My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(9)

“Well, look at what we have here,” a low voice hisses in your ear. “Madame St. Croix will be pleased.”

You wildly glance up into a familiar pair of Nile-green eyes. No…it cannot be. Now that a scarf is no longer obscuring his face, you are shocked to find that the guard who so frightened you earlier has a countenance as beautiful and harshly unforgiving as the Sahara.

“Farouk?!” you attempt to say through the firm, calloused fingers clamping your mouth shut. It comes out sounding more like “Fmmrk?!”

Still, he seems to understand what you say. “No,” he hisses under his breath. “My true name is Fabien. Fabien de Mangepoussey. And you are coming with me.”

“No!” You cannot even scream as you struggle in vain against his iron strength. Another burly man you do not recognize opens the door to the outside world and nods menacingly. Farouk/Fabien nods back and swings you off your feet as though you weigh no more than a rag-doll. Despite your furious kicks and struggles, he carries you effortlessly across the great hall.

You give another stifled scream as you spot Kamal lying lifeless on the floor. Fabien shows no mercy, but only grasps you tighter.

“Ignore him. The imbécile was too preoccupied with his foolish antiques to notice that I have been working for another right under his nose.” He smiles at you mirthlessly.

“Do not worry, he may still be alive. Perhaps.” His fellow ruffian laughs under his breath.

The idea merely makes you struggle all the more. Fabien’s green eyes flicker as annoyance crosses his handsomely swarthy face.

“Do not make this harder for yourself, chérie. You have an appointment with Madame Delphine St. Croix, and I would hate to disappoint her.”

And with that he hauls you unceremoniously out the door and onto an awaiting camel. You ride away, far beyond the city, as you continue to fight desperately to free yourself…to no avail.





Turn to this page.





You refuse to leave and instead offer your heart and soul to Craven. He accepts you happily and you embrace.

As the sun rises, you wait together at the sleeping Alexander’s bedside. The light illuminates a painting of a sweet little girl, the very image of Alexander. It is strange, for the painting hangs in so prominent a place, but you could have sworn it wasn’t there before. The girl smiles out beatifically, as if in thanks.

Little Alexander awakes and tugs your hand. “I dreamed of Helena. She said she is at peace now that the bad man is gone.” A shiver runs down your spine, but not an unhappy one.

“I love you, my darling,” says Craven, like a man transformed.

Blissful time passes. You see young Master Alexander off to school in the fall, a confident and changed boy. And yet…for all that Craven seems happy and content, he still does not ask for your hand. Rather, he pauses whenever you speak of the future. “There is something I must tell you…but cannot,” he sometimes says. You know not how to press him on the matter, nor on his strange absences which occur once a month.

Nevertheless, a period of torrid pleasure and peaceful companionship passes…until you decide to take action.

On the evening that you enact your plan, the sky darkens and a full moon rises. You smile to yourself. This promises to be the night you will make Craven face the last of his demons, once and for all. But first, you make love, experiencing total ecstasy in both body and soul.

You lie entwined with your lover in a corner of the library, the moonstone of your sex still aglow with otherworldly desire for him.

He places that broken-statue hand of his on your left breast, which he has taken to calling Grecian Urn. His other hand travels to your right breast, which he has nicknamed his Sepulcher by the Sea.

His hands are as hungry as his heart, and oh! how they hunt your flesh for sustenance.

“You make me feel as if I am half woman, half beast,” you moan into your lover’s lush but well-groomed pelt.

Lord Craven emits a growl that could also be a knowing laugh, slipping his explorer’s tongue over the valleys and peaks of your topography.





“Your womanly orbs undo me as much as the moon does,” he whisper-growls into the soft fur of your womanhood. Your womanhood responds with some whisper-growling of its own.

The actual moon, which has heretofore been hidden by sumptuous cloud cover, breaks through the late-evening gloom with the same vigor as your pleasure breaking through your lover’s embrace.

The moment a sliver of moonlight slices his ethereally pale flesh, Lord Craven screams as if stabbed by a saber.

“NO!” He flings you into a pile of watercolor silk cushions, which you can’t help but wonder if he placed there much earlier to soften your landing, should he ever choose to fling you across the library floor due to an errant moonbeam.

“Run, my love! Run for your life!” The screams rip through his body, competing with the strange forms and shudders also ripping forth from him as the moonlight plays brighter across his bare, beautiful frame.

“Call Mrs. Butts!” he screams. “She knows how to chain me!”

“Chain you?” You frantically gather your silken robes around your orbs, womanhood, et cetera. “I bid the servants retire in the furthest chambers of their quarters so that we might enjoy each other in uninterrupted freedom!”