Try THE DARKEST SIN by Caroline
Richards,
out this month from Brava!
Rowena Woolcott was cold, so very
cold.
She dreamed that she was on her horse,
flying through the countryside at Montfort, a heavy rain drenching
them both to the skin, hooves and mud sailing through the sodden
air. Then a sudden stop, Dragon rearing in fright, before a
darkness so complete that Rowena knew she had died.
When she awakened, it was to the sound
of an anvil echoing in her head and the feeling of bitter fluid
sliding down her throat. She kept her eyes closed, shutting out the
daggered words in the background.
“Faron will not rest—”
“The Woolcott women—”
“One of his many peculiar fixations . .
. they are to suffer . . . and then they are to die.”
“Meredith Woolcott believed she could
hide forever.”
Phrases, lightly accented in French,
drifted in and out of Rowena’s head, at one moment near and the
next far away. Time merged and coalesced, a series of bright lights
followed by darkness, then the sharp retort of a pistol shot. And
her sister’s voice, calling out to her.
The cold permeated her limbs, pulling
down her heavy skirts into watery depths. She tried to swim but her
arms and legs would not obey, despite the fact that she had learned
as a child in the frigid lake at Montfort. She did not sink like a
stone, weighted by her corset and shift and riding boots, because
it seemed as though strong hands found her and held her aloft,
easing her head above the current tried to force water down her
throat and into her lungs.
She dreamed of those hands, sliding her
into dry, crisp sheets, enveloping her in a seductive combination
of softness and strength. She tossed and turned, a fever chafing
her blood, her thoughts a jumble of puzzle pieces vying for
attention.
Drifting into the fog, she imagined
that she heard steps, the door to a room opening, then the warmth
of a body shifting beneath the sheets. She felt the heat,
his heat, like a cauldron, a furnace toward
which she turned her cold flesh. Her womb was heavy and her breasts
ached as he slid into her slowly, infinitely slowly, the hugeness
of him filling the void that was her center.
Was it one night or a lifetime of
nights? Or an exquisite, erotic dream. Spooned with her back
against his body, Rowena felt him hard and deep within her. She
slid her hip against a muscular thigh, aware of him beginning to
move within her once again. She savored the wicked mouth against
the skin of her neck, pleasured by the slow slide of his lips.
Losing herself in his deliberate caress, she reveled in his hands
cupping and stroking, his fingers slipping into the shadows and
downward to lightly tease her swollen, sensitized
flesh.
“Stay here . . . with me,” he
whispered, breath hot in her ear.
And she did. For one night or a
lifetime of nights, she would never know.
