Read Online The Rake's Redemption by Sherrill Bodine - Free Book Online Page B

the gossamer hangings of silk drew him closer. She looked like a goddess, long silken limbs, skin of creamy alabaster, dark thick lashes laying like open fans above her sleep-blushed cheekbones, and crimson velvet lips.
    On impulse, with two long fingers he pushed back the netting to slip noiselessly onto the ornately carved wooden bed that held his mistress. She stirred him more than he had thought possible so few hours after their long night of love, so he rested his hands on the pillow beside her shoulders and leaned forward to touch her mouth with his own. He felt her lips part hungrily beneath his deepening kiss.
    “Jules…” breathed Contessa Marietta Louisa Primavetta, opening heavy brown eyes, which widened when they met his gaze. “What is the hour, Cara?”
    “It is nearly dawn. My ship leaves on the tide.”
    She cupped his cheeks with her palms, pulling him down to her. Her tongue flicked across his straight mouth curving it into a smile and finally he surrendered, sighing, and rested his head against her breasts. “You are unusually … eager … tonight, my love. I find it delightful, of course,” he mused. “But unlike you.”
    “You have never left me for months before, Jules,” she whispered, threading her fingers through his straight dark hair. “Must you truly return to dreary London for that insipid Season?”
    Reluctantly leaving the soft fragrance of her body, Jules straightened, taking both her hands between his. “I must go. The time is right for me to repay my brother for the past.”
    Her gaze narrowing, she freed one hand to touch the black patch he wore over his left eye. “Your younger brother, the Marquis of Aubrey, is it not? Did he have anything to do with the loss of your sight?”
    “Sweet, allow me my secrets.” He pressed kisses into her open palms. “It was my mysterious past and my patch … you thought me a pirate, remember? … that first attracted you to me.”
    “But that was seven years ago. And I know little more about your past now than I did then,” replied Marietta candidly. Tilting her head back, she smiled into his face. “You have not been back to England since we met. I know your half brother is your only relative. Do you miss this loved one, Cara?”
    Gently he lowered her hands to the covers and rose from the bed. He hesitated a moment, studying her, before reaching down to caress the curve of her cheek with his thumb. “Love for my brother. Yes. Once. But that does not call me back to England. It is something quite different. Something that must be settled between Dominic and me … at last.”
    LONDON
    Wentworth House seemed small after the vastness of the Park, but Juliana rather liked the cozy front parlor. Her father had decorated it in her favorite colors of rose, blue, and cream only a few months prior to his unexpected demise from an inflammation of the lungs brought about by his stubborn refusal to leave the hunting field during a thunderstorm. It was difficult to believe that two long years had passed, for the holland covers removed from all the furnishings before their arrival, had insured that the colors remained true and everything was dusted and polished to a fine sheen just as if her father himself was in residence continually.
    A small fire, for cheer rather than warmth, burned in the grate of the carved marble fireplace before which she sat with an unopened volume of Lord Byron’s poems on her lap. Across the room Sophia lay stretched out upon the sofa. A soft snore parted her lips.
    Juliana smiled. Perhaps a nap was just what she needed herself. She wasn’t sleeping well. She had told her aunt it was the strange bed, but when she was completely honest with herself, she knew that was not true. Dreams disturbed her slumber. Dreams of the Marquis of Aubrey smiling at her as he had in the walled garden when he presented her with the rose. Dreams of him again bending over her hand and pressing his lips to the pulse beating in her wrist.