by Edie Harris
He’d only kissed men, or been kissed by men, for a decade. First forced upon him, he’d soon learned to use them—the kisses—as a lure, a tool. If he willingly kissed his tormenter, he could avoid some of the more distressing tortures that took place in the captain’s tent. Years later, he withheld his mouth from the men with whom he flirted, until they begged him for a taste. A taste he refused to grant until he had the information his employer needed.
So this, here, with Claudia Pascale…it was his first kiss. First with a woman. First in any way that counted.
He refused to feel anything over it. “Say no, chaton,” he dared her, lips caressing hers with each word. “Tell me you do not want this.”
Her eyes drifted shut. “B-but I do.”
Which made her far more honest than he, and to squelch that pinprick of belated conscience, his mouth covered hers. Her lips gave beneath his, parted, a surprised release of flushed, pink flesh. He closed his eyes, breath halting in his chest as the tip of his tongue swept along the satin-soft curve of her lower lip. He tasted the slight tang of sweet wine as he dipped inside, mapped the battlements of small white teeth. When her tongue tentatively met his, all tension left his body on a harsh sigh.
The hand at her waist slipped around to palm her lower back, tugging her forward as much as her bindings permitted, aligning the peaks and valleys of her torso with the firm plane of his. A flood of heat flashed through his veins, searing him, and he slanted his lips over hers, excitement sizzling just beneath his skin.
Kissing a woman was nothing like kissing a man. A woman eliciting a breathy moan reduced him to a pile of ash. A woman dancing her tongue past his lips turned him hard as stone. A woman straining forward, her arms bound on either side of her body, her throat taut beneath his fingertips as she tried to get closer, closer to him, as though determined to crawl inside his soul…it drove him to the precipice of insanity, and he teetered on the edge as he gripped her to him.
She was a feast for a starving man, and Gaspard had lived too long in famine.
So long, in fact, that he stood a heartbeat away from forgetting who he was as he reveled in who he could be. Her lips moved under his, offering him a taste of madness as she sipped from his mouth. A dangerous shiver snaked down his spine, urging him to delight in her response—in his own response—but it couldn’t last.
He needed a clear head if he meant to tempt Claudia and her ten thousand pounds away from Sabien. Dimmed but not doused, his lust receded warily, though a throbbing force within him ached to tease, to play with her as he’d promised. Catching her upper lip gently between his teeth, he sucked it, nipped at it, wanting to sting as he’d been stung. His voice was hoarse when he opened his eyes and said, “Your first lesson.”
Dark lashes fluttered upward to reveal even darker irises. Warm color mottled her cheeks, her parted lips bitten to raspberry redness. “K-kissing?”
“Kissing.” The hand at her throat traveled across her shoulder, over the bared skin of her upper arm, and the supple muscle bunched tight. Her arms must be hurting by now, given the way she’d fought against her bonds, and in all the deviant games he believed he enjoyed, causing Claudia real pain was not one of them. His fingers reached for the knot at her wrist.
“No.”
He froze. “No?”
“D-don’t…don’t release m-me,” she whispered. “Unless our t-time is up?”
Time. Damn it, Gaspard had forgotten they had only limited minutes together in the closet. Their time likely was gone, and one kiss wasn’t enough to sway her, no matter how incendiary. “I am not finished with you.” He stepped away from the wicked heat of her body. “One lesson will not teach you all you need to know,” he said, reminding them both of just whom she was learning for.
“Another kiss?” Eagerness gave her hushed words vibrant life.
“I think a different lesson.” Even though he wanted his mouth on hers again, that madness beckoning, her lips a siren song destined to strand him on the rocks. His mind raced with possibilities, any means for turning her in her affections. “Submission.” Saying the word left him cold then hot, memories of the past sidling close to rub and purr against the reality of his present.
She blinked, confused, and inched back against the shelf. “S-s-submission,” she repeated without inflection.
