Proper Scoundrel by Annette Blair Page B

first.
     
    Instinct. The need to mate.
     
    He moved with her, hard and eager against soft and pliant. Theirs would be a perfect mating; he’d never been so certain of anything in his life. And he was ready, so ready, but a kiss was all she asked.
     
    He stepped back, breathing hard. “I’m sorry. I was too rough. I ... don’t be afraid. I feel as if ... you seem to have some power over me, the power to turn me into a primitive chest-pounding male. But don’t worry, I won’t grab your hair and drag you to my cave, I promise. Not tonight, at any rate.”
     
    She laughed, easy and free, for the first time. “I’m rather fond of my power over you, Marcus Fitzalan.”
     
    He rather liked his over her, as well.
     
    She’d laughed. He’d melted an ice queen in a yellow gown.
     
    The rider Emily saw was wearing a yellow gown the night before they found a stuffed “body” on the tracks, but he couldn’t ask Jade about that now, not tonight. “As I said, I’m yours to command.”
     
    “What if I say I’m yours to command?”
     
    “Then we won’t be getting much sleep anytime soon.”
     
    Jade felt a pleasant ripple of shock skitter through her at his threat. No sleep anytime soon! If his words alone could move her, how would she feel lying naked beside him?
     
    If not sleep, what precisely did a man and woman do behind closed doors during the long dark hours of the night? The process had always remained sketchy in her mind. Titillating, but vague.
     
    She wasn’t entirely naïve; she’d seen stallions ready to breed. This afternoon, when Marcus caught her waiting for Sofia to fit her gown, he had stroked her with his hot gaze and become as ready as any stallion. Her blood had heated and skittered her veins then. It happened again times a hundred, during their kiss just now. But this time she’d arched against that very ready part of him, the corresponding centre of her pulling and pulsing to bring him in, and it all became infinitely more clear.
     
    Jade shivered, and rather than retreat from the source of danger, she stepped nearer, and Marcus enfolded her in his warmth, holding her tighter, knowing exactly what she needed.
     
    “I’ll have to sleep on the possibility of obeying your commands,” she said against his neck. “As far as my own are concerned, none come to mind that I have the courage to allow.”
     
    “I await your pleasure with bated breath,” he said in a low, seductive voice as he gazed into her eyes, then he stepped back, took her arm, and directed them toward the house.
     
    Grateful, relieved, and disappointed, anticipation simmered in Jade’s breast.
     
    “There are any number of commands available to you,” he said as they stepped into the foyer. “Ask me to ravish you; I’ll take you to heaven. Ask me to kiss you; I will anytime, anywhere in the world ... on your body.”
     
    There went her blood, sparking and racing again. Anywhere on her body. Glory.
     
    They stopped as one when they saw the sprite asleep on the bottommost step. Emily.
     
    I was just coming for her, “Lacey said,” as she rounded the bend in the stairs and came into sight. “She wanted to stay up and wait for you, Jade, though she called you ‘the princess,’ but I wouldn’t let her, so she sneaked away on her own, the bold creature.”
     
    “I kissed her goodnight after I dressed,” Jade explained to Marcus. “She called me a princess then too.”
     
    “Because you’re so beautiful.”
     
    “Hah,” Jade scoffed. “Spoken like any gallant worth his salt.”
     
    “Mucks? Jade?” Emily called in a sleepy voice from Lacey’s arms.
     
    “We’re home, Kitten,” Jade said, kissing Em’s brow.
     
    “Have a good sleep, Emmy-bug,” Marcus said doing the same. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
     
    Emily nodded and Lacey took her up to bed.
     
    Strolling up that main stairway, arm in arm with Marcus made one of those perfect moments Jade knew she’d remember