by Edie Harris
But Claudia wasn’t that woman. Her mother had never held her. Her nanny had never embraced her. The governess her father had hired had been a strict witch of a woman who obviously hated teaching as much as she hated children. There had been no friends whose hands Claudia could hold, and her grandfather… Well, Grandpére had disappeared to Hampshire ten years ago with what she’d been told was a case of acute dementia, and with him went her one chance of ever being thought of as something more than a blight to her family’s name.
So was it really a shock that her spine lost its starch, the longer the comte touched her? Or that she had begun to lose her fear, as he’d yet to fall on her in a frenzy of unchecked lust—as she presumed rapists were wont to do?
Shame heated her cheeks. Perhaps not a shock, but rather sick, nonetheless. Her past had shaped her, leading her to this moment where she might very well be assaulted and stripped of her virtue by this intimidating man. This man, who thought she was clever. “Yes, I want him. N-now untie m-m-me.”
“I untie you, you run.”
That’s what any sane woman would do, and Claudia considered herself sane, melting spine and all. “P-please, let m-me…let me g-go.” He was too big to fight, too broad and shadowed and his hand was still on her chin. Still holding her. One sharp jerk to the side, and her neck would snap.
She’d seen a man’s neck snapped, so long ago it might as well have been a dream. But it hadn’t been. She knew it hadn’t.
“I do not want you to run.” His fingers slid over her jaw to curve along the side of her neck. So light a touch to induce such dark sensations in Claudia’s belly. “I want to talk to you.”
Her heart missed a beat. No one ever wanted to talk to her.
His other hand lifted to her nape, fingertips digging gently into the tense muscles knotted at the top of her spine. “You want Sabien. Why?”
The situation grew odder by the second. “I d-don’t understand. What’s s-s-so important about S—” She swallowed, and watched as his gaze dropped to her throat. “About him?”
Those rough-skinned fingertips began to knead, small circles that somehow slowed her hectic breathing and loosened the stiff set of her shoulders. “Sabien is my friend, and he…knows.”
“Knows what?” A pointless question, because he meant that Sabien was aware of her fixation. As soon as she’d decided on him back in London, she knew she’d been somewhat less than subtle, but here in Paris she’d barely seen him—only at the occasional soirée—and she hadn’t dared approach him. Until tonight, after overhearing her parents’ conversation as they dressed for this soirée. Her limited sands were trickling through life’s hourglass, and soon she’d be empty and utterly powerless, forced to accept the husband they would purchase for her.
“You wanted him to capture you, yes?” The comte’s hands brushed down, down across the faint jut of her collarbone until the heel of one palm rested over her pounding heart. “What did you plan for him, here in the closet?”
Plan for him? “K-kiss him, I s-s-suppose.” Embarrassed by the confession and frustrated by her bondage, she wriggled, trying to dislodge the comte’s hands. “You sh-shouldn’t touch m-me.”
“Why not?”
His hand was a heated brand on her chest. “B-because…” She tested the bonds at her wrists again, fabric biting into flesh as her mind raced. “It’s an unfair exchange.”
A smirk curled his full lips. “If I free you, would you touch me?”
“No!”
“Then we abide by the rules of the game. I captured you. You are my captive.” One fingertip began to trace the low neckline of her gown, starting at the top of her shoulder and slowly, slowly sliding downward. “I touch my captives.”
Each centimeter of skin he stroked sent silent shivers coursing through her body. Fear or languor, she couldn’t discern, but when her mouth refused to form the word stop—for reasons other than her stutter—she realized she’d already subconsciously decided against resisting him further. Sick.
No, self-preservation. That’s what this was. “You want to talk about S-S-Sabien? Let’s t-talk.”
That finger kept descending, until it brushed the plump top of one breast. “Are you in love with him?”
Hardly. What she felt for the lieutenant was a detached sort of…of desperation. A recognition that he was strong enough—powerful enough—to shelter her from whatever storm her parents brewed. And maybe, someday, she could grow to care for him, and him for her. “N-no.”
