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An Excerpt From: PERHAPS LOVE
Copyright © MADISON BLAKE, 2008
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing,
Inc.
Consciousness slowly seeped into Esmeralda’s brain and
she registered it was morning by the rays of light filtering in from the
windows. She stretched on the bed, unwilling to open her eyes just yet,
wanting to rest a little bit more before starting on her journey for the day.
She moaned at the silken texture of the sheets underneath her body and the
sensuous enjoyment of her skin on contact with such fine cloth. Someone’s
finger traced a line from her cheek to her throat and down the length of
her bare arm.
“Beautiful,” a man’s reverent voice breathed.
Why was she naked? Who was in the room with her?
Her eyes snapped open and encountered a stern face, all
sharp, chiseled angles, with thickly slashed
green-hued eyebrows, ferocious emerald eyes, a large nose and hollowed-out
cheeks. It was so at odds with the soft voice she had heard that for a
moment, she found it hard to match the voice to the face she saw.
Then she remembered she was naked.
She screamed, slapped his hand away from her body and
scrambled to find something to cover herself with. But there was nothing—no
blankets, no pillows, nothing. So she scooted to the opposite side of the
bed from him and drew her knees up in an attempt to retain her modesty.
“Who-who are you?” She hated herself for her quavering
voice. “What did you do with my clothes? Give them back to me.”
“No mortal things can enter the Emerald Palace,”
he thundered. He stood up and paced the length of the bed, glancing back at
her once in a while. The robes he wore were the green of the forest and the
hem swirled about his legs in interesting patterns. She noted with some
fascination that the fitted sheet on the big bed was also green. On a
hunch, she peered behind him and somehow, she wasn’t surprised to find the
other furniture in the room and the walls and floor to be of the same color—though in a different shade—as the bed. The walls
and the floor particularly drew her gaze. The sheen and brilliance of their
surfaces brought to mind the clarity and polished appearance of the
emerald.
She was dizzy for a moment. She had done it! She had
reached the Emerald
Palace.
Didn’t the man just confirm it? She recalled his words.
“Mortal? But I’m mortal.”
He stopped and sat on a chair near the bed. His fierce
stare intimidated her but it was the way he was looking at her that
disturbed her and the intensity in his green eyes was doing strange things
to her, making her weak and warm. Alarmingly, her nipples were peaking, the
way they always did when in contact with the cold and she was puzzled at
the growing wetness in the place between her thighs.
But she couldn’t look away from his gaze. She was
captured, ensnared.
CLOSE WINDOW
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