The Widow’s Wager
The Scoundrel’s Lady
An eye for an eye, a sin for a sin…
Taken by the Duke
© 2013 Jess Michaels
The Pleasure Wars, Book 1
Amid all the lies and scandals that fuel Society’s gossip mill, one truth has stood out: House Rothcastle and House Windbury have always hated each other.
Lady Ava Windbury prays the feud will someday end, to no avail. One dreadful night, her brother accidentally causes the death of Christian Rothcastle’s sister, a tragedy that leaves both men maimed.
Consumed by grief, Christian makes a grim decision. He will kidnap Lady Ava so that her family will feel the pain of loss as keenly as he feels the loss of his own sister. But once he has Ava in his clutches, desire takes unexpected hold. Even more surprising, she willingly surrenders to his every sexual whim—after haggling over the terms of giving up her virginity.
Too late, he realizes she is using her body for peace, not war. But just as their affair of revenges turns into an affair of the heart, the past rears its ugly head to take matters into its own hands…
Warning: This book contains scenes of erotic seduction, sexual revenge and the healing power of love.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Taken by the Duke:
Ava wasn’t sure what Rothcastle thought of her, if he was drawn in by the façade of toughness she was currently pretending. But inside, she shook like the final leaf on a dying tree.
This man was…utterly intimidating, not only because he was her enemy or her captor, but because he had an air about him that screamed dark and dangerous. Not to mention, he filled the entire room, he sucked out the air around them, he crowded into her even when he was nowhere near her.
But still, she refused to show him his effect on her. Or at least, she tried not to show him.
He tilted his head to examine her closer and suddenly his expression changed slightly. He no longer had rage on his countenance, but something else just as powerful existed in his stare.
She had seen a flash of it before, in the carriage after her kidnapping, but had dismissed it as ridiculous. Now it was far clearer. He was…
He was attracted to her.
She might be an innocent, and even a wallflower, but she had been pursued enough as a young woman and seen enough other women pursued to know when a man liked her, even wanted her on some level. And the Duke of Rothcastle, her family’s greatest, most terrifying enemy, had desire in his eyes when he looked at her.
It wasn’t an attraction that was entirely unreturned. The first time she saw him, over eight years ago, was at a large garden party in London. She’d only been fifteen, not yet out, and she had looked across the croquet field to find a young man watching her. His bright blue eyes had been so beautiful that she had felt a sudden and strange urge to go to him.
In fact, she might have even moved to do so…until Portia told her it was Rothcastle. At twenty-three, he had already been duke for six years. Why she hadn’t recognized him, she didn’t know, except that she had been kept out of company most of her life. And thanks to her brother and father’s tirades, in her mind she always saw Rothcastle as a monster, not a handsome, stern young man with stunning eyes.
But that was a very long time ago. And the desire he might feel for her now was nothing but a means for her to help her brother, or at the very least escape this pretty prison. She could not be so foolish as to feel a fluttering in her belly when he looked at her like that.
“Well?” she asked and her voice sounded funny, for she had not spoken for what seemed like an eternity.
“Terms,” he said, his own voice rough as his gaze flitted up and down the length of her body. Now his desire turned darker, and her knees went slightly jelly and difficult to stand on. “Yes. I believe we might be able to come to terms.”
The tone of his voice did not give her any joy, but she lifted her chin and refused to shiver. “Such as?”
“Because he hides like a coward in your estate in London, I cannot reach your brother to force him to repay the debt as I would see fit,” he all but growled. She opened her mouth to argue that point, but he held up a hand to silence her. “But you could repay it on his behalf.”
She could hardly breathe. “H-How?”
He looked her up and down a second time, predatory and feral. “With your body.”
She blinked. That erased any doubt that he wanted her, although no gentleman spoke this way to a lady. To an innocent. Though she was an innocent who had heard things and read things. She wouldn’t count herself as a shrinking flower by any means.
