Wicked As Sin by Jillian Hunter

Author:Jillian Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345507587
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

When Jeremy Hazlett had violated her, Alethea had not realized that it was the innocence of her heart he’d broken, not her ability to love, nor her body’s capacity to know sexual pleasure. The carnal appetite that Gabriel had awakened, and proceeded to satisfy, at once embarrassed and excited her. She was convinced that no other man could have aroused her passion.

Whereas the same act, or rather its violent parody, had brought her only revulsion before, she now felt her natural desires return with an intensity she could not subdue. In her heart, he was her first lover, her only love. And for a man who was undeniably well-versed in sin, there had always been a valiance about him to balance his darker aspects. She savored every feeling, pleasing and uncomfortable, that he summoned, until, in the end, she gave herself up to him completely.

He led her past shame, forced her not only to submit but to acknowledge her hunger. Virile. He made her feel alive and strong, unafraid to reveal what she craved. He demanded. She surrendered, scarcely aware of the instant that his large body ceased to move. She knew only—in her own unexpected burst of pleasure, her release—that the trembling of his shoulders, the warmth deep inside her from his seed, meant he had found fulfillment.

And if even for a moment she was afraid that this act had been motivated only by desire, he lost no time reassuring her otherwise.

“You are the most desirable woman, the only woman I have ever truly wanted,” he said as he lifted his head.

“Am I?” she whispered, stroking her finger down the deep crease in his cheek.

“I remember the first time you touched my face.”

“You’re considerably more attractive now.”

He tugged one of the dark curls that had fallen across her breast. “So are you.”

“I think—”

“My cousins in London will want to meet you.”

“Your cousins?”

“My family. The other Boscastles. The boys.”

She made a halfhearted attempt to sit up, her thoughts suddenly moving from their distracting nudity to the implications of meeting his infamous male relatives, not as his neighbor, not as a debutante, but as his lover.

“They will accuse us of impulse.”

He raised his brow. He was heady, full of confidence, prepared to take on the world to impress her. “Seven years is not exactly what could be called an act of impulse.”

She regarded him keenly. “It wasn’t as if we had a courtship all that time.”

He grinned. “Yes we did.”

His playfulness was contagious, and yet the secret that stood between them overshadowed her heart. He had not known, had not guessed. Would it change how he felt? She could not bear to spoil this magic intimacy, but intimacy could not survive without trust, and trust was built upon truthfulness.

She would have to confess. But how, when? Would he view her differently, still desire her as he did now? She glanced up at his dark sardonic face.

“Seven years,” he said again.

“We had no contact!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, Alethea. We did.”

She knew she was right because she would have remembered.

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