The Corrupt Comte (19 page)

God help her, she was.

Her fingers found the back of his head, tunneled through the strands of his hair, clutching him to her. “N-never S-S-S—” Her tongue ceased to work when his found the hollow spot at the base of her throat. Warm, wet, circling strokes that laved her skin, tasted it. Her eyes fluttered shut.

He teased her as her nipples hardened to painful points beneath her gown. “Sabien does not have you. Évoque does not have you.” His hand at her hip squeezed before banding around her waist to haul her into the heat of his body. “I have you.”

Again, he shifted, and this time she felt the pronounced evidence of his arousal against her hip. She wriggled, helpless not to, her limbs suddenly liquid and heavy. “Kiss me,” she begged breathlessly, staring dazedly into the starry black abyss found behind her eyelids. “G-Gaspard…”

He slanted his mouth over hers, thrusting and claiming with a tongue that seemed almost desperate as she opened for him. It was so easy to dance this way, her tongue meeting and mating with his and melting her very bones as she gave this demanding, possessive male holding her exactly what he wanted.

“I will never let Sabien have you.” He breathed the confession against her lips. “
Jamais, jamais, jamais.
” Never.

She trembled as he kissed her again, reveling in the press of their bodies, the unyielding strength with which he held her, the gentle scrape of his stubbled chin against hers as he angled her to his preference. Over the din of her racing pulse and panting breaths, she heard the low, animalistic noises rumbling in his chest, grunts of growing need, and she responded to those sounds.

Oh, how she responded, a fire set to her belly. Gripping his shoulders, she tore away from the kiss and hauled herself upright. His hands moved to her waist as he intuited what she meant to do, supporting her as she repositioned herself to straddle his lap. Her knees found space on either side of his body, pressed tight between the arms of the chair, but soon both Claudia and the fluffed layers of white satin were settled securely over him.

Unable to wait and unwilling to let him speak, she palmed his jaw in her shaking hands and drew him to her, her lips finding his, parting his, tasting his. His fingers fumbled with the intricate row of small buttons running down her spine. He plucked and tugged, blind as he let her kiss him, wild in his response. Her gown loosened, the short, capped sleeves drooping down her upper arms.

His impatience got the better of him, and he pulled back from her, brusquely brushing aside her hands. “Sit,” he commanded, and though she bristled at the order, she settled her weight on his thighs as she tugged at her sleeves in a silly attempt to retain some modesty.

Modesty was the absolute last thing she needed right now.

One arm held her around the waist as he reached past her, down toward his feet, straightening moments later with a long, wicked-looking blade gripped in his scarred hand.

She stiffened instinctively, her gaze snapping from the knife to his face and its determined expression, and back again to the weapon. “W-w-what are you g-going to…going to d-do? With th-that?”

He scowled at her, displeased. “I will not hurt you.”

“That’s a knife.”

“
Oui.
” He brought it between them. Firelight reflected on the gleaming surface. “And your dress must go.” Without warning, he let go of her waist to grip the top of her bodice, set the edge of the blade to the scooped neckline of the gown and sliced through satin with fluid ease.

The ruined halves of her gown parted to reveal— “Wait!” She grabbed at the split fabric, trying to cover herself again, but he snatched her hands as he dropped the knife carelessly to the carpet beside the chair.

Jerking the ripped panels of heavy white satin apart, he revealed the undergarments beneath her bodice—the undergarments she’d purchased just that morning with him in mind. He froze with a long indrawn breath. “
Mon Dieu,
what is this?” His touch seemed almost tentative as his fingertips traced the lacing binding her from sternum to navel. “Claudia. Claudia, I…” His voice was awed, reverent, and he shook his head.

With a sigh, she drew the sleeves down her arms until the remains of the ruined gown pooled low around her hips. She straddled him wearing the most provocative red
lingerie
she’d been able to find in the shops on such short notice, an expedition out into Paris she was still surprised she had so sneakily accomplished. She’d forgone a chemise and drawers, which was more than a little uncomfortable, and as she maneuvered her body off the chair to stand before him—the gown falling to her feet in an ominous
whoosh
—the lace-and-satin garters holding up her sheer silk stockings were revealed.

The
piece de résistance
, however, was the short corset in a deep blood red, cinched tight over her ribs with satin ribbon so dark a red it appeared black in the flickering firelight. No straps bound her shoulders, the corset lightly cupping the undersides of her breasts as their nudity—and the bared apex of her thighs—was presented to his gaze.

He sat in silence, heavy-lidded eyes traveling over her, so potent that it felt like a caress along every naked inch of her body. He stared intently at the curls covering her mound, and she felt herself grow traitorously damp. She was on display, backlit by the hearth, and she knew he wanted her.

That telling bulge in his lap said how much.

She’d never been so visible in her life, and discomfiture wracked her. Her arms itched to cover her chest, her knees threatening to knock together in an effort to conceal her sex, but she couldn’t—
could not
—let fear rule her. Not tonight. This was the last time she would make a choice, an active choice, and reap the rewards of it.

Tomorrow she married a cold-eyed duke. She’d likely never return to England, would never see her grandfather again. And there was nothing she could do about it.

This was the great injustice of being female, because to be a woman—a young, stuttering, friendless woman, with hardly a pence to her actual name—was to be utterly powerless.

But tonight, standing in front of the
comte
, Claudia acknowledged the heady zip of excitement testing the limits of her daring, and settled her hands on her hips, watching him watching her. “F-for you.” Because she was, absolutely, for him.

He nodded dumbly, his jaw clenched. His brilliant eyes had taken on a glazed look. “You knew I would come to you.”

She hadn’t known. “I hoped.” And she’d lost that hope briefly, to disastrous effect.

