Benedict was broken when Vivien broke off their affair years ago. When she comes back into his life...and his bed…he isn't certain of anything except the power of their desire.
But as Vivien moves closer to disappearing forever, both of them begin to question if the past can be overcome and if love might be the one loose end that cannot be neatly tied up.
Warning: This book contains scenes of a powerful woman, unafraid of her sexuality, trying to find her way in the world. There is a brief scene of a threesome M/F/M and then one woman falling madly in love with one man. Proceed with caution, a fan and tissues.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Her Perfect Match:
Benedict saw Vivien coming across the room in his direction from the moment she turned ever so slightly. But that was nothing new. Whenever they were in the same space, he couldn’t help but be utterly aware of her and her every move. Her every breath. That was the curse of his feelings for her. They forced him to track her when he knew he should not.
His distraction must have been obvious, for the people he had been talking to a moment before moved off and left him alone as Vivien reached his side with a smile he knew too well. It was her false “mistress” expression meant to soothe and seduce. It wasn’t real.
“Benedict,” she said as she reached for his hands. She squeezed them briefly and then let them go, but the touch blasted him back in time to a night when they had lain out on the grass after making love, holding hands and staring up at the stars.
“Vivien,” he managed to croak out. “This is a lovely party you have thrown together for your friends.”
She tilted her head. “Yes. It isn’t my usual kind of event, but I’m happy to celebrate all four of them and their marriages.”
He swallowed back a biting word about her lack of desire for her own marriage and instead smiled. “Both the couples do look very happy.”
She shifted ever so slightly and then rushed into a new topic.
“How have you been? I have not seen you in…it must be a few months.”
Benedict pursed his lips. It had been four months, six days.
“Right after Christmas, I think it was,” he said. “I returned to London to take care of some business and saw you at the opera, wasn’t it?”
Her eyes widened when he could recount so many details, but he shook his head. If only she knew that he could recall even more. Like how her blonde hair had been styled in a different way that night. Like how she had smelled of lemons and rosewater. Like the exact cut and color of her blue gown.
He kept those details to himself. She had already rejected the idea that he would notice them. Rejected him. There was no changing that.
“I think you are correct,” she said. “How have you been since then?”
“Very well,” he replied, keeping up the same charade that she was. That they were acquaintances. “My family is well.”
“Good.” She remained smiling, but he could see the slight twitch in her cheek. Vivien had always known that his family did not approve of the relationship they’d shared.
Benedict clenched his hands at his sides. She had used that fact in her parting with him. Hidden behind their disapproval in a cowardly display when he knew there was more to her rejection of his heart. She had told him to move on with his life. And since that was what she wanted…
“I am being encouraged to marry,” he said, watching her carefully for her response. “And I believe it may well be time for me to make that commitment.”
She blinked. That was her only response. Just a flutter of her eyelids that betrayed she felt any deeper emotion about his announcement than she showed. It took her a moment to respond.
“I suppose it is time for you to pursue a new future.” She hesitated as if she was going to say more, but didn’t.
“Yes. A new future,” he repeated, but there was no pleasure in the words he spoke. They felt like sand on his tongue.
She tilted her head. “You do not wish for this?”
He bit back surprise that she would be so direct. “You know what I wish for.”
Now it was her turn to draw back. “Benedict—”
He waved his hand to silence her. “Please do not go through all your reasons for rejecting me. I have heard them all.”
She was silent for a moment, watching him with a hooded gaze he could not read. Then she moved closer. “Benedict, it is true I cannot accept any future you have offered me. We both know why.”
Except he didn’t, but he said nothing and she continued.
“But I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t still…think of you. Of us.”
He stared. Was this happening? Was she truly saying these things after three years of polite distance and pretending to be friends?
“You do,” he said, flat and emotionless for he feared revealing too much.
She nodded. “It seems there is unfinished business between us. On both sides. And since everything is about to change, I wonder if we should resolve that business, if only so it won’t haunt us.”
“What are you saying?” he asked softly.
She swallowed and her voice trembled as she whispered, “Be with me again.”
