The Corrupt Comte (6 page)

So he kissed her again.

Plush lips, full and giving and everything he’d never known he wanted from the mouth of a woman. With every teasing taste of his tongue between her lips, he matched a stroke to her clitoris, and eventually the tension left her. The truth of her returned desire became evident in the slow rocking of her hips against his hand.

He thrust upward, once, gently.

She moaned into his mouth.

Oh, fuck.

Again his fingers moved, a slick slide into the most luscious heat ever to scald him. His cock ached, bruised with need, demanding to replace his fingers in the sheath of this wriggling female, spread wide and bound for him. He tore his lips from hers to trail damp kisses, more teeth than tongue, down her throat, nibbling at the line of her clavicle.

“Move on my hand,
chaton
,” he growled into sweet skin.

Her panting breaths echoed the rhythm set by his fingers, his thumb. He twisted her skirts between their bodies until he was assured they wouldn’t fall, then placed that hand at the small of her back to tug her into him.

His erection brushed against her hip.

Laving the spot where neck met shoulder, taking her taste onto his desperate tongue, he curled the fingers clasped inside her, discovering a hidden ridge of tissue that, when he pressed, bowed her back. She cried out in pleasure.

“
Oui.
Yes, be loud for me.” Dangerous words, but she was wet. She was so wet, cream he wanted to lap up coating his palm as she rode his hand. He spurred her forward, guiding her halting movements with the hand at her back. “Let go,” he ordered. “Let go.”

“I…d-don’t…I don’t…” Her blindfolded head thrashed to one side, then the other, moaning beautifully in his ear.

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself one more selfish thrust of his cock against her hip before muttering, “
Soumettre.
” He bit down on the tendon between her shoulder and neck hard enough to bruise as he demanded surrender, flicking her clit as fast as he could.

A high, feminine gasp escaped as her orgasm overtook her. She spasmed around him, grasping and needy, and he wished he could join her. Fuck, he was
insane
with the need to join her while she came. Instead, he held her, curving his larger body around hers as she shook, near-silent moans emanating from deep within the cavity of her chest, so palpable he could feel them vibrate through the myriad layers of their clothing.

Because he held her, he sensed the moment she was about to go limp and withdrew his fingers from her greedy body to make quick work of the ties at each wrist, yanking the blindfold from her eyes to stuff in his pocket.

Brown eyes, big and round and glazed with sated desire, stared wonderingly up at him, and Gaspard’s clenched jaw suddenly felt as though it might crack under the pressure. Briskly, he adjusted her gown so it fell neatly to her feet. Then he stepped away.

They watched one another, wary animals both, for several long moments—moments they didn’t have to spare. “We must return,” he managed, voice roughened with barely leashed and completely unsatisfied lust.

She rubbed her wrists. “Yes. We m-must.”

Unable to meet her stare any longer, he snatched the lamp from the shelf behind her, returning it to its spot in the corner of the closet floor before reaching for the door and opening it to a spill of too-bright light from the hallway.

Squinting as she preceded him into the hall, she waited for him to close the closet door behind them—ever the mannerly English miss, he thought with a sneer. “What was that?” she demanded the moment he steered her toward the parlor where the other guests were awaiting their return, likely with breaths bated and eyebrows arched. “What happened to m-me?”

“You were pleasured.” He refused to look at her, knowing she would be flushed. Pretty. As tempting as Satan at the gates of Heaven. He discreetly clenched the hand sticky from her come in the folds of lace at his cuff. He’d have to be careful not to wave that hand around for the rest of the night, especially near Sabien. The man had had enough pussy in his life to recognize the musky scent clinging to his supposedly homosexual friend’s skin. “
I
pleasured you.”

God, even he could hear the barbarian pride in his gruff tone.

“It was…” She hurried to keep pace at his side, not that he bothered slowing his stride. “It was g-good.”

He snorted. “Better than good, kitten.”

