Espionage and the Earl Read online

  Max had an unhealthy fascination with her plump lips, and he had thought about this more than once. He broke the skin of the orange slice so its juices would flood her taste buds and raised it up slowly, keeping eye contact with her questioning gaze as he did so. Putting the end of the fruit against her lips, his eyes left hers, and he watched her lips as they hesitated and then parted. She allowed him to slide the orange between them, making a surprised sound as the tip of his finger followed through the opening.

  Seeing her lips wrapped around his finger in a puckered little O caused his member to swell rapidly. What would it feel like to have her mouth around his hard staff, making sounds of pleasure as she was doing now at the tangy fruit’s taste?

  He withdrew his finger to let her bite down on the fruit, clenching his hand into a fist on his leg so he didn’t pin her beneath him on the cushions here and now. Instead, he cleared his throat and prepared for more torturous pleasure. “Another?”

  She nodded happily, swallowing the fruit. “I’d like some curry, if you please.”

  He chuckled and tore a piece of chicken from the bone before dipping it in the curried sauce. “So polite, Lady Crescenfort.”

  “Y-you may call me Ellie,” she stuttered, reaching up to touch her hair self-consciously.

  He paused to look at her. It was the first time she had ever ceded any part of herself to him, and he would take it gladly, though he knew it was unwise. “Ellie,” he repeated, liking the way it sounded, almost like a child’s name and a flowing French lilt at the same time. It sounded almost … normal.

  “My father and sister call me Ellie.”

  “So you do have a sister? Younger, I would assume. And a father. What about a mother?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t shy away from answering. Information was more forbidden than anything else between them, and he knew she was well aware of this.

  But she laughed and shook her head. “My mother is… Well, whatever I am, she is ten times that.”

  Max cocked his head, trying to picture the woman who had raised such a daughter. “She is very brave then? And very intelligent and beautiful?”

  The heat in her cheeks rose. He had never seen this side of her, as vulnerable as a newborn flower when he had thought she was made only of thorns. Everything he had thought of her was shifting into something else, and he couldn’t trust his own perception any longer.

  “That’s only what women want men to think,” she said, raising her eyes to his. “You only see what roles I have played and the bravado of having to bluff until the bluff became a reality.”

  “So you’re telling me I don’t know who you really are? That you’ve never shown me anything but a mask?” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe that.”

  Elorie scoffed and pursed her lips. “You don’t know me at all, or the things I want. Do you want to know how I know?” Her eyes had a hard glint to the green now. “Because I don’t know me. I am just exactly what everyone else needs, and that is all.”

  Max could hear tears in her voice that he knew she would never let fall in front of him.

  “I am not myself, and I haven’t been for a very long time, since the masks have eaten away their anchor. I am nothing. And soon I’ll be less than nothing, the mask gone without anything underneath.”

  He saw the way her hands trembled and knew she had revealed something very dear to herself. Yet he wasn’t going to let her get off that easily. “Whatever you do for your country isn’t who you are. But neither is that empty of your essence either. I have tangled with you enough times to know you aren’t some blank canvas that the French Monarchy has painted onto you. It’s why you’re so good at what you do. It is just an extension of all the different sides of yourself.”

  He saw her swallow and look down at her fidgeting hands before meeting his eyes again. “What about family? What about the things we do for them?”

  Max wondered suddenly if this woman’s situation was worlds different than he’d assumed. Was her family connected to the French government? Had she been pressured into a life of espionage?

  Until recently, he had thought of her only as a mystery that could never be solved, a fantasy of witty retorts and dangerous allure. He had wanted to claim her like a man breaks a wild horse, but this was becoming more than that. He saw now she had become real to him, with every bit as many fears and needs as anyone else.

  Upon this revelation, he expected fear to come. Nothing he felt for her now could be good, and he hadn’t wanted to become emotionally ensnared with anyone, least of all Elorie Lavoie.

  Yet he felt nothing but a calm acquiescence to this new feeling that he suspected would only grow if he tried to stop it.

  Max struggled to answer her question without knowing the context. “If your family makes you who you want to be, then do everything you can to keep them close. And if they don’t… If they want you to be someone else, or do things you know won’t make you happy…” He shrugged. “Then tell them to stuff it, and go your own way.”

  She chuckled. “How I wish you were right,” she said, smiling at him in a way he would say was almost fond. “You asked about my mother. She is neither brave nor particularly intelligent. Even so, she is better than me at making sure the outcome of things are in her favor.”

  “Is she the one who taught you to be an operative?”

  Elorie seemed to think about it. “In a manner of speaking. But”—a light came into her eyes—“do you want to know a secret?”

  More than anything in his life did he want to know her secrets. He nodded.

  She scooted forward on her cushion, a lighter air about her than had been a moment before. “My father is the one who taught me to throw darts. He was champion at his school and thought it amusing to teach his daughter when his wife wasn’t looking.”

  Max grinned, her mood infectious. “I must say, you took to it like a fish to water.”

  She shrugged. “I have always wanted to learn swordplay, but my mother wouldn’t have it.”

  “I can teach you,” he blurted, the words out before he thought about the ramifications.

