The Seduction of Elliot McBride (Mackenzies Series) by Jennifer Ashley Page B

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shall have to greet everyone and make sure they’re entertained. Trust me, much better for us to endure such a thing for a few hours than be talked about up and down the countryside. Don’t worry, Elliot. I will take care of it.”
    She had no idea, Elliot thought, how absolutely beautiful she looked at this moment. Her blue eyes were shining under the light of the candles, her hair glistening as she moved her head. She talked rapidly and gestured with her plump hand, so happily dooming him with neighborly calls and a midsummer fête.
    Easy to confess to the world, even to gentle and proper Juliana, that he’d sired a child on Jaya, who’d kept him warm when the cold winds came off the wall of mountains separating northern India from the world. Easy to admit he and Stacy had shared her between them at first.
    That sin was so far removed from the terrible nightmare of being captured and displayed as a prize. So far removed from what the men of that fierce tribe had done to him, and had taught Elliot to do for them. He’d experienced slaveryfirsthand, when a human life was considered less important than an animal’s—when the whole of his history, from birth to present, meant nothing.
    Elliot also couldn’t explain to Juliana that when he’d been their prisoner and slave, he’d forgotten all about Jaya. His time with the woman and Stacy, his years at the plantation, his friends there and in the army might have never existed. The only person he could hold on to, the only face he saw, was Juliana’s.
    Juliana kept on chattering about the fête and jumble sales and conferring with the minister’s wife, but Elliot couldn’t hear her words. He was aware only of her voice, clear like a fall of rain.
    He pushed aside the whiskey he drank too much of these days and rose from his chair. Juliana looked up at him in surprise, because of course a gentleman never left the table until the lady decided it was time for the women to retire to the drawing room.
    Elliot reached the end of the table and pulled Juliana’s chair back. As she looked up at him in astonishment, he lifted her out of the ridiculous throne-like chair and set her down on a vast blank area of the table.
    “Elliot, I don’t think…”
    Elliot silenced her by kissing her. He drew his hands up under her heavy coil of hair, fingers loosening the silk of it.
    In the dark cells he’d imagined this, remembering the soft of her hair when he’d touched it the night of her debut ball, before he’d shipped off the next day to join his regiment. He’d recalled he exact shape and touch of her lips from that brief kiss, the scent of her rose-soft breath.
    She’d sustained him in the dark, and now he needed sustenance again.
    Elliot drew his tongue across her lips, touching the moisture behind them when they parted. Juliana’s hands came up to cup his elbows, fingers sinking into his biceps through his coat.
    He kissed across her lips, every inch of them, then moved to her cheek, kissing the skin he had the privilege to touch. In the darkness, in the pain, the memory of her kiss had wound comfort through the agony. She’d never know—he never would find the words to explain—how many times she’d saved his life.
    I need you.
    Elliot moved to the shell of her ear, brushing it with the tip of his tongue. Juliana made a soft noise in her throat as he closed his teeth on her earlobe.
    He was seducing her again, but she’d seduced him every night of those months he’d been lost. He’d longed each day for the torture to cease, for his captors to ignore him for stretches of time, because then he could sink into a stupor and be with his visions of Juliana.
    They never could make Elliot forget her, because they didn’t know about her. Her name had never crossed his lips. Juliana was his secret, his soul.
    And now she was real.
    He sucked her earlobe gently into his mouth, liking the way she shivered under his touch. He loved the scent of her, the taste of her,