The Corrupt Comte (27 page)

He trembled noticeably, his heavy body strung with tension as she feasted her senses on him. The exposed underside of his hard cock brushed against her throat, velvet covered and iron forged, and he inhaled sharply at the contact. Her fingertips dug into the taut flesh at his hips, squeezing, bruising—God, she hoped she bruised him, because this complicated, angst-riddled, spying French bastard deserved to wear her mark, much as she’d once worn his. Her tongue trekked over the flat expanse of belly that quivered in ticklishness, until her nose found the furry trail nearly hidden by his aroused shaft.

She licked him.

The flat of her tongue swept up the side of his cock, from root to crown, eliciting a strangled noise from above. His hands tried to tangle in her hair, but she swatted them away, blinking open her eyes to glare her reprimand. “T-try that again, and I’ll b-bind
your
wrists this t-t-time.” She fisted his length. “
C-comprends
?”

“
Oui
.” Somehow, that one word managed to sound regretful…and yet not, at the same time.

Perhaps…perhaps he wanted her to tie him up? Her mind stuttered at the thought. If he did it again—if he disobeyed…

Pulling his foreskin back, she stared up at the
comte
. “Watch m-me,” she commanded as she took his head between her lips.

He groaned, a harsh, aching sound, and shook in her grasp. Her other hand moved from his hip around to his buttocks, and she gripped one rounded cheek, unashamedly groping, massaging. He thrust forward in response, sending his thick cock farther into her mouth. “Sorry, sorry,” he wheezed, and attempted retreat.

She sank her nails into his backside and sucked him deeper. Drank in his scent, his taste, the vision of his muscular torso, until her gaze traveled up to meet his. Dilated pupils left only a slivered ring of tempestuous blue to watch her, and watch her he did. His face was flushed, pink and healthy, and his lush mouth parted as he panted audibly.

Gorgeous sight. Gorgeous man.

Tightening her lips, she slid down until the head of his cock touched the back of her throat, then up again to play with the ridge beneath the spongy head. A rush of salty heat landed on her tongue, and she shuddered in sordid rapture, growing wetter between her legs. Oh, but she
liked
this power. She liked the noise he made when she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, teasing the slit at its tip—somewhere between a pained grunt and a desperate whimper.

She felt his hands near her head, and scraped her teeth gently down the length of his shaft in warning.

His head fell back with a grunt. “Claudia…”

She lifted her head, one hand still fisted around the base of his cock surrounded by tight, tawny curls, the other clutching his bottom. “No.” She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, because if she knew one thing about this man, it was that he manipulated words as easily as he’d manipulated her.

“But—”

“No. I have c-control.” Her voice sounded cold and foreign to her ears, in stark contrast to the fire sizzling in her belly, and she watched as her words jerked him out of his lust-filled haze. His cock throbbed in the circle of her fingers as she squeezed. “Tonight, this is m-mine.” She pumped her fist along his shaft once, just so he’d know exactly what it was she had claimed. “Isn’t that what you s-said?”

Blue eyes narrowed. “This is what I said, yes.”

“Have you changed your m-m-mind?”

He paused. “
Non.
”

“B-because if you have, I’ll s-s-send you f-from here. Just like this, naked and…and aroused. And you’ll g-go, because I am the one in c-control.” His jaw clenched, but he said nothing, and the gleeful, angry being that had taken up residence inside her couldn’t resist another taunt. “S-so what lesson is this, Gaspard? What am I learning t-tonight?”

His brow furrowed as he took her question seriously. “To trust me,” he said after a moment.

“But I don’t.” She couldn’t trust him, and yet she would marry him. The price for her naïveté, a lifelong reminder of her willingness to believe in one man.

The hands hanging at his sides clenched into sudden fists, and, riding instinct, she flinched backward, releasing her hold on his erection, on him.

When she glanced up at him, his face was a blank mask. “You fear me. After everything, you still believe I would hurt you.”

