Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (10 page)

She looked at him, suddenly feeling light of head, yet incredibly free and loose. Before she knew it, he bent his face to hers. His kiss, with those full, sensual lips and strong tongue, left her breathless and shaky; but then he sat back on his haunches and began to tug at the hated tunic.

It was her only covering, and she knew it would be so daring to remove it, her last shield. But she was the only one clothed, and her skin yearned to breathe, to rid itself of the heavy, damp cloth. She didn’t protest as he lifted it up over her legs and hips, and before she quite knew it, she raised her arms so that it came up and over her head.

Relief . . . Her skin breathed once uncovered, yet felt warm and supple in the cooler air. Her heart beating strongly, Mercédès looked at Neru, wondering what was to happen next. But instead of kissing her again, he gestured for her to recline on the divan. Her skin tingling with apprehension and anticipation, she stretched out on her belly.

His hands were large and strong, and they moved over her skin with long, sure strokes from shoulder to buttock and back up again. The oil he used created a heated friction, and sent off that same orangey-floral scent she recalled from her bath. Mercédès closed her eyes, giving herself up to the feel of this man’s hands as they closed around her waist, sliding up to her shoulders and down along her arms to the tips of her fingers, and back. She felt glorious, alive, and aroused.

When Neru brought his hands back up from a long stroke to her hips, they slipped around between skin and fur, to cover her breasts. Mercédès caught her breath when his deft fingers veed around her tight nipples and wove them back and forth and side to side. His hot skin brushed up against her hips, his breath and the proximity of his torso warmed her bare back. Neru’s fingers were rhythmic and relentless, tweaking and twitching her nipples against the ermine as her sex lifted and stretched again. Warm wet pooled in her quim; Mercédès shifted her legs so that they fell apart and buried her face into the soft furs near her restless fingers.

Before she knew it, Neru had rolled her onto her back and reared over her, his mouth descending to one breast as the other pulled the heavy, clinging strands of her damp hair away from her torso. When he closed over her nipple and sucked hard, she could no longer contain a gasp of pleasure. It came out like the long, low moan of wind before a summer storm.

The world moved and shifted, like pieces of colorful glass in a kaleidoscope: hot, dark skin touching her golden flesh; full, red lips opening over her nipple and sucking it into a long point; strong fingers sliding through the slick seam of her quim, flicking at her pip like a gentle tease. She closed her eyes, arching her hips and letting the pleasure overtake her.

Dimly, she heard a voice, a deep, sharp command from a great distance. Then the roaring sensations changed. . . . The heat shifted away, then returned. . . . The slickness of mouth and tongue disappeared, leaving one nipple hard and wet and cold, thrusting so tight it must be burning red. She opened her eyes as someone separated her knees, gently but firmly—but she had no desire to keep them closed. Her feet came off the divan, resting on the floor in front of it as large, warm hands stroked the insides of her thighs . . . lightly, so delicately, like a nasty tease, that she jerked and trembled in her sprawled position, trying to shift her hips, her thighs, her feet around . . . to find some kind of deeper touch that might lead her to what she needed.

Someone moved behind her—everything was a luscious haze of warmth and wetness, pressure and tug, rhythm and stroke—and strong, masculine hands came around, covering her tight, ripe nipples from behind. He pulled her back against him, supporting her spine with his torso, his taut arms bracketed around her, holding her breasts as he nuzzled sleek whiskers against her neck and shoulder. His long fingers slipped in and around her nipples, plucking at them, tweaking, caressing the very tips of them as his thumbs made light, sensual circles on the sides of her breasts. The hot length of his cock pressed between her spine and his leg.

Somehow, Sinbad’s long, dark hair, smelling like cardamom and other spices, had come loose, and it mingled with hers, falling over her shoulder as he kissed and nibbled along her neck. She arched and shivered when he found that sensitive spot, just below and behind her ear, letting her eyes close once more as she fell into the rhythm of his fingers and the pulse of arousal.

