Page 1 of Misadventures with a Duke

Chapter One

Bastien

1789 — Orléans, France

Time is a ruthless wench of a bedmate. And no one knows it better than I.

A week ago, the witch taunted me with minutes that felt like days as I took steps that felt like miles through the Forêt de Marly. My boots were filled with mud, the days were drenched in rain, and the nights were consumed by the screams of traitors on their way to invade Versailles.

On their way to kill everyone inside Louis’s grand palace—including the woman who possesses my whole heart.

If I had not joined my men in killing them then, she would not be here now, naked and wrapped in my arms. Those animals would not have cared that she was merely a chambermaid, barely paid decently to be in the building. They would have rounded her up along with the noblewomen she has loyally served and jailed or killed her in the same reckless manner.

A nightmare I cannot consider for another moment. Yet here it is anyway.

Bastien? Mon soleil? Where have you gone?

It is her voice, but I cannot find her anywhere in this strange mist. No. No!

I push it out harder, begging to be set free from this dark chimera. From her woeful, agonized voice…

Bastien!

Until it is her face that I behold on one of the rebels I have killed.

“Nooo!”

Bastien. Bastien.

“Bastien! Please wake up, my beloved. Can you hear me? You are dreaming. Please wake up!”

My own woozy grunt pulls me out of my slumber. I blink hard before scrubbing a hand over my face. With my other arm, I pull my lover tighter against my chest. “Must have dozed,” I mumble. “Désolé, little lily.”

“Dreams are naught to be sorry for. Even the bad ones.” With a fingertip, she traces a jagged line between the nicks that litter my chest. The feeling is heaven, especially when she marks the spot above my steady heartbeat. “Sometimes, talking about it helps.”

“Not this time.” I growl it strongly enough that she knows not to argue.

“Well, then…sometimes, you simply have to fuck it away.”

Quickly enough, I switch to a throaty laugh. “Or pick up a sword and run a bâtard or two through.”

She drops her hand. Jerks up an eyebrow. “Tu préfère te battre que baiser?”

“Hmmm. Tough choice.” I rub my lips with a finger. “Fighting or fucking. Must I select this very moment?”

“If your couilles want to make it out of this room in the same sac, I would advise it.”

My chortle bursts at full force now. “And now I know why all the ladies at court say you must be made of magic.”

She twists her lips. “They do not!”

“All right, then. A simple sorceress?” I would not put it past those Versailles viragos to dampen her brilliance in such a way.

But I cannot let such ugliness cloud my thoughts when her husky laugh fills the air between us. When she punctuates it with a playful smack at my jaw and then a determined splay across my chest.

As soon as she plants her beautiful long fingers, I grin. I cannot be faulted, considering I can already predict her intent—and am damn pleased about it. Clearly, so is she. I feel it in the unique pebbles along her lightly freckled arms. In the desire that spreads across her face as she lifts up over me. In the decadent darkening of her gaze, shifting from springtime glades to shadowy forests, as she slides her soaked core over my hardening shaft.

Mon dieu.