Royal Regard

Chapter Fourteen, Part 2

Michelle's hand clutched at his hip, waiting for any indication he might allow her a more intimate touch. The reflexive curling of her fingers, tightening of her leg, the faint rocking of her sex against his thigh, were both noticed and unrewarded.

"Will she not fall in love with him?"

"Pity for Madame and her lover, Michelle?" He yanked her hair, dislodging her wet heat from the possibility of fulfillment. "Events will proceed more easily if she falls in love with me first."

"Of course you can make her love you." She snapped her fingers. "Like that! Who could be more deserving?"

The pride Michelle took from being chosen as lover to le duc shone in her eyes, ready to defend against anyone who might devalue his name. The confidence in his powers of seduction caused his sex to rise again. With a firm tug of her ear, he reminded Michelle she needed nothing but her presence to render him stiff as a poleax, several times a day.

"By the Heavens, I hope I need not bed her before we are wed. That I will do naught but once."

Her voice grew very small and she scooted closer once more, braving his chastisement. "You do not plan to get her with child, Monseigneur?"

"Why would I fuck an ugly old woman, ma petite, when I have a pretty one?" He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, smoothing the wrinkles under her eye with his fingertip. "No, Michelle, I have no need for her once the money is mine, and I want no half-English child. It is a pity you are too old to bear. In France, your bastards might inherit."

The silence fell heavy and dark, and he held her closer, kissing her forehead, her face in his palm like cradling a kitten. His hand down her shoulder and arm gentled as for a frightened animal. Michelle curled her leg around his under the blanket, her toenail scratching his heel. A tear fell on his collarbone, but he wiped the next from her cheek with his thumb, distracting her with a sweet, soft kiss.

"Mon chaton, you must not cry. It has been so many years, and we have been given this great gift from God, my dear, the chance to be in each other's arms again." He cuddled her closer. "Does that not dry your tears?"

Before he could whisper the same words of comfort as so many times before, she shuddered and shook off her excess emotion, careful not to dislodge his hands, and nodded very slightly, offering the tiniest of kisses on his shoulder.

The reticence in her voice dared not verbalize the larger question hanging in the air. "What will you do with her?"

Pleased he had held her grief at bay, he absently toyed with her riotous red curls and answered, "She will be kept in the country until she can act like a duchesse, not a sailor's whore. If she can be made presentable, perhaps she will have value at Court, since she is known there. But first, I must marry her, which is proving more complicated than I had thought."

He shifted his hipbone slightly, and Michelle's hand very slowly slid toward his cock, a quarter-inch at a time. He watched, waiting, letting her risk his anger. Although he was responding, he stayed her hand an inch away.

His voice hard and low, he ordered, "Stop, you greedy slut."

Asserting his control would be more comfort to Michelle than any tenderness he might show. Tenderness only confused her.

She pulled her hand away without delay, draping it across her leg. Indrawn breath and instinctively pulling herself closer, signaled she was safe again under his dominion. Firmly grasping the hair at the nape of her neck, he let the fingers of his other hand drift down her thigh, tugging her legs very slightly apart. "I will fill your hungry cunt soon, ma douce pute, but I have an idea I need to consider."

As the cool wind blew across them, now half-uncovered by the bedclothes, her shoulders tightened, so he pushed her back down to the mattress, holding her there with his free hand. When she relaxed into his touch, he ran his fingertips along the seam of her lips, opening her clenched jaw to allow her to suck on two of his fingers, almost daring her to bite him. His smile grew wider and colder as she pulled him inside, sucking and licking his hand as though he offered food to ease starvation.

The bed curtains rattled as he pulled them shut against the breeze, now infused with the scent of incipient rain, filling the enclosed space with the combined perfume of ocean wind and their long day of arousal and satisfaction. Sitting up to straddle one of her legs, keeping her exposed and available, his other hand reached her center, and he began stroking very lightly, teasing until she groaned. He bent down to suckle her nipple, biting, scraping his teeth against the swollen flesh, then kissed the bruises on her throat, drifting toward her ear, all the while letting her prove the willingness of her lips and tongue.

As he reached her lobe, tugging gently, he asked, "You have said you will do anything for me, n'est-ce pas?" He removed his hand from her mouth so she could answer.

Breath wispy, she agreed, "Oui, Monseigneur, anything you ask."

He increased the pressure of his hand between her legs and quickened the rhythm, sliding two fingers inside and pressing his thumb against her tender bud, until she was moaning in earnest, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow. The bed shook.

"Show me." Pulling away, leaving her whimpering, he fell back onto his pillows, hand pushing her head down to his burgeoning shaft. "If your mouth is the very best I have ever had, ma chère, I will give you what you so desire before I go back to Town in the morning." He stroked her cheek with one hand and hair with the other.

"Now, suck my cock while I tell you what we are going to do."