“If not love, why Sabien? Do you need money?”
It appeared she had finally met the only soul in Paris unaware of her vast wealth. Strangely, it softened her toward him. “M-money is the last thing I need.”
He sighed, irritation weighting the sound. “So why the rush to have him?” His fingertip found the line of her cleavage, toyed there. The hand pressed atop her heart dropped away, leaving only that damning finger, shocking in its assumed familiarity—insulting, really.
And yet…
She shrugged, as much she was able with her arms outstretched, like wings from her shoulders. Yet another of Grandpére’s lessons knocked against her temple. If you show them you do not care, they may wonder why. But eventually they will cease to torture you about it. He’d intended the advice as a means of handling her parents when they were particularly vicious, but she could apply the same logic here, with the comte.
His hand fisted around the neckline of her gown. “When I ask, you answer.”
But words were her mortal enemy, and Claudia didn’t want to answer. So she shrugged again, this time lifting her chin in a meager show of defiance.
A calculating expression tightened his features. “Chaton.”
A word so random it startled her into speech. “Did you just c-call me a kitten?”
“Oui. You look like un chaton, all soft, but sharp at the edges.” He paused. “Will you scratch me, kitten?”
Oh, she’d like to scratch him. Each passing moment ratcheted her anger one notch higher, fear nothing but an echo in the back of her mind, until she imagined claws tipping her fingers. She pictured shredding the linen at her wrists and then leaping forward to slice furrows into his smooth cheek. He deserved punishment, this comte, for making her body yearn for more of his touches, and scratching him bloody would do nicely.
Her breathing unsteady, her pulse racing with adrenaline born of this wretched situation, Claudia regretted ever following Sabien into the parlor. After years spent learning to avoid volatile situations—tiptoeing around her father’s tempers and her mother’s fits—she’d foolishly made herself a victim. No matter how she softened toward the comte, her foolishness could prove deadly, to both her reputation and her person.
Weary of her thoughts, of fighting, she tipped her head back against the shelf and closed her eyes, needing to shut out the sight of him. “What d-do you want, t-truly?”
Silence reigned. She listened to his breathing, steady and calm, and tried to match hers to it. Perhaps she was missing an obvious solution, a plainly routed escape, all because of the exhilarating terror that had her by the throat.
“I wish to help you.”
With Sabien? Now it was her turn to ask, “Why?”
The fist in her gown unclenched, fell away, the fabric loosening immediately across her breasts. “As I said, Sabien is my friend.” He paused. “If you can please him, perhaps you should have him.”
She swallowed hard, a reflex exacerbated by the exposed expanse of her throat. “I d-don’t know,” she admitted in a whisper.
“What do you not know?”
“If I c-can—” Breaking off, she raised her head, opened her eyes. “If I can p-please him.”
He moved away to fetch the lamp from the closet floor, and she immediately exhaled in some mutant form of relief, wherein she missed the heat from his body but gave the door a longing glance as she tugged in vain at her captured wrists. The knots he’d tied so efficiently, combined with the heft of the shelf at her back,
held her hostage.
He returned to stand far too close for Claudia’s peace of mind, yet did not touch her. The comte reached past her, setting the brass-and-glass lamp on the shelf behind her head to bathe them in warm yellow light.
His eyes were blue.
Except not quite. Blue muddled through with green, the changeable color of a wave-tossed sea. Long gold-tipped lashes fringed his inquisitive gaze, matching the tawny strands the lamplight revealed in his hair. She saw so much of him now—too much. The faint line between his brows, the hint of a shadowed cleft at his chin, the grooves that deepened at either side of his mouth as he studied her.
She stared up at him, memorizing this face, his face, so she would know never to trust it. If she saw him in a ballroom, she would flee to its other side. If he sat ensconced in a parlor she entered, she would exit it forthwith. Should he ever possess the arrogance to ask her to waltz with him, she would stomp on his toes as often as possible until the violins ceased their plaintive one-two-three masterpiece.
