Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

Despite his mild denial, she was already feeling a slow seeping desire drift through her senses.

He shrugged like any nobleman would when confronted with a question related to the kitchen. "Don't ask me. Would you like me to call Gabriella?"

"No," Daisy instantly retorted, not currently in the mood for additional company.

"Could I interest you in some wild strawberries or some génoise? Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Don't you feel it?" she asked, incredulous he could so casually converse about food when she was beginning to feel the Egyptian cotton of his shirt as though it were heated silk.

"Of course." He'd eaten too.5

"And this was why you delayed me… it wasn't concern for a servant's feelings."

"It was both," he said. "Gabriella terrifies me." His smile negated his latter statement and in truth, Gabriella coddled him. For which he, as a grateful man, reciprocated. "More champagne?"

"No, thank you." Leaning over, she placed her plate on the floor. Settling back against the cushions, she unbuttoned the small closures at her wrists, then slid the crested silver buttons of the shirt-front open. Smiling up at the Duc, who had set his champagne glass down, she let the shirt slowly slide down her shoulders and arms until it lay in puddled white ripples on the deep purple of the cushions. Lifting her hands free, she raised herself enough to slip the shirttail away before lying back against the grape-colored cushions. "I'm waiting for my promised reward," she said, her smile lighting up her eyes.

She was, he thought as he gazed at her, the most perfectly formed woman he'd ever seen. Slender, toned, her long legs lazily crossed, her arms resting against the settee back and curve of pillows, she was every man's erotic dream. Her full splendid breasts were suspended by the position of her raised arms so their weighted volume appeared almost perfectly round, soft and luscious, and waiting to be touched… her nipples peaked, tautly subject to Gabriella's aspic. He could already imagine her whimper of excitement when he finally sucked on them. And when his glance drifted downward to the heating juncture of her thighs, she shifted in a small restless movement as though he had touched her there.

Putting out his hand, he said, "Come," knowing she would obey. When she rose to walk to him, he watched each step, counted them with the rhythm of his pulsebeat, wondered in a small corner of his brain- not yet inundated with desire whether anyone in history had lost his reason so willingly. A blithe, ingenuous thought, it brought a smile to his lips.

The warmth of her hand slid into his curved fingers. He pulled her close and for that millisecond before their lips touched, the air between them seemed liquid and scented. That first contact of their lips, delicate and subtle, her small mouth shaping itself against the champagne coolness of his, instantly scorched their -senses, burned through their bodies, ignited an appetite for sensation already roused by Gabriella's festive delicacy. And they clung to each other for a moment—breathless… stunned by the violence of their need.

"The settee's too small," Daisy said first, her voice still touched with a suffocated quiet.

"I'll show you my boat." Etienne's voice in contrast was terse. He was already pulling her toward the pavilion entrance facing the river.

They walked together under the dense willow boughs, the path moss-covered and spongy beneath their feet, the coolness exquisite contrast to their heated bodies. "Wait," Daisy said once, frantic to touch him, and reaching up, pulled his face down so she could kiss him. And had Etienne not known the comforts waiting on his river barge, he would have tumbled her to the ground right there. As it was, he said, "no," softly once to her importuning mouth and body and the second time held her arms to her side while he said in a hushed low breath of command, "Soon." Lifting her into his arms he quickly carried her the remaining distance to his boathouse, shoved the door open with his foot and stood for a moment in the cool dimness of the interior while his eyes became accustomed to the diminished light. Daisy was nibbling at his ear, whispering intriguing suggestions, so he moved swiftly to the small causeway leading to the barge. The vessel had been built a century before, in the decade before the Revolution, for parties on the river, for frolic and merriment, and while the deck had been designed in large enough dimensions for an orchestra and dancing, the salons on the lower deck were fitted for activities of a more amorous nature.

The main stateroom was opulent, gilded in all the exuberance of the classic years of the rococo, mirrored and garlanded, decorated with painted murals of shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in pastel-hued play, dominated by an enormous chase gold bed.

"Where did that come from?" Daisy asked with a mixture of curiosity and awe. The oval bed shaped like a sculptured shell was detailed in hammered bas-relief with scenes of seduction and love, a magnificent work of goldsmithing, exotic, arresting, distinctly Eastern, imbued, it seemed, with a former life.

"From a harem."

"I shouldn't be so naive, should I? I imagine you need a harem bed quite often." She'd gone rigid in his arms, her eyes in contrast were alight with fomenting resentment.

"The bed came with the barge," he said, placing her on the peach silk coverlet, careful to keep his response scrupulously serious. "A Russian prince was the former owner, I'm told. A Russian prince with a jealous wife. He sold the bed."

"I don't doubt she preferred less potent memories in her bedroom. Is this the usual second course then, after the aspic?" Her jealousy painted each word with sweet sarcasm.

"The bed is virginal as my nuns here on my estate, so you can damp the fire in your eyes."

"Your nuns?"

"A nonliteral phrase. Good God, Daisy, be reasonable." He would have liked to say he had all the women he needed for entertainment without encroaching