Innocence Defied (New York) Read Online Free PDF

also taken classes she thought would endear her to him. It was humbling to be the recipient of that level of devotion.
    And terrifying.
    Terrifying when it was coming from her.
    Terrifying because it was just the sort of devotion he was looking for in a slave.
    “Zoe, darlin’,” he began, mustering his determination to put them back on the right path. “This is never going to happen. You got to know that.”
    She turned from the stove with a plate in each hand, and set one in front of him before she took a seat across from him with hers. Gage looked at the perfectly browned triangles of battered bread, crisp strips of bacon and the wedges of fruit slices that garnished the plate, and felt his heart give a sad twist.
    “Oh, baby.” He met her eyes and saw now what he’d always accepted as sisterly devotion was in reality a devotion that was far from sisterly. It made him ache for her—for the heartache she had in store when she realized they could never be. “This looks amazing. You went to a lot of trouble here. We coulda just ate cereal, but this looks down right perfect.”
    The first bite was so good he gave her a heartfelt, “S’good,” and shoveled down half the plate, before he looked up to notice she was not eating her own. She was instead watching him with a somber look of purpose.
    “I’ve saved myself for you.” She must have mistaken his shell-shocked lack of response as a lack of understanding, because she elaborated. “I’m a virgin.”
    As he gulped down the glass of orange juice in front of him to try and cool off his libido and gear back the panic, she added to his torment, “I want you to take my virginity next Saturday…for my birthday.”

Chapter Seven
    By eleven o’clock that night, Gage was well on his way to rip-roaring drunk. Zoe was a virgin. A virgin who thought she was in love with him and wanted him to take that virginity as a fucking birthday present.
    He scowled at the giant flat screen TV in front of him and took another swallow of scotch. They’d argued for hours today. He shook his head at the thought. He’d never known her to be anything other than accommodating to him—and to her whole family, for that matter. She’d lived to please others all her life, and especially him. But today she’d shown him that she damn well had a backbone and a mind of her own. She cried and pleaded at first. So quietly sad his heart had cracked right in two. Then he’d insisted she was too young to know what love was, and the tears had dried up pretty damn fast.
    “You have no right to say that to me,” she’d said in the frostiest tone he’d ever heard out of her. “Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know my own mind. My own heart. If you don’t feel for me what I feel for you, fine. But don’t stand there and try to tell me what I am or am not feeling.”
    That had been the beginning of the argument. His first ever with her. The shock of it still had him shaking his head in bafflement. She’d shouted at him. Oops shouted at him. She’d stood there in front of him with her hands clenched into tight fists on her hips and shouted toe-to-toe with him.
    “I’m not right for you, little girl.” He’d thrown out as his own temper started to rise.
    “ I’m not right for you is what you really mean, isn’t it?” she’d thrown back. “At least be honest about why you’re rejecting me.”
    “God, darlin’, I’m not rejecting you. I’m protecting you.” He’d wrapped his hands around her shoulders, and his muscles had trembled with the need to shake some sense into her. “You deserve better than what I got to offer. Can’t you get it through your thick skull that I’m tryin’ to look out for you, here?”
    “If you were so concerned for what’s best for me, then you’d stop fighting me on this, because you are what’s best for me. You always have been.”
    He brought her up to her toes and bent down until his forehead was resting on hers. What he told her