The hands between her legs stopped their languorous strokes, settling firmly, fingers gently pressing into the tender flesh there. Then Neru’s lips—it must have been Neru kneeling before her as Sinbad caressed her from behind—slid over one side of her labia, and his tongue snaked out in a surprise swipe over the seam of her quim. Mercédès startled, jerking under his hands, lifting her hips to press her sex to those full lips.

Did she hear a gentle chuckle in her ear? Her world became a maze of sounds—of deep sighs, and gentle moans, the soft suction, the faint lapping and rasping breathing; and Mercédès knew her own sounds of pleasure filled her ears most loudly.

Sinbad gently caressed her breasts, relentless with the teasing of her nipples to a point of near pain, but ultimate pleasure . . . and then easing a bit, just a bit, so her breathing could catch up. . . . Neru bent between her legs, his lips and tongue sliding in the deep, wet crevices of her quim, lapping through the pool of her juices slowly, so slowly she thought she would scream with the frustration.

She moved her hips desperately, feeling the orgasm come so close only to ebb away as Neru and Sinbad seemed to know just when to slow or ease back. Her body was tight and stretched, ripe as if to bursting—her nipples, her lips swollen from biting back the sighs and pleads, her quim lips, her pip . . . full, glossy and plump, ready . . . so ready . . .

And then Sinbad’s fingers shifted away, and Neru’s mouth stopped its lovely taunting, and Mercédès jerked restlessly, her hips lifting and rocking to the side, trying to find it again . . . but firm hands held her thighs steady. Sinbad’s dark breath in her ear teased and infuriated her.

“Not yet, Countess,” he said. But his words were harsh and forced, hot against her earlobe. She felt the rampant throbbing of his cock against her, the little swipe of moisture that had slipped from its head and stroked along her hip. He was ripe and ready too.

Before she could respond, grasp that cock and show him a little torture of his own, he moved like an eel, sleek and fast, and his mouth was on her breast, and his hand between her thighs. Mercédès gasped when his skillful mouth feathered over the sensitive, pebbling skin of her breast, arching up into the warm, wet cavern. She felt the movement, the gust of warm air over her damp skin when he breathed his own lust over it, and she reached, trying to find his sex.

He captured her hands, pulling them above her head, straight over and down into the furs, settling himself directly over her, hip to hip, breast to chest, mouth . . . oh, God, mouth to mouth with that strong tongue swiping deep and sure around hers. Limbs entwined, mouths smashing together, his cock throbbing against her quim, they kissed and touched and ground their bodies together.

She pulled her hands free, pushed away the mess of heavy, clinging hair plastered to their faces and bodies, and closed her fingers around his shoulders. Dragging her nails down, deeply into his skin, she lifted her hips, capturing his turgid penis between her thighs. He grunted and moved away, dragging the length of his dripping cock over her thigh, scooting to settle between her legs.

His tongue was flat and slow . . . oh, so slow . . . up and gently over her pulsing labia, up and down, slowly, excruciatingly slowly. Mercédès tried to sit up, to pull herself toward him and touch, but strong black hands closed around her wrists, holding them above her head again.

And again the tongue, and again, slowly up and over her quim . . . and then, with his thumbs, Sinbad pulled her lips apart, opening her swollen pip to the gentle lashing of his tongue. Mercédès was thrashing now, her hair over her face and shoulders, her lips parted and breath coming in desperate gasps as he played and teased and brought her to the edge again, and again . . . always stopping just before she went over until she was ready to scream.

But even through it all, she didn’t ask. She didn’t beg. She closed her lips on the words, biting them, knowing that it would come. . . . She was close, so close . . . ripe and ready, and at last, with one last teasing swipe, he steadied, settled, and used his tongue to lap and lift and jiggle her sex into madness.

She burst at last, her whole body arching, then convulsing against the hands that held and caressed her, against the mouth that ate at her and the furs that embraced her, pleasure hot and hard and strong trammeling through her body in a haze of flashing lights and satisfied groans.

Mercédès fell into a langorous darkness for a moment. Then she felt movements, shifting around her and short, sharp words . . . then the long, slow slide of a moist, hard body next to hers. Sinbad kissed her again, pulled her over as he rolled so that she sprawled, a sack of sated bone and muscle, over him. His cock rose strong and ready between her splayed thighs, and he said, “Ride me, Countess.”

