The Reiver (5 page)

“I didn’t promise I would not escape. I promised not to
try
to,” she pointed out.

He chuckled. “Aye, I recall now you were very specific when you made the promise. Notwithstanding, I was very angry—and hurt. I considered coming after you, going to the Warden, demanding satisfaction from the king. But in the end, I realized this is the only thing that would ever bring me true satisfaction.” His mouth swooped down and captured hers.

Aye, aye, he was right. This was the only thing she wanted, the only thing that truly mattered. She would never want anything else in life if only she could have this—the pepper-sweet taste of his mouth, the warm, solid breadth of his body, and the truths they could only seem to communicate this way.

He lifted his head. “I am ready to declare an end to this branch of the Maxwell-Johnstone feud. What do you say we start a new alliance in its place?”

“I would love that, but what about my brothers? I am not so sure they’ll go along.”

“My brother, Ewan, is out there right now, negotiating a bride price for you. I think ‘tis safe to say they’ll find the terms favorable.” His voice dropped an octave. “I’d even give them Curaidh in exchange for you.”

Joy blazed in her heart. “I love you, Duncan Maxwell.”

“As I love you, Reiver of my heart.”

The End

Author’s Note

This story is loosely based on actual events. In the late 1500s, a feud erupted between the two most powerful Scottish border families, the Maxwells and the Johnstones. The animosity between the families resulted in the Battle of Dryfe Sands, where the Johnstones solidly defeated the Maxwells, leaving many of the surviving combatants with facial scars known as “Lockerbie licks.” Duncan Maxwell and Jamie Johnstone are both products of my imagination, branches of the two families that never actually existed. The conflict that stands between them and their happy ending. however, is very much a product of history.

Author Bio

When Jackie isn’t trying to be a writer—and even when she is—she’s a happily married mother of three who makes her living writing technical training materials for the software industry. She lives with her husband and children in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She holds a BA in Classical Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago.

You can visit her online and learn more about her current and upcoming titles at 
http://www.jackiebarbosa.com
.

An Excerpt from
Carnally Ever After
by Jackie Barbosa

Available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, All Romance eBooks, Kobo, Sony, and Smashwords

Chapter One

St. Paul’s Cathedral, June 1816

“Just like the bloody man!” Alistair de Roche, Earl of Holyfield, sank into the rear pew of the Morning Chapel and loosened his cravat. Behind him, the shuffling footsteps and grumbling whispers of the guests echoed as they exited the cavernous cathedral. Thwarted in their hopes of witnessing the wedding of the Season, the rumormongers would have to find their amusement elsewhere.

No doubt in ripping the unfortunate bride to shreds with vicious speculation as to the reason her intended had failed to appear at the altar.

“Isn’t it just?”

Alistair nearly fell off the narrow bench. Though he could discern only the outline of a figure in the far corner of the dimly-lit niche, he recognized her voice instantly. Lady Louisa Bennett’s husky yet dulcet tones were unmistakable, with the capacity to make him hot and uncomfortable.

Never mind that she was his best friend’s betrothed.

His best friend’s 
jilted 
betrothed.

He opened his mouth, attempting to frame a suitable response to her question, and then, finding nothing to say, closed it. After taking a deep breath, he tried again. “Grenville 
is 
a trifle unreliable.”

An understatement, surely.

Lady Louisa emerged from the shadowy recesses into the light streaming through a stained glass window set high in the wall. A rustle of silk and satin accompanied her movement. Bathed in the multicolored glow with her dark hair arranged in artful curls about her face and her large, round eyes glaring at him, she looked every inch a vengeful angel.

An angel with a form so lush, she could tempt the devil into an alliance with the other side.

Grenville was an idiot.

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, forcing the ivory mounds upward until they threatened to spill forth from her bodice. Although the neckline of Louisa’s gown might have been demure on most women, on her, it bordered on indecency.

Alistair’s fingers flexed. He had no business thinking about her breasts, in or out of her dress. Although now, he could think of nothing else.

Out of her dress held the greater appeal.

“Why did he not come?” she demanded.

A reasonable question. Alistair was the best man and it was his duty to see the groom to the altar. A duty he’d failed miserably.

He shrugged to cover his unease. “I’m sure he was unavoidably detained by some sort of emergency.”

Provided an emergency included sleeping off a night of debauchery. This was Grenville’s typical reason for missing appointments, even one as important as his wedding. Alistair knew that if his friend’s father found him, he’d be enlisted to search London’s best brothels and slimiest hells for Grenville. Alistair had skulked away from the rest of the wedding party when no one was looking precisely to avoid that thankless—and likely protracted—task.

She closed her eyes, dark, expressive eyes he knew to be the color of rich chocolate. Her plush, upper lip crumpled in on the lower one. She shook her head. “I doubt it.”

Damnation! Did she know more about Grenville’s proclivities than he thought?

“He didn’t come because I’m fat.”

Alistair blinked, dumbfounded. The words were spoken with such flat conviction and self-loathing, he felt them like a fist. Fat? Louisa? No, surely not.

Voluptuous, ample, and yes, perhaps a trifle plump. Though her dressmakers seemed to do everything possible to disguise Louisa’s generous proportions beneath modest, billowy gowns, their efforts were wholly ineffectual, a fact for which Alistair was not certain whether to thank or curse his Maker.

He grimaced owing to the increasingly snug fit of his breeches. She honed in on his expression.

“You admit, then, I am right. No man wishes to bed a fat girl, especially not for the rest of his life.” Her voice cracked.