“My body,” she repeated, letting the words roll from her tongue slowly. “I suppose you mean my innocence?”
He flushed and hesitated before he spoke again. It was almost as if he was battling with gentlemanly instincts she assumed he did not have to dare entertain such a shocking request—nay, demand.
“Yes,” he finally said, his voice gravel. “Your innocence. And more.”
Ava wanted to respond. Her sense of propriety told her to refuse his insulting request, to lash out at his shocking lack of decorum.
Another part of her, though, a deeper and darker part of her, had questions. She just didn’t know how to phrase them since she could not fully picture this man taking her innocence, taking more, as he put it. And yet the stirrings in her body as she tried were anything but unpleasant.
“I have shocked you,” he said with a faint smile. “Which is to be expected. It has been a long day, and I am certain you long for a bath and bed as much as I do. I will have a tray sent up to you with supper later. And we will discuss our ‘terms’, as you put it, tomorrow at far greater length.”
Ava swallowed, still trying to find something else to say. Except she could find no words, and Lord Rothcastle was moving on her. He stepped closer, closer, until he filled her entire scope of vision.
“But you must have something to think about, some point of reference while you consider my offer,” he murmured, low and utterly seductive. “So…”
He slipped a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face toward his. She could hardly breathe, she couldn’t think as his mouth descended and suddenly his lips were on hers.
The pressure was gentle at first, compensating for her shocked stillness in response. But as she relaxed, her eyelids fluttering shut and her hands coming up to touch his forearms almost against her will, the kiss changed. He slid his hand into her hair and angled her face differently. His tongue slid out to dart along the crease of her lips, and she found herself parting them to allow him the access he asked for.
He delved inside and tasted her. Her world exploded around her into sparkling rainbow fragments. In that moment, as he explored her mouth with his warm, rough tongue, her knees went weak, her body seemed to melt and strong, powerful sensations of pleasure unlike anything she had ever known or felt ripped through her body.
A moan echoed on the air and she realized, quite to her shame, that the needy, wanton sound had escaped from her unruly body. And the moan only seemed to spurn Rothcastle on further. He tugged her closer, gentleness replaced by wild, animal intensity. She was crushed to him, her body molding to his as the kiss deepened, deepened. She was lost in it, and she feared he might be too.
She had no idea where it would have gone. She never knew, for there was a rap at the door that brought reality spiraling back. He all but shoved her aside, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand before he turned and called out, “Enter.”
The uncomfortable butler from the foyer pressed inside. He spared Ava a quick glance and then inclined his head. “Lady Ava’s rooms are ready, as is her bath, Your Grace. Yours has also been drawn.”
Rothcastle…Christian, for now she could not help but think of him by his given name…turned toward her and his face was hard again. No sensuality remained. “I hope I have given you something to think about, my lady. Please follow Sanders. We will speak tomorrow.”
He walked away, out the d
oor and past his servant. Ava stared at the place where he had stood and all but made love to her with his mouth. Then she somehow gathered her composure and made her way to the waiting Sanders. But as she followed him up the stairs, she was keenly aware that her body was different now. The Duke of Rothcastle had awakened something in her with his searing kiss.
A notorious rake is about to make the ultimate faux pas—fall in love with his own wife.
Unforgivable
© 2013 Joanna Chambers
Gil Truman has eyes only for the beautiful Tilly—until he is forced to marry plain, sickly Rose Davenport to reclaim the lands his father foolishly gambled away. After a disastrous wedding night tainted with his bitterness, he deposits Rose at his remote, Northumbrian estate, soothing his guilt with the thought that she need never lay eyes on him again.
Five years after the mortifying wedding night that destroyed all her romantic fantasies, Rose is fed up with hearing second- and third-hand reports of Gil’s philandering ways. She is no longer the shy, homely girl he left behind, but a strong, confident woman who knows how to run an estate. And knows what she wants—her husband, back in their marriage bed.
