Promos Spot: Tall, Dark and Wicked – Madelaine Hunter

We have an excerpt today from Madeline Hunter’s release TALL, DARK AND WICKED.  Enjoy!

Tall, Dark and Wicked  

excerpt  copyright 2015  Madeline Hunter

A final flash of indecision showed in his eyes. On impulse, she stuffed the banknotes down her bodice.

He laughed, darkly. “The fashions today do not lend themselves to that maneuver with such a large number of notes. One or two at most.”

She looked down at the ridiculous bulge between her breasts. “Still, it is safe from any gentleman with inconvenient notions of duty.”

“Some gentlemen would decide duty was a good excuse to pluck it back out.” He came closer to her. “You have all but invited me to try.”

She swallowed hard. “But you won’t. Correct?”

No response came. No nod. All she received was that deep consideration to which he so often subjected her.

“I wonder,” he murmured, as if to himself.

“Wonder what?”

“That first night, you came close to trying to bribe me.” He tipped her chin up with his hand. “Have you been trying that, Padua, in more subtle ways? Are you attempting that now?”

“I am not the one showing up unexpectedly in your life. I have not been the one interfering. Do not blame me just because you—you—”

“That is true. You are blameless. I am my own undoing.” He angled his head and kissed her lips, first with a gentle touch, then more fully.

She pretended to suffer it, when in truth sensual sparkles descended in a shower. She turned her head in halfhearted resistance. “Shouldn’t you be showing more fortitude? Thinking of duty and such?”

“I suppose so. And yet—”

His kisses enlivened her cheek, her jaw, then the sensitive skin below her ear. He embraced her, his firm arm encompassing her waist. “If I am going to turn a blind eye to one small point of duty regarding that money, I don’t see why I should deny myself on another.”

“I am flattered to know I am a small point.”

“You are not. I have decided that kissing you is, though.”

They both knew that was not true. She did not think he would listen to reason now, however. Nor could she muster enough sense to make the argument. The possessive manner in which he began to caress her became too distracting. Thrills commanded her attention so she could barely think at all.

Still, she really should stop this, except—a touch on her breast made the idea dissolve.

That hand just rested there, on the top of her breast, while his arm pulled her closer to his body.

She looked into eyes like faceted dark emeralds, unable to read his thoughts. Except one. He knew she enjoyed this too much to deny it. He knew he had won without much effort at all.

As a well-known barrister and the son of a duke, Ives confines his passionate impulses to discreet affairs with worldly mistresses. A twist of fate, however, has him looking for a new lover right when a fascinating woman shows up in his chambers, asking him to help save her father from the gallows. Unfortunately, he has already been asked to serve as the prosecutor in the case, but that only ensures close encounters with the rarity named Padua Belvoir. And every encounter increases his desire to tutor her in pleasure’s wicked ways…

Having always been too tall, too willful, and too smart to appeal to men, Padua Belvoir is shocked when Ives shows interest in her. Knowing his penchant for helping the wrongly accused, she had initially thought he might be her father’s best hope for salvation. Instead, he is her worst adversary—not least because every time he looks at her, she is tempted to give him anything he wants…

You can read our review of TALL, DARK AND WICKED here. 

Madeline Hunter is a two-time RITA award winner and seven-time finalist, and has twenty-five nationally bestselling historical romances in print, including The Accidental Duchess, The Counterfeit Mistress, and The Conquest of Lady Cassandra. A member of RWA’s Honor Roll, her books have been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly. More than six million copies of her books are in print and her novels have been translated into thirteen languages. Madeline is a regular contributor on USA Today’s Happily Ever After blog with her Romance Unlaced column. She has a PhD in art history, which she teaches at the university level.