The Corrupt Comte (5 page)

Of course not. She was using Gaspard as much as he was using her, with the notable exception that he knew he was being used, whereas she did not. How naïve was she, to think a man would maneuver a woman into being alone with him out of some Samaritan-like desire to hasten a friend into holy wedded bliss? Foolish girl.

And how girlish was she? “What is your age?”

“Twenty,” she breathed as he dropped his other hand to her waist, feeling the lightly boned corset beneath that shaped the curved indent of her torso.

His thumb stroked over her jawline, his hand lifting her chin aloft as his mouth traced a path of kisses across the plane of her chest. Twenty was good. Twenty was an adult, not a child. Twenty meant she’d been on the marriage market for more than one season and her desperation was likely no dramatic, juvenile pronouncement.

She wanted to escape her parents’ household. What was happening to her there?

No, he wouldn’t ponder it now. Now was for the rising bubble of lust traveling from his heavy groin to tingle up his spine until it burst at his nape, making his vision blur and his ears ring. Yet he wasn’t so blind he couldn’t see her stiff shoulders settle into relaxation, nor so deaf he couldn’t hear her sigh of layered longing, tonally different by miles than the sound of defeat.

Claudia Pascale wouldn’t tell him no.

His hand tightened on her waist as he straightened, stepping into her so that his feet tangled with hers beneath the hem of her skirts. The lamplight cast her in muted gold, leaving her lovely but still no great beauty. The fingers cupping her face slid to splay over the side of her neck, his thumb tipping her chin up, up to him, and he leaned down, in, until his lips brushed against her parted ones in a ghost of a kiss.

She gasped.

In the past, when he’d managed to sneak away to the seedy brothels located as far from this Parisian neighborhood as possible, Gaspard hadn’t kissed the whores. He knew too much of their trade to want his mouth anywhere near theirs.

He’d only kissed men, or been kissed
by
men, for a decade. First forced upon him, he’d soon learned to use them—the kisses—as a lure, a tool. If he willingly kissed his tormenter, he could avoid some of the more distressing tortures that took place in the captain’s tent. Years later, he withheld his mouth from the men with whom he flirted, until they begged him for a taste. A taste he refused to grant until he had the information his employer needed.

So this, here, with Claudia Pascale…it was his first kiss. First with a woman. First in any way that counted.

He refused to feel anything over it. “Say no,
chaton
,” he dared her, lips caressing hers with each word. “Tell me you do not want this.”

Her eyes drifted shut. “B-but I
do
.”

Which made her far more honest than he, and to squelch that pinprick of belated conscience, his mouth covered hers. Her lips gave beneath his, parted, a surprised release of flushed, pink flesh. He closed his eyes, breath halting in his chest as the tip of his tongue swept along the satin-soft curve of her lower lip. He tasted the slight tang of sweet wine as he dipped inside, mapped the battlements of small white teeth. When her tongue tentatively met his, all tension left his body on a harsh sigh.

The hand at her waist slipped around to palm her lower back, tugging her forward as much as her bindings permitted, aligning the peaks and valleys of her torso with the firm plane of his. A flood of heat flashed through his veins, searing him, and he slanted his lips over hers, excitement sizzling just beneath his skin.

Kissing a woman was
nothing
like kissing a man. A woman eliciting a breathy moan reduced him to a pile of ash. A woman dancing her tongue past his lips turned him hard as stone. A woman straining forward, her arms bound on either side of her body, her throat taut beneath his fingertips as she tried to get closer, closer to him, as though determined to crawl inside his soul…it drove him to the precipice of insanity, and he teetered on the edge as he gripped her to him.

She was a feast for a starving man, and Gaspard had lived too long in famine.

So long, in fact, that he stood a heartbeat away from forgetting who he was as he reveled in who he could be. Her lips moved under his, offering him a taste of madness as she sipped from his mouth. A dangerous shiver snaked down his spine, urging him to delight in her response—in his own response—but it couldn’t last.

