“Georgette,” she called, still in a whisper.
She inched closer to the bed as the breathing hitched and the pile of quilts stirred. Relief spilled through her, and she hurried all the way to the side of the bed, setting the lamp on the bedside table.
“Georgette, I must speak with you at once. I—” Alice sucked in a breath as a large form, far larger than Georgette was, twisted under the quilts to face her. “George—”
She yelped and clapped a hand to her mouth as the bedcovers were pushed back and Count Camoni squinted up at her in the dim light. There was a moment of confusion in his sleepy eyes before it resolved into ire.
“George?” he said, his voice louder than Alice wanted it to be. She tried to shush him by touching a finger to her lips and glancing over her shoulder, but he sat and demanded a second time, “George? What is the meaning of this?”
Terror roiled in Alice’s gut, not the least of which was because, as he sat, the bedcovers slumped to reveal Count Camoni’s powerful, naked chest. The lamplight was more than enough for her to see the definition in his muscles and the light hair that dusted his chest. His arms were a sight to behold as well, with a firmness that brought the ache instantly back to her core.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered, barely able to form the words as she drank in the sight of his body.
“I’ll say it is,” he growled. “So you thought you could sneak into your lover’s room for an assignation right under my nose?”
“I—” Alice barely heard his question. He shifted the way he was sitting and a stretch of his naked thigh poked out from the bedcovers, hinting that he wore nothing at all to bed.
“Is this why you’ve been so cold to me these last few days?” he demanded, glowering at her.
Alice dragged her eyes up from his body, but she couldn’t manage to shut her mouth as she stared at him. A riot of feeling played havoc with her senses. His expression was truly terrifying. Like he might punish her for her wickedness. But that didn’t strike her as an entirely bad thing. The words of her section of The Secrets of Love rushed back to her. “Sometimes submission is the most glorious way to move a romance forward. Embrace his mastery of you and pleasures you have never known will be opened to you.”
He was still glaring at her and she hadn’t answered. She blinked, determined to do something about that. “George?” she asked, taking a deep breath that caused an alarming friction between her nipples and the fabric of her nightgown.
“Yes,” Count Camoni said, narrowing his eyes. “You know, the man whose bed you tried to hop into? The man you’ve likely been dallying with all these months of our engagement?”
She didn’t have the first clue what he was talking about. “No.” She shook her head. “I only meant that…I have to warn…she can’t marry him or….” Why couldn’t she think or form words?
A flash of uncertainty filled Count Camoni’s eyes, although it could have been the play of shadows from the dim light. “What does he give you that I cannot?” he asked.
Alice gaped for a moment, scrambling to decipher his meaning. He had to be referring to her father. She didn’t know any other men. “He’s…I suppose he’s provided for me,” she said with a frown of confusion.
“Provided for you, has he?” Count Camoni seemed indignant at her perfectly normal response.
“Yes?” She shivered, certain she’d put every foot wrong.
“I suppose he sees to your physical needs as well,” Count Camoni went on in a bitter voice.
Alice bit her lip, knowing she wouldn’t say the right thing. “Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do?”
As she’d predicted, it was the wrong thing to say. Count Camoni looked downright livid. She expected him to start shouting and to either order her from the room or smack her, like her father sometimes did when he was in a particularly foul mood.
But he shocked her by growling, “We’ll just see about that,” and surging toward her.
She barely had time to gulp a breath before Count Camoni captured her and twisted her so that she lay on her back in his bed. He closed a hand possessively over her hip and swooped down to punish her mouth with a kiss that overwhelmed her. His lips played aggressively with hers, and when she parted hers just a little, he took full advantage, plunging his tongue in to plunder her.
She moaned deep in her throat, feeling as though the world had tipped off-balance. He was so powerful and demanding. Her lips felt tender and bruised within moments, but she didn’t want him to stop. She arched against him, but gasped when the fullness of his naked body pressed back against her.
“Are you so voracious that you don’t care who your lover is as long as they pleasure you?” he rumbled above her. His large hand reached down her leg to gather the hem of her nightgown, tugging it up. “If you want it, I’ll give it to you.”
Alice’s mind reeled. Through her shock and fear came the realization that she did want it. She wasn’t sure what it was, but if it had anything to do with the way he caressed her thigh, teasing his fingers toward her aching sex, then yes, that was exactly what she wanted.
“Does he make you feel like this?” Count Camoni asked on, yanking her nightgown up over her hips, then spreading his hand across her belly. It didn’t stay there for long. He traced her navel with one finger, then slid his hand down to the thatch of curls between her legs. He didn’t stop there either, His fingers delved into her folds, stroking her overheated sex.
Alice tried to say something, anything, but all that came out was a sensual sigh. Sharp bolts of pleasure, like nothing she’d ever experienced before, coursed through her as he traced her entrance with his fingers, then thrust one slowly inside of her. Her eyes went wide at the invasion and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
“I should have known a hussy like you would be wet and panting for it,” he growled, though there was something warm and teasing in his tone, something beyond anger. “I bet you like cock. I bet you lie awake at night, abusing yourself and dying for a big, thick, hard cock ramming into you until you come so hard you cry.”
