Welcome to the Nice Girls Writing Naughty “Under the Gazebo: Naughty Hottie Memorial Day Blog Hop” @ngwngroup @giveaway
The weather’s warming up and the heroes and heroines of our stories are finding themselves lured by temptation in the great outdoors.
On June 23, I’ll be debuting the first book in The Rites of May, a series of historical erotic romances set in Regency England.
And here’s the brand new PRE-ORDER link:
http://www.amazon.com/Bared-Viscount-Rites-May-Book-ebook/dp/B00Y7I7CKM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1432528022&sr=1-1&keywords=lara+archer
In the first book, BARED TO THE VISCOUNT, Lord John Parkhurst—a man everyone assumes to be about to marry the local beauty– finds himself tempted by the last woman he should ever allow himself to lust for: the spinster sister of the local vicar.
The trouble starts when the viscount and the virtuous Mary Wilkins take a walk together in the woods, and her skirts become snared in a wild tangle of blackberry vines:
***********
“Hold still, Miss Wilkins,” he urged her. “I’ll get you loose.”
“No!” she cried. “No need! Stand back, Lord Parkhurst!” And she pulled harder at her restraints, which only seemed to shake loose other vines from the vast green tangle, so more long tentacles full of thorns whipped around her, catching her clothing in several places, and even the side of her hair.
“Blast!” she said again, and her cheeks colored once more. The vines now held her in a slightly contorted posture, one that bent her forward, bringing that subtle curve to her backside into more prominent sight.
Damn.
John’s loins were definitely reacting, and the fact that Mary let loose with one or two more choice exclamations a clergyman’s daughter probably should not have uttered in a gentleman’s presence was not particularly helping.
A gentleman. He was a gentleman, and he couldn’t afford to forget it.
He was not going to think about her backside, and he was certainly not going to pay attention to the fact that her breathing had become more rapid or that the pinkish color in her cheeks now spread to her long, bare throat.
“Please, Miss Wilkins,” he said. “Hold very still, and I’ll have you free in just a moment.”
Unfortunately, the vines had her pinned all along one side, and he didn’t dare get closer to the general mass of them, lest he be snagged himself, so he had to contort himself to try to free her. Which required his forearms to press against the backs of her legs as he reached around her, and even brought his face into proximity with that intriguing backside he was working so hard not to think about.
And damned if she didn’t smell rather delicious—clean, natural, without a trace of perfume, only the slight tang of exertion from their long climb, and a scent of womanly flesh that made him want to breathe her in more fully.
He needed to get away from her, and soon, before he started actively sniffing at her, like a mongrel after a bitch.
But freeing her wasn’t a quick job: every move set the whole network swaying, so half the time, when he got a bit of her loose, the vines shifted and caught her somewhere else. If women wore breeches, his job would have been easier, but there were folds of fabric everywhere around her, especially in that loose sack of a dress.
At one point, a particularly springy shoot he freed bounced upwards and speared a new bit of fabric on the way, lifting the hem of her skirt, baring her ankle and several inches of long, white, surprisingly shapely leg.
His cock pulsed and stiffened almost instantly.
Which was going to make standing upright again quite a bit more awkward.
Mary gasped as the breeze hit her skin, surely embarrassed by being exposed to his gaze, so in desperation he gripped the vine to tear it free, stabbing his fingers and tearing a small rent in her hem.
At least he got that one bit of fabric loose, and her leg was properly covered again.
But Mary had jumped rather violently in her own panicked effort to free her skirts, and now she cried, “Ouch! My hair!”
He looked up to find a thick vine arching above her, pulling long strands out of the tight coil on her scalp as it strained upwards, doubtless causing her quite a bit of pain.
To stop the pressure, he grasped her hair as near to her scalp as he could, then used the fingers of the other hand to tease the captured strands loose.
They were lovely strands, he discovered.
The color looked dull wrapped at the base of her skull, but the loose strands in the sunlight were warm, reddish-brown, rather like the color of good brandy. And surprisingly silky to the touch.
What would her hair look like if it were all loose, curling down around her hips?
No. He definitely wasn’t going to think about that.
He eased the loose curls down against her cheek, careful to keep them away from the blackberry branches. Her face looked far softer with waves of brandy-colored hair resting against it.
Softer, and…warmer.
With her grey eyes suddenly looking very bright indeed.
His gaze fell quite unbidden to her mouth, which was also a good deal rosier than he remembered.
“John,” she said again, more softly. She was looking at him too, her gaze vague and unfocused. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her lips were parting. “John.”
He was breathing faster too.
John. She was calling him John. For the first time in years.
No one had called him by that name since his father died, not even his own mother, to whom he was always Parkhurst now. The sound of his name on Mary’s lips moved something in his chest. He felt as if he were….loosening inside.
Not to mention that he was still staring at her lips, and his blood was heating quite precipitously, and his cock was stirring to full attention against the fall of his trousers.
“Mary,” he said, though he had no conscious intention at all of saying her name.
Oh, this was bad—this was very, very bad.
This was Mary Wilkins he was having lustful inclinations towards.
**********
I hope you enjoyed that little snippet from BARED TO THE VISCOUNT! Trust me, things get a lot steamier from there….
For a chance to win the $10 Amazon gift card and Advanced Reader Copy of BARED TO THE VISCOUNT I’m offering, please comment and answer this question:
Have you ever been tempted by someone you should have stayed away from?
I’ll announce the winner on Monday here and on the Nice Girls Writing Naughty Readers Group on Facebook. If you haven’t yet joined our group, now’s your chance 🙂 We have fun events and great prizes every month!
Don’t forget to comment at all the stops for a chance to win the Grand Prize, a $50 Amazon Gift Card! Find all the participating blogs here!
Thanks for taking part in the Naughty Hottie Memorial Day Blog Hop!