He stared at her for he didn’t know how long. This was like a dream. Or a nightmare he had lived out before.
Vivien shifted with discomfort. “Benedict?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m certain I didn’t understand you correctly. Will you repeat the question?”
Blood rushed to her cheeks, making them pink. He had so rarely seen her bashful that he stared at the sight.
“We have something still between us, Benedict. Before everything changes, I would like to resolve it. I want to be with you.”
“Vivien,” he whispered. “Why now?”
She was silent for so long that he thought she might not answer. Then she looked him in the eyes. “Why not?”
But as he stared into the blue depths of her gaze, he saw something deep within that he thought she did not mean to share. A secret, a hesitation, something she was not saying.
And fear was there too. Fear which wasn’t like her.
She reached out and squeezed his arm. He felt her touch crash though him like lightning and he almost recoiled from its power.
“Don’t decide this very moment,” she insisted. “I will wait for you tonight after the party. If you come to my room…you come.” She emphasized the word so there was no doubt to its meaning. “If you don’t…I understand and I will wish you nothing but the best.”
She released him and stepped away. Without another word, she scurried into the crowd and left him standing, wrecked in her wake and totally uncertain of what he should do.
She offered him a return to the happiest time of his life. A sweet taste of passion and pleasure and all the love he still felt for her. But he knew that taste came at a cost. She had already made it very clear that they would never be together beyond an affair, beyond sex.
His brother had been telling him for years to walk away from Vivien. But he had never been able to do that.
And now might not be any different.
The worst of times, the most passionate of loves.
The Bookseller’s Daughter
© 2013 Pam Rosenthal
In her family’s bookshop, Marie-Laure Vernet had adventure, romance and mystery at her fingertips. And intrigue, in the form of an enigmatic stranger as unsettlingly attractive as the scandalous books he smuggled. But he disappeared, and so did the bookshop’s meager fortunes.
Forced to work as a scullery maid, Marie-Laure struggles to keep the china in one piece—and herself away from the aristocrats’ wandering hands. Until unexpectedly, the Duc’s estranged son comes home, and Marie-Laure once again finds herself face-to-face with the fascinating stranger.
Joseph has braved every conceivable danger during his secret adventures outside France, but he knows no one is in greater peril than a pretty servant in the employ of his lecher
ous father. And the only way to protect her is to pretend to be her lover.
Behind his bedroom door, their chaste friendship blooms into a connection more erotic than the stories in any forbidden book. But desire, even love, may not be enough to overcome the forces society has arrayed against them…
Warning: Contains a relationship between a couple who love books almost as much as they love each other.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Bookseller’s Daughter:
Provence, August 1783
Six years before the French Revolution
The rule at the chateau was never to hire a pretty servant. And yet there was no denying that the copper-haired girl serving tea in the library this afternoon was pretty. Clumsy too: if she continued rattling that Sèvres cup and saucer she was going to spatter hot tea all over the Vicomte’s impeccable white stockings.
Bored with each other’s company, the family of the Duc de Carency Auvers-Raimond directed keen eyes in the girl’s direction. Sèvres was shockingly expensive; a servant who broke a piece could expect to be punished—even, or especially, a servant as pretty as this one. The cup rattled more loudly. The family waited in dreamy stillness for the shivering crash of china on the parquet floor.
But none came; only a few faint beige drops of tea marred the Vicomte’s shins, for at the last possible moment, he’d put out a long, deft hand and rescued the cup from imminent destruction.
“Thank you, Marianne,” he murmured.
She managed a curtsy, lowering her eyes from his and blushing beneath the freckles scattered over her cheeks.
Teatime finally over, she made her way back to the kitchen. A narrow escape; catastrophe barely averted. No broken china to sweep up, and—more importantly—no punishment to anticipate. The Comtesse Amélie had only glared at her. Ah well, a glare was nothing. What one had to look out for was the Comtesse’s scowl, the Gorgon-face that meant a thrashing was in order.
She wouldn’t be hurt and she wouldn’t be fired. No servant would be fired today; there was too much work to do. All right, she told herself, she should be glad of the work then. Because her job was the main thing, wasn’t it? Her job, her salary—surely these things were more important than the fact that he had clearly forgotten he’d ever seen her before.
