The Corrupt Comte (10 page)

“It suits my purpose.”

“P-purpose?”

He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shook off her hold on his wrist to cup one heavy breast. Her nipple peaked and hardened under his palm, the brush of delicate fabric over vulnerable flesh sending a flash of piercing pleasure sprinting through her veins.

His lack of forthrightness forgotten, her eyes slid closed, and her arms swept over the sheets to rest above her head. She was utterly exposed to him, and he took quick advantage of her implicit offer by shaping her other breast with his free hand. Her lungs refused to fill, so she lay gasping while she waited for him to do more, say more. Touch more.

He didn’t disappoint. “What did you do with Sabien?” His thumbs strummed over her nipples, his strong fingers massaging her breasts as the layer of the
négligée
prevented their skin from melding, meshing, fusing them together.

Ohhh, and would that be so terrible? She threw her head back, drunk on the heat coming off him in radiating waves. To always be connected to someone, touched by hands that teased, petted, tortured but never harmed.

Held. She’d never been held. That was what she wanted, all she wanted.

The haze of lust fogging her brain cleared somewhat when he pinched her nipples, a reprimand for not answering his question.

“Ouch,” she hissed, her eyes opening to find him bending closer, his hair falling over his brow as he bent to lick from her collarbone to the pulse beneath her jaw. His tongue, warm and wet, wiped her mind of any pain, numbing every nerve ending in her tension-filled body with the promise of more, more, more, he could give her more, pain or pleasure, and she would take it all.

One of his hands snatched her wrists, pinning them together on the bed above her head.

“Sabien,
chaton
,” he rasped against her throat. His lips trailed down to press open-mouthed kisses over the tops of her breasts, until his attentions threatened to overwhelm her, sending her into a spiral of thoughtless feeling.

“What about him?” she managed hoarsely as she tested her arms against his strong fingers. He imprisoned her, and she reveled in it. Where before he had forced these sensations upon her, in this bed she welcomed every new glimpse into a foreign world of sumptuous carnality, even when physically restrained.

“What did you do with him?” His teeth closed on the
négligée
’s neckline and gave a sharp yank. The sound of rending fabric cut through the echo of her stuttering breaths, and then his lips surrounded one bared nipple. The tip of his tongue swirled around the aching point, tormenting her as wetness pooled between her thighs and whimpers caught high in her chest. “Did you get him alone, as I told you?”

He suckled her, and she cried out, bliss arrowing a direct line from his dangerous mouth to the hard nub of her clitoris.

“Yes,” she gasped, straining against him again.

His growl vibrated over her flesh. “Yes, you were alone with Sabien?”

“Yes.” After dancing a minuet last night, Claudia had asked Sabien to follow her into the corridor, somehow able to produce the words with only the tiniest evidence of her stutter. He hadn’t wanted to, she could tell, but when she directed him toward a darkened corner, the lieutenant had followed her willingly enough.

The
comte
tensed around her, his fingers manacling her wrists, his palm presenting her breast to his mouth, his calves riding parallel to her naked thighs. “Did you kiss him?” His lips left her tortured nipple to press taunting kisses across her quivering belly. “Did you kiss him as I taught you?”

She shuddered when the tip of his nose nudged the bunched hem of her nightgown higher over her hips. “I k-kissed him.” But it was nothing like how he’d taught her, and she hadn’t felt even a fraction as much kissing Sabien as she did right now, subjected to the
comte
’s slow seduction. “Isn’t that what you wanted m-me to d-do?”

His teeth scored the curve of her abdomen below her navel. “No. Yes.” He made an inarticulate growl and squeezed her wrists warningly. “Do not move,
comprends
?” When she nodded, he scooted down farther in the bed, grabbing her inner thighs to make space for himself between her legs. He bent, shadowed shoulders so very broad, and licked a line along the crease between her thigh and her sex.

She trembled.

He did the same on the other side. His thumbs found those wet stripes and stroked, his strong fingers curving beneath her buttocks to lift her lower body off the bed. “Perhaps I made a mistake, kitten.”

