Viscount’s Vice
She blackmailed her guardian. Does his heart stand a chance?
Miss Lenora Wainwright has always known what she wants. And what she wants is Simon. A union between them is impossible. Or is it? Now on the cusp of her first Season, she has run out of patience… and scruples.
Simon Langdon, Viscount Asquith, has spent years keeping his wards safe, his secrets buried, and his feelings for the most perceptive of the Wainwright sisters locked firmly away. With Lenora’s changeling eyes and her unerring ability to see straight through him, she is the most dangerous person he has ever met. And then she blackmails him into meetings.
But Asquith carries wounds that go deeper than the scars on his hand. And Lenora has learned, from long experience, that a man’s love is not always a safe harbor. Before long, the private negotiations she extorted become something neither of them planned—and neither of them can afford to lose.
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Excerpt
“I don’t want to hurt you.” By changeling power, she had drawn from him the truth. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeated.She pulled back and raised her face. “And yet you just did.”
“I am truly sorry.”
Her lips parted, drawing his gaze.
Asking to hold her had straddled a line. Requesting a kiss would send him tumbling past the point of no return. He didn’t care. He had already passed the point of no return back in Adrian’s yew maze.
Even earlier, in fact.
He searched her upturned face. “I’d like to kiss you.”
“Probably not the best idea, but…” Her voice trailed off.
A dangling conjunction was hardly a convincing argument. He waited, wanting her to be sure.
“Why hesitate?” she asked. “You’ve kissed me before.”
“No, I haven’t.” His voice had roughened. “You kissed me. I hardly participated.”
Her brow knit. Finally, she met his gaze. “Would it be different?”
So different. His head drained of blood. He forced himself to nod. Somehow, his hand had already moved to cup her cheek.
Heaven and earth. “Lenora.”
She closed her eyes, looking pained. “Please don’t say my name that way.”
“What way?”
“Like the syllables carry the world’s weight.”
They did. They always had.
“You may kiss me. If, that is, you can tell me I am not your burden.”
He would have said she was. That she would always be. But now he wondered if he’d been confusing burdens and blessings.
Hell. He was going to kiss her, whether or not kissing her was a good idea.
“Not a burden.” But, hopefully, still his.
He bent his head and brought his mouth lightly against hers. Every organ in his body lit like rapidly spreading fire.
He knew how to kiss. At least he’d thought he had. But this was less a kiss than an unraveling—a once-coiled lunge line attached to a galloping horse.
His heart beat faster, the hand on her hip curled into her clothes. After this, he would be changed, but he did not hesitate. Heat and moisture tantalized his senses as he nudged apart her lips. Then, he plunged inside and let the soft, wetness quench a lifelong thirst.
She was soft and yielding. Light, fast wisps of her breath fanned against his skin. Sweet cherries. Heady port. Neither comparison nearly as succulent.
He couldn’t believe he’d denied himself this pleasure for so long. She whimpered lightly before responding yet again. He resisted his growing hunger, the always insatiable demand for more, else what was wholesome become a ravenous need.
As he withdrew, their lips briefly, involuntarily clung together before a final, reluctant separation.