What sounded like a growl escaped her. “Words are not m-my f-f-friends, m-my lord. Accept that
g-good
as the c-c-compliment it was.”

He refused to let her make him feel like a heel. “I do not want your compliments.” He didn’t know what he wanted. Her? Her money? No, in this moment, it was definitely her, a fact his ignored erection wouldn’t allow him to forget.

Her hand on his coat sleeve stayed him; her uncertain tone turned him to face her. “Will I s-s-see you again?” Dark eyes, haunted eyes, eyes with far too much need in them begged an answer of him.

“You do not want to see me again.” He eyed the fresh bruise at the sweetly curved juncture between neck and shoulder. He’d been sloppy—no, he’d been a brute, a possessive brute. She couldn’t be allowed to waltz back into the parlor with damnable evidence of his attentions on display for public viewing—that was a risk much greater than spiriting her away to parlor to the closet. Those playing the blindfold game would titter behind their fans at the grand joke he’d had at Claudia Pascale’s expense, and a joke was all it could be, for now. Courtship was out of the question until his covert service to the duke ended.

Not that he planned to court her. Christ, his head was a mess, fevered and dizzy and angry and confused. He had no idea what he was doing, with her or with himself.

It was the task of mere seconds to slip into the empty room next to the closet where the footmen had neatly deposited every coat, cloak and various
accoutrements
from the party guests, where he snatched an embroidered ice-blue wrap made of silk so fine that its owner would surely miss it.

He quickly closed the door behind him and turned to Claudia. “Take it.” He draped the shawl around her shoulders, adjusting its thin layers to properly hide the bruise he’d left behind.

“It’s not m-mine.”

It took real effort to tear his gaze from her neck and the evidence that his teeth had sunk into her so-soft skin. He’d never bitten a woman, and had certainly never felt one climax violently around his fingers when he did so. He tried to remember if he’d ever witnessed a woman coming so hard, coming apart in his arms, on his fingers, under his mouth.

The answer was
no
.

“You are only borrowing it.” He withdrew his hands, allowing Claudia to draw the wrap more securely around her upper body.

Her head remained down-bent. “P-people will know s-s-something happened, if I return with th-this.”

“If they see my mark,
oui
, they might suspect.” He shouldn’t like saying that quite so much—
my mark
, as though he’d branded her like chattel. “But they may only suppose you are cold.”

Accepting his shoddy explanation without further question, she lifted her head and settled her shoulders. A mask of cool confidence stared back at him, revealing no evidence of the wanton young woman who’d moaned into his mouth only minutes earlier. Claudia Pascale was once again the picture of quiet determination she’d presented to the parlor, before their foray into the linen closet, and Gaspard felt as inexplicably drawn to this side of her now as he had then.

Though perhaps the attraction was no longer inexplicable. He was aroused to the point of pain, and as they approached the parlor door, he scrambled to douse the flames she’d ignited. He couldn’t walk back into the parlor with his cock doing battle with the buttons of his trousers. Especially since his cock appeared to be winning.

Think of discovery. Think of death.

Think of the captain’s tent.

That did the trick. As always.

His hand on the doorknob, he paused. “You want Sabien? It is simple.” He couldn’t look at her while he said it. “At the next soirée, ask for his assistance. Draw him away from the crowd.” His stomach clenched tight, but he bit out the rest. “Once you are alone, pull him down and whisper in his ear. Kiss him as I taught you.”
But not so passionately. Not with such wild abandon. And don’t let him get his hand up your skirts.

She nodded, gaze earnest with ugly gratitude. “I will.
M-merci
,
Comte.
”

Unable to stomach her incessant nearness any longer, Gaspard flung open the door and adopted what he hoped was a bored expression as he strode across the hushed parlor toward the corner that housed Sabien and his beloved bottle of bourbon. He didn’t wait to see if she had followed him into the room, knowing she had, the quiet tread of her footsteps moving in the opposite direction to a vacant spot of wall along which she could grow her grasping vines.

