The Count (Twisted Classics Book 3)

by Monica Corwin

The grin he cast down at me made me want to smack it off his face. “You aren’t one of those people, are you?”

  He didn’t wait for my feigned refusal. “No, don't lie. Save it for these bastards. I can tell you're susceptible just by looking at you.”

  He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine. Not to kiss, but a statement. Part declaration of ownership, part promise.

  “If you think a tiny kiss on the mouth is going to seduce me, now who's the one with ideas in her head."

  His hands tightened and then he yanked me tight into his body. Damn. I knew inciting him was dumb. He’d only push back harder better faster.

  This time he didn't kiss my lips. He released my hand, not even pretending to dance anymore and seized my chin.

  It didn't occur to me to be afraid of him. Maybe I should be, but not that he'd hit me or hurt me.

  Of this.

  The moment his lips fastened onto the curve of my neck and then teeth bit gently into tender flesh. I let go. It was the only choice. His kiss constituted a claiming, more than a bruise, a reminder. But fuck, it started a fire from my toes to my ears. And when he licked the spot I used every bit of focus I possessed not to arch into him. Use the ridges of his body to fill my hollows.

  He didn't stop there. I stumbled as he pulled away, gripped my hand and dragged me behind him toward a side exit.

  “Where are we going? You have a party to host…” My protests sounded half-hearted to my own ears.

  He stopped abruptly inside a sitting room off the main ballroom. Another couple kissed passionately against the far wall.

  “Get out." He said. Just said it. No yelling, no threats, and the pair fled by us out the door.

  I waited. Why would he bring me here? I couldn't keep in my own skin, vibrating with energy. I needed. I don't know what. Not him, not his hands on my body, or his mouth on my skin. But it damn sure felt like I did. Like something which resembled lust.

  A biological urge, I reasoned. He pushed specific buttons on purpose. Anyone would react to him. Biological, yes

  My rationale didn't stop the tiny squeak I let out when he picked me up by the waist, plopped me on a sturdy mahogany desk, and knelt at my feet.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He looked up the line of my silk-covered legs and tugged a foot from the folds of my dress. When he released the strap on my shoe and it dropped to the floor, I let out a little sigh. And then his big fingers pressed into the sore arch of my foot and not even the Gods themselves could stop the moan that fell out of me.

  He chuckled to himself as he went to work on the other shoe and repeated his movements. I stifled the outburst this time, but my face probably gave me away. Head thrown back, eyes shut as I folded my lips inward to keep them closed. He rubbed the tender muscles and then gripped my ankles, one in each hand.

  I opened my eyes to watch him slide his hands up from my inner ankle to the inside of my knees, soothing and massaging a tendon I didn’t even know was sore.

  My body betrayed me. My thighs opened to give him better access. For the first time, he spoke through the haze. “Women are complex creatures. Unlike men, who stir at the brush of a woman’s fingers. Women need more work to be seduced. They need to feel safe, comfortable, tended too. Even if that attention is rough, or gentle. A woman yields more in her seduction than men usually do.”

  He ran his finger up the line of my shin again and I managed to speak through his ministrations. “Do you have a lot of practice seducing men, then?”

  His silence prompted me to open my eyes. He stood now, and I tracked my gaze up his wide chest to his tattooed neck before meeting his eyes.

  “I use every tool I possess to get what I want. If it’s money, violence, sex…it doesn’t matter. I do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

  I found my voice through the endorphins. “And this…demonstration? What job does it accomplish?”

  He leaned in, captured my face and met it with his own. This kiss was not gentle. His lips parted mine forcefully and he swept into my mouth as thoroughly as he did my territory. He commanded control with his tongue, his lips, his teeth. Even the soft press of his fingertips on my cheeks said you’re mine.

  I fell into that kiss. He could have claimed my soul with it. And then his lips were off mine and onto my neck, then my shoulder and collar bone. He kissed and licked and nibbled a trail from the one corner of my shoulder to the other. By the end of the trek, I held on tight to his head and pressed his face into my skin. He knelt on the floor again to get more level access, I had to lean down into him now.

  His voice reached me from far away. “This is what I want.” The voice said cutting the fog. “I want you to surrender. Stop fucking—” a bite followed his last word. “Fighting me at every turn.”

  His words broke through the pleasure his mouth left trailed on my body. I took a moment to process before pulling his head away from me by his hair.

  The reaction earned me a growl and a glare from his position at my feet. He must have realized he lost me because he jerked himself from my grip, stood, and buttoned his jacket. “Why do you keep fighting me when you’ve already lost? Are you waiting for me to kill you? Is that the requirement of your surrender?”

  I considered his words before answering. “It’s not in me to surrender.”

  “So we are going to spend the next…however long…fighting every turn? Neither of us will get what we want that way.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  He took a step forward and I braced my hand against his chest. The memory of his mouth on me still vivid and fresh. I needed to think clearly right now. Who knew what I would have agreed to if he made it to aching parts of me.

  He didn’t press forward though. “You want freedom. You want to rewind the last few weeks so you have your old life back.” He didn’t ask questions.

  I didn’t contradict or correct him.

