The Corrupt Comte: The Bourbon Boys, Book 1

by Edie Harris

The comte leaned a casual shoulder against one of the posts flanking the bed’s lacquered footboard. “You wound me, chaton. I had thought you might enjoy seeing me again, after what happened in the closet.”

  His dark green satin coat caught the firelight from the veined marble fireplace, turning the fabric bronze and blue before her eyes. He wore a snowy cravat, intricately knotted and pinned in place with an emerald stud. His waistcoat beneath the green jacket was a lovely silvery mauve, his trousers a pale dove gray.

  As her eyes traveled back up, she noticed the body beneath the outfit. The thick thighs and lean hips, the flat stomach and wide shoulders, and the muscled upper arms that seemed incongruous when compared to his softer sartorial choices. His frame didn’t match his fashion, she realized. It was almost like he wore a costume, but he wore it with such natural confidence that it would be easy to think his dated-yet-dapper clothing represented his masculinity.

  Claudia had a few questions about his masculinity, as a matter of fact. But she wasn’t certain she was brave enough to ask.

  When she finished her perusal of him, his predatory smile was completely gone. In quiet, halting English, he asked, “Do you like what you see?”

  She did. She shouldn’t, but she did.

  She turned her face into the pillow and rolled onto her side, wanting to melt into the bedsheets and disappear. The shame of being caught touching herself so intimately—and worse, enjoying her own touch—bubbled up in her chest until she was choking, worse than she had on any consonant, any syllable. Embarrassed heat burned her face, her ears, her neck, but before she could draw the blankets over her head, the bed dipped, and the coverlet was ripped away.

  Cool air hit her like a slap as she stared up at the man braced over her on hands and knees, his bigger frame bracketing her, caging her with his sturdy limbs. “Do not hide.”

  She froze, not in fear but in shock. Bathed in firelight, his face was stunning. She drank in the harsh planes that made up his features. His upper lip was shaped like a bow, dipping deeply in the groove beneath his nose, but to her mind it was more reminiscent of a hunter’s weapon than Cupid’s.

  She remembered the feel of his teeth on her top lip from their closet interlude. She remembered the slight tingle as he sucked the swollen flesh and the pins-and-needles sensation as he lifted his mouth from hers.

  She wanted to do the same to him, right now, though trepidation tripled the rate of her speeding heart. A strange man loomed over her, his stormy gaze filled with beastly intent, yet her mind had gone blank but for the vivid memory of the unwilling pleasure he’d so recently wrought from her body. She should be terrified, and yet…

  “What are you d-doing here?”

  “Continuing your education.” But he didn’t move, simply held himself over her in predatory readiness.

  Supine beneath him, desire curled to life again, low in her abdomen. Smoky wisps of renewed arousal, tickling her senses as it thickened, darkened, until her lungs grew tight. It was worse than when her tongue refused to work as it ought to—which until this moment she had believed to be the most frustrating feeling in the world. If she wriggled now, if she reached for him, what would the comte do?

  What would he do?

  “You shouldn’t b-be here.” It was what she was supposed to say, as a proper, well-mannered, commonsensical woman. But propriety and that lot weren’t getting Claudia any closer to finding a husband and leaving her parents’ house, so perhaps it was time to bend the rules a bit.

  The comte had already proven he was a man with whom she could bend those rules.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “What?”

  His head dipped, stopping when his lips hovered only an inch over hers. “When you touched yourself. What was in your mind?”

  Hot breaths puffed against her parted lips, and she couldn’t help squirming where she lay, arms trapped at her sides by his. He was so close, surrounding her, bombarding her senses. She tried to breathe in his scent, and as before its definition eluded her—there was iron in the air around him, fire and sparks embedded in the salt of his skin and the harsh lye of his soap. He needed one of the specialty bars her father’s shop crafted…but then this strange, sharp scent would be masked by bergamot or sandalwood or some other popular male fragrance.

  She might not know his scent but she recognized it as his, and the perfumer’s daughter knew it would be a tragedy to cloak that honest scent in lies.

  His brows drew together. “Answer me. What was in your mind when I interrupted?”

  If she told him, she would indeed be bending the rules. She’d been a passive player in their closet game, allowing him to take from her and thus avoiding any blame or responsibility for the outcome of that game. But if she opened her mouth and spoke—a trying action even on the best of days—her purposefulness could not be denied. If she spoke, the words would mark her first foray into an affair.

