Reforming the Royal Rakehell
Destiny casts its hand one perfect moonlit night when Ascension’s most elusive highwayman, the Masked Rider, chooses the wrong coach to rob. For inside is Rafael, the prince of the kingdom, renowned for his hot-blooded pursuits of women and other decadent pleasures. The failed raid leaves the equally notorious Masked Rider wounded and facing a hangman’s noose. Then Rafe realizes his captive criminal is Lady Daniela Chiaramonte, a defiant beauty who torments him, awakening his senses and his heart as no woman has before.
Dani can only wonder if she’s been delivered to heaven or hell once she agrees to marry the most desirable man in the Mediterranean– until forces of treachery threaten to destroy their tenuous alliance and bring down the throne itself…
Ascencion, 1816
"Raaaaafe!"
A pack of screaming, squealing girls swamped him. All talking at once, they pulled him down into a chair, three of the actresses sitting on his lap, giggling and stroking his chest, and two draped around his neck, covering his face in kisses.
"Ah," he sighed, smiling slightly for the first time that night as he leaned back lazily in the chair, closing his eyes and drowning pleasantly under the soft, scented, writhing mass of lovely limbs and unbound breasts and lace flounces and careful curls. "I love the theater."
He heard them giggling, felt them rummaging in his coat and waistcoat like pickpocket children searching for treats. Ah, well. He supposed he had spoiled them, rolling them a handful of jewels last time he'd been here, foxed as Pharaoh.
Soft lips alighted on his mouth, caressing lightly. After a judicious moment, he began kissing back, willing ennui away. Touching wherever he pleased, he sampled their kisses one by one, but the fun ended when Chloe arrived.
Rafe watched the English diva strutting toward him in her clinging silvery gown.
She had a perfect body and a gleaming smile, his latest toy. They had been lovers for four months now, a record for Rafe. He did not quite know how to tell her that he had begun losing interest. He was rather hoping she would figure it out for herself.
Chloe huffed to see her sister thespians all over her royal protector. She slid her feather boa off her creamy shoulders and pushed her way into their midst, catching Rafe around the neck with it. He glanced up with an unrepentant half-smile. Chloe gave him a disapproving look, but didn't dare reproach him.
Instead, she fluffed the feather boa on him. "Darling, how avant-garde."
"Ooo, it looks so pretty on him!" one of the girls exclaimed, fixing the pink feather boa over his shoulder like a scarf.
"Everything does," another sighed.
He stared dully at the chit, wondering if he had ever been that young and easily impressed.
"Look at this, Prince Rafie!" a buxom brunette said eagerly, climbing off his lap. Daringly, she lifted the hem of her chemise and bared the left cheek of her pretty, rounded bottom for him.
He lifted his eyebrows, admiring the R tattooed there. He traced the monogrammed letter with his fingertip lightly over the curve of tender flesh. "How sweet of you, my pet. What was your name again?"
"Begone, you little tramps, or I'll speak to the house manager and you'll all be out of a job!" Chloe snapped, shooing them off.
Rafe chuckled at his mistress's pique, saying nothing as the girls sadly drifted away, curls drooping. He smiled to himself, watching his friends intercept them, flirting, billfolds at the ready.
"Lovely, lovely little tarts." He glanced up at the haughty blond with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "And then there's you, madam witch."
She leaned over him, grasped both ends of the feather boa, and tugged. "That's right," she whispered, holding him in a sultry stare, "and you, my devil, are coming with me. I must punish you for sleeping through my aria. Don't think I didn't see you."
I was awake ... but you can punish me as you see fit," he murmured softly as he stood, towering over her.
