The Lover Page 15

  Anne whirled around, evading the past, the present. Death was an inescapable reality.

  Afternoon sunshine checkered the polished oak floor. Gilded chaise lounges upholstered in dark blue silk cast uncompromising shadows; ormolu-applied pedestal tables stood at attention beside each lounge chair, daunting reminders of another era, another culture. Bone-china lamps covered with dark blue and gold fleur-de-lis-patterned silk shades glowed in the fading light.

  Eyes widening, she halted; her bustle swayed back and forth underneath her dress.

  Michel leaned against the door, eyes hooded, watching her.

  She forgot to breathe.

  He did not look like the man who had confessed his need for a woman. Or who had propelled her toward the stairs with unmistakable intent.

  His violet eyes were flat. Dead. Like the marble eyes in the stuffed owl decorating the foyer in her parents’ town house.

  He looked, she thought, like a man who had never enjoyed the pleasures of intimacy.

  He looked like the butler her solicitor had hired.

  Deadly. Dangerous.

  “You kept the hat on.”

  Michel’s observation was harsh, discordant.

  Anne was abruptly, acutely aware of the white plume that crowned her hat, and of how he must interpret the fact that she wore it still. “Yes.”

  “Men don’t expect women to kiss them.”

  Her head shot back in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You wanted to know what I expect from a woman.”

  “You don’t expect a woman to kiss you?” she asked carefully.

  “No,” he said flatly.

  She swallowed. “I see.”

  Electricity rode the air like a gathering storm.

  “Don’t you want to know what I expect from a woman, Mademoiselle Aimes?”

  Anne inwardly cringed at the impersonal form of French address.

  “Yes.” She stiffened her spine. “I do want to know. Otherwise I would not have asked.”

  “I expect a woman to lick me. Suck me. Bite me,” he said in that curiously harsh yet distant voice. “The same as I did to you last night. And again this morning, when I brought you to orgasm.”

  It was a direct challenge.

  Last night he had teased her with his lips, tongue, and teeth. This morning he had satisfied her with the same tools.

  He knew what to do to a woman, how best to please her, whereas she knew nothing about men, or how best to please him.

  She struggled to reconcile the man before her with the one who had urged her to accept him as her lover.

  She could not.

  In the carriage he had been abrupt, angry at circumstances he had no control over, yet which had forever altered his life.

  Emotions she could relate to.

  She did not know how to respond to the man standing in front of her.

  Her short fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Belatedly she remembered digging them into Michel’s back last night. Had she marked him? “An acquaintance of yours … passed away?” she asked stiffly, hating the euphemism but unable to bring herself to utter the word died.

  “Yes.”

  “Please accept my condolences. I quite understand if you would prefer privacy ….”

  Michel continued staring at her for long seconds, until even her heartbeat fumbled.

  “It was not unexpected,” he replied finally.

  Pushing away from the door, he strode stiff-leggedly toward the white marble fireplace and squatted down.

  Anne remembered the pile of white ashes in Mr. Little’s iron fireplace. She would not have thought the solicitor the type of man to indulge in the extravagance of burning a fire in April.

  She would not have thought to find a Frenchman’s library filled with English titles.

  Yet Michel’s was.

  The sharp strike of a safety match pierced the palpitating silence. A faint waft of sulfur mingled with the smell of leather and lilacs.

  Rising so quickly that he stumbled, Michel jerkily stepped away before turning his back toward the flickering yellow fire that licked at the black coals.

  For one fleeting second his life was clearly delineated on his face: the pain he had suffered five years earlier, his flesh eaten by flame. The fear he experienced still, forced to daily handle a substance that had caused him unimaginable suffering.

  The loss of someone who was far more dear than a mere acquaintance.

  Anne had lived with death for many, many years before it had actually taken her parents. When it had finally come, the relief she had felt had been more of a betrayal than the actual demise of the only two people she loved. But he had obviously not been prepared.

  Michel had forced her to accept her loneliness. In return he had unselfishly given her comfort—with words, with pleasure. He had made her laugh.

  He did not deserve to mourn in solitude.

  Anne offered him the only solace she suspected he would accept. “How does a woman ask a man if she may lick him … suck him … bite him?”

  “Men are not shy,” he said, coldly provocative, the stallion Madame René had called him. “If a woman wants a man, all she has to do is tell him.”

  Her heartbeat accelerated. “I want you, Michel.”

  An ember popped in the fireplace.

  Michel flinched, as if bracing himself for pain. Lowering his lashes, he suggestively reached for the front of his trousers. “How do you want me, Anne?”

  “In front of the window,” she replied evenly. Beneath her dress her knees threatened to collapse at the actuality of giving pleasure to a man whose services she had purchased for her own pleasure. “Facing the sunlight. So that I can see you.”

  His nostrils flared, scarred fingers stilling.

  “Taking a man’s penis inside your mouth is not like taking his tongue. You may not like the taste of sex.” Rawness overrode the crudeness in his voice, remnants of memories devoid of joy. “Not all women do.”

  “But you enjoy kissing a woman’s genitals,” she said with a calm certainty that she was far from feeling.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know that it pleases a woman. Sex is the taste of pleasure.”