The thought drew her gaze to the floor between them, and all plans to trod on the comte’s toes fell by the wayside. His shoes were the most beautiful heeled creations she’d ever seen: pure white with blue satin trim at the heel and large hexagonal silver buckles, in the center of which resided a tiny purple orchid, likely constructed of bent wire wrapped in silk embroidery thread.
Oh, but he had the most excellent taste. She’d never seen a man wearing such lovely footwear before, and the artisanship and obvious expense was enough to make her mouth water with acquisitiveness. His shoes put her own to shame—her entire shoe wardrobe, in point of fact.
Who was this man?
When she looked up again, his eyes were no longer a simple amalgam of blue and green but a vibrant teal, two lost jewels in a cavern off the sea, glittering in the seeking beam of a pirate’s lantern. And while she didn’t trust the gleam in those eyes, a small part of her—a part so small that the Claudia with normal aspirations of a husband, a house and a family could very easily deny its existence—wanted to see how brightly his eyes could shine.
“Teach m-me.” The words escaped before common-sense Claudia could rein them in. “Teach m-me how to p-please him.”
Those eyes flashed. “First, you say why you want him. Then I teach you.”
“I…” How much could she tell him, a stranger? Would he even be a stranger, when all was said and done?
“Confess, chaton, and I will provide an education.” He planted his hands on either side of her head, gripping the edge of the shelf, the lace at his cuffs capturing her attention as it fell away.
She twisted to stare at the wide-palmed, long-fingered hand scant inches to her left. The lamp’s light danced over the geography of his knuckles and down to highlight an intricate web of…of scars. Scars that crisscrossed his swarthy skin, and a glance to his other hand showed the same evidence of pain long past.
Incredible, scar-inducing pain.
Trepidation slithered down her spine as her gaze clashed with his. She didn’t ask what caused his scars. He didn’t offer an explanation.
Her stomach clenched as she took a fortifying breath, logic slowly creeping back. He’d said he was Sabien’s friend, and as Sabien’s friend, the comte had the power to influence the man she needed to wed. She had already thrown caution to the wind to follow Sabien into the parlor, knowing in the back of her mind that this sort of ruination had always been a possibility. And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—maybe the comte would leave her reputation intact. Maybe, when this momentary lapse in judgment had drawn to a close, Claudia could properly snare herself a husband of her choosing and finally, finally slam the doors on her personal version of hell.
She wanted to laugh at herself. Her hope would be the death of her.
“I c-can’t s-s-stay under m-my p-parents’ roof m-much longer.” Embarrassment seized her in a stranglehold. Admitting it aloud was much more difficult than she’d imagined. She squeezed her eyes shut as a flush climbed her cheeks. “A husband will b-be m-my escape. B-but it has to b-be a husband I ch-choose. Not them. Not my p-p-p—” Her throat closed, words disappearing in the blink of an eye, and she opened hers to take in his reaction.
Oddly, the comte seemed to recognize her distress, his head dipping in a brief nod of acknowledgment.
So now it would begin, this education he spoke of. She thought of his scarred hands, his gorgeous shoes, and she bit her lip in confused worry. “What are you g-going to d-do?” This time, her stutter had nothing to do with her tongue, and instead with the man leaning ever closer to her, his scent sparking in the overheated air between them.
“Not me. Us.”
Frustrated and nervous, she huffed out a breath. “F-fine. What are we g-going to do?”
“Two things happen in this closet, kitten. People suck or they fuck.” He bent, his breath almost too hot against the sensitive shell of her ear. “But you and I are going to do something different. You and I are going to play.”
Chapter Three
He kissed her cheek first.
She drew away in surprise, attempting to meet his gaze, but Gaspard didn’t want her to look at him. He wanted her to feel him.
Gripping her chin in one hand, he held her in place as his lips planted whispering kisses along the high curve of her cheekbone. He inhaled silently, and her scent invaded his system once more, clouding his mind and turning the blood in his veins sluggish. Strong tea and rich honey. Comforting. The scent of…home.