He needed a clear head if he meant to tempt Claudia and her ten thousand pounds away from Sabien. Dimmed but not doused, his lust receded warily, though a throbbing force within him ached to tease, to play with her as he’d promised. Catching her upper lip gently between his teeth, he sucked it, nipped at it, wanting to sting as he’d been stung. His voice was hoarse when he opened his eyes and said, “Your first lesson.”

Dark lashes fluttered upward to reveal even darker irises. Warm color mottled her cheeks, her parted lips bitten to raspberry redness. “K-kissing?”

“Kissing.” The hand at her throat traveled across her shoulder, over the bared skin of her upper arm, and the supple muscle bunched tight. Her arms must be hurting by now, given the way she’d fought against her bonds, and in all the deviant games he believed he enjoyed, causing Claudia real pain was not one of them. His fingers reached for the knot at her wrist.

“No.”

He froze. “No?”

“D-don’t…don’t release m-me,” she whispered. “Unless our t-time is up?”

Time.
Damn it, Gaspard had forgotten they had only limited minutes together in the closet. Their time likely
was
gone, and one kiss wasn’t enough to sway her, no matter how incendiary. “I am not finished with you.” He stepped away from the wicked heat of her body. “One lesson will not teach you all you need to know,” he said, reminding them both of just whom she was learning for.

“Another kiss?” Eagerness gave her hushed words vibrant life.

“I think a different lesson.” Even though he wanted his mouth on hers again, that madness beckoning, her lips a siren song destined to strand him on the rocks. His mind raced with possibilities, any means for turning her in her affections. “Submission.” Saying the word left him cold then hot, memories of the past sidling close to rub and purr against the reality of his present.

She blinked, confused, and inched back against the shelf. “S-s-submission,” she repeated without inflection.

He knelt to snatch the blindfold from where it lay half-hidden beneath the hem of her gown, then stood, dangling the strip of fabric in front of her. “Cede me your control, kitten. You will find freedom in it,
je vous promets
.” A promise he needed to keep, for both their sakes.

Indecision warred in her dilated eyes. Her tongue darted out, dampening that plump lower lip before asking, “I let you d-do as you wish, and…and you’ll k-kiss m-me again?” There was hunger in her husky voice.

That, and so much more. “
Oui.
”

“All right, then.” She seemed to brace herself, her longing gaze dropping to his mouth. “D-do it.”

Carefully, he laid the satin blindfold across the bridge of her nose, wrapping it around her head and tying a swift knot below the coil of hair at her crown. Her unsteady breaths heated his lips where they hovered over hers.

Gripping the shelf on either side of her head, he leaned into her, letting her feel the hard press of his body and how easily he could overpower her, even without her restraints. His hips pushed his erection into the giving softness of her abdomen.

This was new, all of it new, and he hated rushing them though he knew he must. The ominous ticking of an imaginary pocket watch echoed in his ears, counting down the moments that remained for them, together. A scowl she couldn’t see etched across his features, Gaspard bent to her ear. “Spread your legs.”

She tensed before he felt her shifting, widening her stance. “Like this?”

Yes, just like that, that’s what he wanted. His hands left the shelf to coast down the rounded curves of her body. He let his hips grind against her once more, an acute torment, before fisting the cool fabric of her skirts in both hands.

Swiftly, he lifted her gown, pretending he hadn’t heard her nervous gasp as he exposed her legs to the closet air. A glance down revealed shapely stocking-clad limbs he wanted wrapped around his waist at the soonest opportunity—preferably while he drove his body into hers, repeatedly. But the soonest opportunity wouldn’t be tonight, or ever if he couldn’t make her come in the next minute or so.

Because that was what Gaspard had to do—make her come, and make her want him more than she wanted Sabien. What other recourse was open to him? As soon as they left this closet, she would find out who he was.
What
he was. And then she’d never let him near her pretty person again.

Adjusting his hold on her skirts to one hand, he used the other to slide between those silky thighs, up and up until his fingers cupped her mound. He couldn’t resist leaning back to catch a glimpse of the dark triangle of curls gently abrading his palm.

