Read Online Waking Up With a Rake by Connie Mason, Mia Marlowe - Free Book Online

sensual world, dark with mystery and potent with promise. Her kiss evidently revealed how little she knew about that world.
    “At least, thanks to you, I’m now a knowledgeable virgin.” She tried to corral her hair into some semblance of order, but without the pins that had escaped during her wild ride, it was a hopeless gesture. “I can recognize the kiss of a rake when I receive one.”
    “I hope you’ll try not to find yourself in situations that lend themselves to another rake’s kiss. You can’t trust those sorts, you know.” He snorted as he mounted Duncan and leaned down to offer her his arm. “We should get you back to the house.”
    “Riding double?”
    “Duncan can handle the weight,” he assured her.
    She didn’t doubt that. She was more concerned about being so close to Rhys Warrington. Just the thought of it had her belly turning cartwheels.
    “If Mr. Thatcher arrives before we do, no doubt your family will be worried.”
    Olivia sighed. Drat the man, he was right. Her mother would pitch a fit if she heard Molly had been returned to the stable injured and riderless before Olivia appeared. Beatrice Symon would never listen patiently to Mr. Thatcher’s explanation. She’d be certain that Olivia was bleeding in a ditch somewhere and it all could have been avoided if only she’d listened to her mother.
    Olivia’s mother in hysterics was a sight to avoid at all costs.
    She grasped Rhys’s forearm, stepped on his foot in the stirrup, and let him heft her onto the scupper behind him, both her legs draped sedately on one side of the horse. Her skirt was wide enough to accommodate riding astride, but after the strange ache she’d experienced when he kissed her, she didn’t think snuggling up to Lord Rhys’s backside with her legs spread was a wise course.
    Since she couldn’t hug the horse with her knees, that meant she had to hug Rhys in order to stay on Duncan’s back. Gingerly, she slipped one arm around his lean waist.
    He claimed her hand with his.
    “Hold on.”
    Rhys nudged his mount into a quick trot. Olivia was forced to wrap her other arm around him and cling tightly lest she be bounced off Duncan’s rear. After a few yards, Rhys slowed his mount to a sedate walk, but she was obliged to continue hugging him in case he kicked Duncan into a canter without warning.
    “Now then, this isn’t completely unpleasant, is it?” he said.
    Far from unpleasant. The faint sun had disappeared completely behind a growing cloud bank, but Rhys Warrington threw off as much heat as a roaring fire.
    “You’re wide enough through the shoulders to provide an admirable windbreak, I’ll give you that,” she said.
    “One of my proudest accomplishments,” he quipped. “I live to serve, milady.”
    “You know full well that I’m simply Miss Symon. I’m no lady.”
    “In all the ways that matter you are,” he said, his voice rumbling through his broad back and into her ear that was pressed against it. “You may as well get used to a title, you know. You’ll have to answer to Your Highness if you wed the royal duke.”
    With her cheek resting on Rhys’s strong back and her arms around his waist, Olivia decided the prospect of an aging groom, royal or not, was more depressing than usual. When she kissed the Duke of Clarence for the first time, would he make her toes curl?
    Somehow, she doubted it.
    “Penny for your thoughts?” he said when they’d ridden in silence for several paces.
    “They’re worth far more than that.” Embarrassment heated her cheeks. She couldn’t admit she’d been thinking about his kiss so soon after trying to convince him to pretend it didn’t happen.
    When they reached the hedgerow, Rhys reined Duncan to a stop. He tossed a leg over the horse’s head and slid off to retrieve Olivia’s saddle from where it had been trampled into the wintry turf.
    She took the opportunity to scoot forward and settle herself astride on Duncan’s saddle. By the time Rhys turned