  He did not have to say that it had been five years since a woman had cared to please him. To taste him.

  It was all there in his stark violet eyes.

  “I want to taste you, Michel. To feel your heartbeat against my lips, my tongue. I, too, want to lose myself in another’s pleasure.”

  Long seconds passed, the silence broken only by the crackling of the spreading flame, the pounding of her heart, and the memory of his voice. Telling her he had felt her heartbeat against his lips, his tongue …

  Just when she thought that he would refuse her, he silently, wordlessly walked toward the large bay window, into the afternoon sunlight. A gilded round table held a large Ming vase filled with lavender lilacs. He halted a few feet in front of it, his right profile facing her, his body wreathed in golden light.

  Heart tripping inside her chest, heels clicking on the sun-checkered floor, she closed the distance separating them and stepped between him and the window.

  Warmth caressed her exposed nape. Tension weighted the dust motes.

  “I don’t want you to regret the time we’ve spent together,” Michel said tautly.

  The scars on his right cheek and temple were raw in the glare of the sunlight.

  Anne ignored them. “I do not regret my decision.”

  He reached for the buttons fastening his trousers.

  She experienced a curious sense of déjà vu.

  “No,” she impulsively protested.

  He paused, eyelashes lifting, his gaze impaling hers.

  “No?” he asked softly.

  He had dared her to unfasten his trousers last night—a virgin who did not know what to expect.

  She now knew what to expect.

  “Please. Allow me.”


  She wanted to bury, now and forever, the memories of death and disease.

  Anne did not fumble with his buttons as she had the night before. The hardness behind the scratchy wool was inviting, familiar.

  It was for her, he had said.

  Not because she paid him. But because he desired her.

  Kneeling, dress and petticoats cushioning her knees, she reached into the open vent, finding wiry hair; humid heat; unmistakable male arousal.

  A faint whiff of something—something that had been scorched—teased her nostrils. It was immediately gone, replaced by the clean, musky odor of masculine flesh and the pervasive sweetness of lilac. Sunlight danced along the length of his erect penis, revealing every vein, every gradation of color. A curlicue of black hair. Darkening skin that ripened into dewy plum.

  Gently she grasped him, encircled the first five inches. A thin thread of silvery arousal glistened on the engorged purple head that protruded from her fingers.

  He did not look like a sausage. He did not look like a cigar.

  He did not look like the shriveled mass of desiccated flesh that had been her father.

  Michel was what she would remember in the forthcoming years.

  Anne traced the path of moisture; the plum-shaped crown was slippery smooth. A faint pulse throbbed underneath his skin.

  The moisture in her mouth dried up with sudden apprehension at taking him into her mouth. Licking him. Sucking him.

  Her fingers tightened; she studied the tiny slit that looked like an eye. It wept a lonely tear. “Is it necessary that I take all of you inside my mouth?”

  “No.” She could feel his stare; his voice was strained, still harsh but no longer remote. “Just the first couple of inches.”

  Slowly, carefully, she grazed the throbbing head with her lips.

  His flesh jerked.

  Anne snapped backward.

  Michel’s hands were fisted at his side. His head was thrown back. The muscles in his exposed throat were corded, as if he were in supreme agony—or utter ecstasy.

  Leaning forward, she tentatively nuzzled him as he had nuzzled her. Inhaled his scent as he had inhaled hers.

  It was not offensive.

  Closing her eyes, she tasted him, there where his flesh throbbed like a heartbeat.

  He tasted … clean. Faintly salty.

  Anne hesitantly took the thick, plum-shaped tip between her lips, her mouth opening wider, wider still until she encompassed his full circumference.

  It was awkward, but not uncomfortable.

  He flexed inside the circle of her fingers, as if in approval.

  A murmur of surprised pleasure rose inside her throat.

  Large, scar-roughened hands banded her neck.

  Anne started. Jerking back, she glanced up.

  Michel did not loosen his hold.

  His eyelids were heavy, a slash of black lashes. Underneath them his pupils were a pinprick of darkness that swallowed the light; his violet irises glittered. “Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” she said in all honesty.

  “Do you know what will happen if you continue?”

  She stared at the purple crown that pulsed and throbbed and wept the tears that he did not. “You will ejaculate.”

  “Inside your mouth,” he affirmed.

  The thought should repulse her.

  It didn’t.

  Leaning forward, she planted a kiss on the velvety tip of his bitte—a beautiful French word for a beautiful Frenchman. Then she swallowed as much of him as she could comfortably take.

  One ridged hand slid free of her neck. A heartbeat later a weight depressed her hat. Steel slipped through her hair—the hat pin.

  A shiver of alarm coursed down her spine.

  Her head snapped back and up.

  Michel held the hat pin. Light played along the sharp steel, fluttered along the glistening wetness of his flesh.

  Trust me, he had said.

  But she didn’t.

  It was so difficult to trust when all her life she had been warned not to.

  Anne took a deep breath. “Tell me what to do. How to do it.”

  The steel hat pin winked.

  Hollows indented his cheeks; the raw-looking scars lining his high cheekbone and temple whitened. “Take me in your mouth.”

