No Dukes Allowed by Grace Burrowes, Kelly Bowen, Anna Harrington (33)

Greetings! I hoped you enjoyed spending time with Belinda and Max. There’s just something wonderful about a man who’s dedicated to both his country and to his true love, isn’t there? In my next novel, the hero Ross Carlisle (yes, one of those Carlisles!) isn’t in uniform, but he’s just as dedicated to serving England and just as blindsided by love. Find out what happens when treason, secret identities, and romance mix! Coming this September.

If you want more dashing heroes and strong women, then you should check out which released in March. Robert Carlisle has met his match in the woman called the Hellion. When he’s given a partnership in her father’s company—if he can find her husband by season’s end—it proves to be the biggest challenge of his life…because Mariah Winslow has ideas of her own about who should get the partnership. (Enjoy the special preview below!)

Haven’t met the Carlisles yet? Then are you in for a treat! The three overly protective brothers from (a RITA Award finalist!) have gone from being the scourge of Mayfair to the heroes of the ton. When they meet three very special women, they’ve met their matches—in more ways than one. (A sneak glimpse into Book 1 in the series, , follows below).

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♥ Happy reading!

Anna

Lord Robert Carlisle never backs down from a dare. But finding a husband for scandalous Mariah Winslow is one challenge he instantly regrets accepting. Robert will have to use every trick in the book to marry off the woman known as the Hellion, no matter how stunningly beautiful she is. Mariah Winslow has no intention of being a pawn in Lord Robert’s game. She knows he only agreed to play matchmaker to secure a partnership in her father’s shipping company, a partnership that’s rightfully hers. Battle lines are drawn, and she won’t surrender—no matter how tempting and irresistible she finds him. 

“Mariah.” Robert smiled against her cheek, and a stab of defeat pierced her. So Carlisle thought he’d won, did he?

Well, she’d prove to him that it would take more than a kiss to convince her to surrender.

When he stepped back, Mariah advanced.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and delved her fingertips through the golden curls at his nape, then pressed her body so tightly against his front that his heart slammed furiously against her chest. When she brushed her hips against his, a low groan tore from the back of his throat. 

Emboldened, she brazenly kissed him, and when he hesitated, stunned, she slipped her tongue between his lips the way he’d done to her.

That was enough to snap him out of his reverie.

He grabbed her shoulders and demanded in a raspy voice, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Despite the racing of her heart, she forced a shrug of her shoulders. As if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Kissing you.”

Then she pressed against him again, her lips making fleeting contact with his before he set her away. An angry scowl hardened his face.

“Don’t you want me to?” she prompted as innocently as possible.

Something dark and heated flickered in his eyes, and she thrilled at gaining the upper hand. Hiding her own quaking she leaned toward him as far as his restraining hands would allow.

She purred huskily, “Surely the notorious Robert Carlisle knows what to do with a woman who wants to kiss him.”

Despite gritting his teeth, his gaze fell longingly to her mouth, and for a moment, she thought he might just kiss her senseless again. And if he did, she wasn’t certain that she could withstand it this time without falling completely apart in his arms.

“Don’t tease me, Mariah,” he warned in a murmur. “You’re playing with fire.”

“Am I?” Pretending that he hadn’t affected her, even as that tingling heat still throbbed achingly, she sadly shook her head. “Well, I certainly hope the other gentlemen I’ll meet this season are better at this than you.”

She slipped away  before he could reach for her again. Or she for him. “Or I’ll be too bored to consider marrying any of them.”

He stared at her coolly as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You will be married by season’s end, I promise you.”

He took her arm and pulled her toward the door. He flung it open and led her into the hall so quickly that she struggled to keep up with his determined strides. Anger radiated from him as he led her out to the carriage waiting in the street.

He placed her inside the carriage. But when she yanked her arm away, it wasn’t relief she felt but an inexplicable sense of loss. For one maddening moment, she wanted to blurt out an apology, to beg him to crawl inside the compartment with her and keep kissing her just as he’d done before, all the way home to her doorstep.

But the devil inside her couldn’t help one last parting jab, and she sniffed with mock disappointment, “If I’m going to be forced to give my first waltz to such a boorish man, I certainly hope you’re far better at dancing.”

He rose up onto the step and leaned inside, bringing himself close. “Don’t you worry, minx,” he assured her in a husky voice that twined down her spine. “When it comes to having a woman in my arms, I do everything well.”

Her breath strangled in her throat. Leaving her to gape at him in stunned mortification at her own heated reaction to the beastliness in him, he closed the door, then ordered the coachman to drive off.

The carriage rolled forward, and she slumped against the squabs. A curse left her lips at him, followed immediately by several more at herself.

They’d fought their second battle, yet for the life of her she couldn’t have said which of them had emerged the victor.

Miranda Hodgkins has only ever wanted one thing: to marry Robert Carlisle. And she simply can’t wait a moment longer. During a masquerade ball, Miranda boldly sneaks into his bedchamber with seduction on her mind. But when the masks come off, she’s horrified to find herself face-to-face with Sebastian, Duke of Trent—Robert’s formidable older brother. Sebastian offers her a deal to avoid scandal: he’ll help her win his brother’s heart if she’ll find him the perfect wife. But their simple negotiation spirals out of control. For the longer Sebastian tries to make a match for Miranda, the more he wants to keep her all to himself. 

Sebastian nuzzled his mouth against her ear.

Miranda gasped. That, oh, that was clearly not an accidental brush of whispering lips! He’d meant to caress her, and the warm longing it sent spiraling through her nearly undid her. Drawing a deep breath as she threw all caution and sense to the wind, she tilted her head to give him access to her neck, unable to deny the temptation of having his mouth on her.

With a pleased smile against her ear, he murmured, “What is it about my brother that draws you so?”

The tip of his tongue traced the outer curl of her ear. She shuddered at the delicious sensation, and his hand pressed tighter against her belly to keep her still in his arms.

The confusion inside her gave way to a tingling warmth that ached low in her belly. With one little lick, Sebastian had set her blood humming, making her body shiver and her thighs clench the way he had that night in his bedroom when she thought he was Robert. She knew who was kissing her this time, yet knowing he was the wrong Carlisle brother made no difference to the heat rising through her traitorous body. She should step away—this was Sebastian, for heaven’s sake, and the most wrong man in the world for her, save for the king himself—but she simply couldn’t make herself leave the circle of his strong arms.

“Robert is masculine,” she breathed, her words barely audible above the aria swirling around them.

“Most men are,” he answered, dancing kisses down the side of her neck.

When he placed his mouth against that patch of bare skin where her neck curved into her shoulder, a hot throbbing sprang up between her thighs. She bit her lip to keep back a soft whimper.

“He’s handsome,” she forced out, hoping he couldn’t hear the nervous trembling that crept into her voice.

“Hmm.” His hand on her hip drifted upward along the side of her body, lightly tracing across her ribs. She trembled achingly when his fingers grazed the side swell of her breast. “We’re brothers. We look alike.”

Oh, that was definitely jealousy! But her kiss-fogged brain couldn’t sort through the confusion to discern why he’d be jealous of Robert. Especially when his hand caressed once more along the side of her breast.

“Not so much alike,” she countered, although she’d always thought Sebastian would be more handsome if he wasn’t always so serious and brooding. If he did more spontaneous and unexpected things…like licking a woman on her nape at an opera. Oh my. She shivered at the audacity of his mouth and at the heat it sent slithering down her spine.

“Very nearly identical,” he murmured as his hand roamed up to trace his fingers along the neckline of her gown. Completely unexpected yet wantonly thrilling, the caress sent her heart somersaulting just inches from his fingertips.

“He’s exciting…a risk-taker…” Her voice was a breathless hum despite knowing that in his rivalry with his brother he didn’t want to touch her as much as he wanted to touch her before Robert did. At that moment, though, with his fingertips lightly brushing over the top swells of her breasts, she simply didn’t care. At least not enough to make him stop. “He’s thrilling.”

When his fingertips traced slow circles against the inner curves of her breasts, she was powerless against the soft whimper that fell from her lips.

“Lots of men are thrilling.” He smiled wickedly against her neck at the reaction his seeking fingers elicited from her. “I’m thrilling.”

“You?” She gave a throaty laugh of surprise. “Sebastian, you’re the most reserved, restrained man I—”

In one fluid motion, he turned her in his arms and pushed her back against the set wall, his mouth swooping down to swallow her words as he kissed her into silence. Her hands clenched into the hard muscles of his shoulders, and she stiffened beneath the startling onslaught of his lips, of his hips pushing into hers, all of him demanding possession of the kiss. And of her.