Taken by the Duke Read Online Free PDF

her calf.
    “It’s been too long since you’ve had a woman,” he grunted to himself, “if you desire your greatest enemy.”
    He turned away from her abruptly and raised the shade on the window to stare into the cold morning. Steam rose from the grass along the roadside as the sunlight began to warm the blades.
    The plan probably caused him to think of Ava in such a way, not her beauty. After all, his intentions were simple enough. He would take her, hold her, allow Windbury to feel the keen power of her loss and then return her. After a week unchaperoned in his presence, she would be ruined even if he never laid a finger on her or spoke a word to her.
    But now the concept of ruination took on a whole new level. He could not help but picture what it would be like to do it in truth, rather than in name alone.
    He cast a glance in her direction. As sunlight filled the carriage, her eyes fluttered open. Gray-blue flickered to him, focused on him, and she sat up. She held her stare on him, without flinching, without blushing. Her boldness should have been repulsive to him, but it wasn’t.
    It was something else entirely. Would she do the same, hold his gaze, if he were touching her? Standing before her, naked and aroused? Would she be so bold if he were inside of her, claiming her in a way no one could ever take back?
    He cleared his throat as blood rushed to his loins and made sitting in the rumbling carriage even more uncomfortable.
    “Will we be stopping soon?” she asked, her voice rough from a night of travel.
    He blinked. “We will not reach our destination until evening.”
    She tilted her head. “But surely you will not drive your horses all night and all day without changing them. I assume you will allow yourself to eat at some point and take your…personal relief, even if you expect me to suffer.”
    He shifted because her stare had not left him even as she questioned him so directly.
    “There is a small coaching inn we will be stopping at in a very short while,” he admitted. “The horses will be fed, as will we, and you may take any…personal relief you need, my lady.”
    She folded her arms. “Thank you.”
    He arched a brow. So polite in the face of kidnapping.
    “Do you think I might also have a blanket of some kind?” she asked, rubbing her hands along goose-bumped arms. “It is cold.”
    His brow wrinkled as he stared at her. He hadn’t actually considered her clothing, not in all his plans. She was wearing that ballgown, not designed for travel. It did not cover her arms, and her wrap had been left at Stavendish Court.
    “I apologize,” he said with a tilt of his head. “I did not think. We will ask the innkeeper for something when we arrive. Until then—”
    He shrugged out of his own jacket and held it out to her. She stared at it like it might bite her, then back to him.
    “Will you not be cold?”
    “I’m fine. Please, take the jacket.”
    She hesitated, then snatched it from his hand and wrapped it around her shoulders. As his remaining body heat sank into her skin, she sighed in an unmistakable sound of pleasure that jolted through his blood and straight to his cock.
    Wonderful.
    “I’m pleased you will not let me freeze,” she said after a moment of enjoying the jacket. “I do still wonder what your plan is for me.”
    Now he was beginning to wonder the same.
    “As I said last night, Lady Ava, there will be plenty of time to discuss everything when we arrive at our destination.”
    Her eyebrows lifted in tandem. “I see. So we are to be trapped in a carriage together all day and into the evening on our way to this mysterious destination, and yet you do not wish to speak until we arrive? It will be a long day indeed. Did you bring books?”
    He pressed his lips together in annoyance. Again, she pointed out a part of his plan he hadn’t exactly thought through. He was so focused on the kidnapping and holding part, he hadn’t put much thought into the hours of travel of they