  If she spoke, it would prove she was in control of her own destiny.

  “You.” Her lips felt dry, her tongue thick, her throat parched. “You were in m-my m—” She needed to choose different words, words that wouldn’t hobble her on her dash for freedom. Because now that she was running, so tempted by the possibility of control, the thought of shrinking back in on herself nauseated her. She could do this. She could speak. “I was thinking of you.”

  His breath caught and his eyes closed for a brief moment, but instead of lowering his mouth to hers for a scalding kiss, as she’d hoped he might, he drew back, pushing himself up until he sat back on his heels. Straddling her like this, he was a giant of a man, and the sight of those broad shoulders set her squirming again. Arousal pulsed between her thighs, low and liquid, her hips moving of their own accord.

  He stared down at her, one brow arched. “Have you seen Sabien?”

  The abrupt change in subject threw her. “I d-don’t—”

  “Since the closet, have you seen Sabien?” His tone was cold, his English gruff.

  Irritation tickled in her chest. “Yes.” The lieutenant had approached her yesterday evening at a soirée, prodding her with curious politeness for information on what had transpired between the comte and herself. Their closet antics had evidently been the source of much speculation among those who’d been present in the parlor…which was when Claudia began to learn exactly who it was she’d permitted to kiss her and stroke her and give her pleasure.

  Where before she hadn’t been brave enough to ask, she now found the words, ignoring his current attempt at intimidation. “Are the rumors t-true?”

  He stilled above her. “So. You have heard about me.”

  Not so much heard as surmised. No one had asked if the comte had ravished her. It had been disconcerting, the number of both men and women who had approached her since that night, all eager to console her on what they assumed must have been a shamefully barren quarter hour of play. Most had said something along the lines of, “Well, his tastes don’t run to you,” followed by, “but that is no fault of yours!”

  In fact, people had been significantly kinder to her in the past two days than they had in the entire two weeks she’d been in Paris. By going in the closet with the comte, Claudia had earned herself a place inside the gossip circles for the first time in her life, making her privy to all sorts of talk instead of remaining the unfortunate subject of it.

  Claudia was not a stupid woman. She knew she hadn’t suddenly gained dozens of new friends, just as she knew enough to piece together what they were all ineffectually trying not to say: Gaspard Toussaint was a molly.

  But that simply didn’t make sense.

  She hadn’t bothered to correct others’ conclusions—to do so would require more than her typical monosyllabic attempts at conversation. But Claudia had wanted to tell them that, no, the comte had made an excellent go at ravishing her, and yes, he’d been quite enthusiastic about the process, showing no reticence concerning her gender whatsoever.

  How could they not see? She gazed up
at him, taking in the wholly masculine appeal of his visage and trying not to let her stare stray to the curve of his biceps straining against his coat sleeves. His clothes were a fine distraction, but he was so very…male. And should someone so very male indeed be attracted to his own gender, one had merely to glance at the comte’s eyes and see the way he looked at a woman—at her, Claudia—to know in which direction his lusts lay.

  His eyes told her that he wanted to eat her for breakfast, have her for tea, and gorge himself on her for dessert.

  She hesitated. “You’re not what they s-s-say.”

  “How do you know this?” His knees squeezed her hips ever so slightly, and he reached down and traced a gentle fingertip along the center of her chest. Starting at the dip at the base of her throat and sliding down the valley between her breasts, his finger halted at the neckline of her nightgown. He tugged, pulling the fabric taut over her breasts as the warm pad of his index finger pressed against the base of her sternum.

  That was all it took—one touch, and she was desperate for him, unable to breathe as longing subsumed her. It was the same as in the closet, when she realized she was so starved for human touch that she could be made a slave to the person lavishing 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 lieutenant had followed her willingly enough.

  The comte tensed around her, his fingers manacling her wrists, his palm presenting her breast to his mouth, his calves riding parallel to her naked thighs. “Did you kiss him?” His lips left her tortured nipple to press taunting kisses across her quivering belly. “Did you kiss him as I taught you?”