He knelt to snatch the blindfold from where it lay half-hidden beneath the hem of her gown, then stood, dangling the strip of fabric in front of her. “Cede me your control, kitten. You will find freedom in it, je vous promets.” A promise he needed to keep, for both their sakes.
Indecision warred in her dilated eyes. Her tongue darted out, dampening that plump lower lip before asking, “I let you d-do as you wish, and…and you’ll k-kiss m-me again?” There was hunger in her husky voice.
That, and so much more. “Oui.”
“All right, then.” She seemed to brace herself, her longing gaze dropping to his mouth. “D-do it.”
Carefully, he laid the satin blindfold across the bridge of her nose, wrapping it around her head and tying a swift knot below the coil of hair at her crown. Her unsteady breaths heated his lips where they hovered over hers.
Gripping the shelf on either side of her head, he leaned into her, letting her feel the hard press of his body and how easily he could overpower her, even without her restraints. His hips pushed his erection into the giving softness of her abdomen.
This was new, all of it new, and he hated rushing them though he knew he must. The ominous ticking of an imaginary pocket watch echoed in his ears, counting down the moments that remained for them, together. A scowl she couldn’t see etched across his features, Gaspard bent to her ear. “Spread your legs.”
She tensed before he felt her shifting, widening her stance. “Like this?”
Yes, just like that, that’s what he wanted. His hands left the shelf to coast down the rounded curves of her body. He let his hips grind against her once more, an acute torment, before fisting the cool fabric of her skirts in both hands.
Swiftly, he lifted her gown, pretending he hadn’t heard her nervous gasp as he exposed her legs to the closet air. A glance down revealed shapely stocking-clad limbs he wanted wrapped around his waist at the soonest opportunity—preferably while he drove his body into hers, repeatedly. But the soonest opportunity wouldn’t be tonight, or ever if he couldn’t make her come in the next minute or so.
Because that was what Gaspard had to do—make her come, and make her want him more than she wanted Sabien. What other recourse was open to him? As soon as they left this closet, she would find out who he was. What he was. And then she’d never let him near her pretty person again.
Adjusting his hold on her skirts to one hand, he used the other to slide between those silky thighs, up and up until his fingers cupped her mound. He couldn’t resist leaning back to catch a glimpse of the dark triangle of curls gently abrading his palm.
“Regarde-toi, chaton,” he muttered, slipping into intimate, familiar French before he could stop himself.
“I c-can’t look.” Her thighs attempted to close around his hand, self-consciously—and belatedly—trying to keep him from seeing her most private area. She squirmed against the shelf. “What are you—?”
She cut off with a choked wheeze as his middle finger parted the lips of her cunt. “Submission,” he reminded her. He needed her to melt for him.
“I d-don’t know what that m-means,” she snapped back, “b-but I’m fairly cer-certain what you’re d-d-doing right now is what m-most women would c-c-consider an invasion of p-p-privacy.”
He smiled at the bite in her proper English voice, at all those syllables that just spilled out of her and onto him. It made him want to bite her in return, though not with words. Giving in to the urge, he nipped at her chin. “You do not like what I do to you?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing to m-me!” She heaved out a trembling breath wreathed with frustration. “What are you doing, m-my lord?”
; He removed the hand between her legs, bringing the tips of his fingers to his mouth and licking before sliding them back home again. This time when he caressed her parted flesh, he got the reaction he’d been waiting for.
She shuddered. “That…that is…” Her thighs relaxed, widening even more in welcome for his attentions.
Attentions he had no trouble offering. He found the nub of her clitoris with two wet fingers, peeking through the shield of soft curls, and stroked it. “Bonne?” Good?
Her “Yes” came to him on a sigh that raised the tiny hairs on the back of his neck.
Another stroke, this time with his thumb as his fingers slid to circle the opening of her body, and a rush of wetness slicked over the digits. “Do you touch yourself here?” He breathed in her scent, found in excess just beneath her ear.
She shook her head vehemently.
His teeth lightly scored the strained tendon along the side of her neck. “Answer me, kitten.”
“N-no, I haven’t.” Her hips jerked, pushing her sex further onto his petting hand, making his fingertips wet with her cream.
