Still lean and slender in the torso and hips, he was now darker with hair, which fully covered his upper chest and grew to a long slim line to the curling bush that held his cock and ballocks. His shoulders were wide and square, his arms had grown thicker, curved with muscle, and his thighs . . . powerful and wide, jutting from the sharp edge of hips and a flat, hairy belly. As if skin were a premium, there wasn’t a bit of pudge or paunch anywhere on his body; it was lean and golden and tight, like that of a statue. Tighter than any man she’d seen naked.
“Turn over,” he said. His voice sounded uneven, and his eyes did not meet hers.
Her heart gave a little jump of nervousness, but Mercédès did as he bid, rolling onto her belly so that she lay across the bed, head at one side, feet facing him at the other. The pile of cushions was to her left, near the head of the bed.
“Spread your legs. And your arms.”
The pressure against her pounding sex was a relief, and she shifted so that she tilted her hips and pressed it more firmly into the bed beneath her. She spread her legs in a gentle vee, and reached beyond her head until her fingers curled over the edge of the mattress, pulling herself flat. Turning her face to the side, she rested on her cheek and tried to see him . . . but he was standing at her feet, out of sight.
There was silence for a long moment, and her apprehension and tension grew when he made no move to touch her. The skin over her back prickled, rising in little bumps, as she anticipated him. Would he suddenly shove his cock inside her quim, from behind? Would he take her in the ass? Would he slash at her with a whip?
Her heart was pounding faster now, and she felt the trembling begin deep inside, and fought to keep from showing it. None of it would be new to her. . . . It had all been done before.
She’d survived it. She could survive this—whatever it would be.
The silence stretched, and she wondered suddenly if he’d gone silently from the room and left her there to wait and worry. Just as she thought to lift her head, he spoke. His voice was hard and brittle. “Don’t move.”
She sagged back against the bed, gripping it with her fingers, still fighting the tremors that threatened to burst forth . . . yet aware of her swollen pip, of her wet quim and pointed nipples . . . all of them seeming to throb harder as she waited.
Waited.
When he touched her finally, she started and gave a little cry. His hand closed over her nape, as if to hold her there—not harshly, not strong enough to make her feel stifled or want to fight for her life—but enough to make it clear that she wasn’t to move. Then his other hand smoothed along her spine, in a wide, languid stroke, down over her buttocks, raising those little flesh bumps all the way. She trembled as his hand came back up, lighter, nearly tickling her but sending shocks to her little pip, where it swelled against the bed. She spread her legs wider, trying to increase the pressure there, to find some relief. . . . His hand moved again, slowly, teasing and tickling, around the other side. And this time, he slipped his fingers down between the vee of her buttocks, down into the slippery warmth there. She groaned and shifted, trying to fit those questing fingers deep inside.
His hand tightened a bit over her neck, and he removed his fingers from her quim. “Be still.”
With a soft little moan, she bit her lip and closed her eyes.
He lifted his hand from the back of her neck, and she braced herself. . . . The bed dipped and she felt him climb over her, his legs between her spread ones. Suddenly his cock was pushing against the cleft of her ass, and his hips pressed into her buttocks as he slipped his hands down around her breasts.
Then his mouth was on her shoulder, and she nearly jerked again when she felt the soft, gentle tickling of lips and tongue on the sensitive skin there at the crook of her neck. Sensation erupted over her body, and his fingers tightened over her nipples, there between them and the bed. She shifted her hips and felt his penis slip against her more, closer to the place she wanted him to be.
His mouth moved up along the side of her neck, his hands held her breasts, lifting her shoulders, gently arching her back up into him, pressing her quim into the bed. The arousal was becoming unbearable; Mercédès bit her lip and squeezed her eyes closed as he kissed, and slowly sucked at that spot . . . that place below her ear . . . the one that made her insides quiver and curl and her body shudder and tremble in anticipation.
If she begged him now, would it end this game? Would it make the next eighteen months easier, would he take her without the teasing? Would he satisfy her?
Did she have any reason to wait? She’d already lost.
