Thanks for dropping by my First Kiss Friday blog! Please help me give a warm welcome to guest author Misty Urban who has an excerpt from her novel, The Duke Decides . We hope you enjoy this first kiss scene. Happy reading, my lovelies!
Excerpt:
Louisa had never felt so entirely alone as she did now, when she fled the glittering room and its music and the artful and empty promise of something better, something more, when her own life stood on a precipice.
She pushed through another drawing room, another crowd, hearing the exclamations and reproofs as she trod on trains and knocked loose decorative feathers in her mad, blinded flight. No one knew who she was. No one among these people would care about her plight in the light of day. By the time she burst through the tall French doors onto the porch, her chest was heaving and she thought she might faint.
She had not one single person to help her. The one ally she was meant to meet was as much a cad as the others. From here it was almost as if she could see the broad, tall outlines of the Hospital shimmering in the darkness, dissolving into shadows, disappearing from the city. From the Earth. Because of her. Because she had failed.
“Hell’s ankles.”
He’d followed her. His scent hit her first, and then the knowledge that he was on the porch with her, the light of the torches lining the balcony casting shadows on his jaw. Outside, alone, he was larger than he’d seemed in the crowded ballroom. He moved with a feral grace, a man of action, a predator.
“I’ve never had a woman run quite so far from me simply because I requested a kiss.” His voice was a low rumble, dangerous, and it sent that awakening shiver across her shoulders and down her back, curling into her belly.
She knew what that shiver meant now. Part fear. Part alarm. Much more something else, something she’d felt in the most distant way in girlhood but which she’d never known as a woman. And never would know, because after tonight, she had to disappear.
“A kiss.” Her voice was a growl in return. He’d demanded much more than a kiss.
He loomed, a tall shadow at her side, but a solid shadow, of gleaming dark hair and glossy thick fabric, of blood and muscle and bone. His voice, his nearness called up something wild within her. She felt mad.
Desperate, unhinged, entirely mad, and uncaring of whatever else happened beyond this moment—beyond the two of them alone on this stone porch, stars above and torchlight behind, the music of the ball a distant echo in her head, and the scent of night-blooming jasmine burrowing into her brain, uprooting all the careful barriers and warnings and common sense she had shielded herself with for the last fifteen years. He was as beautiful as a fallen angel, and he was everything she’d never had in her life, and what she’d never be granted, now.
He drew near, his head close as if he were trying to peer into her eyes. Into her soul. “Didn’t you wonder—”
She rolled onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
Time slowed into a drip of molasses as her world telescoped inward and shrunk to this moment. This man. This meeting of mouths.
She swung like a pendulum outward, outward, hardly able to breathe at her boldness. He held entirely still, though his lips met hers, catching, questioning. His mouth was soft and warm and firm all at the same time, the strangest and most delicious combination.
He made a small sound in his throat, like a grunt of satisfaction, and all of a sudden the pendulum yanked her backwards and she was flailing, off her feet, lost. She threw her arms around his neck to find an anchor and was crushed as his arms swooped her against his chest, as if she were a shipwrecked sailor being hauled onto shore, dragged from the clutches of death.
He dove his tongue into her mouth and she startled at the sudden mass of sensations. Heat. Pleasure. Hunger. She moaned and pressed closer. She’d never known this delirium, this excitement. She was in the grip of a fever.
She plunged her fingers into his hair, dislodging his mask. He made a sound like a laugh and pulled it from his head. She could run her fingers over his face now, the strong brow, the sharp, high cheekbones, the long lean slope of his cheeks and that arrogant jaw, the skin there slightly grainy beneath her palms. His tongue in her mouth, his lips moving against hers, the hard hot press of his body, all of it melted her like wax.
Everything else disappeared—her reserve, her worries, her history, her fears. She had one purpose in life and she had discovered it in this moment: to stand in this man’s arms and lose herself entirely in his kiss.
The Duke Decides
By Misty Urban
The Duke of Barkham is the last man a woman should trust.
He’s the only man who can save everything she holds dear.
Lady Eloisa Grenay died, and Louisa Bickford rose from her ashes to become the matron of an institution devoted to the protection of women and orphans. Her reputation is revered, her influence absolute – as long as no one knows the truth about her.
Gabriel Declan, the new Duke of Barkham, might be devotedly loyal to his friends, but he’s notoriously untrustworthy for anyone else. Too busy keeping his own demons at bay, he’s the last man to play knight in shining armor for anyone – much less a virtuous woman who finds the charitable work she’d devoted her life to under threat from an unknown attacker.
A summons from the man who knows her secret leads Louisa to the masquerade. But she can’t be sure if the stranger who lures her into his arms is the one man who can stop the threat to expose her – or if he’s her blackmailer in the devilish flesh.
All Louisa knows for certain: this wayward duke holds the power to destroy everything she’s worked to protect … including her heart.
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Duke-Decides-Misty-Urban-ebook/dp/B0FR2PCW9R/
Other digital retailers: https://books2read.com/u/bWD9RM
Author Bio:
Misty Urban fell in love with stories at an early age and has spent her life among books as a teacher, scholar, editor, writer, and bookseller. Her favorite stories take you new places, teach you new things, and end with a win. She especially likes romances about unconventional heroines who defy the odds and the unexpected heroes who woo them, so that’s mostly what she writes. When she puts down the book she likes to take long walks, drag her family to new places, or hang out around water, dreaming up new stories.
Find Misty at https://www.mistyurban.com or at