She heard him inhale deeply as her eyes closed. “A m-mistake?”

“
Oui
, a mistake, to tell you to kiss Sabien.”

Before she could question him again, he kissed her. Right between the legs, which was absolutely where kisses were
not
supposed to take place, though she admittedly possessed limited knowledge on the subject. But his kiss landed perfectly on that throbbing, sensitive, too-prominent button she’d so recently discovered, thanks to the
comte
, and of course he knew where it was. He knew—

She whimpered, high-pitched and needy, as his lips circled it. He sucked her, his wonderful tongue teasing the underside of her clitoris as her hips jerked. He moved one hand to splay across her abdomen and hold her down on the mattress, even as the fingers of his other hand spread wide the lips of her sex.

He laughed, a choked sound that quickly turned into a groan as the flat of his tongue laved from her slick entrance up to the pulsing bundle of nerves that called to her fingertips with every beat of her heart.

“Your taste… I taste you.” He licked deeper, dipping into her core. “Like honey.
Dieu
.”

Her own ministrations hadn’t made her this wet, nor this mindless. She wiggled in his hold until he growled against her and caught her hips in a bruising grip. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as her entire body flushed. She felt feverish, dizzy, deafened by the roar of imminent release as he collected her essence on his tongue and swallowed her down.

“M-my lord…” Her toes curled, her knees finding their natural place crooked over his shoulders.

A shudder wracked him, and his lips closed around her desperate clit. He held her where he wanted her, open and lifted to his mouth, and her head began to thrash back and forth as each sucking draw on her wet flesh pushed her that much closer to the edge.

Something prodded her entrance, circling, petting, and then one of his fingers slid inside her body. “Fuck,” he mumbled, lifting his head as her back bowed at the intrusion. “You are so wet. So tight.”

But she didn’t want him talking—she wanted him licking. Tasting. Feasting upon her. Frantic to have his mouth on her, Claudia disobeyed and reached for him, clutching at his silky hair. “More,” she moaned, whipping her hips into the thrust of his finger. She was close, so close, and he
had
to know it. Had to feel how the first tremors were beginning to shake her, starting from the base of her spine and clawing through her heavy, heavy limbs. “P-please.”

He swatted her hands away, not gently. “I told you, do not move.” He added a second finger, stretching her violated inner flesh in delicious increments. “
Mauvais chaton.
” Bad kitten. “Do you want to come?” He thrust again, the tips of his fingers curling inside her as the heel of his palm applied the barest pressure to the aching point of her clitoris.

“Yes.” More than she wanted to breathe. More than she wanted to live. “Yes,
please
.” She didn’t care that she was begging, practically sobbing. She’d chosen this torment for herself, and would choose it again and again and again, because
she chose it
. The heady power of that choice alone was nearly enough to send her flying.

But the
comte
wanted to make her soar. “Then come.” It was nothing less than a command, punctuated by the hard press of his palm against her clit and the bite of his teeth nipping her inner thigh, and she was helpless to resist.

She threw her head back and loosed a silent, gasping cry. The tears escaped, painting hot, salty trails down her cheeks as she fisted the twisted coverlet in sweaty palms. Her lungs pumped like bellows, her heels dug into the
comte
’s satin-covered upper back, and she succumbed to the spasms that drenched her in ecstasy.

A whine caught in her throat when he slowly withdrew his fingers, dropping light kisses along her trembling torso as he crawled up her body. She opened bleary eyes to find him caging her again with his arms and legs. Blinking up at him, she managed a small smile and a languid sigh.

He lowered his head, pausing when the tip of his nose brushed hers. The sweet, musky scent of her arousal clung to his lips, lips that parted to say, “Do you want my kiss now?”

She nodded, unable to form words. Even sated, she longed for his kiss, wanted to erase the fact that Sabien’s were the last pair of lips to caress hers.

“I want to kiss you, kitten.” His tongue darted out to tease the corner of her mouth, quickly replaced by the warm press of his lips. “But first, a question.”