Just as she opened her mouth to say it, to plead with him, to cry for release, he moved quickly, rolling off her and flipping her onto her back. The next thing she knew, his lips were on hers, hard and rough, cutting off anything she might have said, pushing the back of her head into the pile of cushions.
It was as if he wanted to devour her, to take her whole into his mouth. His fingers closed over her wrists, pulling them wide beyond her shoulders, pushing them into the cushions, as he ate at her lips, and she lifted her head to kiss him back, to suck his tongue deep into her throat, to inhale his taste and smell and touch.
His torso arched over hers, his legs and hips on the bed next to her splayed legs, and at last he released her arms. Her wrists ached from where he’d gripped them, but she moved her hands to touch his hair—his soft, long hair, which fell in a shaggy brush against her face. He pulled away from her mouth with a long, loud smack, and she saw his face for a brief moment before he fell upon her breast, taking the nipple into his mouth with long, hard draws as though he wanted to devour it too.
But the fleeting expression she’d seen on his face sent a cold shiver beneath the pangs of lust curling in her belly. Sharp and hard, it hadn’t been one of desire as much as determination and pain.
Then she was caught up again in the tug at her nipple, the fingers that slid over her quivering belly and down between her legs to slip and surge in the wetness there. She moved her hands from the back of his head over the broad warmth of his shoulders, tracing their angular curves over arms that bulged as he braced himself on the bed over her.
The next thing she knew, their bodies were smashed together, tangled and hot as he rolled on top of her, gathering her into his arms and raising his face to kiss her neck. His cock pushed against her, and she lifted her hips and felt it slip against her quim, sending a quick, hard shudder through her.
Please. Now.
As if he read her mind, he moved suddenly, shifting up and away from her torso, sitting back on his haunches, he grasped her hips, sliding them up onto his thighs. Looking down, his fingers biting into the tender flesh of her back, he shifted, his cock long and proud, raging between them, and slid himself inside.
Mercédès cried out with the pleasure of it, yet deep inside, she held back, bracing herself for his teasing withdrawal, for the game to begin again.
But he held her hips, and he thrust in and out, so deep and hard that her whole body jolted against the cushions, and they fell over her, muffling her soft cries, sopping the tears that had begun to leak from the sides of her eyes. The building desire rose, tightened, clutched inside her as he slammed and rocked. . . . She felt the grip of his fingers in her skin, knew there would be marks, but she shifted and bucked and moved with him, her own fingers digging into the brocade coverlet beneath her until at last . . . at last . . . with a soft scream, she found her peak—he brought her there, took her over—and she tumbled into a vortex of bone-deep pleasure and shudders undulating from within and without, her toes curling into the bed behind him, her fingers pulling up the coverlet, her face buried in fringe and cushions.
And then with a deep, angry grunt, he shot his hips forward in one last, hard slam, as if to shove himself up into her belly, and she felt the pulsation of his orgasm ripple through her insides. When his hands fell away, the cusions shifted, uncovering her eyes. He sagged back onto his haunches and gasped for breath as if he’d been running for leagues . . . for years. . . .
“Mer . . . cé . . . dès . . . ,” he whispered in a hollow, desperate voice. “Why . . . ?” To her shock, to her great horror, she saw the streak of tears glistening on his face before he turned, pulling out of her and stumbling away from the bed.
SIXTEEN
The Dismissal
Later that day
Paris
"Edmond?” Mercédès sat up in the bed, saying his name tentatively.
"Go.”
"But—”
“I no longer have the stomach . . . but first, you must tell me . . .” He seemed to gather himself together. His voice was still raw, but not as desperate, not as agonized as it had been moments before.
He’d moved to stand, still naked, at what appeared to be his favorite place—near the light, the windows. Something he must still crave after spending fourteen years in darkness. The sun had moved over the house and would be low in the afternoon sky, just beginning to touch the tops of the brown-roofed houses in the distance if they were to look west. “Morcerf is not Albert’s father.”
Mercédès caught her breath. “No.” She had never revealed Albert’s true parentage to him until last night, when she explained everything—or nearly everything—about Fernand and Villefort and Danglars—and what had happened to Edmond Dantès.