Not fear, exactly, but trepidation. Intimidation. She’d been trained long ago by a backhanded blow that had bruised her jaw so badly she hadn’t been able to chew her food for two weeks. The first of many such blows, until the governess arrived, and then her father couldn’t leave bruises on her face anymore.

She rarely thought about those early years, and the violence that had marred them, avoiding those memories with the same instinct that had her retreating from her fiancé’s bigger, stronger frame. Too difficult to explain, with so many words that could trip and tumble and leave her tongue-tied in front of him, she said only, “I don’t t-trust you.”

Her power began to trickle away, leaving in its wake the unsettling urge to cry. That urge crept steadily up the back of her throat and tickled her nose and teared up the corners of her eyes.

She slid off the bed and turned, presenting him with her back. She had an aroused, virile young male in her bedchamber, offering to bend to her whim, and she planned to take full advantage of such largess while she could still pretend their marriage wasn’t a disaster waiting to happen. Eventually, reality would come crashing down on her, but for now, she was Voluptas, the goddess of sensual pleasures, and she would not be denied the bliss he owed her.

“Undress me.”
Worship in comeuppance for your sins against me.

Nothing.

Frustrated, she peered over her shoulder at him. “Gaspard?”

He was frowning, displeasure tempered into something resembling confusion. “You say you do not trust me, yet you want that I should undress you? You…desire me?”

She sighed and faced away from him again, closing her eyes in an effort to stem embarrassing evidence of her runaway emotions. “Of c-course I desire you, Gaspard. I love you.” Finally, finally, she’d admitted the disaster of her situation aloud.

A choking noise behind her. “You—”

No
. “Undress me.”

His blunt fingertips immediately fumbled with the small, satin-covered buttons running from her nape to just below her shoulder blades. Short, uneven gasps of air puffed against her ear as he worked his unsteady way down her back. An odd calm descended upon her as she gathered the mass of her tangled hair and twisted it over one shoulder, bending her head to allow him greater room to work. When he reached the last button, he gripped the open panels of her gown but didn’t move to strip her of it.

Instead, he dipped his head, dropping a light kiss upon her exposed nape. He stepped into her, heat from his naked body buffeting her in pulsing waves, and kissed her at the curve between neck and shoulder. A line of gentle kisses, trailing along the ridge of her shoulder until his lips met the sleeve of her gown. His hands parted, drawing the dress down her arms. When it caught at her waist, she sensed him lowering into a crouch behind her as he gently tugged the garment the rest of the way down. His hand cupped one ankle, encouraging her to step out of the gown so he could pull it away.

She couldn’t resist a glance at him, below her, at her feet. The warm glow of light from the room’s wall sconces highlighted the decadent contours of his upper back. As he divested her of one evening slipper, then another, she placed a hand on his shoulder for balance. He looked up at the touch.

A startled breath choked her. His was wild, fearsome, as if it were taking all his effort to leash something terrifying inside him—and he was losing the battle. After a long moment where their gazes clashed and her excitement mounted once again, he dropped his head and, without a word, reached beneath her drawers to roll down her stockings.

He was too good at playing the supplicant, doing as she bid him—undressing her, but slowly, carefully. Methodically. His hands no longer trembling, he loosened the tie at her waist and divested her of her drawers, and her hand fell away from the solidity of his shoulder.

He stood and moved behind her, and she planted her heels into the rug to resist the jerk and pull of her stays as he freed her from their confines. Her growing arousal and the strange lull that had fallen when he began undressing her warred in her chest, lungs rusted and heart pumping to an awkward beat. The docility with which she raised her arms and allowed him to draw the chemise—her final garment—over her head jarred with the tempest roiling within her.

Her breathing wasn’t any steadier than his as she stared blindly at the bed. Big, empty. Less…less
loud
than the bed in Paris, but carrying just as threatening a taunt.
Use me,
it beckoned.
Taint me.
White linens and whiter pillows beckoned.

