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When she could speak, Lara murmured, “If that’s fucking, you are welcome to do it to me anytime, Monsieur de Comte.”
He laughed, his halfrigid cock still inside her. “Anton,” he reminded her for the third time, kissing the side of her neck.
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Emma Wildes
It was very late and the candles had burned low, giving the huge bedroom an ethereal glow. Lifted up on one elbow, Anton lightly touched the cheek of the woman lying next to him. “Tell me,” he urged, trying to read her expression, “about your husband.”
Lara stirred, her lashes lifting over her dark blue eyes. The tumbled black satin of her hair spilled over the pillow and sheets, framing her ivory shoulders. “I am not sure,” she said with a small smile, “that I have the strength to speak. You are insatiable this evening, Comte. What is it you want to know?”
Did you love him
, was what he wanted to ask, but it seemed an unreasonably personal inquiry, one he wasn’t sure he had the right to ask. So instead, he said, “I suppose I am naturally curious about the man you chose to marry. Surely, with your beauty, you had your pick of any man in England.”
“You flatter me, my lord.”
“Not at all,” he declared honestly, taking in the breathtaking splendor of her firm, high breasts, the unblemished smoothness of her pale skin and long, slim limbs. “I have never seen a woman more lovely. You enchant me.”
“Since you certainly would qualify as a connoisseur, I thank you for the compliment,” she murmured dryly. “But the truth is, my marriage was arranged at my birth. My father had a good friend and long before I was conceived, they vowed to each other if one had a son and the other a daughter, there would be a match.”
She shrugged against the bed linens. “I knew Peter my entire life, always accepting our betrothal. He was nice enough, if a bit spoiled.
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His father was very wealthy and I think allowed him a bit too much liberty. It killed him in the end, as he drowned in a sailing accident, unwilling to listen to the men who told him the sea was too rough that day. He insisted he felt in the mood for a sail, and sail he would. The sea, however, took issue with his overconfidence.”
“And at twenty-two, suddenly you found yourself a widow. Do you miss him?” Very lightly, Anton stroked her perfect shoulder, watching her face.
There was a silence in which she seemed to contemplate her answer. “It sounds unfeeling to say no,” she finally admitted, “but I don’t. He was selfish in many ways. I was something he owned, and since he had always known we would marry, he certainly took me for granted. There was no courtship, which when I was younger made me feel a bit cheated, if you will. And when I failed to conceive a child immediately, he made it clear he felt I was to blame. His death set me free.”
“I am guessing,” Anton said quietly, her answer pleasing him as he uncharacteristically disliked the idea of her former husband completely, “he was also selfish in bed?”
Her blue gaze was direct and a little cynical. “If you are asking if I ever experienced anything so…vividly pleasurable before you, the answer is no. I am sure with your sophistication you’ve already realized that. Peter tended to come to me and take his satisfaction quickly, sometimes doing little more than shoving up my night dress.”
As he leaned forward to lick her delicate jaw, Anton whispered, “I shoved up your skirts in the carriage this evening. Did I remind you of him?”
Her breathing changed a fraction at his touch, the exhale of breath subtle but unmistakable. “No. He certainly never…never—”
“Tasted your delicious, wet snatch?” Anton supplied mischievously, smelling the fragrance of her silken hair, one arm going around her waist to pull her closer. He’d seen the shock in her expression earlier when he’d used a crude word and liked teasing her.
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Emma Wildes
“It was so sweet and running with your desire. Hot and silky and entirely female. What a fool he was to never have feasted on something so delectable. I look forward to eating there often.” He found he swelled just thinking about it, his erection growing, lengthening.
“You are outrageous,” she murmured in demure reprimand as he moved his mouth to just below her ear. “For a well-mannered man, you seem to forget yourself, monsieur.”
However, he noticed with satisfaction that when he urged her body next to his so they lay nestled together, she yielded willingly. “I promised to make love to you all night,” he said huskily, “and it is hours until dawn. I might be outrageous, but I am a man of my word.
“You promised to make love to me
sinfully
,” Lara reminded him, the languorous note in her voice as arousing as the soft feel of her in his arms. “I cannot imagine what that means.”
