My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(45)

Or do you prefer to stay not dead, all things considered? If so, make no sudden movements, just do what she says…and turn to this page.





You rush to tend to Lord Craven, who has collapsed at the foot of your bed in a fashion both manly and vulnerable. You manage to tug down the neckline of your nightdress ever so, in order to ensure that the tops of your womanly orbs glow attractively in the moonlight.

You wrap him in your trembling arms.

“Lord Craven,” you say. You know you should be scandalized, but your voice catches with desire. He places his hand against your mouth to silence you, letting his surprisingly rough fingers slip over your plush, parted lips. “You are bleeding!” you cry, your moonlit orbs heaving with every syllable.

“I have…urges.” The way he emphasizes the word would bring you to your knees if you weren’t already sitting. “I tried to fight them tonight. For you.”

“Did you win?” you ask, not fully understanding what he’s getting at—but also not minding so much because he looks so good being so bad. Any effort to solve the mystery of Lord Craven’s words is abandoned the instant he wraps the width of your waist with his arm. For a moment you are both so charged with erotic electricity that you almost don’t realize the painting of the lovely late wife with raven locks glaring at you.

“The painting,” you whisper.

“Damn the painting! Damn her!” Lord Craven’s ragged voice rips through the room as his hands rip through the portrait’s canvas. “She made me this way! She made me a monster! But you!” Lord Craven tears his eyes away from the torn picture and burns his longing into your very soul. “You make me feel like a man,” he growls lustily.

“Oh, Garraway!” you swoon, calling Lord Craven by his first name. A time for painting-ripping and waist-gripping is no time for formality.

“I want you,” he keens, his eyes as wild as your desire for him. “I have wanted you since you arrived.”

“But society dictates—” You attempt a false protest to at least appear to save your modesty.

“Society!” he spits. “What do our bodies dictate?”

He wraps you in an embrace so close you feel all the firmness of his body’s dictations. You rack your mind for adequate verbiage but ascertain that the truest depth of your emotions can only be expressed by pressing the fullness of your moonlit orbs into Lord Craven’s handsome, hungry mouth.

“The only society I care about,” he says through mouthfuls of orb and ecstasy, “is yours.”

The two of you make love with a violent passion on your bedchamber floor, atop the ruins of your purity and the painting of his dead wife’s face.

Minutes, or possibly hours, later, as you lie panting in each other’s arms, your reverie is broken.

“HE SAID IT WOULD BE ONLY ME! ONLY ME FOR ALL TIME!!” An eerie, feminine voice rends the air, followed by the sounds of a woman crying. Craven’s face turns as pale as a corpse.

“Damnable woman!” Craven cries. He rushes from your chamber, leaving you with nothing but your tattered nightgown for company.





Goodness. Do you leave and never speak of this again? Turn to this page.

Or do you investigate the voice? The source must be nearby, for it is in woman’s-screaming-distance from where you are. In for a penny, in for a pound. Turn to this page.





You are shocked, but you choose to stay. Surely he couldn’t do anything in cold blood, knowing how hot he makes your blood run. Yet there must be more to tell. You stroke his face and look into those haunted whisky-colored eyes.

“What happened?” you ask gently. Mac explains.

“Constantina was Abercrombie’s bit o’ fluff back in the war, when we were stationed at Salamanca. All I knew was that she had a fine name and a fine eye for Abercrombie. One night, I was out walking, after m’guard. I had just passed a knot of Frenchmen on a bridge, thinking themselves hidden in the shadow. Here comes Constantina, headed straight for ’em, wobblin’ like she was three sheets to the wind. I went to stop her, and she turned her knife on me, slashin’ like a madwoman.”

A shudder runs the length of Mac’s glorious body. You reach out and stroke him. He moans, half in painful remembrance, half in total arousal.

“Go on,” you urge.

“There was a struggle. She fell off the bridge to her death. I may have been a soldier”—he turns to you with shining eyes—“but, aye, lass, I have never held with killing women.”

“Even a woman who seems to have wanted to kill you?” you say with wonder, as well as a fierce desire to untie the knots of his past.

“Ye ken,” he says, deep into the valley between your breasts, “I can still hear her screaming.” You are about to kiss him, to erase this tension on his brow and capitalize on the tension between the two of you, when your movements are interrupted by literal screaming: the sound of a horse about to give birth. Mac snaps to attention.

“Och, lass! A foal is needing born!” He races toward the keening sound. “We must help the mare!”

Oh, you think. Must we?





Well…must you? If so, turn to this page.

Or must you not, and instead get some air after all this drama? It’s not like you’ve ever birthed a horse before. Turn to this page.