The Corrupt Comte (28 page)

Tears stung her eyes, and she squeezed them shut, warding off the show of weakness and willing herself to just…just enjoy. Enjoy the pleasure she knew he’d wring from her. But she was rubbish at concealing herself from him, and he lifted his head, breaking their kiss.

She opened her eyes to find him staring concernedly at her. He swiped at her tears with the pads of his thumbs. “
Ne pleure pas,
kitten.”

“St-stop being s-s-so nice to m-me.”

“But I want to be nice to you. I should always be nice to you.” He dragged his lips across hers, slowly, so slowly, and the sensual tug of his mouth battered down the last of her shoddy defenses. She shook beneath him, her arms encircling his neck to cling as her fingernails gouged into broad shoulders, her port in this ferocious, fatalistic storm. “Claudia,” he breathed against her lips, and she curled one leg over his hip in silent response, drawing him down to collapse heavily atop her.

The weight of him was nothing short of miraculous, and she arched and moaned beneath him, urging him into the cradle of her body and sighing in abject pleasure as the head of his erection prodded at her slick entrance. He shifted, cursing in French as he reached between them to adjust himself. His forehead rested against her temple as she listened to his hastened panting, relishing the excitement she stirred in him. Two fingers delved between the plump folds of her cunt, teasing her with the evidence of her desire.

His breath hitched, and he lifted his head. “This,” he said through clenched teeth, stroking her again, “this is for me.” His gaze crackled with the dominance he’d stolen back from her without permission.

She knew what he asked, even if he hadn’t phrased it as a question. “Yes.” Of course it was for him. Silly, stupid, arrogant man. He’d awakened her sexuality, bewitched her spirit. She livened for none but him.

He played at the entrance to her body, dipping the tips of his fingers inside, then retreating, leaving her chest tight with wanting. She writhed under him, raking her nails across his back, encouragement and reprimand in one. His teeth caught her lower lip, and he sucked it into his mouth as he changed tactics and thrust two fingers into her willing body.

She clamped around him in retaliation, knew the sly pleasure of feeling him quake. He’d taught her, through actions if not words, that the responses of her body held him captive, and that her femininity ravaged his self-control to ashes in the wind. It was its own kind of power, one she couldn’t relinquish or trade away because it lived in her. It
was
her, and no matter how thoroughly he exerted his dominion over her, she would always carry the trump card.

A revelation. One she would have welcomed were she still sober, but this man sent her high and left her to flounder above the clouds.

His fingers twisted inside her, curling upward to toy with that secret spot that would send her falling into the abyss she craved. “You are wet because of me,” he muttered, dragging his mouth from hers to find the pulse at her throat, making her gasp. “So wet, so hot and wet, because of
me
.” His accent grew thicker, rougher, matching the fingers he thrust again, more forcefully this time.

She moaned, clawing for that edge, racing ever closer to the extraordinary pleasure he’d promised her. The single honest interaction between them, these intimate moments. “Yes, yes.”

The heel of his palm pressed down on her clitoris, and she cried out as he grated, “Because
you love me
.”

“Yes!” She threw her head back into the pillow, spine bowing off the bed as the first spasms tore through her.

Without warning, he pulled his fingers free and spread her thighs wide. She whimpered, eyes fluttering closed, needing to be filled again, because she was so so so so empty and—

His cock pushed into her on an even, thrilling glide, and they groaned in tandem as she stretched around him. He filled her perfectly, fit her perfectly, and the unceasing rightness of having him so intimately joined with her triggered a second orgasm.

“
Dieu. Dieu
, I feel you. Just you. Oh, fuck.
Putain
.” His arms slid beneath her, and he held her flush against his heaving body, heavy atop her. His hips pumped once, twice, and she clung to him while he shuddered and spilled inside her.

She could feel him coming inside her body.

Even as he collapsed, pressing her deeper into the mattress, he didn’t let go of her. It was only when she whispered that she couldn’t breathe that he rolled them to their sides, bodies locked together in the waning fever of lust. There had been no protection this time—no crinkle of paper, no sheath over his shaft, no fumbling at the root of his erection before he’d plunged into her.