Gil doesn’t recognize the bold, flirtatious woman he meets at a ball, with or without her mask. Yet he is bewitched and besotted, and their night together is the most passionate he has ever known.
But when he confesses his sins to the beautiful stranger, the truth rips open the old wounds of their blighted history. Threatening any hope of a future together.
Warning: Contains a flawed hero who can be redeemed with the right woman—the one who’s been under his nose the whole time. Ain’t that just like a man?
Enjoy the following excerpt for Unforgivable:
“Are you quite sure this is the best course of action, cara?” Lottie asked carefully. “Your husband has refused to come to Weartham all these years, and while I’m sure he’ll be gratified to see how beautiful you’ve grown—after all, the man is horribly shallow—I fear the shock of you turning up on his doorstep unannounced might cause him to do something foolish, like send you home before he’s taken a good look at you.”
Pathetically, Rose found herself seizing on the least relevant part of what Lottie had just said. “Do you think he will find me much changed?” she asked hesitantly, staring into her chocolate cup.
Lottie sighed. “Cara, I doubt he will know you.”
“Really?”
Lottie rose and held out her hand. “Come here.” She drew Rose over to the seat she’d recently vacated in front of the dressing table, facing the mirror, and sat her down. Then she lifted one of the silver-backed brushes and began to draw it through Rose’s dark hair, still loose round her shoulders from being brushed out last night. After a brief silence, Lottie said, “Do you recall what your hair was like when you married?”
“Short,” Rose replied.
“Yes, just a covering really; this long.” Lottie held her finger and thumb an inch apart. Had it really been as short as all that? Rose touched her head as though to check, but of course, her hair was long now, long and thick and luxurious, dark brown tresses that spilled almost to her waist.
“I remember it well,” Lottie went on, still brushing. “You were very poorly when I met you, and your hair was growing slowly. Your body had more important things to mend first.” She looked up, meeting Rose’s gaze in the mirror with those expressive black eyes that showed a depth of emotion that Rose hadn’t been able to understand back then. “You almost died.”
“Yes,” Rose whispered. She remembered the worst of it not at all, and much of the rest only dimly. Seemingly interminable days of fever, the days and nights running into one another, the hallucinations more real to her than the world around her.
The physicians had glumly told her father she would die; and she would have done so if left to them.
“But you saved me, Lottie,” she said, smiling at her friend in the mirror.
“Pshaw!” Lottie scoffed. “Anyone could see what you needed: rest, food, care. Those doctors would have had you in a coffin while you still breathed! But look at you now—so beautiful.” She beamed. “No, he won’t know you. On your wedding day, you weighed little more than a bag of feathers, and your skin was a mess. But look at you now! The marks are all gone!”
“Not quite,” Rose countered lightly. “I have a few scars.” Not merely physical ones either. She tried to dismiss the memory of a night in an inn long ago; a girl in a pink dress, a pink ribbon in her hair. A memory that still made her feel like that girl all over again.
“You call those scars?” Lottie retorted. “Those little moon-marks?”
There were hardly any scars on her face, which was amazing, considering how awful they had been. They’d been everywhere, even on her eyelids and inside her ears. But she’d been left with just three scars on her face, three little white circles at her left ear, her hairline and her chin. They were tiny, almost unnoticeable, the silvery scar tissue just a few shades lighter than her creamy skin.
There were a few more obvious battlefields on her body. A little ring of them on the back of her neck, like the interwoven links of a necklace; another clutch on the backs of her knees. A few other isolated ones here and there, on flank and thigh and arm. But none of them were unsightly, just little silver indentations in her flesh. They had long ago lost the power to make her feel ugly. Indeed, they made her feel proud now, to have survived.
Rose looked into the mirror and saw a woman who was beautiful. She saw her own beauty with satisfaction and joy and defiance. The gaunt, skeletal face of five years before had filled out to one of heart-shaped prettiness. The sad little cap of thin hair was now a thick, glossy mane. Her skin glowed, and her eyes shone with health.
