Free Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) by Christina Skye

silence he caught her wrists tightly. “Swithin has infinitely more sense than you appear to have. Where is that wretched father of yours? I can’t believe he’s allowed matters to reach such a state. Sweet Lord, Chessy, how long have you been going on in this way? When did you last eat properly?”
    Chessy answered with a furious squirming.
    Frowning, Morland planted his thigh atop her legs. She felt the corded muscles bunch and ripple. Dear heaven, he was big. He was hot and hard and—
    “Get off me!”
    Morland’s body went rigid. “What are you trying to hide?”
    “Hide?” Her heart lurched. “Why should I want to hide anything from you?”
    “I was just asking myself that question.” Morland’s elbow flexed slightly. “Where is he, Francesca? Off sermonizing at the British Museum? Sequestered with his cronies at the Royal Geographical Society? When I find the man, I’ll draw and quarter him!”
    His face might have been carved out of granite, his eyes from Himalayan turquoise.
    Chessy barely noticed.
    Francesca .
    How she had always hated that name. She hadn’t heard it in years. Certainly she hadn’t heard it said the way he had.
    He had used the name often that summer in Macao. Sometimes it had been voiced in simple, blunt camaraderie, sometimes in irritation, and sometimes with an infuriating blend of hauteur and disapproval.
    Just as he had moments before.
    Suddenly Chessy remembered the other times he had spoken to her that way. He had pulled her out of one scrape or other while her father had been busy with his maps and his exploration of the treacherous waters around the wrecked imperial Chinese treasure junk.
    On one occasion a group of fishermen had been convinced that the foreign girl with violet eyes was an evil sea-devil stealing their fish. Morland had sauntered into their midst just as they were preparing to tie Chessy into a weighted sack and toss her overboard.
    Chessy had been glad to see him that time.
    Several weeks later, a powerful warlord from Canton, watching her swim near the wreck, had decided he « must have her for his twelfth concubine. He was not so easily routed as the fishermen, since one of his advisers had suggested that union with a violet-eyed virgin would give him the sexual stamina of a twenty-year-old.
    It had taken Tony the better part of a day and a harrowing night to persuade the warlord that Francesca Cameron would not be at all good for his sexual energy. Among the major reasons Tony listed were that she was no longer a virgin, and that Morland himself could attest to her insatiable demands in bed, demands that rendered a man old before his time.
    At first the plan had appeared to backfire.
    The warlord had studied Chessy’s slim, budding body hungrily, fascinated by the tale Morland had spun.
    Then there had come an even more harrowing moment when the warlord had demanded to verify these claims for himself. Morland had finally convinced him that with even one touch he would be damaged for life.
    The warlord let them go ten minutes later, bestowing a gift of twenty taels of silver upon Tony in gratitude for the horror he had just escaped. On the way back to their boat, Chessy had asked Tony how he had convinced the warlord she was not a virgin.
    He’d given a low oath in answer.
    Later that day, by dint of questions directed to the girls in the local Chinese fishing village, Chessy had learned exactly what a virgin was, in explicit detail.
    She had avoided Tony for a week after that, as gut-wrenchingly embarrassed and ashamed as only an adolescent of fifteen could be.
    Finally he had taken her aside and told her to forget the whole business. He assured her that he liked her far too much to sacrifice their friendship to a bunch of missish airs or misplaced modesty.
    Besides, he would be leaving in a month. He wanted to enjoy every moment of time they had until then.
    Chessy had fallen prey to his charm then, just as she had again and again during that halcyon