The Corrupt Comte (12 page)

Not. Sabien.

He inhaled deeply, catching the faint scent of tea leaves clinging to her. He found the fragrance as pure and refreshing now as he had in the linen closet. “Clever girl. But I know you want to tell me something.” Hesitation wrote itself across her face, but Gaspard wasn’t about to allow her to hide in silence any more than he had done at the first moment of their meeting. “Last night, I said to decide,” he prompted. “Did you decide?”

Her gloved hands flattened over her middle. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

The muscles at the back of her jaw bunched and flexed. “I p-prefer you.”

It wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for, in terms of declarations, but it was progress. “Prefer, or choose? We do not want you changing your mind later.” Or ever.

“Fine. I
choose
you.” She rolled her eyes at him, something he doubted she would have dared to do at any other man. It seemed that a couple of orgasms from him had given Claudia confidence.

His body tensed at the thought. “Prove it.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Prove you chose me. I dare you.”

Her glare was full of frustrated heat. “I’m st-standing in front of you, not him. I d-don’t know what more p-p-proof you n-need.” Anger colored her cheeks, turning her pretty blush splotchy with each rise and fall of her chest.

“Simple.” There was nothing simple about it, really, but the euphoria sluicing through his veins had turned him slightly mad. “Return the favor I did you last night.”

“F-favor?”

He raised an eyebrow, waiting.

Realization was not a trickle but a flood across her now-familiar features. “You c-cad.”

“Do not say you have not thought about it.”

She moved to stand at his side, her back to the guests, and turned her head to glance up at him before scowling down at the floor.

With his gaze on the crowd, watching for any undue interest in their conversation, he inched his body closer to hers. Leaning in, he traded wicked, whispered words for the chance to inhale her warm scent, a scent which both comforted and aroused. “Do not tell me you are not curious about licking my cock.
Sucking
it.” Drinking him dry.

He barely stifled a shudder of longing.

Her gasp told him how reckless he was being, and perhaps a better man would have retreated, averse to scaring or intimidating a woman he needed to woo. But Gaspard had neither the time nor the patience for wooing, not with the culmination of five years’ worth of covert efforts taking place tomorrow night.

Besides, Claudia wasn’t scared. Frustrated, yes. Irritated with him, probably. Excited? Nervous? He supposed those were normal reactions for a sheltered virgin raised in a wealthy household. But he didn’t feel fear from her, and Gaspard knew himself to be a master of fear, manipulating it at whim. He brokered in fear, his sense of it as finely tuned as that of taste and smell, and nothing in her right now called to that dark, sick part of him.

He didn’t want her afraid, he realized, his gaze locked on the whirling rainbow of dancing guests. He just…wanted her.

She sighed, and he almost smiled. She stood at the edge of his vision, a miffed pastry frosted in pink satin, and his mouth watered with the urge to nibble at her. “I hate you,” she muttered.

“I am certain you believe you do.”

There was a pause as she pondered that. “Wouldn’t you rather d-dance?”

He bit back a scoffing laugh. “No.” No man, no matter his sexual preferences, would ever choose waltzing over willing lips wrapped wetly around his member.

Though her lips might not be so willing. Part of him—a very small, dusty, hidden-away part of him—hesitated, but when her gloved fingers tangled discreetly, tentatively, with his… She didn’t try to hold his hand, to clasp or grip or squeeze, but satin scraped against the calluses on his fingertips, and the lace at his cuff shifted over his scars as she wandered and explored.

A stroke down his middle finger, and he instantly hardened, as if she had given the same slow, purposeful touch to his cock. “Claudia.” His fingers clenched around hers.

“You sh-should know…I’m choosing th-this. You.” He heard her swallow. “You’re not f-forcing m-me, and it’s not a game, like the c-c-closet.”

“This is no game to me.” With his hold on her hand, he led her away from the partygoers, walking backwards and keeping an ever-watchful eye on their surroundings. It wouldn’t do for people to notice. This dare was for her alone, and voyeurs were not invited.

She followed, and he felt her stare on him as they trod a course plotted in his mental schematic of Max’s home. He backed silently through a doorway, listening for chatter and laughter and instinctively rerouting them away, until they reached a secluded corner—a dead-end, darkened hallway that was nothing more than useless architectural space between two rooms. Frivolous, wasted footage, he’d always thought.

Until now.

Gaspard’s shoulders hit the rear wall, pulling Claudia with him as the shadows cloaked them. “So this is your choice.”

The faint glow of lamplight from the sconces in the main hall crept through into their dark corner, glinting in the facets of her bourbon eyes. “Isn’t that what you w-wanted?”

It was, but he was greedy over her, constantly wanting more—the next splintered confession, the newest sensual discovery, the higher leap and greater fall. He needed to push her further with each word from her hesitant lips, his gut whispering,
Nip her, and she’ll bite back. Swipe a paw at her, and she’ll claw your world to shreds.

His justification in singling out Claudia Pascale was nothing elegant or calculated, after all, and it was time he admitted that to himself. This was the bestial, desperate instinct that had kept him alive in the bowels of hell. Instinct called him to action the very first moment he saw her, and instinct had him by the balls now.

This is how you survive.

She tugged at her hand, still caught in his, but he didn’t release her. “M-my lord—”

“Tell me what you did in your bed last night. After I left.”

She glanced over her shoulder, as if worried someone lurked nearby, someone who would overhear. But she was safe in their corner, and she couldn’t escape his demand. A huff of air left her nostrils in a rush. “D-don’t m-m-make m-me.” Her stutter grew more pronounced as her frustration mounted.

“This is your choice, yes?” She hated talking, had every reason to hate it—but as he’d told her in the linen closet, he would never accept silence from her. Not when he could see she had so much to say.