  He stepped forward, not touching any part of me except his thighs in the confines of mine. “You want your life back.”

  This little speech must have a point, so I waited. When I didn’t speak his ghost of a grin returned.

  “What if we made a deal? Another one, but a truce so to speak.”

  I shoved him back and he retreated. I closed my legs, my body still aching to finish what he started. But I never negotiated with my thighs spread.

  “What are your terms?” I even crossed my legs to add another layer of protection against him. As if it would help. In my head it did, and I clung to that.

  He tucked his hands under opposite arm pits. “Help me in my goals. Let me trust you, and you do the same for me. Let’s work together. Stop fucking fighting with me, and when this is all done I’ll give you back your territory. With the minimal amount of oversight from me.”

  I stared at him open-mouthed, not even trying to stick to my usual tactics of negotiation. To reverse the last couple of weeks. Get my power back, my damn life. But something else flitted at the edge of my mind. “You spent a lot of time and effort to take what’s mine. Why give it up so easily?”

  “Because I’m starting to realize you have more fight that I originally gave you credit for.”

  “What part of your research told you I’d roll over and let you take everything?”

  He shrugged, and I knew his ease was an act. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

  I hopped off the desk and fixed the skirt of my dress with a toss. “I don’t think you’re the kind of man who guesses. Especially when related to what you want.”

  I knelt and fastened my shoes back on my still aching feet, while I thought about his offer. When I finished I stood and met his eyes. “Fine. But should circumstances require, when this is over, I reserve the right to renegotiate this deal. Until then, I’ll play your game, by your rules. No more fighting.”

  He held out his hand for me to shake.

  I eyed it for a moment and took it. “Now what’s the plan?”

  He smiled, a f
ull on damn smile with teeth. It unnerved me. “You’re going to help me put three bastards in the ground.”

  SIX

  EDDY

  When we finally left the party, I felt like I’d accomplished something, even if the end result wasn’t my starting goal. She even accepted my arm and allowed me to escort her to her bedroom door. Safely on the other side of the house in my own room, I released the tight hold on my control, allowing my body to simply react to the surge of lust her seduction elicited. It didn’t matter as long as she continued to think my actions were guided out of some power play, rather than actually wanting her.

  I’d forgotten how she felt in my arms. How she tasted. How could I have when twenty years disintegrated with one touch of her lips?

  My mind kept replaying it. The little noises she hadn’t even realized she made…. her grasping fingers in my hair, on my face. And the dam broke.

  I unlatched my belt and opened my already strained fly. The material of my boxer briefs chafed as I free my cock and gripped it hard. I walked into the shower, braced a forearm on the wall by my head and began to pump. I needed to release this frustration, it would only distract me. In a few rough jerks, with the vision of her head thrown back exposing her long delicate neck, I shot jets of cum onto the shower walls and floor. My body shook from the force of it. After, I finished stripping, turned on the hot spray, and washed away the evidence of my weakness. The evidence demonstrated, in the most primal way, I’d always want her.

  I stepped out of the shower, toweled off and entered my bedroom to find some clothes. A rustle from the adjourning door made me halt. I listened hard around the fresh orgasm heartbeat still pouding in my ears.

  Someone infiltrated my office. No. Only one person would go in there without permission. I stalked to the door and jerked it open. She froze, hand hovering near a bookshelf.

  I pasted on a careless look despite the anger drumming through me. “This trust thing is off to a rough start wouldn’t you say?”

  Did she hear me in the shower? What the hell was she wearing?

  The red sink dress had been replaced by a basic black slip, lined with lace. Her legs and feet were bare, her hair down, makeup washed away.

  She dropped her hand and at least had the decency to look ashamed. When she finally met my eyes, they flew wide then tracked back down to my still wet chest to my towel and bare feet.

  “Umm…I can’t say I’m sorry I just wanted to know what I’m in for here.”

  She’s stopped looking at me now, staring instead somewhere over my left shoulder.

  “You’re as deep as I need you to be. If you want to know something specific, ask.”

  She squared her shoulder and met my eyes now. “Am I going to have to kill someone?”

  I looked her over trying to piece together what went through her mind. After all the things she’d done in her life, was murder her line in the sand?

  After studying her, I realized she asked a serious question. “I’m not going to kill anyone. A merciful death is a kindness and I don’t intend to be kind in the least.”

  She searched my features. “You’re so calm.”

  “I like to think of it as resolved.”

  Without looking down she asked, “do your tattoos go all the way down?”

  I licked my lips. “Do you want to see for yourself?”

  She skittered backward, tumbled over the arm of a plush chair and into its embrace. I surged forward to grab her before she got hurt, but stopped when I caught her giggle from the other side. I skittered around to look at her.

  Her ass was still propped up on the arm and her legs dangled, her upper body flat on the cushion. Her black hair framed her face which scrunched in laughter. I couldn’t help but smile down at the scene.

  She opened her eyes and stared up, the laughter slipped away, but it lingered at the edges of her lips and eyes.

  God, she was beautiful. She’d always been beautiful, but age only intensified her beauty.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I couldn’t tell her, she would take off running before I finished the sentence. Instead, I said, “there’s nothing to find in here. You should go.”

