Free Bride of Fortune by Shirl Henke Page A

have indicated that they had been lovers even if he did not recognize the woman Luce had described in such detail.
           “Cenci,” he said coolly, appraising her with the hard, off-handed expression he had learned from watching Luce.
           “Have you missed me, darling?” She wet her plump rosy lips and let her eyes undress him, moving down the length of his body from the open-collared white lawn shirt to his polished riding boots, then back up to his face. “They have marked you,” she said in a husky voice, touching the scar on his cheek.
           “A rebel saber grazed me.”
           “Every day seemed like a year waiting for you to return,” she whispered, lowering her hand and letting it rest against his heart, feeling it beat through the thin fabric of his shirt.
           He threw back his head and laughed. “I'll just bet you repined all alone in your bed from the day I left.”
           She moved closer to him, letting her breasts brush back and forth against his chest until her nipples stood out in dark, nubby points beneath the thin cotton of her low-cut camisa . “I have spent little time in bed,” she said petulantly. “Your pale little stick of a wife has worked me like a peon. Look.”
           She held up her hands for his inspection. They were red and work-roughened but so were his wife's. There the resemblance ended, for Innocencia's were large and heavy-boned as was her whole frame. She was supple and curvaceous to the point of lushness, but in a few years her body would go to fat unlike the aristocratic slenderness of Mercedes’ elegant fine-boned limbs. How could Luce have preferred this coarse slut to a beauty such as his wife?
           Luce had cautioned him about his old mistress, saying if anyone could detect the masquerade, it would be her; for he had taken her as his lover when he was only eighteen years old. She knew every nuance of his body, how he made love, even how he tossed in his sleep. His brother had spent a great deal more time describing Innocencia than he had Mercedes, but seeing her now, Nick was not inclined to resume the old relationship.
           Her busy hands quickly glided up his chest and around his neck as she fused her body against his from breasts to thighs, rotating her pelvis in blatant invitation. Her fingers dug into his scalp and she pulled his head to hers for a fierce kiss. Her mouth was wide and mobile as she opened it and plunged her tongue against the barricade of his lips, then withdrew with a pout.
           “You no longer find me desirable after all your fancy French women in the capital? I can do anything they can—and more, my stallion—much, much more! Touch these and tell me you do not remember.”
           She seized his hands and placed them around her heavy breasts, cupping them as the large dark nipples protruded against her camisa . She arched her hips against his and whispered obscenities in his ear, moaning low.
           He thrust her away none too gently as Luce would have done with a woman who no longer held his interest. “I'll decide when—and if—I want you, Cenci. And this isn't the time or the place.”
           “Surely you aren't afraid of what the high-and-mighty patrona will say? When she came here as a trembling bride, you ignored her. You took me on the floor of your father's library!”
           “That was a long time ago. I've come home to perform my duty. To give Gran Sangre an heir—a legitimate heir.”
           “Ha! She is probably barren. You will soon tire of her and come back to me...” She slipped his restraining hands from her arms and quickly lifted her arms to his shoulders, wriggling her body against his. “Remember how it was, my great stallion?”
           Mercedes stood transfixed in the doorway, having overheard only the last fragments of their conversation. She watched that brazen slut undulate her ample charms