Taken by the Duke (16 page)

Christian couldn’t help staring in shock as the servants filed from the room, each nodding to her, and shut the door behind them.

“And you say they have loyalty. They hardly acknowledged me at all,” he said once they were gone. “It seems they have all gone over to your side.”

She looked at him, her eyes twinkling with humor at his ill-tempered response. “Oh yes, you have much to fear from me speaking to them for more than two minutes put together. I have convinced them to share all your secrets.”

He stared at her, dark hair trailing little auburn tendrils around her face. Her eyes were bright, her face flushed slightly pink. And she was smiling.

That smile was the most powerful part of her. It sucked a man in. It made him wonder how to make her smile every day for the rest of her life. What a thing that would be, to wake up to that smile. To see that expression as the last image in his mind every night.

“I have no doubt you could convince them to do just that,” he said. “You could convince anyone.”

She drew back in surprise at his statement, but then shook her head. “We should get to the matter at hand.”

He nodded. “I agree. Where should I be for your magical ministrations?”

She smiled. “The bed, but first you must remove your clothes.”

He had taken a step toward the bed at her answer, but now he stopped and slowly faced her.

“I believe we discussed this earlier,” he said softly, trying very hard not to get angry.

She arched a brow. “Your refusal to allow me to see you naked? Yes, we did. But I do not know how you expect me to help you if I cannot touch you.”

“You can touch me perfectly well through my clothes,” he insisted.

She held his gaze for a long moment, then stepped toward him. He had already removed his coat, so she lifted to her tiptoes and slipped one button on his shirt free. He covered her hand with his own and shook his head.

“Ava—”

His voice was sharp, filled with warning, but to his surprise, it seemed to make no difference. She ignored him and pulled her hand away, unfastening another button without arguing with him again.

“Stop,” he insisted, but it was becoming harder to do so when she slipped a warm hand beneath his opened shirt and let her fingers brush his chest.

“Pretend it is for solely medicinal purposes,” she whispered, meeting his gaze as another button opened.

“Is it not?” he asked past a lump in his throat that nearly choked him.

She shook her head slowly and unbuttoned his shirt all the way to the waist of his trousers. She tugged at the fabric, freeing it from the confines of his waistband and finished opening it in a few flicks of her wrist.

She parted the fabric and sucked in a breath. He turned his face, refusing to look at the scar that began on his side and made its way down under his trousers where it crossed his hip and ended on his thigh. Let her look. Let her see how twisted he had become and
then
let her say she wished to touch him without clothing.

“You are…your body is—” She looked up at him, eyes glassy and stance slightly unsteady. “You are beautiful.”

He glared at her, hating the humiliation created by her words. “It isn’t necessary to mock me, Ava.”

Her lips parted in surprise, and she touched his cheek briefly. “How can you not know? What I say is anything but mocking.”

She shoved the shirt from his shoulders and tossed it aside. She stared, studying him as her fingers smoothed over his collarbone, over his chest, down his stomach.

“Not know? I
know
what my body looks like,” he growled. “The scar—”

“Looks very painful, yes, I will deal with that in a moment,” she said, waving her hand as if that didn’t matter.

He stared at her, shocked by the fact that she
wasn’t
shaken by the way he looked. Could she be speaking the truth? Could it possibly not matter?

Or was she playing a twisted game with him?

She leaned forward and to his surprise she brushed her cheek against his chest. Her skin was so soft, so smooth. The last person to touch his half-naked body was a doctor, and he had been far less attractive. No one had touched him with tenderness or passion or love in…a very long time. He was ashamed by how much it moved him now.

“Ava,” he began, tone rough as he tried to find a way to make her stop. To make this stop. He didn’t want it.

He didn’t want to want it.

“Please be quiet,” she ordered, pulling away from him and lifting her fingers to his lips. “Just be quiet, stop arguing, stop
thinking
if you are capable of that.”

He almost laughed at her daring. How many women would shush a duke, especially while he was standing half-naked in front of her? Only this one, perhaps.

And somehow her tone, her touch, the look of wonder on her face did stop him from arguing and he allowed himself to feel what she was doing. To watch as she explored his body for the first time.

She searched every muscle, stroked every inch of flesh, and he was shaking with desire as she did so. Especially when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the flat disk of his nipple and gently sucked.

He gasped in a breath and wrapped his hands around her arms for support. She smiled up at him.

“I wondered if it would feel as good for you as it does for me,” she whispered. “Apparently it does.”

“Yes,” he grunted. “Very good.”

“Then I’ll come back to that later,” she promised, shrugging from his grip and allowing her fingers to dance down to the waistband of his trousers. “But for now...”

She loosened the buttons and then slid her hands under the material. Her flesh was hot against him, and he let out a garbled moan as she let the fabric fall past his hips and around his ankles. He wore nothing beneath, and she stepped back to examine him.

Her eyes were wide as she swept her gaze over him from head to toe. He knew she saw his damaged flesh, the slight twist to his hip, the red and puckered scar that slashed and maimed him.

But she wasn’t looking at that. She was just looking at
him
. Like a lover. Like a goddess bestowing her favors upon a grateful worshiper.

“Oh my,” she murmured and once again moved into his space to touch him. “Now I know.”

“Know?” he managed to choke out.

“Know what you’re hiding,” she whispered, cupping his cock and gently stroking. “Not your scars, but how magnificent you are.”

