To Sin with Scandal by Tamara Gill

Chapter One
London 1805

    "Please, hand me the invitation, Anna." Miranda added a hint of warning to her tone, which her headstrong, sometimes selfish friend, chose to ignore.
    Anna fanned herself with the card. "Not if you intend to waste such an opportunity. You must promise me you will go. Lord Scandal does not bestow his favours on everyone," Anna said, with a pointed stare. "You must attend."
    Miranda looked across the Lord Augustine Ballroom floor and watched the unsavoury rake ogle the widow, Lady Marshall's breasts. Extremely easy this night, considering the low cut of her gown. Lord Scandal, or formally known to the ton as Lord Sedley, was not a man to toy with. His dark, hooded eyes and cropped hair gave him the air of a man who took what he wanted and gave no quarter to the ton and their strictures.
    But he had been so different once . . . .
    They had been children then. New to the ways of the season and what society expected of them. New to what touches in the night by desired hands could do.
    Miranda thought back to the last night she was with him. Seven years. A lifetime ago.
    Lord Sedley had courted her and lavished attention on her whenever a secluded corner or hidden closet presented itself. A smile quirked her lips at the memories of their trysts. Of how his lips, eager and hungry, would tempt her to sins no lady of eighteen years should ever commit.
    "Miranda, love me," Sedley had said, pulling her onto his lap in a deserted parlour, the muted sounds of a waltz fading to insignificance when he moved his hands to lift the hem of her gown.
    Miranda had chuckled at his antics. "Love you, dear sir," she said, clasping his shoulders and looking down at him. "I thought I already bestowed such favours."
    He pulled her onto his lap, and her legs straddled his. Wicked lips brushed hers with a fierce longing that left her breathless. "No. Not in that way." He adjusted her seat and brought her heated core up against his own, his hands kneading her bottom. "In this way."
    Miranda bit her lip, as his hard and willing rod pressed against her sex.
    Delicious shivers she had come to crave ran from her core to spark in every part of her body. She clasped his dark locks and ran a hand over his chest and down until the semi-stretchy material of his pantaloons met her fingers. "You would love me before we are married?"
    "I burn for you with every moment of my life," he said on a gasp when her fingers examined the hard ridge in his pants. Miranda squirmed as he pulled down the front of her gown and took one puckered nipple into his mouth. "Please," he begged, his voice wracked with need.
    Unable to deny him anything, Miranda fumbled to free his pulsing manhood.
    A forbidden action that sent a tremor of fear through her when she noted his size.
    Was it even possible, this loving between two people with . . . that? All trepidation had dissolved when he took her lips in haste, his tongue swirling with her own, dragging her along into a firestorm of desire.
    The head of his penis brushed her curls, and Miranda moaned at the velvety stroke.
    "Miranda . . . ."
    She clasped his shoulders and lowered herself onto him, the large head stretching her at the most private of parts. "Merrick, you're too large."
    He rolled her onto her back and came up against her. "No, we'll fit, I promise."
    He paused, his face marred with concern. Fear. "Please, let me try. I will be careful."
    Miranda lifted her knees to hook her legs around his hips. "I trust you," she said, and tried to relax, knowing he would never intentionally hurt her.
    The door handle turned.
    "Miranda? Are you in here?" Both of them stilled at the familiar voice of her mother. "Lady Mont, are you sure you saw my daughter enter this room?"

    Sedley met her terrified gaze while he tried to hide them farther into the depths of the settee, its back the only thing between her and ruination.
    The woman with her mother sighed. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Shall we try the library, my lady?