The Corrupt Comte (31 page)

“No more lies,” he corrected, unable to make her a promise he couldn’t keep. “For every question I answer, we do something on our bed.”

“Our b-bed,” she repeated, and her tongue darted out to sweep over parted lips. “All right.”

His stomach tightened at her agreement. “We must remove your gown.” He moved to her as she presented him with her back. He made quick work of the pearlescent buttons running the length of her spine, starting on her corset lacings as she shimmied and stepped out of the dress, tossing it aside. He pulled away the corset, and she toed off her shoes, pausing as he untied her petticoat. When nothing remained but her chemise and stockings, she turned to him and silently raised her arms.

Never taking his eyes off hers, he grabbed fistfuls of the delicate chemise and tugged it up over her head. Ignoring the stockings, he gripped her by her naked waist and lifted her, settling her on the bed. Then, after removing his shoes and stripping his hose from beneath his trouser legs, he sat next to her at the foot of the bed, atop the blue velvet throw.

“Ask.”

“D-do you like b-being with m-men?”

A good thing he wasn’t drinking, or he’d have choked. It was the absolute last question he would ever have expected from her…but as he fought for calm, he realized it should have been the first thing she demanded of him. “That is difficult to explain.”

“T-try.”

He drew her feet into his lap as he pondered how to answer. He lifted one, curving his fingers over her instep as his thumbs massaged her arches. Her head fell back on a sigh, hands propped behind her on the mattress. She didn’t bother to hide her nudity, and he marveled at how quickly she had grown comfortable, both with him and with her gorgeous body. Cream curves, pink valleys, the rounded softness of her hips and belly and breasts. She made his mouth water, and if he had his way—if he could keep her here—she would lounge naked on this bed for him, with him, every single day.

But first, “I do not
want
to like having sex with men. It is…not natural for me.” His kneading fingertips wandered past her ankle to her calf. “There are men for whom it is natural, do you know? They desire other men. They fall in love with other men.” He shook his head. “I am not one of them.”

If he’d been born wanting a man’s dick between his lips, it would have been one thing. But Gaspard had been
made
, and he had never been able to actively desire and enjoy bedding those of his gender.

Lord knew he’d tried. After the Hundred Days, after being named a peer, after his first few jaunts into Paris’s seedy underbelly for Évoque, Gaspard had recognized that it would be simpler for everyone—himself most of all—if he could just…be a molly. But Courreaux’s evil, leering face would flash before his eyes at a critical juncture, and Gaspard would break into a cold sweat, weak limbed and decidedly not randy. After the third time he’d retched in an alley outside a molly house, he had known he couldn’t force these lusts to be natural for him.

His fingers found the fastening of her garter above her knee, toyed with it before releasing it and drawing the sheer, loosened stocking down her lithe leg. Then he started the process over on the opposite foot, thumbs massaging, as he took in her hums of relaxed pleasure.

“This is different,” he murmured, studying the contrast of his swarthy, scarred skin against the pale sheath of her stocking where it clung to her sleek calf. “Between us, right here. This is different.”

“Than with m-men?”

He shook his head as his fingers found the sensitive back of her knee. “It is different than other times, yes? You are…comfortable.”

She fell back with a sigh, eyes closing. “I s-suppose I am.” She draped an arm over her breasts. “You’re right. It feels d-different this time.”

Bending, he pressed a kiss to her bared inner thigh. Clean, satin skin beneath his lips, the familiar scent of her entrenched in his nostrils. The mood between them was less frenetic, their desire less frantic. The air of sadness no longer twined around her, though he doubted she’d given up on her decision about Hampshire, and leaving him behind to pine after her.

Except she didn’t expect pining from her new husband—she still believed he’d married her only for the wealth she’d brought with her, but he had a chance to show what he would not say. He found the edge of the garter with his teeth and tugged it loose, peeling away the stocking with one hand while the other followed, smoothing down the length of her leg. “I like how this feels, between us.”

