The Good Girl's Guide to Rakes (Last Chance Scoundrels, #1)

by Eva Leigh

The wedding hadn’t happened yet, and already the marriage was a disaster.

“As groomsman, I’m off to check on Dom. I’ll offer my early felicitations for joining his cursed line to ours.”

Giving the earl an ironic salute, Kieran wrested open the church doors. He raised a brow as Finn fell into step beside him. “I’ve a wager with myself to see if you are struck dead the moment you set foot inside the church,” Finn explained genially. “There will be two charred spots on the floor, then. Yours beside mine.”

“Don’t drain it, you son of a bitch,” Kieran muttered as his brother tipped his head back to drink deeply. “How dare you call our mother a bitch,” Finn said,

“Looks like Rome after being sacked by the Visigoths.” “The Vandals sacked Rome.” “Who didn’t sack Rome?”

Love also had a disastrous habit of turning rancid, as he’d seen with his parents, and now with Willa and Dom. While the initial pleasure might be great, in the aftermath love cooled and congealed like spilled blood. The stronger one loved, the greater the despair that followed its inevitable retreat.

She’d been born into poverty, but now she lived in a cage. Granted, it was a cage full of beautiful things and abundant food, but it was nevertheless a cage. All she could do was let her song float out between the bars, yet no one heard her tune.

“Then you understand my need for a respectable wife,” Kieran said. She held up her hands, warding him off. “I’m not going to marry you.” “Oh, God, no,” he answered at once. Well, that was also exceptionally unflattering.

“I’m a means to an end.” Impossible not to feel dispirited by Kieran’s request. He had never truly seen her until she was useful to him, and only then as a stepping-stone to some other woman.

“One self-serving act of dependability hardly negates a lifetime of suspect behavior.”

Kieran Ransome all but radiated with erotic possibility.

“All this time,” she muttered, “I believed other people kept me in line, reining me in, but perhaps they’ve done such an effective job of telling me what I can’t do, now I tell myself what’s impossible.” “Implanting the seeds of doubt in you, so they barely have to do the work themselves.”

“Love’s a complicated thing,” she said. “It seldom exists in its purest form.”

“We’re not always who the world believes us to be.”

She glanced toward the hazard table, and a smile of eager potential bloomed across her face. Her expressions were so dynamic, so emotive—impossible not to wonder what such responsiveness might mean in a bed partner.

It’s so exhausting, being in that box. No one asking who I am, who I want to be. No one truly seeing me. But,” she went on in a low, urgent voice, “I see that you’re a kind and generous man. For whatever my opinion’s worth, I see that in you.”

“I’d never,” he said, affronted. A moment later, he said, “All right, I wanted to. But I didn’t, and that should count for something.” “Felicitations on being slightly less appalling than normal.” “My thanks.”

“Will you be honoring your guests with a performance?” Lord Hempnall chortled. “An unwell goat bleats better than my own attempts at music.” “When I come to your home,” Kieran vowed, “I shall bring a remedy for the goat.”

“Someone’s selling lemonade next to the lake. While it isn’t the rich and holy blood of virgins, I’ll drink it.”

“That’s the trouble with hearts. They involve themselves, whether we want them to or not.”

“Depending on others to bring us happiness leads to disappointment.”

My hands burn because they want to wrap around your throat and hold you still as I pleasure you.”

“We need to leave, love,” he growled, “before I forget myself and fuck you against the wall.”

But sleep wouldn’t take away the fact that she had no choice in how the rest of her life was to play out. Her fate was settled, and that fate included nothing she wanted for herself.

“I’m a grown man,” Kieran answered, “and grown men don’t fidget. We are moodily restless.”

“Much as I adore your scandalous clothing, when you’re Salome, you become the woman who’s been inside you all this time. I do love to see her.”

Each question I pose, one answer is true— My guide is the constellation of you.”

It was safer to retreat into badinage than say what she truly wanted: that she appreciated him, that she hated the thought of life without him, and that she would spend every moment after this dreaming of tonight. Dreaming of him.

Inwardly, she grimaced at their banal conversation. For God’s sake, he’d been inside her less than two days ago.

“Do you think His Grace has a library? One that is more than decorative?” “Books are better company than the guests?” Finn asked. “In my estimation,” she said dryly, “books contain actual knowledge, whereas most of the people in attendance here do not.” “I contain almost no knowledge,” Finn answered cheerfully.

Christ almighty, he was in love with Celeste. So much so he ached with it. Every face he saw was hardly worth a glance because it wasn’t her face. Anyone who spoke simply made meaningless sounds because it wasn’t Celeste speaking. A moment without her was a moment without joy, without purpose.

Love blossomed in his chest and spread its tendrils through him. He was dizzy with it, and she was the fixed point in his spinning universe, holding him steady.

He wanted to make Celeste his—before the eyes of the world. All the mad chasing of pleasure he’d done for most of his life, it made him understand that the greatest pleasure of all was being with her. Standing close to her. Seeing her smile and hearing her laugh and watching her joy as she discovered a new experience.

“It was a beautiful thing to see. She was beautiful. Free and fierce and I couldn’t help it—I fell in love with her. There was no way not to love her. To see her become all that she was, all that she could be, it was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.”

“Because you . . . you’re a hurricane contained within the structure of a woman. You’re a force more powerful than anything else, and when you impelled me to accompany you out into the larger world, it was like beholding the birth of a whole new universe. I was merely the lucky bastard to witness it.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” she said, leaning into his touch. “I choose you, for always.”

“Kieran,” she said urgently. “Love?” “Kiss me.” A fierce, joyous fire burned in his eyes. He tilted her head up and brought his mouth to hers. They kissed ravenously, driven by need that had been too long denied. She pressed herself into him, his strength meeting hers, as it was meant to be.

“Love ain’t always enough to keep a scoundrel at home,” her father answered. “When Celeste is home,” Kieran replied, “I’ll be home with her. When she’s out, I’ll be out with her. Wherever she is, that’s where you’ll find me.”

Celeste and Kieran shared a knowing look. To the world at large, she was perfectly respectable. Yet she and her intended knew better.

To C. K.—Every line is for you.