Authors: Shirl Henke
Rebel Baron (48 page)
“Aaah,” he gasped as she reached inside and took hold of his rigid staff with one small, skillful hand.
“A pity we don't have time to test that remarkable American stamina now,” she murmured. “Perhaps tonight?”
“Insatiable woman,” he crooned, then rotated his hips in rhythm with her strokes. “But you've forgotten one important rule—boots first.”
“Only if we plan to get as far as the bed,” she answered reasonably. “Johnny will be awakening soon, remember?” He had somehow managed to slide her soft cotton gown off her shoulders and shove her camisole down to free the tips of her breasts, which were hardened into tight little buds. The heat of his mouth on them nearly made her dissolve. She arched up, letting him flick the nipples with his tongue, then suckle on them. The lovers slowly crumpled together onto the soft carpet.
He spread her hair out around them like a fiery mantle, taking one long curl and binding her to him by wrapping it about his neck. “Miranda, my love, my life,” he whispered as her lips parted and joined his in a deep, searing kiss.
She could feel his callused hands—those wonderful, long-fingered hands—stroking up her calf toward the sensitive skin of her inner thigh while he pulled her skirt and petticoats up. She arched her hips, allowing him easy access to slide down her pantalets. When his hand cupped her mound, it was Miranda who cried out. “Please, Brandon, my love, now—now!” He obliged her as she spread her legs, positioning his staff and sliding it deep inside her welcoming heat. At once her thighs tightened around his hips and she arched against him. He felt the tug on his scalp when her hands seized fistfuls of thick blond hair and guided his head to her breasts once more. As he suckled her, she moved in perfect sync with his thrusts, crying out in unabashed pleasure.
This austere woman of business who coolly ran banks, iron foundries and shipping yards was his and his alone at moments such as these. Miranda was wild and abandoned, caring nothing for what servants might gossip or Society say about her Rebel Baron of a husband who raced horses and refused to dance to the tune piped in London. This was real. This was all that mattered.
They rolled around on the floor and Miranda came up on top, her skirts bunched up about her thighs as she rode him like a Valkyrie. Brand reached up and cupped a breast in each hand, using his thumbs on the nipples until she threw back her head and moaned. Knowing the end was near, he once again tumbled her beneath him, driving fiercely into her as if this were the last mating on earth.
He felt her reaching her peak and looked down with awe at the bright pink blotches that stained her face and traveled over her throat to her breasts. Such a lovely sight on her fair silky skin. But when her body began to spasm in bliss, she wrung from him the last vestiges of his control and he, too, gave in to the ecstasy.
She could feel him stiffen and swell even more as his shuddering release poured into her, sending her into yet another climax of her own. When they made love, it was difficult to tell just where one of them began and the other ended, as every nuance of their wild joinings elicited such mutual bliss. He collapsed on top of her, sweat-soaked from their exertions, even more than he had been from working under the warm spring sun.
“I'm afraid I've quite ruined your lovely dress—and now we both smell of horses.”
He did not sound the least bit apologetic and she did not the least bit care. Burying her face in the springy hair of his chest, she inhaled deeply. “You smell of male and I like that.”
“I was riding a filly,” he said with a lopsided grin.
“Human male, not horse, you dolt, and you did just ride—but I'm far from a filly.”
“Fishing for compliments, are you, darlin'?” he said, pressing kisses on her eyelids, nose and cheeks before centering his attention on her mouth. “You are the most beautiful woman in all of England.”
Between kisses, she said dreamily, “Only England?”
“Well now, to be certain it's all the world, we'll have to start with that visit to America this fall, won't we? But I'm sure you'll still hold the title if we circle the globe.”
“I'm not so certain.” She looked up at him with a blaze of joy on her face. “You see, I'll be growing quite fat by the end of the year.”
Comprehension dawned and he beamed at her. “Lordy, darlin', I'm supposed to be running a stud farm for horses, not children.”
“Let's work at beating Reiver's record—but mind you, always remember that your stable of mares is a stable of one,” she said with mock severity.
Brand chuckled. “Woman, that is one condition you won't ever have to negotiate.”
Author’s Note
I first conceived the idea of an embittered Confederate cavalier who had lost everything in the war and then found the English title he inherited was as bankrupt as his lost plantation in Kentucky. The concept seemed rather dark for the American Lords series, which was intended to be comic as well as romantic. Lorilee Auburn, not her iron-willed mother Miranda, was to be his leading lady. But how to put a light touch to the story? My husband Jim came up with a twist—have Lori become matchmaker for her mother and turn the tables on Brand. I loved the older woman-younger man concept for a romance!
All sorts of possibilities for humor followed. So did Gideon Hercules St. John, “Sin” to his friends. If he reminds you a bit of his very English counterpart Alvin Francis Edward Drummond (Drum to his friends) from
Wicked Angel, Wanton Angel,
and
Yankee Earl
, I also owe Sin's character to Jim.
After writing three books set during the Regency, I was a bit at sea when I moved into the Victorian era. My good friend and colleague Karyn Witmer-Gow, a.k.a. Elizabeth Grayson, lent me a large canvas sack of reference books which were a lifesaver, guiding me across the Atlantic into mid-nineteenth-century England. It is so much easier on a writer when the “lending librarian” has no due dates stamped on her books.
I hope you have laughed and cried with Brand and Miranda, as you did with Jason and Rachel in
Yankee Earl
. Next on deck will be Josh and Sabrina in
Texas Viscount.
Some day in the future, how could I resist a story for Lorilee? After losing a hunk like Brand, she certainly deserves a hero of her own. Let me know what you think at
www.shirlhenke.com
.
Happy reading!
Shirl
About the Author
SHIRL HENKE lives in St. Louis, where she enjoys gardening in her yard and greenhouse, cooking holiday dinners for her family and listening to jazz. In addition to helping brainstorm and research her books, her husband Jim is “lion tamer” for their two wild young tomcats, Pewter and Sooty, geniuses at pillage and destruction.
Shirl has been a RITA finalist twice, and has won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewer’s Choice Awards from
Romantic Times
“I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ballpoint pen—it’s hard to get good quills these days,” she says. Dragged into the twenty-first century by her son Matt, a telecommunication specialist, Shirl now uses two of those “devil machines.” Another troglodyte bites the dust. Please visit her at
www.shirlhenke.com
.
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