“C-calmer?”

“
Oui.
” He didn’t want her any less, still needed to join her body with his to find any sort of peace…but without manic desperation searing his veins, he could
feel
more.

He could feel his heart, and know its content.

Daring a glance at her quiet face, he noted the troubled frown marring her brow, though her eyes remained shut and her lips slightly parted as he continued to caress her bare leg. His hand drifted to her knee, thumb stroking, petting. “You have more questions.”

Immediately, she asked, “What d-did you
do
with them? The m-men?”

Too much. He’d done too much with other men. And yet… Parsing through his pounding heartbeats, he realized he was aroused as he considered all that he could tell her. His introduction to sexual depravity had initially left him at the mercy of his own warped lusts, but eventually he had learned to separate mind and body, the reins of control rarely leaving his hands once he taught himself to differentiate between the need for release and the need for completion.

Christ, but he was one fucked-up bastard.

What aroused him might not arouse her, however, so he tread carefully. The hand on her knee slid slowly up her thigh. “You want to know what I do to them, or what they do to me?” Grabbing her opposite ankle, he spread her legs apart, planting her heel in the mattress. “Do you want to know how they knelt at my feet and sucked my cock?
Ma bite
?”

Her eyes flew open when he moved between her legs, waist bracketed by her knees. “I d-don’t know…”

“You asked.” His hands found her hips. “Now I tell you.”

She nodded. “Tell m-me.”

His erection thickened behind the confining placket of his trousers, and he could hear the faint breathless quality to his voice when he murmured, “There were some whose cocks I sucked.” No fond memories there, but the blush creeping down her neck and over her chest had heat curling in his gut.

She squirmed as his palms stroked over hips and then beneath to curve around her bottom. “What else?”

His fingers traced the cleft of her buttocks. “Some I fucked.”

“How—?”

“
Ici.
” He brushed over her puckered rear entrance. A finger circled, and her hips jerked up, retreating from his intimate touch. He placed a hand on her abdomen, stilling her movements. “
Oui
, right here, kitten.” Again, his fingertip swept over her anus, this time applying a hint of pressure. “I slide into them, fill them. Over and over,
encore et encore.
” He shifted on the bed until his groin notched against her curl-covered mound, stifling a shudder. “Can you imagine me, fucking those men?”

“Yes. Yes, I c-can.” Eyes fluttering closed, she lifted her knees along his sides, allowing him better access to where he played, bringing to life sensitive nerve endings he knew had never before been manipulated for her pleasure. “Will you…will you m-miss it?”

“No.” Helpless not to, he ground his hips gently into her, just as the tip of his finger inserted itself inside her body. Ohhh, she was hot there, and so, so tight. His breath caught, stuttered. “Now I have you.”

She’d grown wet, more so with every dirty, illicit word falling from his lips, dampening his trouser placket. “Are you…are you g-going to
fuck
m-me there?”

“
Dieu.
” He nearly lost his balance as
her
dirty, illicit word rippled across his senses. Flattening one hand on the mattress next to her, he gritted his teeth and pumped his finger again, now past the first knuckle. His head dropped forward as he stroked her inside with the pad of his finger. “Not…not today. But one day, yes, I will. Is it…? Do you want that?”

“Sh-should I?” Her bare calves rubbed against his rib cage, tugging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, stretching and writhing like a cat in a patch of sunlight. “That feels…”

“Good. It feels good. I know this.” He shifted, kneeling between her legs as he withdrew from her body and drew his shirt over his head. As she opened dark, dilated eyes to stare up at him, he shrugged jerkily before unbuttoning his trouser fall. “I know how good it can feel, to be stretched and filled in such a way.” If it was done right, that is. And he would certainly do it right, when the time came. He would do it so very, very right.

Her arm fell away from her breasts as she sat up, reaching out to pull his trousers and smallclothes down his hips, his thighs, until the clothing caught where his knees met the mattress. Her gaze skated over his chest, brows knitted while one finger followed the faint trail of hair bisecting his abdominal muscles, traipsing down toward his navel.

