The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes Read online

‘Don’t bother,’ he said, and the voluminous folds of cloth disappeared, leaving her in skimpy underwear that might have come from some cosmic Victoria’s Secret. Her slightly small breasts spilled out of the lace bra, and the thong was riding up, both arousing and uncomfortable.

  She growled, and a moment later she was frozen, immovable, and something was pinching her butt a lot harder than the strip of lace. She tried to move, only to be rewarded with the sound of clanking metal.

  ‘Armor, Lizzie?’

  She was totally immobilized. She threw her weight to one side and fell over, pinned to the bed by the weight of the metal.

  It didn’t help that he was laughing. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said in a kindly tone, and a moment later she was lying on the bed without any clothes at all.

  She shrieked as she dove for the covers, wrapping the silk sheet around her.

  He knelt on the bed, moving toward her as she huddled in the corner with the covers wrapped around her like a shroud, and he was lean, feral, and the hottest thing she’d ever seen. He was also clearly out of his mind, and even for the sake of great sex she wasn’t going to sleep with a crazy man.

  And it would be great sex – she had little doubt of that. Bone-melting, soul-shattering sex, hot and wicked and everything she never thought existed.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest, one more layer of defense. ‘Go away, Elric. You’ll get over this if you try. You think I’m a scatterbrained idiot, and I’d drive you crazy if you had to spend much time with me.’

  ‘You already drive me crazy,’ he said. ‘The fact of the matter is, we don’t have any choice.’

  ‘You may not have a choice, but I do. Go away or I’ll start screaming, and one of the neighbors will call the police.’

  She had no place to retreat to, and he knelt in front of her, grabbing her hands as she clutched at the sheet. ‘Look at me, Lizzie,’ he said in a gentler voice. She closed her eyes tightly, shutting him out.

  He was holding her prisoner and she didn’t like it. Except that the hands encircling her wrists were oddly gentle, and she knew she could break free any time she wanted to. And she knew she should want to.

  ‘Look at me, Lizzie,’ he said again, and she couldn’t resist the wry note in his voice. She opened one eye, cautiously, then the other.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ If she sounded sullen and childish she didn’t care. He’d already said that she was a disaster of epic proportions – she had no intention of encouraging his delusions. Even if she had the almost overwhelming urge to put her mouth on his flat, golden stomach.

  ‘Sex. Companionship. True love. Take your pick.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, appalled.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with sex.’

  She should have said no. Her entire life had turned upside down, all thanks to the man kneeling in front of her, and he seemed to regret it even more than she did. And it wasn’t helping that every time he touched her she could feel light and color flooding through her body, and she was tired of being gray and ordinary.

  But she wasn’t going down without a fight. ‘Okay, let’s look at this logically. You’ve got some delusion that we’re trapped in the curse of true love, though I’m not sure I understand why it’s a curse. So if I sleep with you, it’ll either free you from that delusion, which would be a relief, or convince you that it’s true, which would be revenge. If I sent you away right now, I know that you’d go, and sooner or later you’d realize it was only temporary insanity and you’d forget all about me, and I’d marry Charles if he ever gets back from Alaska and remembers who I am, and I’ll have a safe, ordinary life, which is everything I always wanted. The trouble is, I don’t want to marry Charles after all.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said weakly. ‘Do I have to marry you, too?’

  ‘Revenge is sounding good to me,’ she said, half to herself. She scooted down on the bed, the purple sheets pulled up to her armpits, and closed her eyes. ‘Have at it.’

  If Elric had any doubts as to the scope of this catastrophe, looking down at Lizzie as she lay on the bed, swaddled like a mummy in purple satin, her blond curls tangled around her pale face, her eyes tightly shut, convinced him it was all too terribly, horribly true. He was in love with her. He didn’t need the purple rim around his eyes to prove it – all he had to do was look at her and he was lost.

  She was fighting it even harder than he was, but then, she didn’t know it was hopeless.

  He leaned over her, taking the edge of the sheet and tugging gently. She quivered for a moment, keeping her hands at her sides, effectively keeping the sheet over her, but he was a lot more experienced than she was, and he simply pulled it down, away from her body, tossing it on the floor beside the bed.

  She was the most luscious thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. Smooth, creamy skin, smallish breasts, soft and small and sleek. A far cry from the experienced, sophisticated women he tended to sleep with, and she was absolutely, shyly irresistible.

  He put his hand on her ankle and she jerked, her eyes opening for a minute and then shutting again. This was probably the way Charles did it – with Lizzie lying passively, missionary style, while he groaned and sweated over her. He might have to kill Charles.

  Or at least turn him into a moose. Moose did well in Alaska, didn’t they? Maybe a polar bear would eat him.

  But he wasn’t interested in thinking about Charles at the moment. He kissed her ankle by the side of her brand-new tattoo, tasting the rose-scented soap she’d bathed in. He kissed her behind her knee, and he could feel the tremors run through her body. Fear or arousal? Or a heady combination of both? He kissed the inside of her thigh, the soft skin at her hip, and she was trembling in earnest now, her eyes tightly shut. Poor baby, she had no idea what was in store for her.

  He kissed her other ankle, moving up her legs with slow, lingering kisses, and his hands cupped the full sweetness of her hips.

  ‘Open your legs for me, Lizzie,’ he whispered. She opened her eyes instead. ‘What?’ she demanded, shocked.

  ‘This doesn’t work with your legs together, sweetness. Hadn’t you figured that out yet?’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Open your legs for me,’ he said again, helping her, pushing them apart and moving between them, and she braced herself, expecting God knows what. He hadn’t even taken his pants off yet.

  She really was the most adorable, pathetic creature right now. So frightened, so needy. So why was he shaking, too?

  He pulled her toward him and put his mouth between her legs, because he needed to, and she let out a shriek loud enough to rouse the neighbors. Her hands left the bed to clutch his shoulders, pushing at him. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, a thread of desperation in her voice.

  He looked up at her. ‘Why? Is it sinful?’

  ‘You shouldn’t… I can’t… you wouldn’t…’

  ‘I like it,’ he said, touching her. She was slick and wet, even before he’d gone down on her, and she was wound up so tightly she might burst. He wanted her to burst. To split apart, into a thousand pieces, and then he could pull her back together again.

  All it took was the touch of his tongue, and she began to spasm, her body contracting in helpless pleasure. He held her there, for long, endless moments, letting the waves of her release fall around him, and as each one began to subside he would bring it on again, with his fingers deep inside her, with his tongue, his lips, his teeth, until she was sobbing, rigid, gasping for breath, and then he took her further still, into a dark, hot place that even he seldom reached.

  When he sat back on his heels, kneeling between her legs, she tried to curl up, in on herself, hiding her face, hiding her body, sobbing, and he knew if he let her she’d keep hiding. He pushed her back against the sheets, gently, covering her body with his and kissing her mouth. And another orgasm caught her body with weary pleasure.

  He hadn’t even realized how fucking hard he was – he’d been concentrating so inte