Paradise Found excerpt
Interracial Historical Romance
September 2009
Red Rose Publishing
Available in electronic formats only at this time
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“Marc Vincent Ghiradelli.” She spoke his name, savoring the taste of each syllable as it glided from the tip of her tongue.
She closed her eyes to better view the pictures his name conjured. His eyes were an impossible shade of blue, a blue she had seen only in her dreams. When he flashed his perfect white teeth in a smile, he was positively divine. And when he laughed, the sound was so rich and cordial it very nearly managed to banish all memories of Edmond Verdieu.
She recalled the day she had first seen him working shirtless in the sun. Months at sea had bronzed his skin. His arms and torso rippled with taut, sleek muscle that had glistened with perspiration borne of his labors.
Behind her closed eyelids, she replayed his descent from the stairs at the start of the evening. The long, lean muscles of his legs had worked lazily beneath his close-fitting buckskin trousers. His silk shirt had draped almost lovingly over the chiseled planes of his chest. From his raven hair to the polished toes of his black boots, his presence had commanded the attention of everyone in the salon.
She never stared at him openly, as Manon and many other women dared. But she wanted to. Rose had taught her that the human body was a wonderful, beautiful thing, created to be looked upon. In truth, she had no trouble admiring Marc. It was the feelings resulting from that admiration that troubled her. She was unsettled by the longing that coursed through her when he was near, or at the sound of his voice. His touch thoroughly disarmed her. And the one person with whom she wanted to discuss her confusion was gone.
She dropped her face into her hands, unable to stop the sting of tears. “I need you,” she whispered urgently. “I am trying to make sense of everything, but I’m failing, miserably failing.”
Marc suddenly discovered that he could bear anything but Alyssa’s sadness.
Alyssa wiped at her eyes to see the approaching silhouette of a man. Terror seized her as she leaped to her feet and backed away. The moonlight revealed the figure’s face upon entering the clearing.
“I won’t hurt you,” Marc said with calm assurance. “I will never give you cause to fear me.”
She defiantly stood her ground. “I’m not afraid of you.” Her insistence was too vehement to be convincing. “Have I given you the least indication that I’m afraid of anything? Why must you always presume to know how I’m feeling when you’ve not troubled yourself to learn a thing about me? I have endured so much and I’m tired! My only fear is that I have no strength left for what might come next! ” A torrent of fresh tears wracked her slight frame.
Before she could calm herself enough to protest his action, she found herself clasped to his chest, her cheek to his thundering heart. Her tears wet the soft silk of his shirt as his large, calloused hands stroked her hair with a tenderness that bordered on reverence.
She took several deep breaths. His heartbeat was as comforting as a lullaby. Her arms hesitantly slid around his middle. “You followed me,” she murmured into his chest.
“You wore a dress,” he observed. “We have both behaved out of character this evening.” Her cool skin goose-pimpled as his fingertips moved over her bare arms.
“No one else comes here,” she whispered. “This is my own secret place. My heaven.”
“You have not even shared this place with Manon?”
Alyssa awkwardly wriggled from his embrace. The cool night air rushed between them. “Joshua will sound the bell any second now, to ring in the New Year. You must not waste this moment with me when it is obvious that you wish to be with someone else.”
As if on cue, the lingering gong of a bell faintly reached their ears.
“You are the someone I wish to be with.” He had wanted to catch her alone, to discuss Beaux Elysees, he tried to convince himself. Business was the last thing on his mind now that they were together. The wine and spirits he had consumed at the banquet, the long weeks he had spent at sea … those were the only logical explanations for the sudden, ravenous stirring in his belly. He closed the space between them as the bell rang out once more. He cradled her face in his hands to see that her green eyes mirrored the blue of his own. The fetching tremble in her lower lip started his mouth watering.
The bell chimed twice more and she felt herself spiraling into the fathomless indigo of Marc’s gaze. With overlapping echoes of the bell in the background, he said, “You have been so strong and so brave, for such a long time. You endured Edmond’s hell. You cannot expect to have escaped unscathed.”
