THE LOVER
Kensington Brava
ISBN: 0-7582-0427-2
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Sequel: Gabriel's Woman
Thirty-six-year-old Anne Aimes is a spinster whose only attraction is her wealth. But her plain looks mask a passionate woman who yearns to know a man's intimate caresses. Michel des Anges - Michael of the Angels - is renowned for his ability to bring women to pleasure. All it will cost her is ten thousand pounds...
Driven by vengeance, Michael seeks to lose himself in a woman who will demand only physical pleasure. A woman who won't suspect his own aching needs - or his true motive for accepting her terms. Unable to resist the lure of Anne's guileless desire, he plunges her into a deadly web of deception and revenge where the price of carnal ecstasy is life itself...
Excerpt
Michel des Anges filled the grinding, jarring hack, stealing oxygen, usurping space. His body burned Anne through her cloak, hip to shoulder; the memory of his kiss burned her lips, inside and out. Orgasm was a living, palpitating promise.
Every woman, every time, the carriage wheels grated.
Eighteen years ago she had thought he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Now he was hers, paid by the money that would have been her dowry had she married.
Anne wanted to scream for the cabby to stop. Or perhaps she wanted to scream for him to hurry, so that she could get the night over with.
The man beside her spoke precise English, as cold and clipped as if he were an Englishman born.
He was not the man she remembered.
Save for those incredible violet eyes of his.
They blazed with raw sexuality.
"You said you will do anything I wish." Anne stared at the door of the Hansom cab. Light briefly shone inside the grimy window beside her; the passing lamp post turned ominous darkness into worn brown upholstery. "As many times as I wish it."
The cracked leather underneath her shifted, creaked. She could feel his eyes upon her.
"That is what you are paying me for."
But she didn't know what to ask for.
She only knew that she wanted.
A man's touch.
A man's body.
Her own satisfaction.
"What if . . . what if a woman did not know what to ask for?" Anne's voice was unnaturally loud over the monotonous clip-clop of the horse's hooves and the singsong grind of the carriage wheels. Her shoulder throbbed where his rhythmically rubbed against it. "What if . . . she did not know how many fingers she wanted inside her?"
"Then I would introduce one finger at a time"—his voice was a dark rasp—"until she could not comfortably take any more."
Anne clenched her thighs together at the sharp stab of desire his explicit words evoked. She remembered his hands spread out on the white tablecloth. And saw not the scars—trivial flaws that did not cripple with arthritis or weep with cancer—but the length and the breadth of him.
"How many fingers does a woman normally require?"
"Three. Sometimes four."
His fingers had been long. Far thicker than her own.
"Surely that many would not be comfortable."
"Sexual pleasure is not always a matter of comfort. I assure you, when you are properly prepared, your body will accommodate that many fingers. And yearn for more."
Anne struggled to control her breathing. "How will you know when I am properly prepared?"
"When your body is hot and wet," he said bluntly.
Her body was already hot and wet.
"How many times can you . . . bring a woman to orgasm?"
A sigh of breath was followed by the slipping of her hood. She fought to keep her hands in her lap and not shove it back over her head.
He was no longer beautiful, this man who was named for his ability to bring women to orgasm, but he was darkly, dangerously attractive.
Her only attraction was her money. But even that, surely, could not blind a man to the threads of silver hair that marked her spinsterhood.
"However many orgasms she wants. However many you want, mon amour."
It was only when he uttered the odd French word that he gave away his heritage. His voice deepened, became melodic, seductive. It promised a woman everything she had ever wanted, sexual acts a virgin spinster could not even begin to imagine.
"Please do not call me that. I am not your love; I am your patroness."
And she was frightened.
By the strength of her desire.
By the man sitting beside her.
Of all the things he might do to her; of all the things he might not do to her.
Dear God. What was she doing?
Her elderly, sickly parents had been dead for less than a year. Yet instead of mourning them she catered to her own selfish needs.
Needs that a spinster should not possess, let alone confess.
