The Corrupt Comte by Edie Harris Page B

such a paltry show of affection upon her.
    She grabbed at his wrist, catching a fistful of lace. “You k-kissed me.”
    His palm flattened, long fingers splayed over her chest, sinking into the giving flesh of her breasts. “Perhaps I was playacting.”
    Her back arched, lifting herself to him. “This…this s-says no.” He must be able to feel the erratic thump of her heart beneath her ribs.
    His expression was a mix of wariness and excitement, gold-lashed lids lowering to shield his dilated irises. “Perhaps I like men and women.”
    “You don’t.” She didn’t hesitate over the words, feeling them to be true. “Why d-do you let them think your p-preferred lovers are m-men?”
    “It suits my purpose.”
    “P-purpose?”
    He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shook off her hold on his wrist to cup one heavy breast. Her nipple peaked and hardened under his palm, the brush of delicate fabric over vulnerable flesh sending a flash of piercing pleasure sprinting through her veins.
    His lack of forthrightness forgotten, her eyes slid closed, and her arms swept over the sheets to rest above her head. She was utterly exposed to him, and he took quick advantage of her implicit offer by shaping her other breast with his free hand. Her lungs refused to fill, so she lay gasping while she waited for him to do more, say more. Touch more.
    He didn’t disappoint. “What did you do with Sabien?” His thumbs strummed over her nipples, his strong fingers massaging her breasts as the layer of the négligée prevented their skin from melding, meshing, fusing them together.
    Ohhh, and would that be so terrible? She threw her head back, drunk on the heat coming off him in radiating waves. To always be connected to someone, touched by hands that teased, petted, tortured but never harmed.
    Held. She’d never been held. That was what she wanted, all she wanted.
    The haze of lust fogging her brain cleared somewhat when he pinched her nipples, a reprimand for not answering his question.
    “Ouch,” she hissed, her eyes opening to find him bending closer, his hair falling over his brow as he bent to lick from her collarbone to the pulse beneath her jaw. His tongue, warm and wet, wiped her mind of any pain, numbing every nerve ending in her tension-filled body with the promise of more, more, more, he could give her more, pain or pleasure, and she would take it all.
    One of his hands snatched her wrists, pinning them together on the bed above her head.
    “Sabien, chaton ,” he rasped against her throat. His lips trailed down to press open-mouthed kisses over the tops of her breasts, until his attentions threatened to overwhelm her, sending her into a spiral of thoughtless feeling.
    “What about him?” she managed hoarsely as she tested her arms against his strong fingers. He imprisoned her, and she reveled in it. Where before he had forced these sensations upon her, in this bed she welcomed every new glimpse into a foreign world of sumptuous carnality, even when physically restrained.
    “What did you do with him?” His teeth closed on the négligée ’s neckline and gave a sharp yank. The sound of rending fabric cut through the echo of her stuttering breaths, and then his lips surrounded one bared nipple. The tip of his tongue swirled around the aching point, tormenting her as wetness pooled between her thighs and whimpers caught high in her chest. “Did you get him alone, as I told you?”
    He suckled her, and she cried out, bliss arrowing a direct line from his dangerous mouth to the hard nub of her clitoris.
    “Yes,” she gasped, straining against him again.
    His growl vibrated over her flesh. “Yes, you were alone with Sabien?”
    “Yes.” After dancing a minuet last night, Claudia had asked Sabien to follow her into the corridor, somehow able to produce the words with only the tiniest evidence of her stutter. He hadn’t wanted to, she could tell, but when she directed him toward a darkened corner, the