Mistress of the Stone (39 page)

“Perhaps.” Leaving the torch lit had been a mistake. Darkness might have been more intimate, but the shadows played across his face in the most intriguing ways. “Diana doesn’t betray confidences. She wouldn’t have told anyone unless she had good reason.”

His brows drew together even more, shadowing his eyes. “Grace.”

Had he caught her admiring him? His voice seemed caught between warning and something lower. Warmer. Her heart thudded too fast. “I’m sorry if I woke you over something trivial.”

He took the torch from her and set it on its end on the low table by the door. The light bounced off the ceiling, reflecting down around them in deep shadows. “You are not sorry.”

Grace curled her fingers toward her palms, desperate not to reach for him. But holding back her body couldn’t stop the words, raw and stripped of even the pretense of respectability. “Celibacy is more easily endured by virgins, I imagine. Three years of it has made me foolish.”

“I could take you.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead. “But I don’t think you really want me to.”

Laughter fought its way past the knot in her throat. “You’re not terribly perceptive when it comes to women, are you?”

“You want me to
now
,” he clarified. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll feel differently.”

It was her turn to frown. “What happens tomorrow morning?”

“You’ll wake up in bed with a broken-down hound and the sun shining through the curtains,” he said simply.

So simple. So sad. She reached out to touch the scar on his cheek, the one barely visible in the shadows, the one she’d memorized already with too many furtive glances. “Undoubtedly the finest sort of man I’ve ever woken up in bed with.”

He cupped the back of her head. “You say that because you don’t know me.” He bent his head as he spoke, until he almost cut off his own words by slanting his mouth over hers.

How long since she’d been kissed? Years, to be sure. Longer still since she’d been kissed by a man who saw
her
, not the role she happened to be playing. Too long since her lips had been claimed with intent and hunger and skill, all firm pressure and warmth and wildness, so overwhelming she barely had the wit to kiss him back.

Archer hitched her up on the table with a growl, knocking over the handtorch. She clutched at his shirt as he leaned over her, deepening the kiss, and only his hand at the back of her head kept it from bumping against the wall.

She’d bedded men. Bad men, criminal men, but never a bloodhound. Exhilaration flooded her, edged with the tiniest thread of fear. He surrounded her, covered her, a beast in the shape of a man, and as careful as he was, there was no mistaking the proprietary command in the grip of his hands.

She was meant to melt. To yield. And even as her body obediently did the former, sheer madness drove her to deny him surrender. She closed her teeth on his lower lip instead, licked it and loved the taste of coffee for the first time.

He groaned and nudged her chin with his thumb, demanding access. Entrance. Grace gave it to him, parting her lips as she slid her hands up to tangle in his shaggy blond hair.

He settled between her thighs, and his erection pressed against her belly through their clothes. A moment later, he dragged his mouth to her cheek. “Yes or no, Grace? All you have to do is pick one.”

Mistress of the Stone

Maria Zannini

She was ready for his steel, but not for his flesh.

Luísa Tavares has a list of sins the length of the Antilles, but there’s no time to repent for them now. When a pockmarked Frenchman hands her Papa’s ring—still attached to his severed finger—she orders the
Coral
back to the Caribbean, despite her father’s earlier warning never to return.

It’s Luísa’s luckless fate that the only man who can help her is a blasted Inglés pirate hunter who’s more dead than alive and locked in a curse he doesn’t want lifted. Worse, his feral sensuality sparks a hunger she can’t ignore.

Xander Daltry hadn’t planned on kidnapping this wild woman—or succumbing to his uncontrollable desire for her. But he needs Luísa and the moonstone she wears around her neck to rescind a witch’s spell. His sister, long dead, and others like her have been cursed to remain in the mortal plane for eternity. Only the stone can set them free.
 

The only way to convince the reluctant pirate queen to help him is to withhold one small bit of the truth. For if she learns who really betrayed her father, the longing in her fiery eyes could easily turn to murderous wrath…

Warning:
 
Contains a pirate queen with a sacred gem, a werewolf with an agenda, an island where nothing is as it seems, and a hero with a Jolly Roger that’ll make you purr like a kitten.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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Mistress of the Stone

Copyright © 2012 by Maria Zannini

ISBN: 978-1-61921-184-1

Edited by Christa Desir

Cover by Kanaxa

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: August 2012

www.samhainpublishing.com