ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories) (307 page)

                      “Why did you show me where you had hidden my father?” she asked.

                      The captain looked exhausted and took a few moments to answer her.  “Because you were worried about him.”

                      “Yes, but now I can tell the whole crew where he is.  I doubt they would be happy to learn that despite the fact that they thought he perished with his ship, he is actually alive and well, and so is the secret he keeps.”

                      “So you think that I kept him alive just to learn of the Black Pearl?” the captain asked, peering into her face a little too closely for comfort.

                      “Yes.”

                      “Do you really think me so ignoble, Marguerite?” he said softly, coming closer to her, so that she could feel the warmth of his chest on hers, could see clearly the dark stubble on his chin.  Quite suddenly, she found herself possessed of the silly notion that it might feel quite nice against the palm of her hand, and if it would feel good there, it would feel good in some other places of her anatomy, as well.  How she wished that part of her brain would go and shut up!

                      “Do you really think me such a monster that the only reason I would save a man from drowning would be for the worth of his knowledge rather than the fact that he is a human being?” the captain continued, locking eyes with her.  “Perhaps this proves that even a pirate is human sometimes, too.”

                      She did not know how it happened, she only knew that his lips were soft on hers.  She felt the blood rush from her head as he wrapped a solid arm around her waist and pressed her middle to his, working her mouth with a gentle savagery that made her want to scream.  That kiss said many things, told many tales of desire, of longing looks drawn out for days, but most of all, it told the story of just how human the pirate captain truly was.

                      Human enough to simply save her father, god enough to make her swoon.

                      She could hardly believe this was she, with her arms closing around the muscles of his arms and shoulders, nails digging in and eliciting a deep growl from his tender throat.  What had she done to deserve to feel this wonderful, this alive?  He drew back from her, bit his lower lip, and Marguerite ceased to think altogether.  Scarcely knowing where her boldness drew its source, she leaned forward and licked his sensuous bottom lip, and felt his tongue flick out in response.  As she melted completely into his body, curiosity overtook her and she opened her eyes to find that his blue ones were watching her already.  She almost drew back in her shock, but his arms kept her locked there, tongue parrying with hers until she lolled in his arms, a completely willing doll.

                      “Then again,” he whispered softy against her neck and he scattered kisses there, “maybe I saved him for all the wrong reasons, anyway.”

*                    *                    *

                      Ania leisurely wrote the last few lines while Margaret paced impatiently behind her.  She never seemed to mind the ink splotches on her fingers as much as her mother did, but then, she did not pay attention to the same things her mother did and was a different creature entirely.  Although she did a good enough job pretending that for the most part, her parents left her alone.  Which was quite the splendid stroke of luck, she thought.

                      “Would you hurry up?” Margaret cried, exasperated at last at her sister.

                      “You cannot rush genius,” Ania told her wryly, with no hint of elitism at all in her voice.  Margaret made a face at her and Ania almost laughed aloud.  They both knew that in sharing this particular secret of Ania’s, they were both extremely privileged.  Ania because it allowed her to express herself freely in a way that would never be accepted in the ton, and Margaret because it allowed her to one-up the parents who had managed to decimate the family fortune and leave her with extremely diminished prospects for a husband.  Both women were now left with the role of having to save their parents from ruin, rather than being celebrated for their wit and personality.

                      “How do you get your ideas, anyway?” Margaret asked, reading over the last few lines Ania had written, waving the papers in the air to dry the ink.

                      “You would be surprised at how our neighbors and friends do carry on, my dear,” Ania answered, winking at her sister mischievously.  “Why, half the time, they’re not so much ideas from my head as they are careful observations of what goes on in the terrace gardens during each society ball.”

                      “You mean the bouncing rosemary bushes....really bounce?” asked Margaret, and the two of them collapsed laughing onto the desk chair.

                      At that point, Crusoe, the manservant, came in to announce that one Lord Turnquist had arrived to call upon Margaret Cromwell and that Lord and Lady Cromwell wished to have a word with their eldest daughter.  Margaret quickly gathered up the loose papers on the writing desk and bound them together with a satin ribbon just in the nick of time, as the doors to Ania’s office chambers burst open and her mother and father strode in.

                      Strode would be far too confident a way to describe their stride, surely.  They looked a bit worse for wear, given the news of the last few days, and Ania could imagine why.  As she shooed Margaret out of the room, she felt a sense of foreboding that left her quite sure that her hopes of late that perhaps the new Duke of Connols might have re-thought his decision to accept a brand new bride with his brand new estate and title.

                      In the sitting room, Margaret greeted her visitor.  It was truly a testament to her parent’s huge self-interest that they did not notice these semi-frequent visits of the town’s most isolated gentleman.  While many knew him as a convinced bachelor and patron of the arts, few knew him as the sisters Cromwell did, which meant that nobody knew that Lord Turnquist was actually Mr. David Thunrow, editor-in-chief of the mostly widely circulating underground paper amongst the ton.  She had first met him when her sister had let her in on the little deception she had going and was unable to deliver her weekly manuscript herself.  Margaret took it as a sign of great trust that her sister had been willing to let her in on the whole ruse, and that she had entrusted the precious papers into her hands.