He wanted, quite inappropriately, to laugh. All it would take to disabuse her of her foolish misapprehension would be to lay her hand on his breeches where his nascent erection strained to escape his fall. The idea thickened his cock even further.

He daren’t stand up now, though he would like to go and comfort her. Instead, he shook his head vehemently against her words.

“That is not true.”

Her lips pursed in exasperation. He fancied nibbling at them with his teeth.

“What is not true?” she demanded. “That men do not want fat girls, or that I am fat?

Alistair ran his fingers through his hair, knowing he made it stand up on end. “Both. Neither. Christ!” He was doing a bloody poor job of explaining himself. If only his prick would stop sapping energy from his brain, he might be able to form a cogent sentence.

She spread her arms and executed a pirouette. “What man would want me?” The fabric of her skirt caught as she spun, accentuating the plump, perfect arc of her arse beneath it.

Before he could think better of it, he was on his feet. The click of his Hessians against the marble echoed loudly in the now-empty church.

They were alone.

He reached her in four long strides. She turned away as he approached, but he wanted—needed—her to look at him. He grasped her shoulders and brought her about to face him. Wide, startled eyes, glistening with unshed tears, met his. She gasped in surprise.

He hauled her closer, until their bodies touched, and then released her shoulders. She seemed too astonished to pull away.  
Good
. He cupped her arse, the object of so many of his lurid fantasies, and pressed her tight against him.

Her wide eyes grew wider. 
Better.

“Me,” he grated out on a hoarse whisper. The heady scent of her—citrus, cloves, and 
woman
—assailed his nostrils. “Me.”

Her nose wrinkled and she sniffled. “You?”

The weight of her buttocks filled his hands even more completely and pleasurably than he had ever imagined. He nodded. “Yes. Since the moment Grenville introduced us.”

She stared up at him, her lips parted, her breath coming in short puffs. Her pupils, already dilated to accommodate the dim light in the chapel, increased in diameter, nearly engulfing her rich brown irises in blackness. Her breasts seemed to surge forward with anticipation and he imagined her nipples puckering and hardening beneath the layers of silk, linen, and cotton.

After a long, thick pause, her mouth curved upward, her eyes sparking with challenge. “Prove it is so.”

He dropped his hands from her delicious posterior as if her words had set her flesh on fire. “I…we…what? You cannot mean for us to…” He broke off, for saying the words would make acting on them all the more irresistible.

She ran her tongue over that plush upper lip. His cock twitched at the invitation. She was killing him.

“I can and I do. I was to have a wedding night, and I still intend to.”

“But…” Alistair fought to hear the tiny internal voice of reason over the pounding of his pulse in his ears…and in points more southern. “Your parents,” he managed to object at last. “Where are they? Won’t they be looking for you?”

It was the first un-erotic thought he’d had in some moments, and it calmed his pulse a tick.

Her pretty, softly rounded face contorted and she made a derisive sound in her throat. “They’re in some antechamber with the vicar and my future in-laws. And they’ll only look for me after Father finishes browbeating the duke into accepting a smaller dowry payment and Mother stops bemoaning her shame and humiliation. They’re so angry, I doubt they’ve even noticed I left. I should expect them in about three hours.” Her eyelids lowered a fraction, her eyes becoming sultry, near-black slits. “As I understand it, that should be more than sufficient time, yes?”

His mouth went dry. Quite sufficient, his heavy cock argued persuasively. “But where? Surely not here!” A dangerous, wicked image of himself on his knees, thrusting into her as she sat on the pew, her legs wide, careened through his brain. The thought aroused him more than it scandalized him.

He was shameless. At least where Louisa was concerned.

She chuckled, a naughty, knowing sound that heated his blood to fever pitch. “Don’t be a ninny. You have a flat nearby, I believe?”

He did. Three blocks away. 
Yes, do it,
 his lust urged. Take her home and fuck her blind.

But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be a substitute for Grenville. Bad enough that his boyhood friend would marry the woman Alistair wanted for himself. Worse by far to be nothing more to her than Grenville’s replacement.

“Do you want him?” he asked flatly, quietly.

Her features relaxed into raw, glowing honesty. “No, never. My mother told me to close my eyes and think of England.” She gave him a smile that was almost shy. “I didn’t tell her I planned to think of you instead.”

Her declaration shattered the last bubble of Alistair’s resistance. His heart expanded beneath his breastbone until he thought his chest might crack.

He took her by the hand, her small palm engulfed in his. “We should hurry,” he said, tugging her toward the deserted apse.

She fell in step beside him as he marched down the aisle toward one of the side exits. “Why must we hurry? We should have plenty of time.”

He smiled at her. A smile he knew was as dirty and lascivious as the pictures in his head. Pictures of Louisa, naked and sprawled across his bed, open and ready for everything he would do to her.

“For what I have in mind, we’ll need every minute we can steal.”

~End of Excerpt~

An Excerpt from 
The Lesson Plan
by Jackie Barbosa

Coming on or about December 25, 2011

Chapter One

Lancashire, September 1794

The Honorable Miss Winifred Langston had achieved, through a combination of blind luck and careful contrivance, the prodigious age of twenty-one without ever having suffered the indignity of a London Season. Her luck had come in the form of a doting, distractible father who seemed not to notice that his only daughter had long since reached an age past which gallivanting about the countryside dressed as a boy could be considered an excusable, childish prank. The contrivance had come in convincing her brothers that, should she have her debut, it would be their duty to chaperon her to endless Society events at which they would be every bit as much “on the market” as she. As every one of them still possessed a good many wild oats yet to be sown, they had been more than happy to help persuade her father that Freddie’s debut could surely wait until next Season.