The Corrupt Comte by Edie Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

” 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