Hot breath tickled her ear. "You said you knew what will happen when I take you to bed."
Anne sat perfectly still, perfectly straight, as she had learned during her one brief, disastrous season, a rich heiress in a sea of barnacles. Men and women had courted her to her face and laughed behind her back.
She did not want this man to laugh at her.
"I am not ignorant about the mechanical aspects of mating, monsieur."
"Really." Something hot and slick flicked her ear. "Describe to me what will happen when I bed you, mademoiselle."
Anne licked lips that were dry as coal dust—her ear burned and tingled. What had he done to it? "You will join your body to mine."
Like the animals.
But animals did not worry about failure or inadequacy.
Darkness enveloped Anne. It had nothing to do with the diminishing gas lamps lining the narrow London street.
Moist heat feathered her hair, fanned her cheek—his breath. He forced her to look at him by the simple act of blocking her view of the hansom door while his body curved around hers. "Have you ever seen a naked man, chérie?"
Anne should reprimand him for the familiarity. She was paying him to pleasure her body, not to ply her with French endearments.
She found that she could not.
No one had ever called her dear, or darling, or sweetheart, not in English, certainly not in French.
Her parents had called her Anne. The servants called her Miss Anne. Everyone else called her Miss Aimes.
As they would continue to address her for the rest of her life.
She inhaled the acrid aroma of tobacco smoke, and underneath that, the suffocating scent of clean, healthy masculinity—expensive soap and a hint of musk. "No, I have never seen a naked man."
It was only a partial lie. What she had seen was not a man.
"Do you know how deeply I will possess you, when I am buried inside your body?"
Anne did not look away from the black hollows that were his eyes. "If you mean do I know how deeply you will penetrate me, then the answer is no."
She did not lie this time.
"But I want to know, Monsieur des Anges. I want to know how deeply both your fingers and your body will penetrate me. Else I would not be here with you in this carriage."
It could have been her breath that caught in the darkness. Or it could have been his.
"Penetration is not possession, mademoiselle."
Fleeting light lit up the right side of his face—it starkly delineated the ridge of scars edging his cheek—and then once again he was swallowed in obscurity.
"Then I am afraid I do not understand your question."
"Physical penetration will vary—five to ten inches, depending upon the size of a man's erect penis. A woman can take a man into her body and still remain in control of her emotions. But when she lies underneath him gasping for air with only his breath to sustain her—with only his body to give her the orgasm that her very life depends on—at that moment, chérie, that man possesses that woman."
Anne gulped air—his breath.
She imagined his body filling her—five to ten inches—as his breath filled her lungs.
Completely.
Unconditionally.
A frisson of fear raced down her spine.
"That is only if a woman is not in control of her emotions. This is a business arrangement, monsieur, not an affaire de coeur."
"You hired me to overcome your control, mademoiselle."
Her heart skipped a beat, raced to catch up. "You make it sound—" Dangerous. Not at all like the business arrangement that they had. "I hired you to give me pleasure. As a man hires a woman to give him pleasure. No more. No less."
"There is a difference between a man's pleasure and a woman's pleasure."
Yes, men were freely allowed to pursue theirs while women were not.
"And what is that, pray tell?"
"A man only needs a woman's body; he does not need her to bring him to orgasm. His own motions will do that."
Anger flicked along her nerves. "Do you think that a woman needs a man only because of his male appendage, monsieur?"
"If that were so, mademoiselle, then you would not be here with me in this carriage."
His silky response was a parody of her own.
Anne gripped her reticule. "I do not understand the purpose of this conversation."
"I am trying to prepare you for the coming night."
"By telling me that a woman needs a man and not vice versa?" Sharpness spiked her voice.
"I never said that a man did not need a woman; I said that a man does not need a woman's motions to bring him to release. But you will need me in the coming hours, mademoiselle. Your needs will render you far more vulnerable than my body will. No matter how deeply I penetrate you. And I assure you, chérie, I will penetrate you very deeply." ...