He swallowed. All the blood in his body seemed to be rushing to his rapidly hardening member and he could hardly see, hardly think, hardly feel anything except the stroke, stroke, stroke of her hand over his flesh.

“Ava,” he moaned.

She stepped away, releasing him, leaving him utterly bereft.

“Go to the bed,” she said, walking away to the table where the servants had left their mysterious bottles and bowls. “Lay down.”

He could have argued. Might have argued.
Should
have argued.

He didn’t. He was too wrapped up in the soft tones of her voice, the seductive twitch of her hips. In everything she was doing to seduce and soothe him.

He climbed into the bed and lay back, letting out his breath in a sigh as he realized he had been holding it since she removed his shirt. He watched as she glided toward him, carrying a small bottle with amber liquid in it. She set it down on the small table beside his bed.

“What is that?” he asked, looking at her, referring to the bottle.

She smiled. “Oils. They will help you relax, soothe your muscles, make my touch easier to bear.”

“Your touch is very easy to bear,” he murmured.

She smiled and then reached up to unbutton her gown. He stared as she stripped herself with quick efficiency.

“What are you doing?” he asked when she kicked the dress aside and stood in only her chemise.

She climbed onto the bed beside him and took the bottle. She smoothed some of the oil on her hands and said, “Making myself more comfortable. And giving you something else to focus on when I do this.”

She laid her oiled hands on the darkest, ugliest part of his scar and then began to massage. Any pleasure Christian had felt now faded, replaced by screaming, sharp pain.

“Cry out if you need to,” she said, looking at him with a frown. “I know it is painful. I do not judge you.”

He wanted to cry out, to scream as she pressed her weight into the painful injury, but he bit his lip and held back, refusing to be so weak.

She continued on, glancing at him apologetically from time to time.

“Try to breathe,” she counseled. “It will help.”

“I doubt it,” he said, his voice mangled by the pain that rocked him. He sucked in a few broken breaths.

She nodded. “That’s it. I’m trying to loosen your muscles. They are very tight around the area that was damaged. Part of why you are in so much pain may be because of that.”

“Oh yes,” he said with a glare. “
This
is much better.”

“It will hurt now,” she admitted with a quick smile for his sarcasm. “But I hope it will ultimately feel better as we progress.”

He dug the heels of his hands into the bed and squeezed his eyes shut, bearing the pain as best he could. She slid farther down his legs, working the damaged part of his thigh just as she had his hip. Who would have imagined a slender, highbred young woman would have enough strength to nearly topple a man with just her hands? And yet if he had less pride, he would have been begging her to stop. He would have offered her anything to stop.

But before he could prostrate himself to her in such a humiliating way, she stopped massaging his injuries. Her hands glided away from the painful injuries on the left side of his body.

He looked down at her. She reached out and covered her hands with more oil, then began to rub the middle of his thigh, where his pain rarely radiated. She worked the skin gently, smoothing her palms along his flesh with intimate strokes.

“I was not injured there,” he said, rising up to his elbows.

She lifted her eyes and he caught his breath. Kneeling between his legs, clad only in her chemise, her hands covered in oils, she looked like a seductress. Especially when she smiled a wicked smile.

“You have borne my ‘help’,” she said, emphasizing
help
as if she understood it felt like anything but to him. “Have you not earned some pleasure in return?”

“Ava,” he began, reaching for her.

She dodged his grip and waggled one slick finger at him. “Your Grace, you are not being a very good boy. I aim to give you pleasure, and I request that you abandon some tiny remnant of the control you grip so tightly and take it.
Please
.”

Christian arched a brow. Abandon control? To her?

He had many very good arguments to that order, but he said none of them because she returned both hands to his thighs and slid upward, coming very close to touching his cock as she had earlier. And as had happened before, even the vague promise of that touch made the blood pump to his member, and it hardened in readiness.

She leaned over him and her ruddy hair brushed his cock, tickling the sensitive flesh and making him draw in a sudden breath. She smiled, so very wicked despite her innocence. Without breaking eye contact, she leaned forward and allowed her breasts to slide along his thighs slowly. He felt the hard peaks of her nipples against his flesh and saw the pleasure of the touch on her face.

Against his will, all thoughts emptied from his brain. He was lost. He settled back on the pillows in surrender to her touch, to her taste, to everything that was about to happen between them.

He would do as she said, at least in this bed, in this moment. But once this encounter was over, he would go back to the way things normally were. She certainly wasn’t going to change him permanently.

But for now he wanted pleasure. He wanted her. He wanted everything she had to offer and more.

Chapter Fifteen

Ava’s lips parted as she looked up Christian’s lean, muscular body. Had she just won this strange, erotic battle they had been waging since her arrival at his estate? Was he truly offering her surrender, even temporarily?

It seemed he was, if the way he settled back against the pillows with a garbled, gasping groan of pleasure was any indication. And now all the pleasure, everything that was about to happen…it was all on her.
She
was in control.

She had never been in control in her entire life, but especially not over the fate of a Rothcastle. It was rather terrifying when she put it in those terms. But she wanted to continue. To try, at least, to be the one who gave pleasure, not just received it.

And since this might be her only opportunity, she had to take it. Take
him
.

She looked at his hard, ready cock. Oh, how she wanted to stroke it, to take it between her lips in the way he had never allowed her to do before and return the pleasures his mouth brought to her.

But not yet…not yet. Right now he might pull away if she tried. No, she had to build him to that moment, to give him as much gratification as she could until he was almost mad with need, begging her. Only then would she strike and take what she so desired.