“What about this,” he murmured, shifting her, rolling her over so she lay on her stomach, her tempting bottom kneaded by his hands, his fingers dark against firm, pale buttocks. He used his hands to push her legs open, “You’ll like this,
chérie.”
Grasping her hips, he positioned his straining erection against her cleft, already lubricated with the discharge of their earlier intercourse, the slick tissue giving wonderfully as he slowly invaded her tight female passage from behind. Her glorious hair, so extravagantly lovely and black, spilled over her back, the sight enticing as he began to push deeply in and withdraw in measured strokes. “The sensation,”
he said hoarsely, ecstasy flooding his senses, “I am told is somewhat different when I mount you this way. You must tell me if this is true.”
Relishing the firmness of her bottom against his stomach as he held her in place for his erotic invasion, Anton moved over and over, controlling himself with skill learned in almost two decades of sexual experience, holding back until she began to moan, her bottom lifting in needy supplication as she pushed back to receive his rigid cock.
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When she shoved upward and went still, rippling around him, her body trembling, he allowed himself to explode with such force that he groaned, pushing his face into her hair. As he buried himself deep, he felt the hot insistent rush of sperm erupt from his body, the sensation so uniquely superb that he shuddered time and again.
Gasping and sated, he finally withdrew, easing out from between her legs and collapsing at her side. Lara still lay on her stomach, her thighs streaked with slick rivulets of running semen, her breathing choppy. She looked incredibly beautiful in the flush following orgasmic climax; all desirable woman with her voluptuous body and half-closed eyes.
He was beyond enchanted, he thought, his heart still pounding as he lounged against the pillows. Defining his feelings was disturbing, as he’d always assumed once he’d had carnal knowledge of the elusive English countess, he would be able to walk away as he had from so many other women.
Somehow, he was not sure that was possible this time.
Holding up the crimson satin, the modiste smiled with a cat in the cream expression on her face, her small eyes narrowed and delighted.
“This, with the darkness of madame’s beautiful hair, will make him go mad for her.”
Anton was amorous enough as it was, Lara thought with jaded cynicism, but saying so would do nothing but fuel the already rampant rumors flying around the elite social circles of the city. “I do not wear red,” she murmured instead. “Give me the cream silk, and the blue brocade.”
“And new lingerie, yes?” Disappointed, but still trying, Madame Dupont suggested hopefully, “Perhaps something so sheer, you will look like an angel, barely veiled, come to this earth just to tempt the hot-blooded Roussel, yes?”
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Emma Wildes
“Madame, I am ordering the gowns and paying for them myself.”
Patient and polite, Lara smiled to take the edge out of her words.
“Whether The Comte de Roussel will like what I select is not the issue. Please, just the two gowns for now, and slippers and stockings to match. I also need a new chemise, something in Belgian lace, if you would oblige me.”
Unfazed by the rebuff, the woman shook her head. “The
comte
sent word to me himself. He will be paying your bills from now on, and you have his carte blanche to order whatever you desire, Countess. So, perhaps the red, with the bodice cut so,”—she drew a scandalously low line across her own ample bosom—“just for him.
You need not wear it in public, but perhaps on those evenings you dine in and desire an intimate encounter with your oh-so handsome lover, you could thus display your bountiful charms. He will not be able to take a bite of his food if he should so see you.”
Incensed that Anton would do such a thing as actually contact the most popular seamstress in Paris and announce he was essentially keeping her, Lara could hardly speak for a moment. Used to complete independence and a reputation for virtue, it was mortifying to realize her personal life was being discussed so freely. Standing there in her stockings and a thin, lacy shift, she wished she could simply turn on her heel and leave the room, but that didn’t seem possible halfdressed as she was.
Oblivious to her distress, Madame Dupont bustled across the room. Perpetually harassed and always untidy, she nevertheless was patronized by every woman of consequence in Paris. Retrieving pins and more tape, she turned, beaming. “Leave everything to me, Countess, I promise you a wardrobe that will make his knees weak.