Alice tried to answer, but all that came out was a strangled cry as he added a second finger to his ministrations. Heaven help her, but she liked it and she wanted more.
“Does George have a big cock?” he demanded. Her overtaxed mind had no idea what he was talking about. “Is it as big as this?”
He drew his hand away from her, finding her hand where it lay, limp and useless, on the bed beside her, and pulling it toward him. She gasped as he pressed her hand to his cock. Not only did the gesture prove that yes, he was fully naked, it answered the question he’d just asked her. He was enormous. Not that she had much to compare him with. His erect penis was hot and hard, like iron covered with soft leather, and as thick as a tree trunk. Well, perhaps not that thick, but it might as well have been.
He moved her hand so that she stroked him, which only emphasized his size and power.
“Do you like that?” he asked in a tense voice, his eyes blazing with fire in the feeble light of the lamp. “Do you want it in you?”
The very idea made Alice shudder with longing and fear. Certainly, something that size could never fit inside of her. But the only sound that came from her throat was an incoherent, “Ahmm.”
He braced himself above her, studying her with narrowed eyes, his too-long hair hanging down and framing his face. It took Alice a few moments to realize she had continued stroking his erection, even after he moved his hand away.
“You’re going to marry me,” he said with a note of finality. “And when you do, I don’t want you so much as looking at another man again.”
Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to look at another man, not after what was happening to her just then.
“I want you screaming my name when you come from now on, do you hear me?”
She blinked up at him, only half understanding what he was demanding of her. “Yes?”
Her answer must not have been definitive e
nough for him. “My name,” he repeated. “I want my name on your lips when you writhe with lust and demand satisfaction.” When she didn’t say anything, he went on with, “Say my name.”
Alice’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. It was asking too much of her to form coherent thoughts when his body was pressed against hers and his cock rubbed against her hip. “Count Camoni?” she panted at last.
His expression darkened. “It’s Fabian,” he told her in a low rumble.
The sound made her shiver and squirm. “Fabian,” she repeated.
He didn’t look appeased. Not one bit. He moved to wedge the lower half of his body between her legs. “Say it like you mean it.”
She couldn’t imagine what he wanted from her. “Fabian?”
He growled, resting a hand on her belly for a moment before drawing it up to caress her breast. The way he squeezed and kneaded it, brushing his fingers over her nipple until it was a hard point, sent shoots of pleasure radiating through her. Then he pinched her nipple lightly and she cried out wordlessly at the heady combination of pleasure and pain.
“Say it,” he demanded, increasing the pressure of his pinch until she squirmed, her sex on fire with need.
“Fabian,” she gasped.
He released the pressure and returned to caressing and teasing her breast. It felt even better after the flash of pain. He took a moment to sweep his hands over her arms, arranging them over her head as though he were a sculptor and she was his clay. The position left her feeling open and vulnerable, and decidedly wicked.
“You have the body of a goddess,” he said in sultry tones, stroking his hand along the curve of her neck and over her shoulder to tease and fondle her other breast. “It was made for fucking. No wonder you’re such a harlot.”
In the back of her mind, Alice thought that perhaps she should be offended by his words. Offense was the furthest thing from her mind, though. Especially when he rocked back so that he could use both hands to wrench her knees apart. The motion was so sudden and so carnal that she could barely catch her breath. He pushed her legs apart, knees bent, so that her sex yawned wide for him. Her body trembled as though she were terrified, but the sensation of liquid heat pulsing through her was anything but fear.
“Does he spread you like this?” Fabian asked, stroking her thighs in a way that made it impossible for Alice to pay attention to what he was saying. “Does he play with your cunny until it’s dripping with your honey?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer. She couldn’t have formed words as he brushed his fingers over her gaping sex anyhow. The pleasure was too amazing. He plunged his fingers inside of her, then spread her moisture up over her clitoris. It felt so good when he stroked and circled that part of her that she wanted to weep with the pleasure of it. If this was what The Secrets of Love meant by submitting, she was all for it.
“Come,” he ordered her. “I want to watch your cunny throbbing with release.” He continued to pleasure her with steady strokes. “I want you to call out my name as you shudder, knowing that I am the one doing this to you.”
She was already startlingly close to doing exactly as he wanted. The coil of tension began to radiate with her coming orgasm, leaving her short of breath.
“And when you’re finished coming, I’m going to fuck you so deeply that you won’t remember your own name, let alone the name of any other men.”
That was all it took. Her body thundered into the most powerful orgasm she’d ever experienced, far more earth-shattering than anything she’d been able to coax out herself. And as the pleasure throbbed through her, she sighed, “Fabian. Dear God, Fabian.”
A wicked smile spread across his face and a wolfish gleam lit his eyes. He surged forward, his body sliding over hers. The shift from icy cold air to his hot body covering her was delicious, but it was the sudden, merciless way he brought himself to her still throbbing entrance and pushed firmly inside of her that caused her to cry out without words.