  She spun around on the seat to face me now. I mourned the loss of all the skin bared to my sight.

  Then she stood and advanced. I wanted to back up, put distance between us, but I held my ground. She stopped after one step and put a hand to my chest to trace the outlines of one of my tattoos. “Did you get these in prison?”

  I stopped her with my own hand. If she continued I’d flip her over my desk and hold her captive until she screamed my name. “No, I got most of them when I left.”

  “Why?”

  I chuckled. “To cover what I did get in prison.”

  She licked her lips and continued her inspection of my ink. Part of me prayed she’d go to my towel and find out how far it trailed.

  “Did they hurt?” She whispered.

  I took her hand again and led it to my nipple where a swirl of ink barely grazed. “It hurt here.”

  She swallowed heavily. I dragged her fingers up the side of my neck. “And here.”

  Because I couldn’t resist I dropped her hand back down, under my towel right below my belly button. “And here.”

  Her mouth opened and she drew a few heavy breathes.

  “Do you want to see?”

  She hesitated, and then gave me a swift series of nods.

  I released her, and took both ends of my towel in hand. Then I slowly opened the white terry cloth. I watched her face closely so I could read what she wanted as if she actually spoke the words. “Do you want to see everything or just the ink?”

  She cleared her throat, grabbed my hands, and used them to spread the towel wide. And released me just as quickly. I waited, allowing her look her fill of the ink on my stomach, thighs, and hips. Her gaze eventually landed on my dick, already full and hard for her inspection.

  “Did the ones on your thighs hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached out to touch one on my hip bone. My cock jerked against my belly and she sucked in a ragged breath.

  One thing the mad priest taught me was control. I stood still while she touched every sensitive area she could get her hands on, save the one I wanted her to touch. “Are you going to stand there all night torturing me?”

  She jerked her hand back and met my eyes again. It amused me she didn’t even realized what she’d been doing. I wanted to reach out, but I’d never touch her in all the ways I yearned for, unless she asked me to.

  “Tell me…” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “Tell me you want it. Say you want this. Say you want me and you can have it, all of it.”

  She licked her lips and eyed me again. I could tell she wanted me, wanted everything. But I needed her to say it. To understand what she dropped herself into.

  “I don’t know.”

  I re-wrapped the towel around my hips and tucked in the end. She shook herself as if emerging from a dream.

  “I don’t know isn’t enough.”

  I started to turn, but she stopped me with her hand on my forearm. “I want you to touch me.”

  I lifted her and set her on the edge of my desk. She squeaked in surprise like she did earlier in the night but settled faster this time. I knelt as I did before, but this time I didn’t massage her feet. I reached up under her slip and jerked her panties down and off her ankles. Then I dragged her lush ass to the edge of the stone and took my time running my lips up the inside of one thigh, then the other.

  She shuddered in my hands. And this power, this sweet sweet power, let me more fulfill than any power I’d acquired thus far.

  I inched closer to her pussy, already glistening for me in the dim lighting cast from my bedroom. My mouth watered just looking at her. I was tempted to double check if this was what she really wanted. One glance up at her face, though, and I didn’t need to say a word.

  She gra
bbed my neck and pulled me into her. The scent of her. I breathed her in before allowing myself one gentle taste. Her groan told me she didn’t want it gentle. I reached up and spread her open going right to her clit with my teeth. I dragged her skin into my mouth and used my lips to suck hard on her little bud. She bucked up, and I wrapped my hand around her thighs holding her down as I delved my tongue into her. She jerked my head tight, grinding my face, using my mouth my nose my chin for her pleasure. I relished it, every second. Until she started to shack and buck. I held tighter until she shoved me away. The oxygen hit me and I took a full breath. Air I didn’t even want supplanting smell of her, the taste of her.

  She doubled over, her fingers still entwined in my hair. I ached and burned. I was seconds away from busting. She leaned up and reached for my shoulders but I held her hands back.

  “Let me take care of you.”

  “That’s not what you asked for.” I breathed and stood. My palms aching to take myself in hand. The inhale and exhale I forced out grounded me enough not to sway on my feet.

  She reached out again. I leaned back into the doorway of my bedroom. She hopped off the desk and stalked forward.

  “If you touch me I’ll rip off everything you’re wearing, turn you over my desk, ass up, and fuck you over and over until I’ve had my fill.” I met her between the distance but didn’t touch her. “I promise you, it will be awhile until I’ve had enough of you.”

  She dropped her hands. I pressed forward and this time she retreated.

  “If you’re not ready for that then say goodnight and go back to your room.”

  I couldn’t read her face my brain so scrambled by hormones. Her eyes caught me soft and warm. She nodded once and crossed to the door. Before she walked out, she turned back and said, “thank you.”

  I kept silent, anything else from me might make her feel obligated and I didn’t want a woman to fuck me out of some sense of burden.

  She walked out the door and stopped again. I tried not to groan. She didn’t turn as she said, “You’re beautiful, by the way.”

  I sagged back against my bedroom doorframe. I couldn’t even make it to the shower, I took myself in hand, pumped twice brutally, and came hard enough to shoot stars through my vision.