Property of the Marquis

Chapter 2

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PROLOGUE

Morning, at daybreak, just as the sun brightened the blue and yellow room and cast its golden light across the bed, Laney awakened, her hand outstretched along the smooth sheets beside her. For a moment before she opened her eyes, before she became conscious of the day, she imagined Erik having just climbed from between the covers and leaving an imprint of his body heat on the bed. With a soft smile on her lips, she opened her eyes and gazed at the empty space beside her, but there was no imprint of her husband’s body there, nor were there sounds of him showering in the adjacent bathroom, or the tangy aroma she associated with the man she loved. Every morning for six months she’d lived without the sounds and sights and smells of her husband, not since the private jet went down had there been any tangible, touchable evidence of his physical being.

She gazed at her outstretched arm and the bracelet that ringed her wrist with the simple platinum band. Her heart thudded in her chest with a familiar pang of grief, although today, along side that familiar grief was a stirring physical sensation, a wildness in her belly. She tasted a new desire on her lips. She’d been dreaming of the island—Marquis Island—all night long: the air, the breeze, the scent of island wildflowers, and her legs opening wide as some man’s enormous c**k was driven deep between her thighs. She rubbed against the sheets beneath her naked ass, while every s****l nerve in her was awakened by the memory of that dream. Her right hand strayed to the moist valley between her thighs, a finger pushing its way between the cleft formed by her plump labia.

“No, goddammit!” she suddenly shook herself from the delightful amusement, and jumped from bed. As she headed for the shower, she tore off her nightgown and left it in her wake. Briefs to be filed in court, a new client at ten, and the verdict of Jones v. Dalton. Then dinner with Sandra and Elise.

She rubbed her lean body with the foamy, tangerine scented body wash, then stretched to rinse the suds from her elongated breasts. Her belly was flat and firm, her thighs muscled from jogging, her bottom small, round and tight. As her hands glided over her flesh, the platinum bracelet slid down her arm; where it touched, the skin seemed to burn. For a moment, she fingered the shiny metal surface, then cradled it in her palm. Closing her eyes the island returned to her again…and Erik returned to her, vivid, as if he might walk through the door alive and breathing. Her dream reformed, and behind her husband loomed the vague image of another man, an unfamiliar face cloaked in darkness. Her eyes jerked open and the real world descended on her again. The water flowing over her skin seemed to soothe the fire stirring in her belly. Sighing deeply, she shook the troubling images from her mind once again and continued to rinse herself, as if she could end the moment without any further disturbance. But then her fingers glided against the brand on her left flank. EP. Her husband’s initial burned into her skin. Her belly spasmed hard, and she felt momentarily faint. The brand throbbed as hot as it had been when it was new.

Oh, please! she pleaded to the steamy air. Jerking her hand away from her thigh, and her mind from the thoughts the mark evoked, she stepped from the shower and reached for her towel.