He understood. Unbelievably, he knew how she felt. Though Edmond had left no visible scars, she surely had them. She touched the strong line of his jaw. He covered her hand with his own and turned his face just enough to touch his lips to the heel of her palm. “Is this the hand that struck me?” he asked.
“Do forgive me,” she whispered.
“Done,” he said, gazing upon her. What spell does this place work on a man, he wondered. More than he wanted his next breath, he wanted to kiss her.
Again, the bell tolled. “Choose carefully who you kiss at the turn of the year,” Alyssa said, as if reading his mind.
“For that person will be your love for the year,” Marc finished. His own father had distilled the same wives’ tale.
Alyssa moved her hand to the soft fall of his hair. As the new year advanced by two more clangs of the bell, Marc guided her arms to wrap loosely around his neck. His arms circled her. He lowered his head until his mouth was near her ear. Her skin prickled in places that had never prickled before. The tension left her body as he held her. It had been so long since she felt so at ease. Since she felt so safe.
The bell sounded once more in the time it took him to say, “There is something I must tell you.”
Her heartbeat filled her ears, masking the ringing of the bell and the sound of her own voice as she said, “And that is?”
“Happy New Year.”
The bell’s last chime died alongside the past year as he brought his lips to hers. One of his hands found its way into her hair while the other, braced at the small of her back, pressed her body into his. A moan escaped her when his tongue lightly traced her mouth. He tasted the succulent flesh of her upper lip, then the lower one, before once more sampling the two together. His lips moved over hers, nibbling, licking, and teasing. The reality of his kiss was a thousand times better than anything she had imagined. She wanted more and invited it as her hands moved over his back, luxuriating in the minute movement of hard muscle beneath softest silk.
She shivered, her lips parting in response to his gentle coaxing. The unfamiliar heat of his tongue against hers sent her thoughts into a tailspin as his kiss probed deeper, inviting her to respond in kind. She clutched handfuls of his shirt, pulling it from the waist of his breeches. He tasted her eyelids and her cheeks, nibbled her earlobes and her throat, partaking of her as heartily as he had of the New Year’s banquet. Her hands slid from his taut lower back and over his firm buttocks. Her touch was electric, shocking every part of him.
An ache rose deep inside him, unlike any he’d ever known as simple want became dire need. She fit him. She moved against him, and with him, with such ease, he dared to wonder if she had been made just for him.
She drew the pads of her fingertips ever so lightly along the backs of his thighs. He moaned as he set a delicate kiss in the hollow of her throat. His lips moist with heat, he brushed them across the swell of her breasts. She tossed back her head, welcoming him when he closed his lips over one of the tight peaks of flesh pushing against the silk of her bodice.
She gasped as raw sensation washed through her. She tore at his shirt, popping buttons into the air. His lips became more voracious in their hunger for her breasts and she responded by cupping the bold ridge between his thighs. He groaned, bringing her with him as he sank to his knees.
In an instant she was lying atop him on the fragrant cushion of the bayou floor. She was as wild as the bayou she called heaven as she swept his neck and chest with chaste, fragile kisses that betrayed her inexperience. Neither the bawdiest London whore nor the most sophisticated Parisian courtesan could have dissolved his restraint faster or more effectively. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. All he knew was the sweet touch of her lips.
She took his hands and guided them to her breasts, the only prompting he needed. He tugged aside the fabric covering her breasts to tease her bare nipples with flickers and flutters of his tongue and gentle nips of his teeth. Her breath locked in her chest as heat, glorious and rhythmical, pulsed from a molten point deep in her center. She was starved for this touch, for his touch. She hungered for more than kisses and taunting nips that were like sparks jumping from the bonfire between them.
It was intoxicating, this newly-tapped well of sensation within her. For the first time in her life, she knew the meaning of desire. She knew its power, its voracity, and the heady, thrill it sent coursing through her veins. She also knew its name.
Lust...