Again he nodded, but his gaze grew calculating. “Take it off.”

Hesitation gripped her. Even in her bed the other night, when he’d put his mouth to her, she’d still had the security of her
négligée
, little protection though it had offered. To be truly naked in front of a man,
this
man, was…intimidating.

What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if there was some flaw to her person she didn’t know about that made her unappealing? What if—

“Take it off,
chaton
. All of it.”

She reacted immediately to the silky threat in his voice.
Take it off…or I leave.
She kicked off her heeled dancing slippers.
Take it off…or I do it for you.
She loosened the ties of her garters, the sharp dig of them into her skin relieved as she rolled a delicate stocking down each leg, using her toes to fling them to the side.

When there was nothing left but the corset, she paused, hands hovering, trembling, over the satin bow knotted beneath her breasts. She looked at him. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you…? Will you…?” She bit her lip, frustrated and nervous. “Are you g-going to k-keep your…your c-c-clothing on?”

“You want to see me, kitten?” His tone was sly, a seductive rumble that teased a shiver down her spine. “
D’accord
.”

She held her breath as he tugged the kerchief from his neck. His fingers made quick work of the buttons on his plain vest, and he leaned forward to shrug out of it, then fisted the back of his simple shirt in one hand to pull it over his head. She caught his wince from the jostling to his injured arm before his decadent torso distracted her completely.

Bronze in the flickering firelight and as broad as his finely tailored, foppish coats had always hinted at, the
comte
was strength embodied. Heavy upper arms curved with tensed muscle, skin taut and smooth where it stretched over his sturdy shoulders. His chest was cut and firm with pale brown nipples and covered with a light fleece of curls, gold-tipped and tawny, much like his lashes and brows and the hair dusting his corded forearms. His abdomen lay flat, muscles grouped and delineated in a way that artists had often attempted to replicate on canvas or in marble, but as she watched his stomach rise and fall with harsh breaths, she realized those great masters had never accurately captured the living beauty of a man’s body.

Not one this ready, this primed.

He lounged back in the chair, on display for her greedy gaze, and without thinking, she found the ends of the corset ribbon and pulled free the knot.

“Slowly, slowly,” he murmured, shifting as he stared at her bared breasts, her working hands.

As though stringed like a marionette, her hands responded to the control of his voice and slowed. One slippery slide of satin after another, she pulled the ribbon ends free, until the corset gaped and loosened. She watched him watching her, excitement thrilling through her as he brought up a scarred, weathered hand to scrub across his parted lips, and this time, when he shifted, his other hand fell to the hard shape of his cock beneath his trousers and squeezed. Stroked.

It inflamed her.

As the corset fell to her feet, she acted on impulse and tossed him the ribbon she’d removed, inch by inch. He snatched it out of the air, gathering the satin in one fist as the other moved again over his erection.

She pressed her thighs together.

Staring as he was, he noticed, and those tempestuous eyes flicked up to meet hers. “You like this? You like being naked for me?”

She shrugged, because she’d rather tell him that what she actually liked was how confidently, how comfortably he fondled himself. He had stroked his shaft for her last night, in the final moments before he’d come in her mouth, but this was different. It lacked the urgency, and therefore seemed far more lewd.

Every day with the
comte
she discovered just how much she
liked
lewd.

Which he now intuited. “Or you like what I am doing with my hand.” He pocketed the ribbon, sliding down farther on the chair, trouser-clad legs spread rudely as he gripped his manhood through the cheap wool. “Like this,
bébé
?” One long stroke and her insides clenched, wanting.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her arms hung limply at her sides. “Yes, I like th-that.”

“Yes,” he repeated on a low hiss. His stomach muscles jumped, and he shifted restlessly again. He fisted his thick length. “What else do you like?”

She shook her head. “I d-don’t—”

“What else do you want?”

She tensed, helpless to explain it. She wanted him to keep touching himself. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted hands and mouths, and she thought she might also want the big bed behind his chair, and both of them in it, naked, together.

He answered before she could. “What I want…” He released his hold on himself, leaning forward with a wince to prop his elbows on his spread knees. “I want you, on your back. Lie down.”

She glanced down, behind her. Nothing but an expanse of expensive rug in front of the hearth, an exquisite floral design in red and gold and edged in striking black. “Here?”

A jerky nod.

Stepping free of her ruined gown, she lay down, the carpet giving beneath her backside, and she closed her eyes to feel the fire, so close behind the grate, warming her exposed skin. A mere moment later, her thighs were pushed apart, knees bent and feet planted firmly on the rug.

This was it. Now he would take her, as she wanted him to. It wouldn’t be the duke, or Sabien, or some other faceless man decided upon by her parents—this was the
comte
, whom she had chosen, and no one could steal this first from her.

Eyes shut, she braced herself for his claiming. She knew it was a sin to do this out of wedlock, but it could be no more sinful than what they’d already done together, and she refused to give up this chance with him.

Two big fingers spread apart her slick folds, and she shivered, not in cold but in exposure.

“Claudia,” and she shivered again at the heat in his voice.

“P-please,” she begged, not knowing what she pleaded for precisely, but certain he would give it to her.

Give it to her he did—a shift in the current of the air, and then his tongue swirled around her clitoris, warm and wet and perfect. Perfect.

She cried out, reaching down to touch his head, hold him to her, but she remembered the last time, and how he wouldn’t allow her to direct him. So her hands hovered over him, tension crackling from her shaking fingertips as he dipped to tease her entrance with the stiffened tip of his tongue, thrusting in and mimicking what he’d once done with his fingers. “Oh, God.”

“This is what
I
like,” he growled against her wet flesh. “This is what
I
want.” Then he kissed her there, burying his face between her trembling thighs with an enthusiasm that almost scared her with its intensity.