                      What Margaret had not been expecting, however, was Lord Turnquist himself.  Young, brashly blond, with snapping brown eyes, a narrow nose, and enough energy to work an entire farm all on his lonesome, he was both younger and more attractive than Margaret had been expecting.  More than that, he paid attention to what Margaret had to say, which was unusual for her, especially when she was living in Ania’s shadow.  Her sister, with her light brown curls that lit up in the sun and huge green eyes that were shaped rather like a cat’s, had no idea how attractive she was, especially when she began to talk; while both of the sisters were known for their wit and attractiveness, it was Ania who people were drawn to.  Gentlemen, had she noticed them at all, always filled her dance card and seemed content enough to hear her chatter on.  Margaret supposed it was because her ideas and connections about the world and theories were so unusual, even for an educated lady, whereas Margaret’s wit was drier, harder to draw out.

                      But David never made her feel that way.  Since that first day, he had engaged her in conversation based on what she thought not only about her sister’s writing, but how she viewed the roles of both genders in the large functioning society.  When he talked, Margaret often found herself a bit dazed and leaning forward as if hoping to catch every word that came out of his mouth.  She hardly noticed that as time passed, she began to look forward to each one of the visits that he bestowed upon them, under the guise of calling upon her, and that she would take special pains with her gown and honey-colored hair, her most attractive feature.

                      Today, she had chosen a plum-colored gown that accentuated her waist and gave her hair quite a sheen.  In the sitting room, Lord Turnquist was turning the pages of one of Lord Cromwell’s books; when he heard her enter, he raised his head and his face broke out into a wide smile.  Margaret wondered when the room had become quite so light and why she was unable to hold his eye for long.

                      “How did you find the map-drawing this week, Margaret?’ he queried.  They hid the nature of the papers from the busy ears of the servants under the guise of semi-regular cartography lessons.  Pulling the ribbon from the sheaf she had just handed him, Lord Turnquist perused the papers quickly, getting a taste of the latest installment of the series he had commissioned from Ania.  “Ah, I see that as always, you are progressing quite splendidly in your studies,” he said to Margaret in code, but she found herself blushing anyway, as if it truly was her work on the papers he held in between his square, strong fingers, and not the work of her older sister.

                      “Well, I do learn from the best,” she told him, and found her cheeks growing hot.  What nonsense was she spouting at this man?  But David Turnquist only smiled, and she was grateful for his kindness in not embarrassing her.

                      “You know, Margaret,” he began, taking her by the elbow and settling her gently in the chair across from his, “With such a sound mind and lovely face, you are going to make some lucky duke or earl a lucky man one day.”

                      “Oh, my sister is the one marrying a duke, not I,” answered Margaret, and then wanted to smack herself on the forehead for being so literal.  David, however, seemed not to notice, and was in fact rubbing the ribbon in between his fingers, clearly enjoying the satin feel of it.

                      “And how does she feel about this?  Given that she is such a....unusual personality?”

                      “I think she hopes for some kind of understanding, if not actual love,” Margaret told him honestly, a note of sympathy entering her voice as she considered the very real implications of her sister’s future.  “Truth be told, I think she is sitting in her chambers right now, hoping that our parents will not make her marry the new duke.”

                      “Yes, I heard about what happened.  Poor Duke Connols,” David said, and although Margaret was unsure of which duke he was referring to, the new or the old, she found the empathetic look on his face and the fact that he was considering the feelings of the people involved rather than the scandal everyone else had been discussing decidedly appealing.  As a whole, she thought, considering the way a shock of blond hair was falling over one of his eyes, Lord Turnquist was decidedly appealing.  She was so absorbed in the way the light was hitting his fine wool coat that she scarcely heard what he said next.

                      “What?” she queried, hating herself for missing it.

                      David Turnquist looked at her bemusedly.  “Head in the clouds today, Marge?  ‘Scuse me, Lady Cromwell.”  Margaret returned his teasing smile, feeling herself buoyed by his attention.  “I was just saying,” he continued, “that it is a damnable shame that ladies and gentlemen of a certain class do not get to choose their spouses for the right reasons.”

                      “And what exactly are the right reasons, Lord Turnquist?”

                      He creased his pale brow.  “I think that when a man and a woman have good conversation, a strong companionship, and respect each other, these are the right reasons.”

                      “We have good conversations,” Margaret suddenly found herself saying without thinking.

                      A look of mild alarm passed over Lord Turnquist’s face.  He looked, in fact, as if he had just been startled out of a pleasant reverie with a pot of rather cold water being thrown in his face.  “Yes, yes, I suppose we do,” he mumbled quickly, before his voice took on his previous languid tone.  “Although I suppose that in most cases, the choice is not always ours.  Propriety always wins.”

                      “Damn propriety,” Margaret said in a low voice, inwardly delighted at being able to say such a naughty word with David, who tossed his head up in laughter.

                      “Yes, indeed, propriety be damned,” he answered, and Margaret added her smile quite deliciously to his.

                      Upstairs in Ania’s chambers, the darker haired sister’s hopes had swiftly been dashed.  Struggling to maintain her perspective on the situation, Ania uttered a few sentences about how it had turned out to be lucky after all that the new Duke Connols had chosen to keep to the legal deed and take her on for a bride, despite not truly having to do so after all.

                      “You will be married in St. John’s in a week’s time, and your father and I will be hosting the breakfast after,” Lady Cromwell was saying, and Ania found herself wondering what all the rush was about.  Were her parents afraid that during that time, her husband-to-be would return to his previous sport of bedding the more fashionable ladies of the ton?  If he was anything like his brother, then Nicholas Connols was a smart man and it would be decidedly stupid of him to continue to tarnish the reputation of his family, since it was tarnished beyond repair.  And then she realized what it was that her parents were truly afraid of. They cared not a whit for the reputation of her husband to be, or even her own.

                      They were afraid Nicholas Connols would change his mind and not marry her.