Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (46 page)

"How I love a woman who knows what she wants."

She giggled, and he swept her up in his arms, clasping her effortlessly against his chest. She had a moment to revel in the sinewy strength of him, in the electrifying sizzle of flesh against flesh. Then she realized he was headed for the bathtub. She clasped his neck tighter, practically squealing as he climbed over the rim.

"Rafe, I thought we were... I mean, I hoped we would—"

He chuckled, and she gasped when he sank beneath her. Steamy liquid eddied over her limbs; clouds of heat snaked up from the waves that splashed the tarp. She grappled for balance, clinging to the copper edges even as his legs slid sinuously between her knees.

"Comfortable?" he purred.

She was still gasping from the sensuous shock of heat and man. "I don't think this tub was built for two."

"Well then, maybe you should straddle my hips."

A frisson of delight skittered down her spine as his strategy became clear. Trying not to grin as shamelessly as he was, she wriggled across his thighs. She was rewarded when his hand plumbed the depths to fondle her femininity.

The sensation was exquisite: sinuous male fingers stroking the very places his smile had made throb. Her head drifted backwards. Her lashes fluttered closed. When his lips nuzzled her breast, drawing her nipple deep inside the velvet pressures of his mouth, the pleasure was almost beyond what her senses could bear.

She wanted more of him. All of him.

Sliding her palms over his thighs, she delved lower, pleasuring him with her hands. A pleased, throaty sound rumbled in his chest. He clasped her hips, guiding her lower, and a sweet, shuddering need rippled through her. This was the way she'd always dreamed love should feel.

He melted into her, and she cupped his beloved face in her hands. Holding his gaze as he loved her, she poured her heart into his, letting time and place fade away with the spiraling steam. Rocking, flowing, they became the rhythm of life itself. In that moment, there was only the heat and the water, the flesh and the spirit, the elemental ecstasy of man and woman joining in body and soul.

And later, much later as their sacred bath cooled, he wrapped her in bed linens and cradled her before a crackling hearth. Sated and sleepy, she lay in the circle of his arms, marveling at the threads of fate that had bound them so inexorably together.

He smoothed her hair, turning her face to his.

"I love you, Silver," he whispered huskily.

The shining mirrors of his eyes hid nothing from her now. The playactor had taken off his mask, and at last, her scoundrel for hire was hers alone.

She smiled as his lips tasted hers. She felt blissfully grateful that destiny, not her own willful nature, had plotted the course of their romance. Raphael Jones was everything Cellie's stars had promised, and more. Who would have guessed that a devil with an angel's name could bless her with such a divine love?

Perhaps, she mused a little dreamily, there was something to Cellie's fortune-telling, after all.

The End

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HIS WICKED DREAM

The Velvet Lies Series

Book Two

Excerpt from

His Wicked Dream

The Velvet Lies Series

Book Two

by

Adrienne deWolfe

Bestselling, Award-winning Author

HIS WICKED DREAM

Reviews & Accolades

"These sensitive, marvelous characters will tug at your heartstrings and never let go."

~Rendezvous

"Well-crafted. Michael is a perfect... hero"

~Romantic Times Magazine

"You suffer romantic delusions about me, Eden. I assure you, I am not the angel I was named after."

His gaze roamed over her ribbon-bound hair to the renegade wisps that curled softly in the hollow of her throat and trailed across her bodice. His lashes fanned lower. He didn't want her to see his long-constrained hunger, the primal need that would have made him drag her into his arms and feast upon her lips.

"You're only saying that," she said softly. "You've always wanted me to think less of you, Michael."

Her insight was unnerving, almost as unnerving as the realization that the child who'd once bathed his wounds had grown into a woman who could see clear to the bottom of his soul.

But Michael had never cowered before a worthy opponent, and he wasn't about to start now. He stepped closer. Then closer still. He halted only when his thighs were bare inches from her skirts, when his shoulders towered above hers and she was forced to crane back her neck to meet his gaze.
 

"I'm not afraid of you, Michael."

"You should be, Eden," he said huskily. "Very, very afraid..."

His Wicked Dream

The Velvet Lies Series

Book Two

by

Adrienne deWolfe

~

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