“He won’t know you,” Lottie said again, but this time, the tone of her voice was almost wondering. “Not immediately. And certainly not masked.”
“Masked?”
Lottie smiled, a wicked slashing smile. “Have you ever been to a masked ball, cara?”
“What? No, of course not. They’re hardly de rigueur in deepest, darkest Northumbria.”
“Would you like to go to one this evening? I’m sure your husband will be there. And don’t you think that would be a much better place to meet him? Just think, instead of turning up as petitioner at his front door, asking for an audience, you set the time and place. And then you let him see your beauty, perhaps flirt with him a little—flirtation is the best language for your husband, cara, trust me. He responds to it better than English.”
“You think I should meet him in disguise?”
“Oh, you’ll reveal who you really are at the unmasking at midnight. But first you let him see your charms. Soften him up. Once you’ve caught his interest, everything else will be so much easier. Catch him with honey, cara.”
“But what if recognises me straightaway?”
“He won’t.” Lottie shook her head, quite certain. “I have a mask and domino you can borrow—you won’t even know yourself in them.”
“Whose ball is this anyway?”
“The ball is being held by dear Nev, so of course he’ll be delighted to have you attend. I’ll send a note round to him now.” Nev was an old friend of her father’s and more recently of Lottie’s.
“Does this mean it won’t be a respectable occasion?” Rose asked. Nev was known as rather a rakish sort.
“Not very respectable,” Lottie agreed. “Which is why I’m so sure your husband will be there. I always see him at Nev’s affairs. I always give him a look, like this.” She demonstrated an expression of scornful disdain.
Rose laughed, but she knew why Lottie gave him that look, and her laugh was hollow. “Because he always has a floozy on his arm, I suppose? He’ll probably have his latest one with him tonight.”
“If you’re talking about Signora Meadows, their affair is at an end,” Lottie said with a placid smile. “And if he is seeking her replacement, as he undoubtedly will be, he is going to find her:
you. What could be more fitting?”
“Me?”
“Why not? That’s what you want, isn’t it? A real marriage?”
“I won’t be able to attract him like that—”
“Of course you will. I have a few hours before I have to leave. First we’ll dress you, and then I’ll give you a flirting lesson. What’s the worst that can happen, cara? Anything’s better than just turning up at Stanhope House with a list of demands in your hand. That will get things off on entirely the wrong foot.”
Rose thought of all the letters she’d sent Gilbert telling him about Weartham and her life there, the annual invitations to join her for Christmas. He’d never taken her up on any of them, demonstrating a single-minded determination to have nothing to do with her.
He was well known for having a weakness for pretty women, a fact that was tirelessly lampooned in the scandal sheets Harriet loved so much.
Well, Rose was now a pretty woman. The least she could do was turn that to her advantage.
Pleasuring the Lady
Jess Michaels
Once the game begins, there is no tearing your gaze away.
The Pleasure Wars, Book 2
Her mother’s madness and her father’s and brother’s irresponsibility have relegated Lady Portia to the life of a wallflower. The only shining light in her life is her best friend, Ava, who is suffering a rift with her own brother.
Portia’s quest to help takes her to the notorious Donville Masquerade in the hells, where—behind the safety of a mask—she witnesses shocking public acts of sin. And succumbs to the touch of Marquis Miles Weatherfield.
Unfortunately, they’re discovered. And now, tainted by scandal, she and Miles are destined for a marriage neither of them want. But Portia makes a bargain that raises even Miles’s eyebrows.
In return for saving her mother from the asylum, Portia will do anything Miles wants in bed. Shocked by his driving desire for Portia, Miles agrees. As they explore every wicked desire, every forbidden act that pleases them, they discover something that goes far deeper than flesh. But the lies that brought them together could be the very wedge that drives them apart.
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