The pad of his thumb rubbed faster and faster over the sensitive top of her clit, something he’d been taught by the last whore he’d bedded, nearly a year ago. As she responded, instantly, beautifully, he tested the entrance to her body for evidence of her virginity…and found it.
More, his mind urged feverishly. Take more. Take it all.
Take it so that Sabien cannot.
Massaging the barrier of tissue with faint pressure, he distracted her with words. With knowledge. “You should.”
Her lower body began to writhe, every move rhythmic, hypnotizing. “Sh-should what?”
A little more pressure on her hymen, a little more speed on her clit. His fingers spread her moisture around, opening her cunt lips to his seeking touch. “Should touch yourself. Here.”
“Why w-w-would I d-do th-that?” She was panting now, gasping.
“Because it feels good.” She felt good, so good. Wet. Aroused. Almost as aroused as he was, his cock thick and heavy in his trousers, and so sensitized—without so much as a single stroke from his hand—that the linen smallclothes he wore might as well have been burlap against his balls. “Because I get hard imagining you pleasuring yourself in bed. Alone.”
Another gush of wetness onto his fingers. “Hard?”
“Oui.” He couldn’t avoid it any longer. “This may hurt.”
“What—?”
His two middle fingers broke through the thin barrier of her virginity, instantly gloved in the hot, tight channel of her body. He permitted himself a silent shudder as his cock pulsed with painful, unsatisfied need.
She flinched, hissing, and clenched like a vise around the intrusion of his fingers. “Not s-s-so g-good.”
I’ll make you feel good again, kitten. He adjusted his hold on the bunched layers of her gown as he continued to circle his thumb over her stiff nub, holding the fingers inside her still, knowing she needed to adjust.
Wishing he had been allowed that same courtesy long years before.
They were out of time—he knew it, could feel that pocket watch breathing down his neck, but he’d just stolen her maidenhood without so much as a blink or a warning. As much of a bastard as he was, even he knew this was the one moment that should not be rushed.
So he kissed her again.
Plush lips, full and giving and everything he’d never known he wanted from the mouth of a woman. With every teasing taste of his tongue between her lips, he matched a stroke to her clitoris, and eventually the tension left her. The truth of her returned desire became evident in the slow rocking of her hips against his hand.
He thrust upward, once, gently.
She moaned into his mouth.
Oh, fuck.
Again his fingers moved, a slick slide into the most luscious heat ever to scald him. His cock ached, bruised with need, demanding to replace his fingers in the sheath of this wriggling female, spread wide and bound for him. He tore his lips from hers to trail damp kisses, more teeth than tongue, down her throat, nibbling at the line of her clavicle.
“Move on my hand, chaton,” he growled into sweet skin.
Her panting breaths echoed the rhythm set by his fingers, his thumb. He twisted her skirts between their bodies until he was assured they wouldn’t fall, then placed that hand at the small of her back to tug her into him.
His erection brushed against her hip.
Laving the spot where neck met shoulder, taking her taste onto his desperate tongue, he curled the fingers clasped inside her, discovering a hidden ridge of tissue that, when he pressed, bowed her back. She cried out in pleasure.
“Oui. Yes, be loud for me.” Dangerous words, but she was wet. She was so wet, cream he wanted to lap up coating his palm as she rode his hand. He spurred her forward, guiding her halting movements with the hand at her back. “Let go,” he ordered. “Let go.”
“I…d-don’t…I don’t…” Her blindfolded head thrashed to one side, then the other, moaning beautifully in his ear.
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself one more selfish thrust of his cock against her hip before muttering, “Soumettre.” He bit down on the tendon between her shoulder and neck hard enough to bruise as he demanded surrender, flicking her clit as fast as he could.
A high, feminine gasp escaped as her orgasm overtook her. She spasmed around him, grasping and needy, and he wished he could join her. Fuck, he was insane with the need to join her while she came. Instead, he held her, curving his larger body around hers as she shook, near-silent moans emanating from deep within the cavity of her chest, so palpable he could feel them vibrate through the myriad layers of their clothing.
