At the Count's Bidding(23)

                “In this case,” he said silkily, moving his hand along the sweet line of her jaw, her cheek, cradling her head with a softness completely belied by the lash in his words, “it is because you hope to shame me into stopping this. Why else bring up my mother when you’re about to take me into your mouth at last?”

                Her mouth fell open slightly more, as if in stunned astonishment, and he laughed, though it wasn’t a very nice sound.

                “Fine,” she said, though her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “Whatever you want.”

                “That is the point I am trying to make to you, Paige,” he bit out then, holding her immobile, so she had no choice but to gaze back at him, and he was a terrible man indeed, to revel in the temper he saw in her changeable eyes. “‘Whatever I want’ isn’t an empty phrase. It could mean pleasuring me by the side of the road without any consultation whatsoever about your feelings on the subject. It is what I want. Are you beginning to understand me? How many object lessons do you think you will require before this sinks in?”

                She said something in reply but the night stole her words away, and she cleared her throat. She was trembling fully then, and he might have felt like the monster all that accusation in her gaze named him, but he could see the rest of it, too. The stain of color on her cheeks. That glassy heat in her eyes. And beneath the hand he still held to her face and against her neck, the wild drumming of her pulse, pounding out her arousal in an unmistakable beat.

                He knew that rhythm better than he knew himself. He thought it might have been the only honest thing about her, then and now.

                “How long?” she whispered.

                “Until what?”

                “Until this is done.” She moistened her lips and he felt it like her wicked mouth, wet and soft and deep, and nearly groaned where he stood.

                “Until I’m bored.”

                “A few hours, then,” she said, with a remnant of her usual fire, and he smiled.

                “I don’t imagine you’ll be that lucky.” He traced a pattern from that stubborn chin of hers to the delicate shell of her ear, then back. “I’ve had a long time to think about all the ways I’d like to make you crawl. Then pay. Then crawl some more. There’s no telling how long it could take.”

                “And yet when you had the chance, you talked to me for three seconds and then disappeared for a decade,” she pointed out.

                He felt that same wash of betrayal, that same kick in the gut he’d felt that long-ago day when he’d realized she’d used him the way his own mother always had—and it had been far more shattering, because Violet had only sold him out when he was clothed.

                “I don’t want to talk to you,” he said, as harshly as he could in that same soft voice. “I didn’t then. I don’t now. I thought I’d made that clear.”

                A car passed by on the winding mountain drive, the headlights dancing over them, and he saw something bleak in her eyes, across her lovely face. He told himself there was no echo at all inside him, no hollow thing in his chest.

                “Then we’d better get started with the humiliation and sexual favors, hadn’t we?” she said with a cheerfulness that was as pointed as it was feigned, and he felt her hands tighten against his thighs. She moved them up toward his belt and he didn’t know he meant to stop her until he did.

                He watched her face as he helped her rise to her feet, and he didn’t let go of her arm when she was standing, the way he should have done.