Excerpt Chapter One (Part One) Alex's Angel, Erotic Historical Romance, NC17

Alex's Angel takes place in Philadelphia in 1793. The subplot focus is on the issues surrounding the build up to the Barbary Wars and the after effects from a devastating yellow fever epidemic. Emily Eliot is a strong willed yet compassionate artist who uses her art to draw attention to the plight of the mariners who were held in captivity in Algiers. Alexander Dalton is a wealthy philanthropist with a mysterious past who comes into her life. He may prove to be the one thing that could distract her too much from her art and her mission. Emily will have to decide if there is room in her life of crusading and causes for love and devotion to one special person.

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Copyright © Natasha Blackthorne, 2012
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Chapter One

Philadelphia, PA

November 1793

Reader Advisory: Alex's Angel is Erotic Romance and it contains graphic language and descriptions.This book is part of a series. This story contains sensual spanking, wild-eyed Jacobin ideology and a cameo of Thomas Jefferson.

Warm cider wetted Alex’s parched tongue, sweet and spicy and American. It did little to quell the restlessness that crackled along his nerves like lightning along a cast iron fence.

He shifted in his chair and flexed his shoulders.

He’d come out tonight looking for something. He wasn’t quite sure what. In the past, more often than not, that something had been quim. But tonight he longed for something else. Something more dangerous. Dangerous quim, perhaps?

He surveyed the smoke-filled public room of the Blue Duck tavern, letting his gaze flicker over each woman present. The redhead had breasts like firm, ripe melons that threatened to explode from her tight, low-cut gown. Auburn hair fascinated him—however, these curling locks shone too brassy bright, as if she’d been too zealous with henna. And she was wearing enough paint to cover the broadside of a barn. He moved on to the blonde in the dark blue velvet with the too-round face. The raven-haired wench with eyes that were too closely spaced. The tall, chestnut-haired girl…his eyes lingered on her. Well, now, she was pretty enough, but her giggles echoed on the air, a wholly irritating sound, and her large, blue eyes looked vacant.

He couldn’t abide a dull woman.

All right, he’d be the last person to deny it. His standards were high. Not out of any particular desire to discriminate, but simply because beauty and perfection proved so unfailingly intoxicating, like opiates but without the dry mouth and aftertaste.

Indulgence in sex and sensuality was the only way besides travel where he could lose himself enough to find peace. And for a man bent on losing himself in sin, there could be no better place in Philadelphia to seek it than Hell City. But tonight it appeared as if every comely wench had abandoned the city. With an inward sigh, he turned to face the bar again and quaffed the remainder of his cider. Whatever he was looking for, he wasn’t finding it.

Perhaps he should take a trip to New York or New Orleans.

But no, he couldn’t. He’d promised his younger brother James that that he would use his considerable wealth and influence to help foster the issue of a national navy. He’d promised to stay home the entire winter while the matter was debated in Congress. God, an entire winter landlocked… Just a handful of days home from the Orient, and already his demons waited for him in the enforced self-reflection of idleness.

He’d better find something—or someone to fill the idle hours, else the season would prove to be a living hell. "It’s all in your mind." that was definitely trouble. 

"Well, well, well, Dalton, I’ve been looking for you all over."

At the high-pitched, slightly nasal voice, Alex’s jaws clamped so tight that his teeth ground together and his neck went rigid, as if embodying his unwillingness to turn. Nevertheless, he did turn, and what he saw froze his blood to sludge. An acrid taste like ashes choked off his voice. In silence, he let his gaze slide over the deceptively boyish visage and a heavy weight of nausea settled in his guts.

Richard Green, a cousin on his mother’s side, a small-time merchant and a coward who had once betrayed Alex in the worst way possible.

"Dalton, I know you’ve been disparaging me. I warn you, I won’t stand for being made a fool of." Green stared at him with a half-smirk, his lips twitching as if he were merely an innocent schoolboy called in front of the headmaster. As if, between them, Alex was the one capable of inhuman cruelty. As if it were Green whose youth had been shattered.

Alex tightened his grip on his tankard. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to plant his fist in the middle of that smirking mouth.

"Unless I see you, I don’t think of you," Alex replied with deliberate calm. "I have been in the Orient for two years, Green. When would I have had time for all these machinations?"

Green laughed cynically. "You have your ways. I know you’re also behind this latest attempt to smear my good name. I can’t get a loan, suppliers think nothing of cancelling on me at the last moment, my peers have stopped sharing vital information with me—all because of you."

Green narrowed his eyes. "I say, I know what I know. You want to sabotage my campaign for the common council. You want to destroy my political career before it can even start. But I warn you now, when I have some iron-clad proof, I shall demand my satisfaction of you."

Alex suppressed a chuckle. Green’s paranoia made him pathetic. He wasn’t worth the strain it would cause on a man’s hands to snap his neck. And if he wasn’t such a pitiful excuse for a man, he’d have the reasoning to know that Alex sure as the devil would never reveal the shameful secret that tied their pasts together.

"Get out of my sight, Green."

But Green was no longer paying attention. He grasped at his pocket watch, his eyes wide.

His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed rapidly and he paled, licking his lips with quick flickers. The knuckles on the hand that gripped his watch went completely white.

"Another little cut-purse looking for new game."

Green’s snivelling tone grated on Alex’s ears and Alex turned in the direction of his fixed, anxious gaze. In the front window, a petite girl was staring through the glass, her eyes huge, looking as lost as a stray kitten.

What the devil was she doing here?

She wasn’t a beauty. She didn’t even possess the promise of a late blossoming. Her face was too thin, her chin too pointed, her nose too long and her mouth too full and too wide.

But Alex knew trouble when he saw it and that was definitely trouble.

Giveaway; Enter to win a Kindle copy of Grey's Lady. To enter you must be 18 years of age or older and have reached the age of majority in your country/state of residence. Void where prohibited by law. Enter by commenting on my posts here today. I will chose one commenter at random at 12:01 AM March 5, 2012. Thank you and good luck. :)

Read the entire first chapter of Grey's Lady: