A Wicked Wedding (Spies and Lovers #5)

What’s the best Christmas present? A wicked wedding…

Marcus, Lord Linley, never thought to ascend to the title. After all, he was not the heir or the spare, but a lowly third son. Miss Diana Grambling is painfully aware her blood isn’t blue enough for an earl to consider her as a match. When the childhood friends stumble across a smuggling ring operating along their coast, they are in need a Christmastide miracle. If they can survive, will they be strong enough to follow their hearts?

Warning: Contains a hero battling his gentlemanly impulses, a heroine who falls for her brothers’ best friend, and a wicked night in front of a fire that changes everything.

Teaser:
Was Cole, Lord Linley, going to kiss her?

Diana could easily duck under his arm and make a run for Grambling Manor, yet she merely tilted her head back to hold his gaze. Gray clouds scooted across the sky, portending the coming dusk and casting a shadow across his face. Was Cole playing a jest? Would he laugh about how simple and gullible she was to Piers and Liam later?

The moment stretched into minutes, hours, days. His mouth inched toward hers with the inexorableness of the tide sweeping along the shore. At some point, she let go of the cloak and grasped the soft lawn fabric where his shirt parted, revealing his collarbones and a sprinkling of dark hair. He was wearing a hardy green waistcoat but no collar or neckcloth.

“This is terribly ill-advised, Cole.” While the words stuttered out of her, her hand remained firmly entangled in his shirt.

“Terribly.” His mouth moved within the flutter of a butterfly’s wings from hers.

“I don’t require a pity kiss from you.”

He retreated slightly, and she found herself following. “Pity is not the emotion I’m battling at the moment.”

Before she could question him further or ask him why her and not beautiful, ladylike Rose, their lips crashed together. In all her imaginings—and there had been an embarrassing number of hours spent on this very subject—Diana had pictured her first kiss as being chaste. The soft, simple press of lips to lips.

How wrong she was. There was nothing simple nor chaste about Cole’s kiss.

Note: A Wicked Wedding was previously included in the Once Upon a Christmas Wedding anthology