For a couple as proud and contentious as Mary and Kit, a hint of scorn or a whiff of condescension was quite sufficient - for the bonds of trust and honor to dissolve at the slightest provocation. They came by their intransigence honestly; as the children of feuding Derbyshire landowners, Mary Penley and Kit Stansell had been raised to be enemies. Too willful to be bound by their families' prejudices, they became secret friends instead - and then much more than friends. When they eloped, they thought they'd left all rancor and rivalry behind them. But a proper Mayfair marriage wasn't so easy for the reform-minded daughter of a brewer and the wildly undisciplined son of a marquess - if Kit really was the marquess's son anyway. Now, nine years, a legal separation, and a war later - Kit and Mary are thrust together again, as passionate, as stubborn and single-minded, and as ready to hurl themselves (or perhaps the glassware) at each other as ever. Until a vicious political intrigue threatens everything they hold dear...

The Slightest Provocation by Pam Rosenthal September 2006

In this excerpt from The Slightest Provocation, my hero and heroine revisit some beloved old spaces - the cottage where they played together as children, a place in their shared erotic imagination.

...she got to the cottage ten minutes late, and not a little out of breath.

"Kit?"

A nervous quiver started up in her belly. Couldn't he have waited? Or hadn't he come at all? Perhaps he'd simply decided to give the whole thing up. Well, he had every right... She should check to see if there were a note on the table...

No doubt it was her nervousness - if not the fact that she was still trying to catch her breath - that had prevented her from considering if he might be holding himself quiet behind the door she'd opened. Nor had she heard a squeak of hinges or an intake of breath as he tiptoed out to grasp her from behind.

Shouting OH-HOH.

Or what-ho or ahoy.

Or some ridiculous thing a child might imagine that sailors or pirates were wont to cry out - he sang it out into her ear as he caught hold of her arms and bent them behind her waist.

Binding her wrists together - quickly, deftly, taking advantage of her surprise.

She laughed out loud at the broad, crude silliness of it. Though in truth, he hadn't tied her so crudely that she could wriggle her hands free; she found them quite immobilized. He'd used his neckcloth. The linen chafed against her wrists. Her only feeble recourse was to kick her feet when he picked her up and carried her the few steps to the bed. Oh, and to bite at his neck where the shirt was open, before he dropped her onto the mattress and climbed onto the bed to straddle her.

Rubbing the spot where she'd bit him, he grinned down at her. He still wore his pantaloon and boots - she felt herself squeezed tight by his thighs pressed hard into her sides. She contented herself with what wriggling, kicking, and thrashing about she was able to do, while he lifted her skirts and tossed them over her head. Leaving her sputtering in a sea of white ruffles, he moved downward to dive between her legs.

"A pirate treasure," he declared, while he rubbed his rough, unshaven cheeks against her belly. Kissing, nibbling, sniffing at her - practically drooling, like a hunting dog. She bounced about from the hips, arching her back, shrieking in mock terror.

"Villain, monster! Unhand me, you vile knave!"

By now he would have known (having caught a faint whiff of vinegar) that it was all right to proceed as he might. "Never! I'll have my treasure, and the very enlightened lady too," enlightened lady pronounced with a wry twist of a London workingman's accent - she'd become familiar with the intonations when he'd taken her out adventuring, all those years ago.

She tried to close her legs against him and found that she couldn't. He'd always been strong, but he was a lot stronger than she remembered. All that loading of muskets, she mused; she couldn't have fought him off if she'd wanted to.

The light of midday shone gauzily through the white cotton of her petticoat. Nice to picture the muscles in his arms, held taut as he forced her legs open. Her thighs trembled. His face was scratchy against her skin. How long since he'd shaved? Had he scandalized his sister-in-law by appearing that way at breakfast? He kissed her thighs, slowly moving his head upward now.

"Rogue, swine, how dare you!" And whatever you do, don't stop - but she knew he wouldn't. On the contrary, he was using his tongue to bring her off quickly. She arched, crested, lay panting while he raised himself back up, brushing the skirts and petticoat away from her face to kiss her mouth, her neck, her breasts... voraciously, with just a hint of her own smell on him.

There'd been a fichu about her neck and shoulders when she'd set out today. Gone. Lost in the sea of bedding. If there'd been pins, they'd long since pulled out. At least he hadn't torn her clothing. She was lucky that the tartan gown she wore had a wide neckline.

Lucky? Or had she given it a bit of offhand thought this morning when she'd pointed to it hanging in the wardrobe... a bit old, Peggy, but surely good enough for a ramble in the forest. And had she just imagined the wry, knowing stare Peggy had returned? Yes my lady, good enough for that.

He had one of her nipples between his lips. She whimpered, writhed underneath him - tossing her head back, thrusting out her chin in a simulacrum of aggrieved hauteur. She hoped he was enjoying her playacting - she was doing her best to make it as broad, as ridiculous as his.

Ah, but she'd also let out a groan, a deeply felt one, at the feel of his large warm hands, so tight around the cheeks of her arse. Lovely to be held so firmly. To be spread, opened, handled...

Rolling her over, one of his hands tracing the curve of her rump, slapping her now, murmuring that the enlightened lady was far too bold and needed a little pirate discipline.

She felt herself bouncing beneath his palm. Her skin must be growing quite pink, she thought, and found herself suddenly, humiliatingly, wishing that there were a mirror close to hand so she could look see it.

He must be reaching with his other hand to undo his buttons.

With her wrists bound as they were, she wouldn't be able to balance on hands and knees. Shoulders and knees it would have to be then - breathless, with her face buried in the bedding beneath her. No matter - he'd manage the angles; she wasn't sure how, but the nice thing about his uncouth lady-and-the-pirate game was that she didn't have to know quite how he'd... take her, the words inescapable, if crude and beneath her dignity.

He'd manage it. Yes, he was managing splendidly. For he'd entered her now and she heard herself calling out with surprised pleasure, to feel the parts of her quim that usually went quite untouched, when one did it from other positions. She squeezed back against him - one wouldn't want to be entirely passive (would one?) while being (but how might his enlightened lady prisoner put it?) ravished, taken?... and with such profound, cheerful, and energetic disrespect.

He'd reached a hand now, under her belly, his finger touching her flesh where it became hard and knotted. "Pearl," he whispered. Pearl in the oyster. His tongue traced the whorls of her ear; his finger continued to thrum against her while he made his last thrusts and even as he gushed into her. She screamed against the thrumming, and then against the suddenness of his release and the intensity of her own. Until her scream become a gasp of astonishment, for her cries had frightened the doves in the eaves, who now took flight in a great cacophonous flapping of wings.