WidowsWickedWish Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth over hers and pressed his hard length between her legs.
    “What nonsense,” Mary said with a laugh. “You are your
father’s daughter, Olivia.”
    “And my father was a passionate man?” Olivia asked although
she suspected she knew the answer. What else but passion would have accounted
for the secret family he’d kept hidden away from the curious eyes of Society?
    “Wonderfully so,” Mary replied. “And you are so like him.”
    “Am I?” Olivia asked in surprise.
    “More so than Henry, and even Beatrice,” the older lady
assured her. “Like you, Francis was torn between duty and passion.”
    “Yes,” Olivia agreed slowly.
    “As a respectable widow,” Mary continued gently, “away from
prying eyes, you might allow yourself to finally learn what all the fuss is
about.”
    “A respectable widow,” Olivia repeated, not entirely sure
she liked the sound of the words, the picture they painted of a lonely woman
adorned in black bombazine, stubbornly clinging to her propriety.
    “Widows enjoy a great deal of freedom,” Mary continued.
“Perhaps it is time for that wish to come true for you.”
    “I could dare to be wicked,” Olivia replied slowly. “I could
finally learn how it feels to have a man desire me.”
    “Just so,” Mary agreed.
    “Nothing will ever come of it,” Olivia hastened to add.
    “Except a bit of pleasure. An abundance of pleasure, if
you’re lucky.”
    “If I’m very lucky.”
    “And who knows, perhaps even love.”
    “Oh, no, I’d just as soon not fall in love, thank you very
much,” Olivia protested.
    “Why ever not?”
    “You know I don’t ever plan to marry again,” Olivia reminded
her friend.
    “So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”
     
    Three hours later Olivia lay in her bed listening to the
sounds of the house settling, the winter wind buffeting the tree branches
outside her window, and the fire crackling in the hearth across the room.
    Her mind was filled with images of Jack Bentley, most
especially the light gleaming in his eyes as he’d wished her a good night in
the dim hallway between their two bed-chambers. He’d hesitated, his hand on the
door knob, casting a speculative look over his shoulder. For one feverish
moment she’d thought he meant to invite her into his room. Instead he’d arched
one dark brow, his mouth lifting in a lopsided smile and she’d imagined a
silent dare in the gesture.
    Olivia rolled to her side, pummeled the pillow beneath her
head into submission and let out a sigh of vexation. Her senses were alive with
a humming sort of awareness in her body the like of which she’d never known.
Her breasts tingled, her nipples almost painfully sensitive to the shift of her
nightgown over them. A soft pulse throbbed between her legs, intensifying as
she squeezed her thighs together seeking relief.
    With a huff of mingled laughter and frustration, she tossed
off the covers and scrambled from the bed only to stand beside it unsure what
to do next.
    She tried to imagine padding barefoot across the hall to
Jack’s door and found to her surprise that it took little effort. She could do
that much, but what then?
    She might knock. Or did a woman bent on seduction simply
open the door and enter?
    She laughed at her fanciful imagination. What she knew about
seduction wouldn’t fill a thimble.
    She knew only how to lie quietly beneath her husband, how to
submit. But Jack was not her husband and she couldn’t imagine he would welcome
into his bed a shy widow without an ounce of feminine wiles.
    Not for the first time, she wished Palmerton had desired
her, that he’d taken the time to introduce her to the wonders of the marriage
bed. Instead he’d come to her solely to produce an heir, seeing to his duty
much as her mother had predicted on the eve of her wedding.
    Palmerton had come to her wearing a long robe of the finest
burgundy silk, tied loosely at his waist. His chest had been bare beneath,
which surprised Olivia.
    Her mother had clearly