She pulled herself up, focusing at last, and saw no one else on the divan. They were alone, and her body hummed and prickled, and her mind had lost some of the dullness of desire. She looked down at him, but his face was in shadow; someone had extinguished more of the candles, leaving only a few across the room.

He moved his demanding hands to her hips and lifted her over him, easily. She spread her legs, settling his cock’s head into the entrance of her quim, looking down as she placed her hands on his smooth, hairless chest, covering the gold ring jutting there.

She felt the slam of his heart beneath her fingers, the deep, desperate need of his breathing, and teased his cock with her slippery quim. He would have none of it; he grasped her hips and slammed up into her with the groan of a dying man. Mercédès matched the sound, her own gasp of pleasure riding into a long moan as he held her hips to thrust in again.

That was it. . . . He surged up a third time and let it go, and she felt the undulant pulsing inside her quim as he froze in the throes of release.

She collapsed on his chest, her mouth near that fascinating gold ring, and his hands fell away onto the fur. Their hair was plastered and tangled, and her legs ached from being spread wide, straddling him and holding herself up.

It wasn’t long—not long at all, for her breathing had barely eased—when she felt him move against her, inside her. A little jolt of his hips, the change in breathing, the return of his wide hands to her torso, raising her.

He was growing hard again, inside her, and Mercédès felt her own response as her sex throbbed gently between them.

“Ride me, Countess,” he said again. His voice was strained and flat, and she couldn’t see his eyes—they were too shadowed. His fingers bit into the sides of her hips as he shifted her over him.

She moved, feeling the sweet swell of desire building again, rising and lowering on her thighs, her hands flat on his chest as he helped her shift back and forth, up and down.

“Reach up,” he commanded. “High.”

She did, settling back on her haunches, taking his thick length inside her, releasing it, lifting and falling, jolting back and forth in an increasing rhythm. Her breasts tightened, her nipples puckered and thrust, and his palms closed over them, warm and solid. She lifted her hands in the air, reaching toward the olive branches above from that day in the sun.

She reached and tipped and tilted, faster and faster, Edmond beneath her, the sun beating down on her, his hands on her breasts, the olive leaves just out of reach.

His hips thrashed below, his hands tight on her flesh, his breathing harsh and the shadowed planes of his face stark and hard. He was saying something, muttering it as if delirious, but she couldn’t hear him, it was lost in the whirl of sensation and memory. Tears spilled from her eyes as she worked, and he worked, and they slammed into each other, hard and angry, grief-stricken and regretful and desperate. So desperate.

When she finally reached that last pinnacle, the hardest, most draining one yet, Mercédès slipped over, crashing into brightness, and she felt the tears pouring down her face.

She fell to the side, sobbing silently, and slipped into oblivion.

FOUR

"Maman!
I am so glad to be home,” Albert said as Mercédès pulled him into her embrace. Instead of waiting in the parlor for him to be brought to her, she’d rushed to meet him in the foyer of their home on rue du Helder.

“At last,” she said, burying her face into his neck, smelling the scent that had been her comfort since he was but an infant. She barely managed to keep the tears of joy from turning into ones of fear. Fear that she had almost lost the one that she loved above all else in the world. “Those bandits, they didn’t hurt you?”

She stepped back to look at him, just to make certain. He certainly appeared unchanged, except for a more worldly, experienced air. His dark hair was combed neatly, his clothing was fashionable and pressed, and if his face looked a bit more mature . . . well, that wouldn’t be particularly unusual after his experience.

“No,
maman
. They were unfailingly polite and even apologetic once it was made known to them that they had made a mistake.”

It was March, four months after Albert had left to tour Switzerland and Italy. While in Rome for the Carnivale in February, he had been lured away from the festivities by an attractive woman, and then captured and held for ransom by her associates, a gang of brigands.

But by the time Mercédès and Fernand had received word of the demand, Albert had been set free, unharmed, and without his parents having paid the ransom. And then, to Mercédès’ distress, an unconcerned Albert had continued his tour of Italy for another three weeks before returning to Paris.