Free Jane Feather - [V Series] by Virtue Page A

hussy!” Marcus declared, truly shocked. “By God, someone had better take you in hand, before you do some serious damage and find yourself at the end of the hangman’s rope.”
    He jerked the reins from her grasp and guided the horse over to the side of the road, in the shadow of a bramble hedge. The horse dropped his head and began to crop at the grassy verge.
    “What are you doing?” Judith demanded.
    “I don’t know yet.” He turned on the bench, catching her shoulders, and the minute he touched her that jolting current surged between them. Judith looked into his eyes, glittering with purpose, and she shivered, feeling the heat in her belly slowly turning bone and sinew to molten lava.
    “You weave the strangest magic, Judith,” he said, his voice a husky murmur, his eyes holding hers. “You confuse me so much I don’t know whether I want to beat you or make love to you … but I have to possess you one way or the other.”
    Judith shook her head dumbly. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak. She knew only that she wanted his hands on her; rough or gentle, it was immaterial.
    Marcus groaned in defeat and pulled her against him, his mouth coming down on hers with a crushing violence akin to punishment. Judith responded unhesitatingly to the bruising pressure, her lips parting for the determined thrust of his tongue. Her hands found their way around his neck, her fingers raking through the thick, dark hair. Deep within her was a warm, throbbing core of excitement and wanting that seemed to spread in waves through her body. She had never felt anything like it before and she yielded to the hot, red sensation, reaching against him as if she would be a part of him as his hands moved over her, outlining her body, learning its contours.
    Slowly Marcus released her mouth for as long as it took him to readjust his hold so that he could pull her sideways onto his thighs. “I need a little more of you,” he said softly, finding her mouth again. Her head rested against his shoulder, her mouth below his now more vulnerable and accessible to the deepening exploration of his tongue. His hands found her breasts, molding the soft swell beneath her jacket, and she felt in some way opened to him. She stirred on his lap, her thighs parting without volition as the deep red heat within her threatened to consume reason and reality.
    “Dear God, but there’s a passion in you, my lynx.” He raised his head, gazing down into the bemused but desirous golden eyes.
    “It must be the champagne,” Judith murmured, reaching for his head again, bringing it back to her.
    Marcus pulled back, laughter sparking in his gaze, rippling in his voice, lust’s flame abruptly reduced to a smolder. “Did I hear you aright? You attribute such a passionate response simply to an excess of champagne?”
    “I think it must contribute,” she said, grinning up at him. But the mischief couldn’t hide the banked fires in her eyes, the deeply sensual curve of her mouth.
    “Wretch,” he said softly. “I don’t know what you deserve for interrupting me like that.” His hand moved again to her breast, fingers deftly unhooking the frogged buttons of her jacket. Judith quivered, the moment of levity past. The any buttons on her lawn shirt flew apart and his fingers were on her skin, warm, firm, knowing. She raised one hand to caress his head, her body arching upward into his hand with the swelling urgency of her wanting.
    “I have never felt like this,” she whispered on a tiny gasp of excitement.
    “That’s much better,” he murmured. “We’ll have no more nonsense about the uninhibiting effects of champagne.” He smiled at her, a glinting smile of male satisfaction. Holding her gaze, he dropped one hand to her knee, hitching up her skirt inch by inch. The warm breath of a summer’s night brushed her bared legs as the skirt reached her thighs. His palm cupped her knees and slid upward beyond her stocking tops, over the satin softness of