  She shuddered when the tip of his nose nudged the bunched hem of her nightgown higher over her hips. “I k-kissed him.” But it was nothing like how he’d taught her, and she hadn’t felt even a fraction as much kissing Sabien as she did right now, subjected to the comte’s slow seduction. “Isn’t that what you wanted m-me to d-do?”

  His teeth scored the curve of her abdomen below her navel. “No. Yes.” He made an inarticulate growl and squeezed her wrists warningly. “Do not move, comprends?” When she nodded, he scooted down farther in the bed, grabbing her inner thighs to make space for himself between her legs. He bent, shadowed shoulders so very broad, and licked a line along the crease between her thigh and her sex.

  She trembled.

  He did the same on the other side. His thumbs found those wet stripes and stroked, his strong fingers curving beneath her buttocks to lift her lower body off the bed. “Perhaps I made a mistake, kitten.”

  She heard him inhale deeply as her eyes closed. “A m-mistake?”

  “Oui, a mistake, to tell you to kiss Sabien.”

  Before she could question him again, he kissed her. Right between the legs, which was absolutely where kisses were not supposed to take place, though she admittedly possessed limited knowledge on the subject. But his kiss landed perfectly on that throbbing, sensitive, too-prominent button she’d so recently discovered, thanks to the comte, and of course he knew where it was. He knew—

  She whimpered, high-pitched and needy, as his lips circled it. He sucked her, his wonderful tongue teasing the underside of her clitoris as her hips jerked. He moved one hand to splay across her abdomen and hold her down on the mattress, even as the fingers of his other hand spread wide the lips of her sex.

  He laughed, a choked sound that quickly turned into a groan as the flat of his tongue laved from her slick entrance up to the pulsing bundle of nerves that called to her fingertips with every beat of her heart.

  “Your taste… I taste you.” He licked deeper, dipping into her core. “Like honey. Dieu.”

  Her own ministrations hadn’t made her this wet, nor this mindless. She wiggled in his hold until he growled against her and caught her hips in a bruising grip. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as her entire body flushed. She felt feverish, dizzy, deafened by the roar of imminent release as he collected her essence on his tongue and swallowed her down.

  “M-my lord…” Her toes curled, her knees finding their natural place crooked over his shoulders.

  A shudder wracked him, and his lips closed around her desperate c
lit. He held her where he wanted her, open and lifted to his mouth, and her head began to thrash back and forth as each sucking draw on her wet flesh pushed her that much closer to the edge.

  Something prodded her entrance, circling, petting, and then one of his fingers slid inside her body. “Fuck,” he mumbled, lifting his head as her back bowed at the intrusion. “You are so wet. So tight.”

  But she didn’t want him talking—she wanted him licking. Tasting. Feasting upon her. Frantic to have his mouth on her, Claudia disobeyed and reached for him, clutching at his silky hair. “More,” she moaned, whipping her hips into the thrust of his finger. She was close, so close, and he had to know it. Had to feel how the first tremors were beginning to shake her, starting from the base of her spine and clawing through her heavy, heavy limbs. “P-please.”

  He swatted her hands away, not gently. “I told you, do not move.” He added a second finger, stretching her violated inner flesh in delicious increments. “Mauvais chaton.” Bad kitten. “Do you want to come?” He thrust again, the tips of his fingers curling inside her as the heel of his palm applied the barest pressure to the aching point of her clitoris.

  “Yes.” More than she wanted to breathe. More than she wanted to live. “Yes, please.” She didn’t care that she was begging, practically sobbing. She’d chosen this torment for herself, and would choose it again and again and again, because she chose it. The heady power of that choice alone was nearly enough to send her flying.

  But the comte wanted to make her soar. “Then come.” It was nothing less than a command, punctuated by the hard press of his palm against her clit and the bite of his teeth nipping her inner thigh, and she was helpless to resist.

  She threw her head back and loosed a silent, gasping cry. The tears escaped, painting hot, salty trails down her cheeks as she fisted the twisted coverlet in sweaty palms. Her lungs pumped like bellows, her heels dug into the comte’s satin-covered upper back, and she succumbed to the spasms that drenched her in ecstasy.

  A whine caught in her throat when he slowly withdrew his fingers, dropping light kisses along her trembling torso as he crawled up her body. She opened bleary eyes to find him caging her again with his arms and legs. Blinking up at him, she managed a small smile and a languid sigh.