Potent Pleasures Read Online Free

lordly, and very handsome, even given his mask. He had broad shoulders and curly black hair shot through with silver.
    Just then a very pretty girl, dressed as Cleopatra, stopped next to him. She seemed to know him; they were laughing and he rubbed a finger against her face. Charlotte instinctively touched her own cheek and kept staring. From here, his eyes looked black and his eyebrows arched just as her own did. People always said that she looked as if she had a perpetual question in mind; his eyebrows gave an entirely different impression. They made him look a little devilish: not childishly naughty, like Julia’s curate, but altogether more dangerous. Something stirred warmly, deep in her belly. For the first time, she saw a man whom she would like to … to what? To kiss, she decided. Yes, she would even like to kiss him, she thought with a delicious shiver. Although kissing, Lady Sipperstein had said over and over, was something one did only with one’s betrothed, and then only after all the papers were signed.
    Suddenly the stranger’s green domino swung elegantly out from his shoulder as he turned down the stairs and escorted the laughing Cleopatra to the dance floor. Charlotte tried to follow them with her eyes, even standing a bit on tiptoe, but there were too many people. He was taller than most men so she occasionally caught glimpses of his silver-black curls. Her heart thumped loudly.
    “Oh, for goodness sake!” she said aloud. A tiny smile lit her face. She was behaving just like Julia, falling for the first handsome man she saw. He was probably a footman. But where was Julia? The orchestra had played at least two or three dances since she left; Charlotte had lost track. She felt a little anger stir inside her. How could Julia leave her alone, when the ballroom was full of people who were definitely behaving in a less than restrained manner? Even as she watched, a stout man dressed in a frayed domino grabbed his partner by her bare shoulders and kissed her, and they didn’t even seem to notice the hissing annoyance of the other dancers who bumped into them.
    Charlotte turned a bit and stared into the corner behind the statue. The room was papered in a perfectly unexceptional blue with gold flock. She drank up the rest of her lemonade.
    Suddenly she felt a push and she toppled into the corner. She would have caught her balance, but her head was fuzzy and so she teetered and fell forward. And the person who had shoved her fell on top of her, heavily.
    “Ow,” Charlotte said. Her mask was twisted, she could feel that, and powder had fallen from her hair all over the polished floor.
    But she was whisked to her feet in a second and large hands brushed the powder from her cloak.
    She looked up. It was the man from the steps. Charlotte looked at him a bit owlishly. Just at that moment he looked up from brushing off her cloak, met her eyes, and froze.
    “Thank you,” she said, remembering to smile.
    He didn’t move. Charlotte looked away from his eyes. They were so intent: black and deep, like polished obsidian, she thought absurdly, and almost giggled. Would a footman wear a domino made of thick green silk? She stole another look at him. He was younger than she thought, and even handsomer. His eyebrows formed thick peaks over his eyes. He was still staring at her. At her mouth, actually. Nervously she bit her lip, unable to move, caught by the intensity of his gaze.
    Then without saying a word he put his arms around her waist and pulled her against his body.
    “What!” Charlotte managed to say, but he bent his head and a warm strong mouth descended on hers. She didn’t say another word, not even when his lips opened hers and his tongue lunged into her mouth, not when he pulled back slightly and delicately traced the shape of her lips with his tongue, and certainly not when she—she!—leaned toward him in a silent request and his mouth took hers again.
    He swung her about so that they were shadowed behind