“
Regarde-toi, chaton,
” he muttered, slipping into intimate, familiar French before he could stop himself.

“I c-can’t look.” Her thighs attempted to close around his hand, self-consciously—and belatedly—trying to keep him from seeing her most private area. She squirmed against the shelf. “What are you—?”

She cut off with a choked wheeze as his middle finger parted the lips of her cunt. “Submission,” he reminded her. He needed her to melt for him.

“I d-don’t know what that m-means,” she snapped back, “b-but I’m fairly cer-certain what you’re d-d-doing right now is what m-most women would c-c-consider an invasion of p-p-privacy.”

He smiled at the bite in her proper English voice, at all those syllables that just spilled out of her and onto him. It made him want to bite her in return, though not with words. Giving in to the urge, he nipped at her chin. “You do not like what I do to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing to m-me!” She heaved out a trembling breath wreathed with frustration. “What
are
you doing, m-my lord?”

He removed the hand between her legs, bringing the tips of his fingers to his mouth and licking before sliding them back home again. This time when he caressed her parted flesh, he got the reaction he’d been waiting for.

She shuddered. “That…that is…” Her thighs relaxed, widening even more in welcome for his attentions.

Attentions he had no trouble offering. He found the nub of her clitoris with two wet fingers, peeking through the shield of soft curls, and stroked it. “
Bonne?
” Good?

Her “Yes” came to him on a sigh that raised the tiny hairs on the back of his neck.

Another stroke, this time with his thumb as his fingers slid to circle the opening of her body, and a rush of wetness slicked over the digits. “Do you touch yourself here?” He breathed in her scent, found in excess just beneath her ear.

She shook her head vehemently.

His teeth lightly scored the strained tendon along the side of her neck. “Answer me, kitten.”

“N-no, I haven’t.” Her hips jerked, pushing her sex further onto his petting hand, making his fingertips wet with her cream.

The pad of his thumb rubbed faster and faster over the sensitive top of her clit, something he’d been taught by the last whore he’d bedded, nearly a year ago. As she responded, instantly, beautifully, he tested the entrance to her body for evidence of her virginity…and found it.

More
, his mind urged feverishly.
Take more. Take it all
.

Take it so that Sabien cannot
.

Massaging the barrier of tissue with faint pressure, he distracted her with words. With knowledge. “You should.”

Her lower body began to writhe, every move rhythmic, hypnotizing. “Sh-should what?”

A little more pressure on her hymen, a little more speed on her clit. His fingers spread her moisture around, opening her cunt lips to his seeking touch. “Should touch yourself. Here.”

“Why w-w-would I d-do th-that?” She was panting now, gasping.

“Because it feels good.” She felt good, so good. Wet. Aroused. Almost as aroused as he was, his cock thick and heavy in his trousers, and so sensitized—without so much as a single stroke from his hand—that the linen smallclothes he wore might as well have been burlap against his balls. “Because I get hard imagining you pleasuring yourself in bed. Alone.”

Another gush of wetness onto his fingers. “Hard?”

“
Oui.
” He couldn’t avoid it any longer. “This may hurt.”

“What—?”

His two middle fingers broke through the thin barrier of her virginity, instantly gloved in the hot, tight channel of her body. He permitted himself a silent shudder as his cock pulsed with painful, unsatisfied need.

She flinched, hissing, and clenched like a vise around the intrusion of his fingers. “Not s-s-so g-good.”

I’ll make you feel good again, kitten.
He adjusted his hold on the bunched layers of her gown as he continued to circle his thumb over her stiff nub, holding the fingers inside her still, knowing she needed to adjust.

Wishing he had been allowed that same courtesy long years before.

They were out of time—he knew it, could feel that pocket watch breathing down his neck, but he’d just stolen her maidenhood without so much as a blink or a warning. As much of a bastard as he was, even he knew this was the one moment that should not be rushed.