  “I thought you preferred your pistol?” she asked skeptically.

  “I prefer stopping a threat before it reaches me, just as I’m sure you do with your darts, but I am quite good with a sword,” he assured her. He wasn’t lying, knowing his skills were on par with the best.

  Elorie bit her lip, and he could see her warring with her desire. “I’d like that,” she finally said.

  Then, in the companionable silence that ensued, her stomach grumbled audibly.

  He laughed as she put her hands over her stomach in embarrassment and looked toward the food. “I believe I can solve that problem,” he told her, tearing off another piece of chicken. After dipping it into the warm curry, he brought it to her lips.

  She didn’t hesitate this time, opening her mouth readily for him and accepting the morsel from his fingers. A drop of curry beaded on her bottom lip and Max rubbed it with his finger to stop it from sliding onto her chin. Elorie’s tongue darted out to lick at it as well, and the tip of it wetted his finger. The surprise of it made him blink, but he was suddenly ravenous—not for the food, but for her.

  Slowly, so as not to frighten her, he traced her lips with his fingertip and then slid it into her mouth up to the first knuckle. Max held her eyes as she became accustomed to the invasion.

  Elorie touched at it with her tongue inside her mouth, exploring the ridges of his fingerprint and tickling the pad of it. She then sucked on it and gently scraped her teeth along it as she leaned forward to take more of it deeper between her lips.

  He was now hard as a rock, picturing her taking his manhood exactly like that. His breath was suspended in his lungs as he felt and watched her play with his finger.

  “Ellie,” he rasped, unsure of his continued ability to control himself. “If you don’t stop that…” He trailed off, not even knowing how to finish the statement.

  A mischievous light in her
eyes, she pulled her head back and then came forward again, creating a firm suction that made his loins tighten further.

  Unable to take it any longer, he came toward her swiftly and replaced his finger with his tongue as he took her face in his hands roughly.

  Elorie made a mewling sound into his mouth, and it drove him wilder. He laid her back onto the cushions, not bothering to conceal the way he wanted to attack her. Her mouth contained the sweet spiciness of curry as he devoured her lips in a way he hadn’t before.

  The first time he’d kissed her, it had been like touching a storm cloud, wondrous and flashing as temporarily as lightning. The second time, it had been with a hesitant hunger that was unsure of its welcome.

  But this…

  This was something else altogether. He knew the hunger was returned, and he knew her skin ached for his touch as much as he wanted to give it to her. The way she nipped and tasted his lips was born of a desperation to be closer to him, and it was a heady feeling to make her crave him.

  Max drew his hand down between them, skimming his fingertips over the bare skin of her belly. He felt the firm muscles of her abdomen tighten at his gentle exploration and wondered if anyone had touched her in Marrakesh. If she had integrated into the harem, it was possible the sheik had seen her like this, had wanted and touched her. She would have had to let it happen, in all likelihood. It was also possible the sheik had never seen her during her time there. He found he preferred to believe the latter, though she had not been, and still was not, his to think of in such a possessive manner.

  His fingers glided over her soft skin, and he felt the ripples of her pleasure at his gentle touch. Stopping to look down at her stomach, he watched as his fingers caressed the golden planes that tapered downward with subtle strength beneath. He was still darker-skinned than her, especially here where the skin didn’t have as much exposure to the sun. Though he knew she was quite fit, the surface of her belly was soft as velvet, and it made him want to dig his fingers into it like sand at a beach.

  Elorie watched him as well, her chest taking in short little gasps as if she was afraid if she moved, he’d stop.

  There was no way he could stop now, not with her here beneath him, soft and supple and willing. Of the many times he’d fantasized about having the Viper in just such a position, he had never imagined it would feel like he was a green lad exploring a woman’s body for the first time. He had known she would be unlike anyone else, but he hadn’t anticipated the niggling anxiousness he felt at displeasing her.

  What if he didn’t even measure up to the numerous other lovers he knew she must have experienced in her career? Would she find him dull compared to the sheiks and exotic marks that had come before?

  Max was realistic about his own prowess and knew that he’d never had a single complaint from any other woman, but he actually cared about wanting to impress her. She was the one woman whose opinion had always mattered to him, in some twisted way. The thought made his fingers shake, and he suddenly snatched them from her skin as if she’d burned him.

  “Max?” Elorie asked, her eyes full of liquid questions.

  He swallowed. Performance issues had never been a problem before, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to solidify. “When I kiss you…” He tried again. “When I touch you, I don’t want you to think of anyone else. I don’t care what you’ve done, but I need you to tell me if I … if this displeases you.”

  She frowned, seeming genuinely confused. “Why would you think I’m thinking of someone else?”

  Holding himself above her, Max looked into her darkened emerald eyes. “I want this to be between us. Just us.”

  Elorie smiled crookedly. “Do you honestly think that I would dare tell anyone I am meeting the Earl of Eydris in secret? I don’t have a death wish.”

  That was interesting, coming from someone his superiors thought was dead, but he would save that conversation for another time. “That’s not what I mean. I meant that I don’t want you to—” He struggled to find the words, and perhaps it was because the words were so damning that he knew their utterance would precipitate a massive shift in their relationship.

