Summer's Bride. Catherine Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ kidnapped will not make for a happy reunion.”

      Genevieve murmured, “I will pray that he is returned to her well.” In spite of his declaration that he did not wish her to harbor any feelings of attachment to him, she could not deny the mad thrumming of her pulse as she looked into those dark blue eyes.

      Obviously completely unaware of this, he continued. “I have never met my cousin. When Aunt Finella was last here it was with her husband, who was also Cameron. He was a great bear of a man with a craggy red beard and hearty laugh. Some time before our parents died, actually. It was as they were returning from a visit to her that their ship floundered and they were lost.” She heard the regret that entered his voice as he spoke of his parents, though the accident had occurred so many years ago. She knew that Marcel had been young when they died, as she had been when her own parents passed just before she was fourteen. They had been killed in an accident that would not have occurred had her mother not been having one of her “spells” and gone bathing in the lake on a dark, stormy night. Her father had gone in after her and both of them had drowned.

      Her parents’ deaths had resulted in her being sent to her cousin Maxim Harcourt. That despicable knave had attempted to force himself upon her. Genevieve had escaped him and his keep with one thought in her mind, that of getting to Brackenmoore.

      Looking at Marcel, feeling her stomach tug at the sheer masculinity of him, seeing the lean line of his jaw, which seemed to beckon her lips even now, Genevieve knew that she must take hold of her feelings for him. She was not willing to jeopardize her place in this family because of an unrequited infatuation.

      Surely that was what she would be doing by holding on to any romantic notions about this man after he had made his feelings clear. If Marcel wished to put what they had once felt aside, she would do so as well. After all, she reminded herself, he was leaving again. The tightness that came to her chest made her wonder if she was as indifferent to him as she told herself she was.

      Deliberately she smiled at him, aiming to be as bright in her manner as possible. “I do appreciate your coming here to see if all was well with me, Marcel, especially as you are leaving so soon and your time at Brackenmoore has become doubly precious…to us all. I am most well and contented as things are between us. Your presence here in the future will cause me no unrest.” It was suddenly very important that he believe this, that he did not again stay away for two long years.

      Marcel viewed that smile, heard the cool civility in Genevieve’s voice and felt a completely unexpected twinge of irritation. He was glad that she accepted what must be, was very glad indeed to hear that she was not harboring any untoward notions about the two of them.

      She seemed, in fact, to be happy about the offer of marriage from Roderick Beecham. It was a fact that made Marcel less pleased than it should have.

      If only they could go back to the way they had been before their being thrown together had changed the way they…He sighed.

      His gaze ran over her as she looked down at her clasped hands. He took in the sweet arch of her cheek, the dark fringe of her lashes, the lovely curve of her mouth, the slender length of her neck and the delicate golden curls that escaped her head covering at her nape. The idea of twining his fingers in those curls was somehow more intimate than he would ever have imagined. His gaze dipped lower to where her breasts pressed above the square neckline of her gown.

      Genevieve made him think of a warm fire on a frosty evening, of candlelight and downy pillows and soft white sheets, of…

      The sound of his own muted groan startled him and Marcel drew himself up, feeling a strangling tightness in his chest. He wanted the sea, the roll and pitch of his ship, the sounds and smells of exotic ports.

      Perhaps, it was best that he was leaving immediately, given his own unexplainable reactions to the woman before him. He spoke far more gruffly than he had intended. “Well, this will be good-bye then.”

      The shock on her face could not be mistaken, for she blanched and swayed. “Now?”

      He was not happy with the way his voice softened in reaction to her shock. “Nay, not this very eve but on the morrow. Far before you rise.”

      He looked away from her, his stomach tightening at the sadness in her gaze.

      “I am sorry for being so foolish.” She turned her back to him. “You have no idea how I…we have missed you.”

      Though he could not see her face, Marcel was aware of the catch in her voice, the pain. Before he knew what he was going to do, he had moved to put a hand on her slight shoulder.

      The moment he touched her, he felt a piercing heat enter his body and, as she swung around to face him, he saw that she too had felt it. Her green eyes were wide with shock, and another emotion that he could not fail to recognize. It was the same emotion that had sent him from the keep two years ago.

      As if through a dream he saw her reach toward him, felt the light pressure of her slender fingers on his chest. His body tightened and all he knew, could think of, was Genevieve and his own undeniably powerful reaction to her.

      It had been too long. There had been too many nights when he had lain awake thinking of her, wondering what would have happened that last day at Brackenmoore if he had just turned to her, just…

      His arms closed about Genevieve’s pliant form. His lips found hers as her sweet womanly shape seemed to mold itself to his.

      Genevieve felt as if she had waited for this moment her whole life. No matter what she had tried to tell herself over the past two years, she had never, for one moment, stopped wanting this man. Marcel—his mouth was firm and hot on hers, the taste of him so heady, and more wonderful than she had even dreamed. His hands on her back were strong and sure, molding her to him, and she wanted to cry out with joy that he was finally touching her, kissing her as she had longed for him to.

      She gave a husky gasp and whispered, “Marcel.”

      When his tongue flicked over her lips, she opened to him, welcomed him into her, felt a spark of something hot and fluid move in her lower belly. This was Marcel, the man she had longed for with each aching part of her as she lay in her lonely bed. She raised her hands to hold the back of his head, threading her eager fingers through his thick black hair. She strained into him, increasing the pressure of their kisses with a growing urgency, knowing a sense of pleasure as his hips pressed in to her.

      Marcel drew her closer to the length of his ardent and increasingly eager body, running his tongue over hers, reveling in her responses to him. Never, even in his most heated dreams, had Genevieve been this pliant, this responsive, this enticing.

      He was infinitely aware of his own readiness, the aching need of him. As his manhood pulsed against her belly, she gasped, wriggling closer to him. Awed and humbled and undeniably aroused by her response, Marcel felt an indefinable something expanding inside him. It radiated out through his body, rippling in wave upon wave of not only pleasure but also a tenderness so overwhelming that he was dizzied and shaken by it.

      When her hands clasped his hips, Marcel closed his eyes on the resulting flash of heat that throbbed in his belly. He reached up to slide his hand between their bodies, closing around the firm weight of her breast, hearing her cry of yearning and reveling in it.

      Genevieve was on fire, her blood turned to a molten river of desire—a desire for something she could not name. But as her breast seemed to swell beneath his questing hand, she realized that her body knew what she wanted, knew and was more than prepared to seek the answer to this indescribably СКАЧАТЬ