How To Please a Pirate by Mia Marlowe

Instead he grabbed both her wrists, lifted them above her head
and pinned her against the stone wall. She’d had a wicked fancy of
him doing just such a thing, but the action was less romantic and
far more frightening in real life.
    And far more rousing than she would have
believed.
    With her arms raised, her bodice pushed her
breasts up even more that usual. She suspected one or both of her
pebble-hard nipples peeped from behind the Brussels lace at her
neckline. The panniers that held her skirt away from her bare
thighs usually gave her a sense of freedom of movement. Now, she
felt acutely aware that, barring the stockings that were gartered
at her knees, she was naked from the waist down beneath her broad
skirt. A dull ache started at the apex of her thighs.
    “Don’t your scruples give you pause before
you strike your lord?” he asked.
    “No more than yours stop you from ravishing
your chatelaine.”
    “So you think I’m about to ravish you?” The
fierce hunger in his face when his gaze swept down her neck to her
breasts made ravishment seem a foregone conclusion. “Good idea, but
no. When I take a woman, it’s because she wants to be taken.” He
met her eyes with a smoldering gaze. “You’re close, Lyn, but you’re
not there yet.”
    “My name is Jacquelyn,” she said.
    “And yet to me, you’re Lyn,” he said in an
almost tender rumble. He nuzzled her neck and stopped when his lips
neared her ear. She tried to squirm away from him, but his
one-handed grip on her wrists high over her head was firm. “Settle
yourself, girl and it will be done with all the sooner. Time for
the question.”
    “Go ahead, then.” She’d almost forgotten her
forfeit was the truthful answer to this unknown question. His warm
breath sent shivers of pleasure down her neck, but she willed
herself to stand perfectly still.
    “It’s about what happened in the garden—”
    “I suppose you want to know why I ran
away.”
    “No, I already know the answer to that.” He
pulled back to look her square in the eye while his free hand
traced the edge of her neckline, stopping when his fingers brushed
an exposed nipple. He drew deliberate slow circles around her
sensitive areola with his thumb. “You were afraid.”
    “I’m not afraid of you.” The ache between her
legs throbbed steadily.
    “Perhaps you should be, but I hope not,” he
said. “But in the garden, you weren’t afraid of me. You were afraid
of yourself.”
    Her snort of derision made her breasts jiggle
and his eyes flared at their movement. She silently cursed herself
for making things worse. He slid his hand down her bodice and came
back out cupping her breast in his hot palm. He lowered his mouth
to her taut nipple and teased it with his tongue.
    Jacquelyn gasped. The lust in her groin shot
from an ache to white-hot pangs. She caught herself arching her
back, the better to present her needy breast to his mouth. She bit
her lip to keep from pleading with him to suckle her and be done
with it. Anything to stop the torment.
    The question. He had a question for
her. It might be her salvation.
    “What did you want to know?” she managed to
ask as she ground her teeth. “Your question . . .”
    That brought his head back up and she nearly
cried out at the sharp longing in her nipples. If she didn’t feel
his mouth on them again, tugging and demanding soon, she might go
mad.
    At least he pacified her breast with his
hand, flicking the taut flesh as he leaned in to touch the side of
her nose with his. His eyes were closed and his mouth was so close
to hers, his breath feathered across her lower lip.
    “I need to know why,” he said, his tone
ragged. “After I let you go, why did you kiss me in
the garden?”
    Because I’m insane. Because I’ve inherited
my mother’s lack of judgment about men. Because . . . A dozen
answers sprang to her mind, all of them perfectly plausible. But
only one of them true.
    “Because I couldn’t bear not to.”
    She felt his