“I thought I was g-going to…” She gestured toward his groin.

Christ.
“You are. But first, I want words. Your words.” Where once desire had stemmed from his need for dominion over her—and what heady power it was, turning a mute into an orator—now he livened to the sound of her voice. Husky from lack of use, vibrant with checked emotion, with painfully precise Englishness rounding every consonant.

Each word from her was special, because each word belonged to him. Gaspard. He owned them.

This time, she succeeded in freeing her hand. “M-mocking m-m-me?”

“Never.” The truth, but what he couldn’t command, he’d entice. “If you tell me, I will tell you.”

“T-tell me what?”

Would she even recognize the reaction she’d wrought in him, if he revealed his actions to her? Would she see that power for what it was and use it to twist him, control him?

No.
No.
No one would control him. Never again. “Tell me of the night in your bed, and I will tell you what I plan to do once I am in it again.” He paused. “And know that your language is…not always easy, for me.” Control. He had the control. “Now speak, kitten.”

Heat laced her glare instead of ice, and he felt a shameful modicum of relief that his domineering behavior excited her, not infuriated her. He rewarded that glare by pressing his lips to the side of her neck.

Her throat moved as she swallowed, her sharp inhalation overloud next to his ear. “You…you left m-me alone in that b-bed.”

He praised her bravery with a hand high on her rib cage, tugging her body closer into his.

“That b-big b-bed. You s-s-saw how m-massive it is.”

His thumb brushed the underside of her breast, deliberately.

“Too m-much b-bed for one woman, d-don’t you think?” A sly, breathless question.

Tease.
He ignored her as his mouth traveled down to her collarbone, the tip of his tongue playing in the dip of smooth, lightly scented skin.

Her breathing changed abruptly, quickening. “I thought you would s-st-stay with m-me.” Her gloved hands lifted to tangle in his hair, and he allowed it. “B-but you…you d-didn’t.”

The implicit question hanging at the end of her sentence begged a response, but her body called to him with far greater urgency. He flattened his other hand beneath her shoulder blades, supporting her as her back bowed beneath the pressure of his lips and the caress of his hand, now cupping her breast.

As he shaped the weight of that breast in his palm, marveling at the heavy, round perfection of it, she tugged at his scalp, a burn of sensation zipping down his spine. “I w-would have let you ruin m-me.” His mind blanked as she forced his head to lift, her direct gaze seeking his. “I would’ve
invited
s-such ruin.”

Her abrupt honesty startled him, and reflex had him squeezing her tit—painfully, he assumed, hearing her hiss in a breath. He loosened his hold, shifting his fingers up to thrum across her barely covered nipple, gratified by how quickly it hardened beneath his attentions.

He didn’t know how to…to
be
with her when he wasn’t seducing her, or baiting her, or thinking only of his endgame. When she told him
her
wants,
her
needs…

Gaspard felt a little drunk. Buzzy and dumb and in need of sobering.

“Would you like t-to know what I d-did, m-my lord, after you left m-my too-big b-b-bed?”

He nodded, his head falling helplessly back in her hands as her fingers began to pet through the messy strands of his hair. His lashes fluttered down until the world through his slitted lids went hazy.

“I touched m-myself again,
Comte
. I thought of ruination at your hand, t-touched myself and c-came.” She punctuated the statement by snagging his bottom lip between her teeth.

He groaned far too loud and trembled much too visibly.

“Now, tell me your s-s-story. Give m-me your words.”

Nip her, and she’ll bite back.

Control. Where was his fucking control? He needed it, was lost without it, and how could she possibly bring him to this—sputtering and stupid and weak-kneed and five seconds from death unless she touched his cock
now
—with nothing more than a few whispered confessions? With nothing more than her soft, giving body trapped against his excruciatingly hard one?

Vixen. Temptress. A too-clever, utterly satanic creature determined to shackle him before he could chain her in a dungeon from which she’d never escape.

He hated her.

And because he hated her, he gently unwound her fingers from his hair and kissed the satin-covered digits before stripping her gloves and tossing them to the floor. He hated her so very much as he planted his hands on the warm, taut flesh of her bared shoulders. He hated her as he pushed her slowly, slowly down the length of his aching body, and hated her again as she dropped to her knees, her innocent pink skirts pooling at his feet. He hated her most of all when understanding lit her gleaming eyes and she had the audacity to lick her lush lips as if she were eager for what was to come. As if she hungered for it.

For him.

This was her punishment, for turning the trap he’d designated as hers around on him and slamming shut those iron bars with no regard for his own plans and schemes. God, but he planned to relish this torture.
Her
torture.

Straightening, he donned a mask of icy determination and cold arrogance, the mask he wore every time he put a male in this position for the sake of his country. He planted his hands on his hips, drawing his shoulders back, and lifted his chin.

Gaspard was the master now.

He waited for Claudia to see it, to recognize it, and the moment her eyes widened and her lips parted, the moment her hands raised to hover in front of her, as though she debated pushing away from him and fleeing their hidden alcove… That was the moment.

“Suck me.”

Chapter Seven

She froze.

One haughty eyebrow arched. “Take out my cock and put it in your mouth.” His hips shifted toward her, as if restless, and that was when Claudia finally looked at the significant bulge disturbing the flat front of his dark blue trousers.

Her jaw slackened. This was what he’d meant about returning the favor, she knew that, but imminent reality was far different from daring banter. A peek up at his unyielding features told her that yes, the
comte
expected her to do exactly as he said. Loose, liquid heat gathered low in her abdomen, the fire he’d stoked with his lips and tongue and seeking hands setting the embers within her glowing once more. Her mouth watered, and she squirmed, uncomfortable on her knees but not daring enough to leave her position.