expect an apology. She smoothed the front of her gown. “I ought to have Denny cast you out of this house.”

“You should.” Luke stared at her, rubbing his jaw with one hand. “But you won’t.”

“You think you know me so well? It’s been four years. I’m not that na?ve, infatuated girl any longer. People change.”

“Some people do. But not you.”

“Just watch me, Luke.” She backed out of the room. “Just watch me.”





LUKE WATCHED FROM HIS BEDCHAMBER WINDOW as the would-be-gothic, all-too-comic hunting party sallied forth. Footmen bearing torches flanked the four adventurers: Intrepid Denny in the lead; the dark-haired Portia and slender Brooke a few paces behind, squabbling as they went. Cecily, with her flaxen hair and dove-gray cloak, bringing up the rear—graceful, pensive, lovely. She’d always worn melancholy well. She was rather like the moon that way: a fixture of bright, alluring sadness that kept watch with him each night.

No, she had not changed. Not for him.

He watched as the “hunters” crested a small rise at the edge of the green. On the downslope, Cecily made a brisk surge forward and took Denny’s arm. Then together they disappeared, the green-black shadows of the forest swallowing them whole.

Luke felt no desire to chase after them. He’d had his fill of tramping through cold, moonlit forests—forests, and mountain ranges, and picked-clean orchards and endless fallow fields. He was weary of marching, and bone-tired of battle. Yet if he wanted Cecily, it seemed he must muster the strength to fight once more.

Did he truly want to win?

The answers were supposed to come to him here. Here at Swinford Manor, where they’d spent that idyllic summer, racing ponies and reading Tom Jones and rolling up the carpet to dance reels in the hall. When Denny had invited him back for this house party, Luke had eagerly accepted. He’d supposed he would greet Cecily, kiss her proffered hand and simply know what to do next. Things had always been easy between them, before. And the way he saw it, the pertinent questions were simple, and few:

Did she still care for him?

Did he still want her?

Yes, and yes. God, yes.

And yet nothing was easy between them, and Cecily had questions of her own.

When you kissed me that night, did it mean anything to you? How could he give her an honest answer? When he’d kissed her that night, it had meant little. But there’d been moments in the years since—dark, harrowing, nightmarish moments—when that kiss had come to mean everything. Hope. Salvation. A reason to drag one mud-caked boot in front of the other and press on, while men around him fell. He had remembered Cecily, in times and places he hadn’t expected to think of her at all. In places a delicate, well-bred lady had no business intruding. He’d dragged that memory—that fresh, pure kiss—through muck, sweat, blood. Surely he’d sullied it, tainted her innocent affection with violence and raw physical need. His behavior tonight had proved that beyond any doubt. He’d sniped at her and insulted her, provoked her to tears. Embraced her not to offer affection or comfort, but only because a twisted spear of aggression drove him to claim her body for his own.

He’d bitten her, for Christ’s sake.

People change, she’d said.