by Abby Gordon
“Thank you, Master,” she sighed, smiling. “And I promise to love you, to tease you, to take care of you, and to make sure I’m the only one in your bed waiting for you.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” he decided with a smile. “How’s that for talking and planning?”
She laughed, then sighed when he kissed her.
“Now, to fuck you senseless,” he stated, straightening and pulling her hair until she could see their body in the reflection. “Watch me, