Taken by the Duke by Jess Michaels Page A

charge forward, driven for more, though she couldn’t fathom how much more there was to give or take.
    He broke their kiss and glided downward, nuzzling and nipping her neck, back to suckle her breasts. He took his time, switching between them to caress them both with the tip of his tongue until her languid body lit on fire again. This time it was a slower burn, but it was most definitely there, hot and insistent and hinting that it could rage out of control at any moment.
    When she was mewling with pleasure, when she felt sure she would shatter once again, he pulled away, gliding lower. He tugged her gown and undergarments over her hips, then tossed them aside. She was naked.
    Her eyes flew open, and she stared down as he pressed warm kisses to the flat plane of her belly.
    She was naked with this man. Utterly and completely naked. And he was resting his head just inches from the most secret part of herself.
    “Stop staring at me as if you think I’m going to murder you,” Christian said, looking up at her through hooded eyes. “I might eat you, but never hurt you.”
    “Eat me?” she said, not understanding until his mouth came down against her thigh. Surely he couldn’t mean—
    But he continued his shocking exploration, adjusting himself to lie between her legs, kissing her sensitive flesh as he urged her to open her legs by pressing his hands to her thighs. She let them fall open without meaning to do so and blushed as he looked at her sex.
    No one had ever done this. She didn’t even look at or touch herself. Now he was mere millimeters from her and staring at her like she was something delectable.
    He looked up and his wolfish grin flashed his teeth.
    “So lovely,” he murmured and then he dropped his mouth to her.
    She gasped as he pressed a kiss to her sex. But the gasp vanished, as did her breath to produce it, when he spread the outer lips of her body and pressed a second kiss far more intimately. His tongue came out then and he swept it along her length, like she was a fruit to be savored.
    Worse than that, her body reacted. That hard, harsh pleasure that had swept her away a moment before returned and she gripped the sheets, twisting them as she lifted her hips to meet the strokes of his tongue. She was out of control. She was completely wanton. She didn’t know what she was doing, and yet her body led the way without any assistance or guidance from her at all.
    He sucked at her and suddenly there was a starburst of color that flashed before her eyes. Her body thrashed with little quaking shivers and she…came. That was the word he had used.
    He was relentless in his ministrations. Although she was crying out and arching wildly beneath his mouth, he carried on, sucking and tasting, licking and caressing until she fell back against the pillow in weak and utter exhaustion.
    It was then that he maneuvered slightly. Through the fog of release, she saw that he had opened the fly of his trousers and now his member was free. She tried to see it, for she had never seen one before, but he moved too quickly. She felt him at her slick, wet entrance.
    “There will be a moment of pain, Ava, when I claim your innocence fully. But once it has passed, that pleasure you have felt twice now will be common to you when our bodies become one. Please trust me in this if in nothing else.”
    She flinched. Trust? How could she do so?
    She might have asked him that, but he covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply, passionately. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him.
    He drove forward and she cried out in pain. He felt big. Too big as her body stretched inch by inch to accommodate him. And yet, despite her anxiety at the entry to her untried body, some primal part of her still lifted to meet him, maneuvered to allow him better access. Once again her body knew what her mind did not and welcomed this joining in ways she did not expect.
    “I’m sorry,” he murmured, burying his face into her hair and