Trailer and Excerpt for "Vexing the Viscount" by Emily Bryan

Reading about kissing and actually doing it were two entirely different things, she decided. Her soft palate ached with the sweetness of his mouth on hers.

His hands found her waist and brought her snug against him. Even through the heavy boning of her bodice and the yards of fabric, she felt the warmth of his body.

And his hard maleness on the other side of the thin shield of tulle.

Then he shifted his mouth, her lips parted and the kiss changed. Deepened. Flared with heat. Her bones melted. She should have expected his tongue when it slipped into her mouth, but she was so distracted by the sudden gush of warmth in her groin, she lost track of the kiss for a moment in the rush of sensations. She jerked in surprise and pulled away.

“I did it wrong, didn’t I?” He let his hands drop from her waist.

“No, no, your kiss was very . . . “

“Inexperienced,” he finished. “I rushed things, didn’t I? Well, there’s no hiding from you. No doubt you’ve guessed already.”

“Guessed what, Lucian?”

He sank onto the stone bench, pulling her down beside him. “That kiss was the pinnacle of my experience with the fair sex.”

What was he saying? That he had no more first hand knowledge of physical love than she? Daisy was dumb-founded.

“Surely you jest, Monsieur le Vicomte. Young gentlemen of title and wealth are expected to have—“

“Ah! You’ve hit upon the problem squarely,” he said. “I’m a gentleman of title, but no wealth. I’ve no desire to court when I have nothing to offer a wife but my name. And lack of funds means I’m unable to pay for . . . well, to form a relationship with a woman for the sake of pleasure.”

“But surely there have been willing maidens in your past.” Tales of dalliances between the lord of the manor and his house servants were grist for the penny-novelists’ mill. Daisy had read more of them than she probably should.

“Perhaps,” he conceded, “but however tempting it might be, it never seemed fair to take one of the upstairs maids to my bed.”

“Commendable,” Daisy said, liking him better by the moment. “Especially since that sort of liaison invariably ends badly for the girl who hopes to raise herself through them and rarely does.”

He met her gaze directly. “Is that what happened to you?”

“Me? No, of course—“ She remembered that he thought her a ‘soiled dove’ and naturally wondered how she’d come to fall from society’s grace. Daisy lifted her chin and recalled Blanche’s defiant record of her own life. “I became a courtesan with my eyes wide open. I ask you, milord, would you be content to go through life being treated as if you were a child or an imbecile?”

“Of course not.”

“Yet such is the plight of a married woman. When a woman becomes a wife, she becomes a man’s property,” Daisy said, understanding Blanche more as she allowed the courtesan’s words to flow out her mouth and into the garden’s fresh air. “So I pursued an education and chose to take a lover in exchange for rich gifts instead of a husband. And in so doing, I retain control of my moneys and goods as well as my person.”

“And do you have a lover now?”

A trace of his old Italian accent crept back into his voice. Daisy doubted anyone who hadn’t known him as a boy would have even marked the slight Latin huskiness in his tone. But it made her pulse dance.

“I am without a patron at present and in need of nothing. My last protector was very generous,” she purred. “I will take another lover at a time of my choosing.”

“Well, then, it certainly sounds as if you’ve done well for yourself in your choice,” he said with a laugh. “Perhaps I should take a page from your book and hire myself out. That would be one way to fund my work.”

“Ah! But a gigolo must possess skills which you confess you lack,” she said.

He looked searchingly at her for a moment.

“Blanche.” His rumbling tone caressed her false name. “You could teach me.”