Unclaimed - Turner 02 (2011) by Courtney Milan

Author:Courtney Milan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Courtesans, Man-Woman Relationships, Historical, London (England), Single Men, Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction, General, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780373776030
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2011-09-20T07:00:00+00:00

THE RED LIGHT of the setting sun invaded Mark’s bedchamber. The rays bombarded him when he tried to look out his window. He could see only a trace of a silhouette—the echo of a hill, limned in crimson, impossible to focus on through the harsh sunset.

When he turned away, an imprint of the sun remained, etched indelibly over his vision.

Jessica was rather like that. When she was about, he burned. He couldn’t even see straight anymore. And when she was not… He had only to shut his eyes, and he could see her smile at him across a field of dandelions.

Lust wasn’t a stranger. It wasn’t even an enemy. Lust had always seemed something of an itinerant peddler to Mark: always showing up when least expected, clamoring on his doorstep. Either you stopped up your ears and hoped that it would give up and go away, or you were driven past all hope of ignoring it. At that point, you made a token purchase—something you didn’t need and shouldn’t want.

After what had happened earlier that night, his lust wasn’t going away. It had lodged underneath his skin, taking up its complaints in the form of a persistent throb.

A breath of night wind curled through his window. Even that hint of coolness could not calm the storm of his thoughts. God, he wanted her. There was only one way to calm the clamor of his body.

What he was about to do was classified as a sin. He unwound his cravat from his neck, setting his mouth in a grim line. But it was a case of kittens: better the little sin of relieving this tension, than risk losing his mind entirely the next time he was in her presence. And there would be a next time. And a next. And a time after that.

The sun blinded him as he worked. But his vision was ruined in any event. Even without the sun, he wouldn’t have been able to see himself pull the tails of his shirt out. He wouldn’t have been able to make out the buttons on the fall of his trousers.

No. In his mind, no matter what he willed, he saw her: the pins slipping from her hair. Her curls, drifting past pale shoulders. And in his mind, it wasn’t the dark red dress that she wore. It was the black shift he’d glimpsed underneath, clinging to her every curve.

When he let his trousers fall to the ground, he was thinking about taking off her chemise. Of raising it, to show ankles he’d seen—and then more that he hadn’t. Calves. Thighs. If lust had clamored in him before, it rose up in him now—powerful and impossible to displace. His skin seemed on fire.

He was still standing. He shrugged out of his shirt; in his mind, he was not the only naked one. He caught hold of the carved wood post of his bed with one hand. With the other…

It should have been a clinical act, what followed. It was a sin, after all—a lesser one than actually taking a woman to his bed, but a sin nonetheless.

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