It hurt. Dear heavens, it hurt. Like being torn in two from the inside. But the lingering pleasure of orgasm was also there, and the aggressive way he moved in and out of her, jerking his hips against her and grunting with each thrust, ignited something beyond the pain. She clenched her thighs over his and clung to him, digging her nails into his back, as he mated with her in a combination of fury and desperation.
Pleasure quickly eclipsed the pain, though he still felt impossibly huge inside of her, and a new set of sensations swept through her. He was wild and uncontrolled, like an animal with his mate. He needed her as his vessel and his anchor, she could feel it. His power was all hers, encompassing her, but with her as its source.
The sounds he made became unfettered, and a tension radiated from him as though something momentous were about to happen. His breathing became shallower, then turned to a tight cry of victory as his body tensed. His hips flexed against hers, and the sensation of warmth and completeness filled her as his seed spilled within her. She gasped as a second orgasm overtook her, milking him even as he sagged, his loose weight pressing down on her. The whole thing was glorious and strange, and left her bristling with the feeling that they’d abandoned reality altogether.
“You’re mine,” he purred, rolling to his side, then reaching for her and tucking her against him. He reached groggily for the bedcovers, closing them in a cocoon of heat and the scent of sweat and musk. “You’re mine, and don’t you forget it.”
His voice grew groggy, and within moments, Alice had the feeling he’d fallen fast asleep. Her body ached and tingled with spent energy and amazement. Her sex stung with the loss of her virginity. Her lips were still swollen from his kisses, but she had yet to catch her breath. He was right. She was his. Unequivocally. And as mad and sudden as the whole thing had been, as used as her body felt, she wanted more. Much more.
Chapter 4
Fabian would have been happy to awake with the dawn chorus the next morning, Alice soft and warm in his arms. He would have grinned at his conquest from the night before, stretched, and run his hands over Alice’s naked body, arousing her to wakefulness. He would have wanted nothing more than to greet the day by lazily making love to her, listening to her signs of pleasure mingling with the whisper of the winter wind against his window and her desperate moans as she came. He would have loved to spend himself deep inside of her, hoping his seed took hold to start the large family he craved and knowing that anticipating their wedding vows by a few days wouldn’t matter in the long run.
What he actually felt as the cold light of morning crept around the gaps between the curtains was a profound sense of doom and guilt.
He shifted as subtly as he could, lifting his head to see if Alice was awake. Unsurprisingly, she was. Her body was tense against his and she stared straight forward at the wall. Fabian winced. He’d behaved like an utter brute with her the night before. Jealousy and the shock of being awakened without fully coming to his senses had made him crass. His stomach twisted at the memory of the things he’d said to her. He hoped he had just imagined half of them.
But worst of all, a few, gut-wrenching details of the way her body had felt as he plundered her, the way she had reacted to his invasion, had him doubting every assumption he’d made in anger. Women of experience and cunning didn’t respond to lust the way Alice had.
“You….” He hesitated, mustering up the courage to go on. “You weren’t seeking out George for an assignation last night, were you.” It wasn’t a question.
Alice blinked and twisted to her back, turning her head to face him. The shift brought her body into contact with his in a dozen arousing ways. He couldn’t help his physical reaction to her, but he ignored it and focused on the confusion in her eyes.
“Who’s George?” she asked.
Fabian’s lips twitched into a smile even as the dread in his gut writhed like snakes. She was as sweet and lovely as she had been that summer, which was remarkable, all things considered. “George Percival?”
She bli
nked at him again, shaking her head slightly.
“The man you spoke to in the greenhouse after the display yesterday?”
A slight frown furrowed her brow before she sucked in a breath, the confusion clearing from her expression. “Is that what his name was? I was asking him if he’d seen which way Georgette went.”
Like the blast of a cannon, it all made sense to Fabian. She hadn’t said “George” when she entered his room in the middle of the night. She’d clearly said “Georgette”, but he’d heard what he expected to hear. Alice was innocent of attempting to cuckold him under his mother’s roof, days before their wedding. At least….
He cleared his throat. “Tell me plainly. Were you a virgin before last night?”
Alice’s eyes popped wide. “Of course, I was,” she said with equal parts indignation and shyness.
Fabian dropped his head in shame, grimacing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. I was brutal with you. I let an imagined offense turn me into a beast. No woman should be introduced to pleasure that way.”
Alice’s cheeks went bright red and a gentle smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t mind,” she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Well, it hurt for a moment, but it was quite thrilling. And pleasurable.”
Fabian’s cock jerked at her words. The beast that had ravaged her the night before roared within him, urging him to spread her legs and claim her as his all over again. “You liked it?” he asked, his words coming out with ridiculous vulnerability that formed a stark contrast with the smoldering heat in his groin. He closed a hand over one of her dazzlingly full breasts to feed the beast instead of his sheepishness.
Alice’s smile grew as she drew in a breath, arching her back. “Does it make me a complete wanton if I did?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, shifting closer to her and nudging her legs apart with one knee. “But as you are to be my wife, I will allow it.”
Once Upon a Christmas Wedding Page 23