“You not only betrayed . . . Dantès . . .”—his voice dipped on the word, as if he could barely acknowledge his ownership of that name, that person—“with Morcerf, but with another as well? How many? How long did you wait before you spread your legs?
How long?
”
She looked over at him. Her vision was damp and blurry, but she spoke clearly. “I never betrayed Edmond Dantès. Everything I did was because I loved you . . . but you believe me tainted with the same brush as the men who would have seen you dead. So let us get on with this—this vengeance of yours, so that eighteen months from now, I will be able to walk away and wash my hands of anything and anyone associated with Edmond Dantès.”
“Who was it?”
There was no sense in keeping it from him. “Villefort.”
A low, agonized cry ripped from the back of his throat, and when he turned to look at her, his face was ravaged. So drawn, so tight, so black and angular. Frightening. “My God . . . of all . . .” He caught himself, steadied, pulled back that infamous control. Yet still his voice shook. “He had freed me . . . sent me on my way. . . . My bloody hand was on the damned doorknob . . .
on the doorknob
. . . when he opened the letter and read it. And then . . . he called his guards. . . . I thought they were taking me home . . . back to you . . . but they took me to a boat instead. I thought it was a mistake. . . . It would be rectified . . . an error. . . . The boat took me to d’If. . . .”
His shoulders were trembling, his hands clenching and relaxing, his damp eyes burned with loathing. “And you were fucking him? Those months and years I was in d’If,
you lay with the man who sent me there?
You gave him pleasure from the same body that I loved? That I could not forget?”
Mercédès had tears streaming from her face. She reached toward him. “No, Edmond . . . it wasn’t like that. I . . . went to him. I begged him for information about you . . . for any news. He—”
“Leave me. You must leave now, Mercédès,” he said in a terrifying voice. “Or I cannot guarantee your safety. I cannot—
Leave!
If I had known . . . if I had known he was that devil’s son—
Go!
”
He fairly shouted that last word. Mercédès had never been frightened of him before—as Edmond Dantès, as Sinbad, even as the Count of Monte Cristo at his most forbidding. But now . . . he looked so murderous, his face so hard and black and furious.
But she had to try, to make him understand. “Edmond, please,” she said, stepping toward him, her hand outstretched. “He forced me—in exchange for information, he made me—”
“Go!” he shouted, shoving her hand away. “Get from my sight!” He pushed past her so close she felt the swish of air, his entire body visibly shaking as he stalked out of the chamber. The sharp crack of the door slamming into place echoed in his departure, and all was silent.
Fingers trembling, she pulled on the tunic and stared at the splintered door. Should she wait? Perhaps . . . but the memory of his face, black and tortured and violent, haunted her. Edmond would never have lifted a hand against her. But . . . she was no longer sure she knew the man he’d become.
She had to tell him . . . whether he would understand or forgive her—or even believe her—she didn’t know . . . but she had to make him understand. Somehow.
Mercedes opened the door and found herself in the corridor. As she stood there, footsteps approached from below and momentarily, Bertuccio’s head appeared. His face was grave, and at first Mercédès thought it was because he’d heard the altercation, heard Monte Cristo order her to leave.
But the expression on his face told her he was surprised to see her standing in dishabille in the corridor, yet not so surprised that he could not deliver the message he’d come to impart.
“Pardon me, madam la comtesse, but I have just received some disturbing news. I . . . regret to inform you that the Comte de Morcerf has . . . expired . . . in his home, due to a self-inflicted gunshot.”
“I am not certain His Excellency is available to see you,” said Bertuccio to the young man at the door.
Haydée recognized the visitor as Monsieur Maximilien Morrel, that particular friend of the count’s. The only one who seemed able to bring a relaxed light into His Excellency’s eyes, and who seemed to provoke sincere affection from him.
“It’s a rather urgent matter,” Morrel replied, crumpling his fine buckskin gloves with worrying fingers. He wasn’t wearing a hat, nor did he have a recently removed one in his hands, implying that he had arrived in great haste. “I would be most grateful if you would announce my presence, and that I desperately wish to see him. It’s a matter of life and death.”