NOT JUST A WALLFLOWER by Carole Mortimer Page B

Eleanor so intently, as she danced with what seemed like a legion of other gentlemen, that there had not been the time to allow a single drop of the restorative liquid to pass his lips.
    No, it was Eleanor herself who had intoxicated him this evening. Whose every word challenged him. Who had aroused him earlier, causing him to swell and throb inside his breeches, just by watching her lick the juice of the pineapple from the swell of her lips, until Justin had desired, hungered, for the sweet taste of those lips for himself. As he still hungered.
    ‘Well, does it feel like a game?’ he repeated as she didn’t answer.
    Her little pink tongue moved moistly across her lips before she finally responded in a breathy voice. ‘Not any game I have ever played before, no.’
    ‘Good.’ Justin gave a hard, satisfied smile. ‘And would you like to know what happens next in this particular...game?’
    ‘Your Grace—’
    ‘Justin, damn it!’ He glared down at her, watching her face as he pressed his thighs against her, only to give a low and aching groan in his throat as pleasure immediately shot hotly down the length of his arousal.
    Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘Justin, are you all right?’
    ‘Do not look so concerned.’ He gave a strained smile. ‘It may not appear so, but I assure you it is pleasure I am feeling, not pain.’
    Ellie eyed him uncertainly now. ‘Pleasure?’
    Strange, because when she had secretly observed the stallion and the mare together in the stable yard, it had seemed to her as if the stallion were in pain, head tossing in agitation, eyes wide and wild, as he snorted and stomped on the cobbles beneath his hooves as he strained to get close to his quarry.
    The terrified mare had seemed to fair no better, pinned restlessly in place as she was beneath those thrashing hooves, her silky neck bitten several times as the stallion mounted her, squealing and trying to move out from beneath him as that thick rod between his back legs disappeared inside her body, before being thrust in again, time and time without end it had seemed to Ellie, before she could stand to watch the wild coupling no longer and she had run crying from the stables in search of her mother.
    Muriel had wiped away her tears, of course, soothing her fears as she explained that the mare had not been in pain as she had thought, that it was merely how baby horses were made, and that the mare would be happy enough when her foal was born in the spring.
    It was in the course of that conversation that Ellie had added a codicil to her earlier conviction that she would never marry any man she did not love and who did not love her. Observing the stallion and mare together, Ellie had known that she could never be intimate in that way with a man she did not love and who did not love her, either. It was too personal, too carnal, too—too wild, for her to ever contemplate such personal intimacy taking place with a man whom she merely liked.
    Justin’s expression softened slightly as he obviously now saw, or perhaps sensed, her uncertainty. ‘You do not believe me?’
    ‘I—I do not know what to think, or say...’ A slow shake of her head accompanied the hesitancy of that denial.
    He grinned. ‘Well, that is certainly a novelty in itself!’
    ‘You are laughing at me again.’
    Justin sobered, glittering gaze fixed intensely on the pale oval of her face. ‘What would you like me to do with you?’
    She caught her bottom lip between small pearly white teeth, nibbling that tender flesh for several seconds before her chin rose in challenge. ‘I believe I should like for you not to treat me as a child.’
    He smiled. ‘Oh, I assure you, Eleanor, at this moment you are far from appearing as a child to me.’
    She nodded. ‘Then you will please tell me what happens next in this game?’
    Justin drew in a sharp breath. ‘Usually the gentleman now nuzzles his lips against the lady’s throat. Like this.’ He suited his actions to his words,