Free Don't Tempt Me by Julie Ortolon

feel the heat of his skin, smell his scent, almost hear his heart beat.
    "In the morning ..." she whispered in a husky voice, "I'll let you cook my eggs ... hard and scrambled ... and serve my bacon ... crisp."
    She saw him shudder and felt an echo of it flutter in her own stomach.
    Pulling back, she found his eyes had gone dark and the teasing smile had finally vanished. He didn't move a single muscle, just watched her with a hungry gaze as she stepped away.
    "Sweet dreams." Smiling, she turned and walked as sensuously as she knew how to the door to her room, then glanced over her shoulder.
    He stared at her as if fighting the urge to pounce.
    She slipped inside, and the second she had the door closed, she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. She couldn't believe it. She'd finally figured out the way to best Adrian at his own game: fight fire with fire. A very apt phrase, she thought, fanning herself.
    Except, how would she ever sleep with her pulse hopping like the beat of a steel-drum band? Her gaze fell on the diaries, which she'd left on the nightstand. A little reading might distract her from fantasies of rolling naked on a beach with Adrian.
    After changing into an oversized T-shirt, she climbed in bed and searched through the stack of leather-bound volumes for the one she wanted. Allison had put them in chronological order but had bookmarked the first mention of Jack Kingsley. Stuffing a pillow behind her, she opened to the bookmarked page. She fully intended to read all the diaries, but couldn't resist reading this one entry out of order.
    Her eyes scanned the first few sentences, and she scowled in disappointment. It was a description of what Marguerite planned to wear for dinner that night. As if Jackie cared about women's fashion in the 1800s. As she read more, though, she caught the bitterness behind the words and realized the newly arrived gown from Paris was something her husband had commanded her to wear.
    Apparently, Henri was throwing a lavish dinner party for the captains who carried cargo for his shipping company. Marguerite described the expected guests as the "coarsest of seafaring men who will devour every delicacy put before them with all the manners of drunken sailors in a dockside tavern while Henri secretly laughs at their crudeness."
    The low-cut gown would also have the all-male dinner guests salivating onto their plates, making Henri feel even more superior since she "belonged" to him.
    What a jerk, Jackie thought recoiling at the plight of women in a time when they were little more than property.
    The exquisite sapphire bracelets Marguerite would wear with the gown suddenly sounded more like a prisoner's manacles than fine jewelry.
    With a note of resignation, Marguerite ended the diary entry in order to dress.
    A second entry for the same day followed, though, and Jackie's attention was piqued, since it had been written after the party.
     
Tonight at dinner there was a man, a man I've not seen before. He was a sea captain, like the others, and yet not like them at all. I still can picture how he looked in that first moment I saw him. Seated near the head of the table next to Henri, he was leaning back in his chair, holding a goblet of wine. He watched the room with lazy eyes and a half-smile that said he found the other men amusing but beneath him. There was about him an unmistakable arrogance, as if he, not the painted Neptune over his head, commanded the very tides to do his bidding.
Then his eyes lifted and he saw me. For the barest heartbeat, the detachment vanished and he looked ... surprised. He rose with the kind of gallantry I once took for granted and now sorely miss. And as his gaze held mine I saw such admiration that some of the numbness in which I've cloaked myself these past years faded. I felt raw, exposed. Like a person again, rather than a porcelain possession with no purpose save that of being displayed. I cannot recall what he said to me by way of a greeting,