Four Dukes and a Devil by Jeaniene Frost, Cathy Maxwell, Tracy Anne Warren, Sophia Nash, Elaine Fox Page A

to drown out all her thoughts, yet so beautiful it filled her with joy. As if the strings had been plucked within her, vibrating her emotions.
    Behind her, she felt Sam move close, the nearness of his body creating ripples of sensation within her even though he didn’t touch her.
    She turned her body to face him and found him looking down at her, eyes gentle in warm light. She was overcome with the desire to touch him, to feel him touch her, to make a connection with this man who really had very little to do with who she was or what she wanted. Yet he felt so familiar, as if she’d known him for years.
    Whatever part of herself she had shed earlier in the evening was the part that had determined this man was not her type, and all that was left was the impassioned woman here before him. A woman enraptured by the music, and the night, and his presence, and the very air around them that still trembled with the last notes of Beethoven.
    In the silence, her fingers rose to his chest and traced the outline of his breast pocket. “Thank you for that. It was…incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
    “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He said it quietly, as if he meant it, really meant it. As if for him it wasn’t just something to say.
    “Thank you, too, for coming in with me tonight,” she said, adding, chagrined, “I was nervous.”
    Slowly, he reached out, and his hands came to rest on her hips. “Are you nervous now?”
    The low tone of his voice set her nerves atremble.
    She looked up into his face, complex, changeable, expressive. She felt like she could look at that face forever and never be bored.
    With a tightening of his fingers, he pulled her close, his body against hers, and bent his head down to catch her lips.
    The fire was immediate and furious. The fire between them, that was. If she’d thought she’d smelled smoke before, this was an all-out conflagration.
    His hands moved up to cup her face, his mouth probing, his hips pressing hers. Against his hard body, hers went soft, melting into him, going hot and liquid to her core.
    Could she possibly be this reckless? What on earth could stop her? She had never in her life slept with someone on a first date—and this hadn’t even been a date. But she was consumed by a desire so fierce she didn’t recognize herself. Her hands roved up his back, then down to his hips, clutching the taut muscles of his buttocks and pulling his hardness against her.
    His hands dropped to her breasts, pushed up under her sweatshirt, then under her shirt. She felt his hot palms on her flesh and moaned with relief. She had to have him, she could not— would not —stop herself.
    At first she thought he had moaned in return, and registered it as vaguely odd that she’d seemed to feel it in the floor. But when an inhuman wail vibrated up the walls, she froze.
    Sam did, too.
    They both looked over at the turntable. It had turned itself off.
    “What the hell was that?” Sam’s voice was almost as low a rumble as the furnace.
    “I…I have no idea.”
    You ain’t heard it yet, I gather.
    Fainter now, but still audible was a weary woo-ooo-ooo, a sound for all the world like something a cartoon ghost would make at a Halloween party.
    “Do you think this is this what Covington Burgess was talking about?” She gripped his arms with rigid hands.
    Sam pulled back and raised one brow. “Let’s not go invoking ghosts just yet. Seems to me it has to be the heating system. Have you used the furnace before?”
    “Yes, I’ve had it on most nights since I got here. So, five nights, not including tonight.”
    He looked at her in bemusement. “Gray, it’s June.”
    “Sam, it’s cold. Don’t forget, I come from Virginia. Where summer means warm weather. Besides, I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
    The sound had stopped, but inside Gray’s head it echoed like a threat.
    Sam’s eyes scanned the room. “I’ll go check it out. Is there a basement? And a