The virile
comte
is a man of exquisite taste. Let us indulge him, shall we? You are so beautiful together, I am told, you so fair…he so sublime…”
“Madame,” Lara began in a strangled voice, then stopped, remembering that just that morning she had received a very discreet
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note saying that Leon Medes had been taken to a hasty trial and easily convicted. Perhaps, even if it was a little humiliating for everyone to know Anton had bedded her, it was best to seem the compliant mistress. He had promised to protect her.
God help her, maybe she
did
need him.
“Whatever you think,” Lara murmured without inflection. “I guess if you feel he would like the red, I’ll take it. And the lingerie, too, of course, if it would be pleasing to him.”
Madame Dupont gave a delighted cackle. “Excellent.”
It was most certainly like being in a duel, the riposte and thrust similar but in this case, only verbal. He’d been in the stuffy, little office for twenty minutes, trying to get around to the question that was impossible to ask outright. Anton leaned back in his chair and sipped his cognac, smiling with bland nonchalance. “Your proof, then, is so reliable, you will execute a son of one of our finest families? Remember your own remarks when it came to d’Enghien, Minister.”
Fouche looked unruffled. “I still think that was a mistake, but this is not the same situation.”
“Medes is a popular man, and a romantic figure.”
The room was austere, the lighting dim. Enigmatic and saturnine, the minister of police simply smiled. “I am curious to know, are you asking as a fellow aristocrat, Monsieur de Comte, or as a friend of the Medes family?”
Brows lifted, Anton responded, “Neither. I am here as a citizen of France, of course. I also have many financial affairs handled by the very bank Leon ran so efficiently.”
“Ahh…and so you are personally concerned that justice is served, is that it?”
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Emma Wildes
“Shouldn’t we all be?” Anton said pointedly. “Please tell me the Terror wasn’t for nothing. In this new France, it is put forth that a man can expect a fair trial. It seems to me that this Medes affair has been handled too quickly.”
“And as a man with the ear of the emperor, you are here to police this situation?”
It would never do to insult someone like Fouche. Anton laughed lightly. “No, of course not. The courts are supposed to do that. I am here to—”
“Obliquely find out if Medes has in anyway given evidence that might implicate your very beautiful English lover, Lady Edgerton?”
Not known for his frankness, the very bluntness of the minister’s speech was so surprising that for a moment, Anton was nonplussed at how to react.
Fouche went on in that same pleasant voice. “You are concerned, and justly so, that we—I dislike the word torture, so let us use
influenced—
Medes. In the course of such questioning, most men break down, do they not?”
“After the third day, as so the saying goes.” Recovering his poise a little, Anton set aside his snifter, wondering what kind of game they were now playing. “It seems rather barbaric to me, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, to me also, but effective. Mind you, I did not say we did anything of the kind. I simply stated what I believed to be your concern. Lacroux cries Lady Edgerton’s name at every turn, certain she is a planted spy sent by the enemy.”
A small chill had seized him. Since Fouche had already brought up her name, it seemed his worries were justified. Anton said curtly, “Lacroux is unstable, and you know it, however well he serves you.
Lara is English. I would not want her falsely accused simply because of her nationality. Our countries are ever at odds with each other.”
“Our countries are ever at war.” Fouche chuckled. “Come, Monsieur de Comte, let us be blunt. It is obvious to me that you have discovered something that makes you suspicious also of the lovely
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countess and you are enamored enough of this young lady to bestir yourself to try and assess her danger. I suspect that if I were to have proof enough for an arrest on the charge of espionage, I would find myself in a battle that involved your influence in the highest circles.”
“You have my assurance, Minister, that Lady Edgerton does nothing but occupy my bed. Is that not enough?”
There was a brief silence in which the room seemed to grow even stuffier, the stench of stale tobacco and old books filling the air. Then Fouche sighed, sinking back in his chair. “Take her out of Paris,” he suggested with a languid wave of his hand, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “To the country, perhaps, for a while, at least until this affair with Medes and his little group is over. I do not intend to stand by and allow such an operation right under my nose. I serve France, and it is not prudent to allow information to leak across her borders, even if it means more unpopular executions.”