Because he held her, he sensed the moment she was about to go limp and withdrew his fingers from her greedy body to make quick work of the ties at each wrist, yanking the blindfold from her eyes to stuff in his pocket.
Brown eyes, big and round and glazed with sated desire, stared wonderingly up at him, and Gaspard’s clenched jaw suddenly felt as though it might crack under the pressure. Briskly, he adjusted her gown so it fell neatly to her feet. Then he stepped away.
They watched one another, wary animals both, for several long moments—moments they didn’t have to spare. “We must return,” he managed, voice roughened with barely leashed and completely unsatisfied lust.
She rubbed her wrists. “Yes. We m-must.”
Unable to meet her stare any longer, he snatched the lamp from the shelf behind her, returning it to its spot in the corner of the closet floor before reaching for the door and opening it to a spill of too-bright light from the hallway.
Squinting as she preceded him into the hall, she waited for him to close the closet door behind them—ever the mannerly English miss, he thought with a sneer. “What was that?” she demanded the moment he steered her toward the parlor where the other guests were awaiting their return, likely with breaths bated and eyebrows arched. “What happened to m-me?”
“You were pleasured.” He refused to look at her, knowing she would be flushed. Pretty. As tempting as Satan at the gates of Heaven. He discreetly clenched the hand sticky from her come in the folds of lace at his cuff. He’d have to be careful not to wave that hand around for the rest of the night, especially near Sabien. The man had had enough pussy in his life to recognize the musky scent clinging to his supposedly homosexual friend’s skin. “I pleasured you.”
God, even he could hear the barbarian pride in his gruff tone.
“It was…” She hurried to keep pace at his side, not that he bothered slowing his stride. “It was g-good.”
He snorted. “Better than good, kitten.”
What sounded like a growl escaped her. “Words are not m-my f-f-friends, m-my lord. Accept that g-good as the c-c-compliment it was.”
He refused to let her make him feel like a heel. “I do not want your compliments.” He didn’t know what he wanted. Her? Her money? No, in this moment, it was definitely her,
a fact his ignored erection wouldn’t allow him to forget.
Her hand on his coat sleeve stayed him; her uncertain tone turned him to face her. “Will I s-s-see you again?” Dark eyes, haunted eyes, eyes with far too much need in them begged an answer of him.
“You do not want to see me again.” He eyed the fresh bruise at the sweetly curved juncture between neck and shoulder. He’d been sloppy—no, he’d been a brute, a possessive brute. She couldn’t be allowed to waltz back into the parlor with damnable evidence of his attentions on display for public viewing—that was a risk much greater than spiriting her away to parlor to the closet. Those playing the blindfold game would titter behind their fans at the grand joke he’d had at Claudia Pascale’s expense, and a joke was all it could be, for now. Courtship was out of the question until his covert service to the duke ended.
Not that he planned to court her. Christ, his head was a mess, fevered and dizzy and angry and confused. He had no idea what he was doing, with her or with himself.
It was the task of mere seconds to slip into the empty room next to the closet where the footmen had neatly deposited every coat, cloak and various accoutrements from the party guests, where he snatched an embroidered ice-blue wrap made of silk so fine that its owner would surely miss it.
He quickly closed the door behind him and turned to Claudia. “Take it.” He draped the shawl around her shoulders, adjusting its thin layers to properly hide the bruise he’d left behind.
“It’s not m-mine.”
It took real effort to tear his gaze from her neck and the evidence that his teeth had sunk into her so-soft skin. He’d never bitten a woman, and had certainly never felt one climax violently around his fingers when he did so. He tried to remember if he’d ever witnessed a woman coming so hard, coming apart in his arms, on his fingers, under his mouth.
The answer was no.
“You are only borrowing it.” He withdrew his hands, allowing Claudia to draw the wrap more securely around her upper body.
Her head remained down-bent. “P-people will know s-s-something happened, if I return with th-this.”