He’d claimed her, it seemed. She was his.

Arranging her knee over his hip, he slid a leg between hers. Without a word, as the last remnants of sated arousal shivered through them both, he wrapped her in his arms and set his forehead to hers.

Eyes closed, she felt his warm breath on her bruised lips just before he kissed her, a soft kiss praising her for the lovesick confession she had given him moments before. She turned her head and shifted lower in his hold to burrow into his shoulder, unable to tolerate that final intimacy.

She couldn’t receive such a kiss, knowing she’d never be allowed to give him a similar one in return. Predators never surrendered, after all—to do so was to become the prey. And no matter what he thought, he hadn’t been the prey tonight. Not in the end.

Ignoring the sudden tension stiffening the protective limbs surrounding her so possessively, Claudia fell asleep and dreamed of a time when she hadn’t known Gaspard Toussaint existed.

Chapter Sixteen

24 February 1820

Claudia strode to the large window in the front parlor of her new townhouse and flung back the heavy brocade drapes. Southern sunlight streamed through the pristine glass panes, highlighting the dust motes disturbed by her sudden action.

“What do you think, child?”

She stared dispassionately out across the tidy front garden, noting the frost-tipped landscaping, the sturdy tree trunks with their barren branches and the elegant wrought-iron fence gating her property from the quiet Mayfair street below. “It’s lovely,
G-Grandpére
. And v-very generous.”

There was a shuffle of feet on the parquet floor behind her—purposeful, she knew, because Amaury Pascale possessed a silent tread that had allowed him to sneak in and out of any number of dangerous rooms in Paris unseen and unheard. “It’s yours,” her grandfather murmured in rumbling French. Her entire life, they’d spoken thusly: him in his native language, her in hers. Somehow, they had always found a means of conversing. “Not your father’s, not your fiancé’s.”

“It’s m-mine until I m-marry,” she corrected, turning her back on the picture of dreary grayness neatly framed by the parlor window.

Amaury scowled at her, worn, wizened features bunching in rejection of her statement. “
Non
,” he retorted. Bushy white eyebrows rose to near-comical heights as he shook an arthritic finger at her. “It’s in your name: C.A. Pascale.”

“Th-those are your initials too,
Grandpére
.”

“Why can you not simply accept what I say?” An angry edge lurked in his tone. “And what I say is that this is your house. Not Auguste’s—” he spat his son’s name, “—or your future husband’s, but Claudia’s. Claudia’s. House.”

“
Grandpére, arrêtez.
” She softened her expression and moved to join him where he stood, an elflike old man dwarfed by the tall ceilings and empty floors of this room, this house. It had been ten years since the last time she’d seen him, and that decade hadn’t been kind to him. “
C’est m-ma maison.
” It’s my house.

Her French seemed to soothe the rough edges of his temper, and he crossed thin arms over his chest, glaring at her without heat. “You need something that’s yours,” he grumbled. “Your father cares nothing for your safety, and your husband-to-be is an aristocrat. What have I always told you, Claudia? Never—”

“—trust an aristocrat.” One of many lessons he’d taught his young granddaughter, unable to shed the paranoia from his years as a spy. “B-because they always have s-s-secrets.”

Claudia had learned her own lesson about secrets. She wanted nothing to do with them.

“That’s right.” Amaury turned in a circle, studying the detailed moulding that lined the edges of the parlor’s high ceiling. “This house is several blocks away from your parents’. I thought you might like that.”

She did, yet over the past few days she had wondered—more than once—if she hadn’t been too hasty to leave her childhood home. Her parents openly hated her, true, but at least she knew where she stood and no longer hungered for their love. To expect a pair so shallow and so selfish to love her was unreasonable, and that was their loss.

No deficiency within
her
made her unlovable. Claudia was not the first person to ever have a stutter. Certainly others with her same condition had loved and been loved.