What a bitter, unkind wretch he was.

“That was longer than fifteen minutes,” Sabien murmured in French as he stared over Gaspard’s shoulder, and Gaspard knew he was looking at Claudia, just as the rest of them were.

He couldn’t. If he looked in her direction and saw any new awareness gleaming in her eyes, his erection would come back full force, and he’d need to leave the room to…take care of things.

That his fingers—the same fingers bearing her intimate scent—ached to wrap around his cock and pump until seed filled his palm was an urge he must ignore, much as he must ignore Claudia Pascale herself.

He’d set her on the path toward Sabien. Taught her to kiss, stripped her of her virgin barrier, introduced her to pleasure and granted her implicit permission to pursue her future—with Sabien, since that was who she wanted, apparently. If she could convince the lieutenant to kiss her, surely he would fall prey to the drug of her lips.

Gaspard certainly had. But only momentarily.

“I’m afraid I forgot my timepiece when I dressed this evening,” he answered Sabien in an even tone. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me.”

Sabien turned his attention back to Gaspard. “My only worry is that now I’ll have to answer all sorts of awkward questions you might have about the female body.” His voice adopted a teasing note. “Which bit confused you most? A sizable pair of tits like hers can be quite intimidating on the first go…”

So Sabien had noticed her tits, had he? Gaspard struggled to remember his role, too riled over what both had and hadn’t happened in that closet to maintain a perfectly calm demeanor. “I managed.”

Riled, yes, but it was odd—what bothered him most wasn’t his thwarted desire, but that Sabien had been right. There
were
demons in Claudia Pascale’s eyes, and now Gaspard suspected it might have been her parents who put them there. The shadows dulling her gaze had skittered away under his attentions, but the key to their destruction lay not in kisses and petting but in the freedom marriage would offer her.

He’d always assumed most women viewed marriage as men did—the words as lies, the vows as shackles. But for someone like Claudia, marriage appeared to be some paltry form of salvation.

Cynical and jaded, Gaspard decided he pitied Claudia her hopes. In her quest to rid herself of her present situation, she was vulnerable to scads of dissolute rakes and fortune hunters, bored men and poor men and every variation of man to be found in between.

Sabien’s hesitancy notwithstanding, most males would overlook a stutter—a stutter that hadn’t bothered him in the least—for ten thousand pounds. And Gaspard was one of them.

If his time working for France was truly coming to a close, then there was no reason he shouldn’t plan for a future. A future that involved his title, his castle. Money. Women. A woman. Just the one. He only needed one.

Sex with multiple partners through the years had driven home one hypothesized fact, which he had as yet been unable to test—that Gaspard was a monogamous man. To not have to worry about who his next fuck was…it sounded luxurious—decadent, even.

He’d learned safety at the hands of his tormentor and wore a protective sheath for each and every sexual encounter. A majority of his income went to the purchase of such precautionary measures, the stingy remainder to his costuming and rent. With a wife, however, he wouldn’t need a sheath. He could be bare in her. Gloriously bare.

Christ
, to feel a woman, and nothing but her.

Nothing…but her.

But before he thought of
her
, he had to think of himself, and his ball and chain: the mountain of debt attached to the title he’d inherited.

He needed money, soon.

Claudia had money, now.

His solution was simple. Woo her—secretly, because he could scarce afford to raise undue suspicion—then wed her. He would be saved, she would be stuck, and together they’d…live. That castle of his wasn’t a home now, but perhaps it could be, with Claudia’s help.

As if the devil possessed his tongue, he found himself asking, “Is there nothing about her you find appealing?”

Sabien sighed, scratching along his jaw where his night beard was just starting to shadow the skin. “I suppose…if she didn’t talk, bedding her might not be such a hardship.”

Gaspard’s back teeth clenched. “If they can talk, you’re doing it wrong. A universal law of fucking.”