“B-but if you c-could get aroused b-by it, won’t you want it again, at s-s-some point?” Without warning, she fisted his cock where it bobbed before her, hard and heavy and wanting, and he groaned at the exquisite feel of her hand. “I c-can’t give you that, s-s-so what will you do? S-seek that p-pleasure elsewhere?” Her grasp tightened deliciously. “Away from m-me?”

“Never,” he panted, his denial vehement, head falling back in bliss as she pumped his manhood with sure, unhurried strokes. Had he been the one to teach her so well, how to destroy a man’s composure with only her hand? A mistake, that, and he almost regretted all their so-called lessons together—almost. “No one but you,
chaton
. Man or woman, there is no one for me but you.”

But Claudia wasn’t finished with her interrogation. “Why haven’t you tied m-me up again?” Her legs curled around his thighs, and, still frowning, she lifted her other hand to cup his bollocks. Gently, gently, she weighed them in her palm, shifting and squeezing until he groaned and grabbed both her wrists, but it didn’t stop her from speaking. “Did you like it? T-tying m-me up?”

“Claudia—”

“Did you like it, Gaspard?” Hands trapped by his, she raised her gaze to spear him with the bleak look he thought he’d chased away when he had agreed to answer her questions.

Demons in her eyes
. He nodded, watching her concernedly.

Her hands clenched into fists. “Tie m-my wrists.” When he hesitated, she attempted to break free. “B-bind me, or I leave. Now.”

He was no longer surprised that he didn’t mind her bossiness—it said she cared, enough to fight with him. Perhaps enough to fight
for
him, and that made him a lucky man, indeed. But he had to ask, “Why?” He slipped a hand into the pocket of the trousers bunched at his knees, groping blindly for what he needed.

Her eyes glinted, as though tears threatened, but then she blinked and her gaze was clear once more. “What d-do we have,” she murmured, “if not this?”

He froze in place, fist clenched around his prize. “What do we have?” he repeated, incredulous. “
What do we have?
”

They had mountains climbing toward the heavens and piercing the horizon with stark, poignant beauty. They had the sea, crashing bravely against the sheer cliff faces and retreating unharmed on the tide. They had the warm rays of sunlight breaking through the gray fog of London, and the whisper of green poking up through the sodden winter earth.

Together, they had the whole damn world, and she wanted to reduce them to nothing more than release.

Gaspard had had years of release. He was ready for what came next. He fucking
needed
what came next.

Relaxing his fist, he dangled the ribbon in front of her—the satin ribbon removed from her corset their first night together, its hue a red so deep it shimmered nearly black in the fading daylight. In mere moments, he’d wrapped the ribbon around her wrists in a slippery infinity that bound her, knotting the ends between her palms.

His handiwork may have trapped her, but one sharp tug, and she’d be free.

She’d fallen silent, but when he lifted his head, the look in her eyes was anything but. Swallowing audibly, she whispered, “That ribbon…”

“Is mine.” That he had carried it with him constantly since it fell into his possession was his business, his alone.

As she gazed up at him, he realized he was angry. Angry at her, angry at himself. Angry at his past, and the demons he couldn’t exorcize, no matter how fervently he may wish to.

Tossing her bound wrists away from his aching erection, he shifted to kick free his crumpled trousers, not sparing them a glance as they landed on the floor next to the bed. “Turn over,” he bit out, jaw clenched. Hands on his hips, he watched her, waiting.

Slowly, eyes wary, she rolled on the bed until she rested on her elbows and knees. Her ankles knocked between his legs where he knelt behind her, and she peeked over her shoulder at him. “What are we d-doing?” Her sad expression faded, lusty curiosity a flush stealing over her fair features.

Anger continued to hold him, as surely as he gripped her hip with one hand, while the other smoothed over the bedsheet-warmed skin of her buttocks. “The better question is, what am
I
doing?”