Yes, of course. He was of no importance whatsoever.
Though it rather pained her to admit that she’d recognized him the instant she’d entered the room. The set of his shoulders, the dark gleam of his eyes: she’d known him immediately. No wonder she’d stopped breathing properly; of course she’d rattled the china.
And, she warned herself, if she continued thinking of him so…so physically, she was still in danger of dropping things—this time the whole damn tray. She hurried into the kitchen, laid down the delicate tea things, and tucked her thick curls into a cap, to protect them against soot and grease.
Be honest, she thought. Admit the whole truth and be done with it. She winced; the appalling, humiliating fact of the matter was that since last December she hadn’t let a day go by without thinking of him.
Thank you, Marianne.
And thank you, Monsieur le Vicomte. Even if you don’t remember that my name is Marie-Laure and not Marianne.
She pinned a stained apron to the front of her dress. One couldn’t expect an aristocrat to know a servant’s proper name.
Heaps of work awaited her in the scullery. A mountain of pots to wash, a bushel of onions to peel and chop. Plenty of distraction from her troublesome thoughts. She took a heavy knife and sliced off the tip of an onion. Predictably, her eyes filled with tears. Well, of course, she scolded herself. What else could one expect, from such a strong onion?
There would be a banquet. A chandelier of Bohemian crystal had been installed in the mirrored dining room; tomorrow evening thirty guests would feast under its light in celebration of the Vicomte’s visit.
He’d arrived only this morning, together with his mother the Duchesse. No one among the chateau’s army of servants knew what had brought about the sudden family reunion.
“The Duc’s illness could have taken a turn for the worse,” Jacques, the Duc’s valet, had speculated that morning at breakfast. “The doctors looked graver than usual, last time they visited.”
“Perhaps they’re selling off some property,” someone else suggested. “That will usually bring a family out of hiding, to clamor for their share. Or perhaps it’s time to find a wife for the Vicomte Monsieur Joseph.”
It would have to be a matter of some import, everyone agreed, to pry the Duchesse away from the convent that had been her home for the last few years.
“Of course, the Duc was always a wretched husband, even when he had his wits about him.” Nicolas, the chateau’s general manager, prided himself on his knowledge of the family’s history. “Joked in public that the Duchesse was a prune in bed. Had a list of mistresses as long as your arm, and you couldn’t keep him away from the maids and village girls.” Which was why, now that the old man was too enfeebled to have a say in things, his daughter-in-law tried not to hire pretty servants.
But even Nicolas hadn’t known Monsieur Joseph’s whereabouts these past few years. There were rumors of duels, prison, exile, even a sojourn in America.
“America?” Marie-Laure was an enthusiastic supporter of the recent revolution in the English colonies. How wonderful, she thought, if Monsieur Joseph had joined the Marquis de Lafayette in the fight for American independence. How worthy. And how utterly improbable that a member of this nasty, spoiled family would do any such thing.
The group in the kitchen would have been pleased to gossip the morning away but Nicolas hustled them off to work. And so all Marie-Laure had learned of the Duc’s younger son was that he’d been his father’s favorite and hadn’t visited in more than a decade.
But I know something that Nicolas doesn’t, she thought, putting aside the last onion and moving over to skim the foam from the veal stock. I know what he was doing last winter. He was smuggling forbidden books into France. And cheating booksellers. Well, at least he cheated me and Papa.
Of course, last winter she hadn’t known who he really was. But she’d suspected he wasn’t what he seemed. She’d liked that about him.
The sights and smells of the busy kitchen dissolved into the steam rising from the stockpot. She was in a shabby, beloved room—with books, books everywhere.
Home.
Taken by the Duke
Jess Michaels
An eye for an eye, a sin for a sin…
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.
eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Taken by the Duke
Copyright © 2013 by Jess Michaels
ISBN: 978-1-61921-340-1
Edited by Amy Sherwood
Cover by Kim Killion
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: July 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
Taken by the Duke Page 21