Not his home, though. Gaspard hadn’t seen the small, rundown cottage of his youth since he left for the army a decade ago, and the apartments he currently rented barely counted as home. He slept there, bathed there, waited there.
He was always waiting.
But not now. Now, he had a girl in his grasp—a woman—vibrating with anticipation. He’d been touching her from almost their first moments in the linen closet, and he felt helpless to stop.
I touch my captives. Ha. A blurted excuse, anything to quell the questions he didn’t know how to answer, and he was an evil man to force himself on her like this. He was stripping her of choice, as had been done to him so many years ago, and yet he couldn’t stop.
No, not couldn’t—didn’t want to stop. And he thought that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t want him to stop, either.
Still… “Tell me no, kitten.” But he tempted her with his teeth nipping her naked earlobe, his lips lowering to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the sensitive skin behind her ear. His tongue circled clockwise, then counter, and he sighed with the clean taste of her. “Tell me no if you do not want this.”
“What is th-this?”
“A lesson.” His mouth drifted down to skim over her collarbone. She was a short little thing, but he didn’t mind bending to her when the reward was his lips on bare female flesh.
Untouched flesh. Virgin flesh.
She quivered beneath his touch. “A lesson in what?”
He wanted to bite her. Something about her skin, her scent, the way she subtly shifted toward him, had him longing to take a bite out of Claudia Pascale. “Séduction. You will not…not…” He shook his head. His first forays into the English language had been during the years in the army he fought never to think of, the rest of his linguistic education scrabbled together in the early days of spy-hood. Many English words continued to elude him—he could only feign aristocracy in one language, it seemed, and even then it was a constant battle to keep the rougher jargon of his youth from slipping between the cracks of his precisely enunciated French.
What he wanted to say now was that she would never entice Sabien Purvis as a passive wallflower, but hell if he knew what to say, or how to say it in her language. “You must prove you want him.”
“Him?”
Oh, how he liked the scrape of tension hiding beneath the surface of that one, confused word. “Sabien. Or have you already forgotten him?”
“Of c-course not.”
Of course not. She was us
ing Gaspard as much as he was using her, with the notable exception that he knew he was being used, whereas she did not. How naïve was she, to think a man would maneuver a woman into being alone with him out of some Samaritan-like desire to hasten a friend into holy wedded bliss? Foolish girl.
And how girlish was she? “What is your age?”
“Twenty,” she breathed as he dropped his other hand to her waist, feeling the lightly boned corset beneath that shaped the curved indent of her torso.
His thumb stroked over her jawline, his hand lifting her chin aloft as his mouth traced a path of kisses across the plane of her chest. Twenty was good. Twenty was an adult, not a child. Twenty meant she’d been on the marriage market for more than one season and her desperation was likely no dramatic, juvenile pronouncement.
She wanted to escape her parents’ household. What was happening to her there?
No, he wouldn’t ponder it now. Now was for the rising bubble of lust traveling from his heavy groin to tingle up his spine until it burst at his nape, making his vision blur and his ears ring. Yet he wasn’t so blind he couldn’t see her stiff shoulders settle into relaxation, nor so deaf he couldn’t hear her sigh of layered longing, tonally different by miles than the sound of defeat.
Claudia Pascale wouldn’t tell him no.
His hand tightened on her waist as he straightened, stepping into her so that his feet tangled with hers beneath the hem of her skirts. The lamplight cast her in muted gold, leaving her lovely but still no great beauty. The fingers cupping her face slid to splay over the side of her neck, his thumb tipping her chin up, up to him, and he leaned down, in, until his lips brushed against her parted ones in a ghost of a kiss.
She gasped.
In the past, when he’d managed to sneak away to the seedy brothels located as far from this Parisian neighborhood as possible, Gaspard hadn’t kissed the whores. He knew too much of their trade to want his mouth anywhere near theirs.