Taken by the Duke by Jess Michaels Page B

pressing a kiss to the place where her neck and shoulder met. “It will fade in a moment. Breathe with me.”
    She stared at him. He pulled back and looked down at her as he began to draw deep, calculated breaths. She slowly matched her own breathing to his, and soon they shared a rhythm.
    Something almost as intimate as their joined bodies.
    He turned his face away, as if that intimacy had just occurred to him as well. Then he pulled his hips back and stroked into her again. This time there was no pain and she sighed as he began a slow, gentle pace inside her body.
    She did not expect pleasure to come again, not after twice, not when there had been pain at their first moment of joining, but as he thrust into her, keeping a steady rhythm, that pleasure built again. Brick by brick, it created a wall, then a tower, and just when she felt too full from it, the world shattered and she cried out.
    Her release seemed to inspire his, and he withdrew from her quivering body to spend between them. For a moment, he remained over her, his body shaking in time with hers, his arms still tight around her in a warm embrace. Then he rolled away, stiff and awkward thanks to his injury, to lie on his back.
    She looked at him from the corner of her eye. His face was so unreadable that she had no idea what was in his mind. Although the encounter had seemed as intense for him as it was for her, was he unhappy? He had pulled from her body, did that mean something? Would he renege on their arrangement now that her virginity was gone?
    She rolled to her side and looked at him full on. “Have I upset you? Disappointed you?”
    He jolted, almost as if he had been lost in thought, and glanced at her. “No,” he said. “No, I am anything but disappointed, Ava.”
    “Then you shall not go back on our bargain?” she said, relief flooding her.
    His brow wrinkled. “You have surrendered your innocence. There is no going back now.”
    She shivered as she stared up at the ceiling far above. No going back. That was most definitely true. She had given up her one bargaining chip for any relationship. And the future without it was very hazy.
    She closed her eyes and tried not to ponder that truth any longer. It was quiet in the room, warm from the fire, and after such strenuous activity and so much high emotion, she found herself very tired. As she drifted away into sleep, her last coherent thought was that she had to make this sacrifice worthwhile.
    It was her only choice now.
     
    Christian lay on his side, watching Ava as she slept. Her face was soft in the dying firelight, free of the worry and fear that had lined it since he took her.
    It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had stood in the shadows on the terrace and plotted to take her. His plans, which had been so clear and made so much sense to him, now had been altered because of her. He had gone from vengeance to pleasure, a ruination in name alone to the claiming of her innocence in a most enjoyable encounter.
    One that had included a connection he had not expected nor desired. In the moment he had claimed her body, he had been overtaken by a primitive sense of ownership, of protection, of claiming that had nothing to do with her quaking body or his long-neglected physical desires.
    “Manipulation,” he muttered as he got up and paced away from her.
    But could he truly accuse this woman, who reacted so guilelessly to his touch, who had truly been an innocent until he took that from her?
    He shook his head. Whatever the answer, his path was clear. There could be no connection with her, no further moment of weakness to her wiles, purposeful or not. She was a means to vengeance and perhaps a bit of pleasure.
    Nothing more.
    He turned back to look at her. She was curled up on the bed, naked. He grabbed a small blanket from the chair beside the fire and draped it over her before he buttoned his trousers and moved to the door, moving slowly so he didn’t require his cane. He rang the bell, then