  To hell with it.

  “I meant that I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I want you exclusively, and I want all of you. I want to obliterate every memory of anyone that came before me. I want to chain you to me in every possible way because I can’t stand the thought of you disappearing into thin air again, leaving your taste lingering on me.”

  Elorie’s eyes widened, and she scrambled backward on the pillows.

  Heart pounding in his throat, he knew he had frightened her.

  She gulped, shaking her head. “I cannot be yours, Maxwell Berisford. I’m not… I’m not for you.”

  “So you keep saying.” He pursued her over the uneven pillows, pulling her beneath him again. He trapped her, one hand grabbing the hands that pushed at his chest and pinning them above her head. “Yet here you are, and I know you want me just as much as I want you.”

  The V of her collarbone sucked in and out with her rapid breaths. “Just because you are the only one I think about doesn’t mean I’m yours.”

  He smiled down at her. He was the only one she thought about then.

  Using one arm to prop himself up so as to maintain his grip on her wrists, he used his other hand to squeeze her rounded hip through the thin scarf. He pressed his thumb into the sensitive skin just inside her hip bone, and she moaned, shutting her eyes to him.

  She might not think she was his, but he would make sure she was obsessed with how he made her feel every second they were together. He lowered himself down her torso and moved the translucent material of the scarf out of the way. Then he put his mouth where his hand had been and sucked hard at the delicate skin of her pelvis.

  Elorie shot up off the pillow with an exclamation, almost bucking him off of her.

  Max sucked harder, knowing he was leaving a mark on her fragile skin. She writhed under him, and when he let go of her wrists, she didn’t seem to notice, leaving them above her head in careless pleasure.

  “Max, please,” she begged, and he knew she wasn’t asking him to stop.

  Despite the warm air enveloping them, he observed the flesh of her stomach prickle with sensation. He moved the hand that had been holding her wrists down her side, savoring the way her waist dipped in from her ribcage and then flared out to the suppleness of her hips. She was no dainty English rose, or French flower, for that matter. Not his Viper. She was strong and curved and radiant in a way that the pale, wan misses of the ton never allowed themselves to be.

  As he moved his mouth closer to the center of her hips, a few inches below her belly button, she convulsed, sucking in her stomach until it was slightly concave. Max smiled against her skin, loving how she responded to him. He let his tongue trail down to where her silk pants sat low and began to pull the edge down with his teeth. His bottom lip grazed the first line of her peachy nether hairs, and Elorie yelped, coming up off the pillows.

  Suddenly, he was on his back, blinking up at her flushed face. The shock of their changed positions left him staring as she held her hands over his shoulders.

  She had somehow managed to flip him over in one fluid movement, using only her legs, and was now straddling him.

  “Damn,” he said simply, watching her pleased grin.

  “Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I might have panicked.”

  Imagine that, the Viper panicking. “Is this how you divested that German Baron of his signet ring and left him trouserless at his own party?”

  She leaned down and whispered in his ear, “You’ll never know.”

  He couldn’t help smiling back as he pulled her down on top of him. Grasping her buttocks, he forced her hips down onto himself fully, wanting her to feel the rigid length of his staff against her mons. He was gratified when she gasped, her irises dilating.

  “Do you feel how much I want you?” he rasped, grinding in to her.
r />   She moaned, arching her back as he forced her to mimic the motions of lovemaking.

  Being with her, he now knew, would be devastating. He’d never recover.

  “Do you want Elorie Lavoie or the Viper?” she asked breathlessly.

  Though he knew he was driving her to the brink, past the point of caring, he could see that his answer was intensely important to her. He could choose not to answer, to wrap her up in a haze of desire where she wouldn’t be able to remember her own name, much less a philosophical conundrum.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he answered as truthfully as he could, looking back into her darkened emerald eyes. “It will always be both, my lovely Ellie. Why do you think you must separate yourself from one or the other?”

  Her chest rose and fell with the force of her breaths as she held his gaze. Then she rolled off of him abruptly, leaving him looking up at the diaphanous veils hanging from above.

  He rose to a sitting position, looking to where she sat beside him, legs crossed and hands around her bare feet like a child. Max said nothing, letting her think in silence as his own breathing returned to normal. Still hard as granite beneath his trousers, he forced the desire to ebb as she seemed to contemplate some unknown thing with a furrowed brow.

  Between the falls of her long blonde hair, her face was scrunched in an adorable expression of confusion and tumult. He took advantage of her obliviousness to study her flushed features that had become more familiar to him than his own family’s lately.

  Finally, she said, “I’d like some more food please.”

  It took Max a moment, but he nodded and scooted toward the table to prepare a mouthful for her. He then fed her bite by bite, trying to control his own arousal as she took the morsels from his hand with her teeth and licked his fingers clean. Every motion was slow and filled with languor, keeping him on the edge of a knife of desire.

  After a while, she groaned and shook her head at his proffered bite of mango, but then snatched it from his hand quick as lightning. Grinning, she offered it to him instead, and he took it, scraping his teeth along the pads of her fingertips. She began to feed him in the same manner as he had done for her, but she pointed to things on the table and then looked for his confirmation or shake of the head.