And though she had wavered, briefly, she reminded herself that her parents had sold her off to the Duke of Évoque, and that she would have spent the rest of her days married to a cold-eyed, cruel-voiced man her father’s age. She remembered that Gaspard had rescued her, in his own way, and she had chosen him…even as she questioned how much of a choice it had been.

He had targeted her, after all. Because of her ten thousand pounds.

Not because of
her
.

The night of their ridiculous engagement ball had only highlighted the farcical nature of their relationship. From the linen closet until that horrid morning in the duke’s foyer, she had permitted him to overwhelm her. She’d fallen in love with his sizzling touches and smoldering glances and the very damaged manner in which he lived his double life. Yet their lovemaking three nights ago, when he’d submitted to
her
…she hated thinking of it as magical.

Magic didn’t exist, no matter what her body tried to tell her.

She hadn’t spoken with Gaspard since he crept out of her bedchamber before dawn, her attention snared by the shocking arrival of her grandfather. How Amaury had even known about her wedding was beyond her, as it quickly became apparent that Auguste had not bothered to inform his father of Claudia’s impending nuptials. He’d been furious at Amaury’s pronouncement that he would be staying through the wedding—and not only that, but giving the bride away himself.

While Claudia had been pleased to hear this, her father was very obviously
not
pleased. Not pleased at all. The tension between the two men made her ponder their relationship as she hadn’t thought to as a child, wondering at the secrets Amaury held and what knowledge Auguste had of them.

Not that she cared about secrets.

And here he was, ten years absent and giving her this modest-yet-elegant London townhouse. It was exactly the sort of home she’d dreamt of living in, back when her dreams were more amorphous goals than actual desires. A husband, a house, children.

She possessed one of the three, and as of tomorrow, she’d have achieved a second. She wasn’t sure she wanted the third. She and Gaspard hadn’t discussed children. Perhaps they’d never have any—she was an only child, with no aunts or uncles or cousins, and while Gaspard had mentioned being one of several children…well, he hadn’t impregnated her yet, had he? She didn’t know how quickly these things were supposed to happen, but she was approaching her menses in a few days’ time. She’d have her answer then.

For now, her grandfather had just offered her an extravagant gift—this house, free of any ties to her past. A safe space in which Claudia could build her future—except her future was forever tied to Gaspard Toussaint, and this lovely structure would house them both, together.

So how safe was it, really?

“Claudia.” Amaury tapped her upper arm to regain her attention.

Shaking off her moroseness, she forced a smile. “Yes,
Grandpére
?”

“How much of your dowry will be left after your husband is done with it?”

Even as surprise held her immobile, she heard the echoing click of low-heeled shoes wandering through the foyer. Those shoes paused—to study the intricately constructed balustrade bracketing the front stair, she was certain—and then continued to the open double doors of the parlor in which she and Amaury stood. “Three thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine pounds.”

Amaury whirled with a scowl. “
Pardon?
”

Gaspard’s stern features were a mask of indifference. “That is how much will be left of Claudia’s dowry after I repay the debts owed against my title. Three thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine pounds.”

A quick mental calculation told her six thousand, three hundred and sixty-one pounds. That is how much she was worth to her fiancé. Not even the full ten thousand. The remainder was simply a bonus, she supposed. It could keep him in peacock-blue frock coats for the rest of his lying life, identical to the one he wore at the moment.

Framed in the creamy paneling that trimmed the doorway, he was…pristine. Cold and distant and really quite handsome, the more she studied him. His attractiveness still managed to catch her off-guard. Gaspard had been lacking when she’d first compared him to Sabien Purvis, whose male beauty was unparalleled, in her opinion. Not unhandsome, per se, but not Sabien. Looking at him now, the man was a splash of vibrant color bleeding into his staid surroundings, living artwork on a canvas of swarthy-skinned ice. His sleeves were tailored, his cuffs stark, his shoes envy inducing, and it wasn’t a costume to her anymore. It was him, just like the peasant’s attire from the night of the Red-and-White Ball, and just like any other garments he might choose to clothe that fine, strong body of his with.