  “Say it in French.” She heard her voice over the drum of her heartbeat. “Talk to me like you did the others ….”

  The women who were beautiful. Gay. Frivolous.

  Everything she was not.

  For a long second even the rhythmical pounding inside her fist stopped. Sunlight ebbed and swelled around them, defining glistening flesh, gray wool, white linen, and shiny metal.

  Across the library the burning coals ceased to snap and pop.

  And then …

  “Prends-moi dans la bouche.” Take me into your mouth.

  Closing her eyes, she took him into her mouth. The steel pin continued to glint in her mind’s eye.

  “L’eche-moi.” Lick me.

  She licked him.

  “Mords-moi.” Bite me.

  She gently nibbled on him.

  “Suce-moi.” Suck me.

  She sucked him.

  “Plus profond.” Deeper.

  She took him deeper, lips working against the circle of her fingers.

  “Plus fort.” Harder.

  She drew deeply on the silky hard flesh inside her mouth, as he had drawn on her breast. A woman taking sustenance from a man.

  Did he feel this closeness when he suckled a woman? she wondered.

  Had he felt it when he suckled her?

  His scar-roughened fingers dug into the base of her head.

  “Plus vite.” Faster.

  Anne felt the fragility of her neck, the masculine strength in his hand. The feminine power of her touch.

  She took him faster, trembling on the verge of discovery, utterly lost in the taste and texture of Michel des Anges.

  His flesh hardened. Thickened.

  Something was happening. Something quite incredible.

  It felt as if he were about to explode inside her mouth.

  A sharp ping resounded beside her. Vaguely she identified it as the hat pin bouncing on the wooden floor. At the same time both of Michel’s hands clamped about her neck and he hoarsely shouted, “N’arrête pas! Jesus! Don’t stop!”

  Liquid spurted against the back of her throat.

  It was hot. Thick.

  Exhilarating. Empowering.

  It was the essence of Michel’s pleasure.

  Anne instinctively swallowed.

  And yes, she did like it.

  Sauce. Blanc. Came.

  The French terms rolled on her tongue.

  Her hat flew off the top of her head. Suddenly she was standing, blinking in surprise. Strong fingers tangled in her hair, dislodging the pins securing her bun. Hair slithered down her back.

  Michel’s face was flushed; his eyes were narrow shards of violet. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered fiercely.

  “You didn’t hurt me,” she reassured him shakily, equally enthralled by both the wonder of his orgasm and her ability to effect it. “I—”

  His dark face swooped down. He stole the words from her mouth, and then he stole her breath, lips grinding against hers, tongue plunging between her teeth.

  She was arrested by the unexpected fervor of his embrace. Or perhaps it was fear that held her immobile.

  This, she realized with a frisson of alarm, was the difference between a lover and a man employed to ensure a woman’s satisfaction.

  This was a man out of control.

  This was a man’s passion.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he repeated raggedly, inside her mouth, against her lips. More hair cascaded down her back; a tiny rain of pings, impacting hairpins, reverberated over the harsh sound of his breathing and the thudding cadence of her heartbeat. “I promise. No matter what, I won’t hurt you. Kiss me. Kiss me back. Suck my tongue like you did my bitte.”<
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  Anne tentatively reached up and kissed him back, suckling his tongue as she had suckled his manhood.

  She grabbed his shoulders at the sudden loosening of her dress, her corset ….

  “The servants—”

  His hand flattened against her lower back. “Will not intrude.”

  The thin cotton chemise did not shield her from the heat of his skin. A matching ball of heat glowed inside her stomach.

  It was ridiculous, of course, but she fancied she could feel his sperm inside her. It was every bit as hot as the pressure molding her spine. The breath gusting against her cheek. His tongue filling her mouth. The masculine flesh prodding her abdomen.

  Anne imagined that heat spurting deep inside her vagina, jetting against her womb as it had jetted against the back of her throat.

  Gasping for oxygen, she tore her mouth away from the scalding furnace that was his mouth.

  “Have you ever ejaculated inside a woman’s vagina without benefit of a French letter?”

  The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  Michel stilled, violet eyes watchful, intensity banked. A man once again in control of his passion. “Yes.”

  Anne’s heartbeat fluttered. How quickly he recovered from intimacy.

  She firmed her chin. “Is there another means of protection, then, that may be used to prevent conception?”

  His irises were translucent in the sunlight, like colored glass. His contracted pupils were as black as jet beads. “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “There are things that you can use. Devices that fit up inside you.”

  “Do they hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Do they lessen a woman’s pleasure?”

  “I have been told that they do not.”

  “Where does a woman obtain these devices?”

  “Through a physician.”

  She frowned. “Not through a chemist?”

  “The most effective contraceptive requires an examination so that the proper size can be prescribed.”

  Anne did not need to ask what part of a woman’s anatomy a physician examined in order to prescribe this mysterious device.

  It was impossible to think of physicians and the pain they wrought when she was pressed this closely to his body.

  She lowered her gaze. Blood rapidly pulsed through the artery underneath his jawbone. An answering rhythm pulsed deep inside her. “Thank you.”