His gaze wandered down her backside, an invisible caress, and she swore she could feel his palms skate over her shape, hovering less than an inch from her bared skin. But he didn’t touch, didn’t presume yet another liberty she hadn’t permitted.

He simply stood behind her, watching so intently she felt pummeled by it.

“Command me.”

Watching and
waiting
. He was waiting for her to continue their game, except it didn’t feel like a game anymore. She’d told him she loved him, and now she wished to draw the words back inside and bury them deep. She, who guarded her speech with miserly intent, had spoken carelessly for the first time in her life, the words torn from her by his relentless battering of her senses.

She hated him. No, no, she loved him. The manner in which she confessed her weakness did not negate the fact that what she’d said was true. She loved him. It hurt—no, it
tortured
her, the loving of him, but it was the truth, had been the truth from nearly the beginning of this farcical drama, and she hated the bastard and loved him and then tried hating him all over again.

But the hate simply wouldn’t take. A sob caught in her throat, and she lifted a hand to stifle it, a second too late. His arms banded around her like a fortress. Like a promise. He drew her against his body, his unabated arousal pressing into the base of her spine, and lowered his face to her hair. Nuzzling the top of her head, he crooned in a gravelly voice, “Shhh,
chaton
,
ne t’enquiétes pas.
”

“I’m not f-f-fretting,” she mumbled, closing her eyes as he enveloped her in awful, wonderful warmth. When one rough palm stroked down her naked arm, she shivered helplessly, resentment flaring over the reactions he continued to draw from her. “I sh-should’ve b-bound your hands.”

“Another time, you may do so. For now…” He pressed his lips to the top of her ear. “Tell me what you want.”

“I don’t—”

Capable hands skimmed down her front. “Do you want me to seduce you?” He cupped her heavy breasts, one in each hand, overflowing his kneading fingers. “Suckle you?” His thumbs thrummed over her hardened nipples, and she squirmed. “I could make you come like this,” he breathed into her ear. “Do you want to come like this?”

She shook her head vehemently, opening her eyes as she tried to escape. He reluctantly released her, and she whirled, losing her footing and falling back onto the bed. She looked up at him, mouth open and panting, needing to see his eyes. Needing to know if he’d caged that feral beast pacing inside him.

He hadn’t. There remained an unholy light in his gold-lashed gaze, and he stalked forward, a predator once more. Bracing his arms on either side of her hips, he leaned over her, stopping only when his mouth was a hair’s-breadth away from hers. “Order me to pleasure you, kitten.” His teeth flashed in a devil’s grin. “
Demand
it.”

Their eyes locked, fought. Her nape prickled in awareness. She broke out in a sweat. She could barely breathe, oxygen burning like hellfire in her lungs. “Pleasure m-me,” she whispered.

With a growl, his lips claimed hers, claimed
her
, and she fell back on the bed. He moved over her, sleek and feline, and she felt his knees at her hips, his hands never ceasing their movement as they stroked possessively over her body. His tongue lapped at her. His teeth nipped. His mouth was an unyielding portent of things to come, and she feared she was at the top of the list.

Thoughts blurred and senses heightened, she settled her hands first on his upper arms, flexing with corded muscle, then danced her palms over his strong shoulders to his neck, uncertain of where to land.

“Yes, touch me,” he muttered against her lips. “Like that. Ah,
bébé
, how you touch me…”

He was the very devil when he spoke, and she cupped his jaw between her palms and held him to her, tilting her head and shifting beneath him to urge him closer. She needed him to feed her desperate hunger, to give her something tangible on which her aching soul could feast, and she loved him.

Oh, how she loved him. It reeked of madness, a frantic refrain pounding at her temples and loosening her tongue and ripping her heart to shreds, because she knew he didn’t love her in return. He desired her money and her body…and for some reason he’d entrusted her with his secrets. But he didn’t love her, and she wanted never to see him again as much as she wished to never be parted from him, and that hurt was so, so, so great.