Read Online The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance by Candice Hern, Bárbara Metzger, Emma Wildes, Sharon Page, Delilah Marvelle, Anna Campbell, Lorraine Heath, Elizabeth Boyle, Deborah Raleigh, Margo Maguire, Michèle Ann Young, Sara Bennett, Anthea Lawson, Trisha Telep, Robyn DeHart, Carolyn Jewel, Amanda Grange, Vanessa Kelly, Patricia Rice, Christie Kelley, Leah Ball, Caroline Linden, Shirley Kennedy, Julia Templeton - Free Book Online Page A

her say “Sebastian” meant he needed a couple of seconds to register what else she’d said.
    His grip on the chair became punishing.
    He must be mistaken. She couldn’t be offering herself. She’d never offered herself in all these many years. Even in the beginning, he’d always had to take. He’d come to hate it, so that when she’d finally suggested a separation after those miserable months together, he’d almost been relieved.
    Of course, he hadn’t realized then that his agreement would lead to ten excruciating years without her.
    She sat up in the bed and watched him with a glow in her blue eyes that in any other woman he’d read as blatant sexual interest. She’d taken her beautiful hair down and it flowed around her shoulders, catching the firelight. She became his fantasy Alicia. He had to be dreaming.
    A frown crossed her face, he guessed at his continuing silence. “Sebastian?”
    “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said in a constricted voice, wondering why the hell he tried to talk her out of fulfilling his dearest hopes.
    He’d wanted his wife for ten lonely years and now she was near enough to touch. He’d always been blackguard enough to want more from their forced intimacy tonight than mere conversation.
    Then he’d remembered those disastrous encounters at Balmuir House. He couldn’t bring himself to inflict himself upon her once again.
    She raised her chin, a signal of bravado that had been familiar in the young Alicia. The memory made his gut clench with longing.
    “You’ve chased one lover away. Honour compels you to offer recompense.” Then in a less confident voice: “Sebastian, once you wanted me. I know you did.”
    He swallowed and forced his response from a tight throat. “I still do.”
    She’d taken her thick red cloak off when she entered the room. Now she raised trembling hands to the buttons on her mannish ensemble. An ensemble that looked anything but mannish on her lush figure.
    Her travelling garb was cut like a riding habit and the white shirt was suitably modest, high at the throat. Even so, when her fumbling fingers loosened that top button, every drop of moisture dried from his mouth and his heart crashed against his ribs.
    The Earl of Kinvarra was accounted a brave man. But he recognized the emotion holding him paralysed as ice-cold fear.
    Tonight provided a miraculous second chance to heal the breach in his marriage. But if he hurt Alicia again, he’d never have another opportunity to bring her back to him.
    He needed patience, restraint and understanding to seduce his wife into pleasure. Yet he burned like a devil in hell. What was he to do? He wanted her too much. And wanting her too much would destroy the fragile, uncertain intimacy building between them in this quiet room.
    When his family had presented him with such a beautiful bride, he’d been sure they’d find joy in each other. Instead every coupling had been furtive and shameful, accomplished in darkness and ending with his wife in tears. No wonder he’d lost his taste for forcing himself upon her, although to his endless torment, his desire had never waned.
    The shirt fell open another fraction, revealing a delicate line of collarbone and a shadowy hint of her breasts. She still studied him with an unwavering stare. Her hand dropped to the next button.
    “Stop,” he said hoarsely.
    Her hand paused. “Stop?” The vulnerability that flooded her face carved a rift in his heart. “You said …”
    He shook his head and finally released the chair. He flexed his aching hand to restore the blood flow. “And I meant it. But let’s do this properly.”
    Her hand fell away from her shirt to lie loose in her lap. “Shouldn’t I take my clothes off?”
    Dear God, she was going to kill him before she was done.
    He closed his eyes and prayed for control as images of Alicia’s naked body crammed his mind and turned him as hard as an oak staff. When he opened them, she stared at him as if he