Potent Pleasures Read Online Free Page A

the Narcissus statue, safe from people’s eyes. Then he swiftly pulled her mask over her head. Charlotte looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing a mask anymore either. The light in the corner was rather dim, and it enhanced the strong planes of his face. He was staring down at her, his eyes glittering, as if she were a rhubarb tart ready for eating, she thought. She nervously wet her lips and his eyes darkened visibly.
    Charlotte still didn’t say a word. In fact, she had no thought of leaving, or of speaking. She was simply waiting. His large hands swept down her back and cupped her bottom through her cloak and dress, and even though she knew exactly what he was doing, she mutely raised her face for another kiss.
    His mouth left hers and she felt warm breath on her ear, and shivered instinctively. A tongue swept around her ear, and a husky voice murmured, “Very nice, a lovely ear,” and swept without a pause to reclaim her mouth again, his tongue stabbing into her mouth. Finally he stole her tongue altogether and sucked it into his mouth.
    All the time his large hands kept up a disturbing rhythm on her back, and even on her bottom. He molded her to him, his fingers caressing her through the worn domino and her frock. He pulled her body up against his hard muscled body; Charlotte’s legs felt as if they were made of jelly.
    Thinking back, she knew she couldn’t have protested, even if she’d thought of it. Her body was hardly even hers anymore. Maybe she could have said something when he put an arm behind her shoulders and another under her knees and simply, smoothly, picked her up and backed out into the warm garden. Instead she just leaned against his chest and felt his fast-beating heart against her cheek.
    He was gazing at her, his eyes black as jet and thickly fringed with lashes. Charlotte blinked, her mind possessed by the idea of licking those lashes.
    The insanity of this notion almost jerked her back to reality but then he was kissing her again and she heard herself moan faintly. He lowered her to the ground, and she smelled flowers and fresh grass, and felt the fierce warmth of the large male body hovering just above her. And so it was she who wound her hands in his curls and pulled his masculine pressure down onto her softness.
    He pushed aside her cloak, but her eyes were shut tight and she was lost in the intense pleasure of the moment. When he ducked his head and his mouth closed on her breast, Charlotte—uncaring of the ballroom a few feet away, just on the other side of some trees—gave a moan that wasn’t a moan but almost a scream.
    His mouth sent trails of fire up and down her body and especially down her legs, and she gasped and twisted in his arms, her body instinctively arching up, her hips lifting off the soft grass. And he was murmuring something, murmuring his strange, delicious kisses against her skin. Charlotte strained to listen and then forgot to understand; lips moved down her body as if he were tracing messages, teaching her a language of which she had known nothing until now.
    Charlotte was on fire and exploding at the same time, and so when his face appeared over hers, all she did was delicately put her tongue to his lips, and run her hands through his curls again. With a muffled groan, he did something, she didn’t know what, and he was pushing about her clothing, but his hands were on her breasts and she couldn’t think. And when he said, “Would you like …” in a deep, velvety hoarse voice that she still shivered to think about, she whispered, “Please,” and strained toward him for another kiss.
    A knee pushed between her legs, but he was bending down to kiss her and she swept into a swirling, breathless haze, her body ignited by the closeness of his. But then, in a split second, pain shot through her and she screamed.
    “What the hell !” he said in a furious tone, rearing up on his arms. Charlotte shrunk back, suddenly coldly sober.
    Alex McDonough Foakes, future Earl