She tried to move her head and capture his mouth. When he reared back to deny her, she looped her arms about his neck. “Ask,” she whispered, feeling the stiffness in his shoulders, the taut strength of tense muscles. “Ask m-me.”

“Do you still want Sabien to be your…your—?” His shoulders lifted beneath her arms in a jerky shrug. “
Un chevalier,
” he finally said, his tone tinged with frustration as the English word failed him.

A knight, he meant, wearing a suit of shining armor, just like in the fairy tales. Did she want Sabien to be the man to rescue her from her silent, tormented life? Or had she, perhaps, found someone else? Someone who didn’t cringe every time she stuttered.

Someone who was looking down at her now with barely leashed desire burning in the depths of his sea-swept gaze.

Claudia wasn’t sure she was ready to choose the
comte
as her means of escape, once and for all. To Paris society, Gaspard Toussaint was a molly…and yet in her presence, he was anything but. The grandeur of his lies worried her. Was a man with that much to hide a man she could trust with her future?

“I d-don’t know.” It was honest. She couldn’t continue on in her current state much longer. If she didn’t choose her own husband, and fast, it would be too late, and she’d be trapped forever with someone her father deemed acceptable.

Her father, who considered calling his daughter a
dumb cunt
an endearment.

The
comte
brushed his lips over hers, not quite the kiss she wanted, nor the one he’d promised. “You need to decide, kitten.”

“I know.” Her time was running out.

“Tomorrow.” He caught her lower lip between his teeth. “Decide tomorrow night, at Baron Denney’s ball.”

Without giving her a moment to argue, his mouth covered hers in a scorching kiss. It wasn’t until early the next morning—long hours after the
comte
had left her bedchamber, her lips still tingling in the aftermath of his possessive kiss—that Claudia realized she had already run out of time.

Chapter Six

12 February 1820

Waiting for her to arrive made Gaspard tense with anticipation and nerves.

Last night, his body aching with unfulfilled need, he had unwillingly dragged himself from her bed. Though Claudia had already seen through his outward persona to the man prowling beneath, he had wanted to stay and prove his masculinity to her. Over and over again, until they were sweaty and exhausted and unable to move.

Of course, she had only seen what he’d
allowed
her to see, he reminded himself. She would never have guessed his secret…not if he hadn’t kissed her, fingered her, licked her to orgasm—the first time he’d set his mouth to a woman, and it had been more intoxicating than his fantasies had ever hinted it could be. Following instinct, he had made the sweet, slick heat hiding between her soft thighs into a meal, the privileged sort of meal he’d never known he wanted during his hungry days in Napoleon’s army.

His mouth watered with the need to taste her again, and his cock thickened where he stood in the ballroom.

Claudia Pascale did something indefinable to him, twisting his insides into painful knots he kept trying to unravel in the hours they were apart. The more he knew her, the more he found her arrestingly beautiful, possessing the sort of beauty that snuck up on a man—as it had on him—with her fair English skin stretched taut over feminine, feline features. Her hair spread across the pristine pillows had caught and reflected in the firelight, turning the strands a thousand different shades from the blackest tea to the most brilliant russet. Her eyes had been so deep a brown as to be almost indiscernible from the pupils, and staring down into them as he loomed above her, a hunter toying with his prey, he’d come close to falling, drowning in those dark depths.

Drowning in Claudia Pascale was unacceptable.

So he’d pushed off the bed, suppressing a wince as his erection strained against the front of his trousers, and stood. His lips had burned from the imprint of hers, his body yearning for what his mind wasn’t ready to embrace. Forcing himself to leave the bed of a woman who made him harder than iron had been a torture unlike any he’d previously suffered.

Gaspard had left, snatching his walking stick from where he’d propped it next to her bedchamber door, and hurried down the hall to the hidden staircase, at the base of which he collected his coat and hat and braced himself for the bitterly cold night air. He’d walked the long blocks to his apartments, erect and angry, and the moment he’d closed his front door behind him, his fingers had attacked the buttons at his trouser fall.