Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed by Anna Campbell Page A

The friction spurred his heart to a wild gallop. “You’re not at all like pictures I’ve seen of statues.”
    In spite of his extremity, a strangled laugh escaped. “Not at all.”
    She cast him a disapproving glance. “Pictures don’t convey the size and power.”
    He restrained the urge to tell her about the size and power of one particular part of him. His hands clawed the sheets beneath him. “Damn you, Sidonie, put me out of my misery.”
    She studied him as if he presented a mathematical problem. Obscurely her calmness annoyed him. Blast her, she should be flustered. She should be all a-flutter to kiss him. “I think you should sit up,” she said thoughtfully.
    “At your command, my lady.” He rose, piling pillows behind him.
    After an infinitesimal hesitation, she pressed her hands to his cheeks. Automatically he flinched. He loathed anyone touching his scars. Hell, for her, he wished he wasn’t scarred. He wished he was young and pure, gallant and worthy. When he was none of that.
    She lurched forward and he drowned in womanly scent, warm and sweet with early morning. Then soft arms encircled his neck, velvet-covered breasts nudged his chest, breath drifted across his face.
    Her lips met his.
    Sidonie’s brief confidence shriveled. Merrick’s arms lay at his sides and the mouth beneath hers remained sealed.She waited for him to seize control and sweep her into fiery heaven.
    Nothing.
    Trembling uncertainty built. Long enough for her to notice the smoothness of his lips. The soft hiss of his breathing. The heat of his body against her thigh. Tentatively she moved her lips, then started away at the tingling rush of pleasure. His mouth twitched at her skittishness.
    “Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she said grimly.
    “Never.”
    His morning beard rasped beneath her palms. She had access to a secret Merrick that the world never saw. More unwelcome intimacy. Somewhere since accepting his challenge, she’d abandoned all pretense that she did this for any reason other than the desire to kiss him.
    Wicked, wicked girl.
    “Blushing, Miss Forysthe?”
    She refused to answer. Instead she studied his mouth. That mouth betrayed so much. Passion. Humor. A vulnerability he’d go to the gallows before admitting. She licked her lips as she remembered that mouth claiming hers yesterday.
    Ah…
    “You look like the cat that got the cream.”
    She delighted in his wary tone. “Do I?”
    Without lingering on the scars, she caressed his face, then kissed each corner of his lips. He released a muffled groan. At last she seemed to be getting somewhere. Taking a lesson from him, she bit gently on his lower lip and sucked it into her mouth.
    He tasted wonderful. Salty. Hot. Desperate. She traced his lips with her tongue, then lifted away to meet his silver gaze. “Damn you, Merrick, stop fighting me.”
    “You’re not trying hard enough.” He struggled for nonchalance, but his husky voice betrayed how her clumsy wooing stirred him.
    “I’m just starting,” she said softly.
    Jonas braced for more tantalizing kisses. Containing himself when she tasted his lower lip had required every ounce of control. Blast and confound it, he’d promised to take the kiss no further. He needed to have his head examined.
    She nibbled an excruciatingly pleasurable line down his neck.
    “I think you’re avoiding the business.” Not even threat of damnation could stop his voice shaking.
    She kissed his jaw. “Just preparing the ground.”
    This time when her mouth met his, he was incapable of denial. His lips parted and her tongue darted in to taste him. He groaned low in his throat. She tensed and withdrew. As if seeking assurance that he was a better man than she thought, she stared at him. Tragically he could offer no such confirmation. Even more tragically he wanted her so badly, he almost promised to change, to prove himself worthy.
    This had started as a morning’s game. Now all urge to tease vanished. And still the wordless