Read Online The Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley - Free Book Online Page B

coursed through him when she’d glanced up. He’d seen his own mother’s eyes staring back at him, the eyes of the woman he had not been able to save from murder. He remembered how he had sunk to his knees, stunned beyond imagining, remembered the hunger in his heart as he looked into her face and had seen his past, his present, and his redemption.
    All of this, every single event that had happened since he’d found his beautiful child, he had begun himself, long, long ago when he had decided to accept the advances of his best friend’s lady.
    A man could be so innocently stupid at twenty-two.
    He ever so gently slid Alexandra from his lap. She landed on her feet looking bewildered.
    Grayson rose. “Cross him from the list and tell your friends to cut the acquaintance.”
    Her brow puckered, her lips parted, and ringlets straggled to her flushed face.
    Yes, in bed, with her, for the next three weeks.
    He decided to leave before he bore her to the floor and shocked her servants silly. Before he ceased caring what the servants thought and simply made her his own.
    He put his finger under her chin. “Will you sleep bare for me again tonight?” He found himself unable to keep the longing from his voice.
    Her eyes rounded. Outrage? Or fascination? “Sir, you presume.”
    He really ought to tell her he liked it when she went all haughty. It made him want to erase her irritated expression with a long, dark hour of kisses. He had to satisfy himself now with giving her a wicked smile. “If youchange your mind, tap on the wall. To let me know.”
    She stepped back, blushing hotly. He wanted to laugh. Did she know how beautiful she was, all flustered and bothered like that? If those gentlemen on that list even suspected she was considering them, they would roll over like tame puppies and wave their feet in the air. She would only have to place her hand on the arm of the one she wanted and they’d melt to her.
    And then he’d have to break the man’s neck. His arousal demanded he take immediate action, but he willed it to silence. He needed to find an icy waterfall somewhere to calm him down.
    He satisfied himself by letting his gaze rove once over her delicious body. Then he grinned at her confusion and left her.
    Alexandra ran the brush through Maggie’s tangled curls, gently sorting them. The girl sat at Alexandra’s dressing table, a smock covering her fine new white gown. Alexandra had already dressed in a slip of creamy yellow silk covered by a gown of sheer silver-gray. The skirt shimmered in a pleasing way whenever she moved. Her curls had been caught in a loose knot and twined with pale flowers. A glittering diamond necklace reposed on her breast—ready for a pirate to steal.
    It had been nearly a week since the viscount had discovered the list in her sitting room and had teased her with it. She’d been idiotically pleased at first that he had wanted to put himself high on it, and romantic enough to think he’d meant it. And then when she’d blurted her question, he’d turned to her, his eyes subdued, and said, “I regret—”
    In other words, no, you silly woman. I am a pirate, I had an exotic island woman as a wife—what would I want witha widow who needs to make a list of stodgy gentlemen so that she can choose her next dull and stay-at-home husband?
    And his warning about Mr. Burchard had been most bizarre. Was the story true, or had he been fabricating it to play with her a little more? She had casually dropped the name in conversation with Maggie, but Maggie had never heard of the man.
    She had intended, before the viscount had found the list, to have a serious discussion with him about Maggie, and her clothes and education. But after he’d teased her so, then made his second brazen suggestion that she sleep without clothes, she’d not found the courage to approach him.
    Of course, that night, she had once again removed her nightrail after Alice had departed and climbed between the cool sheets in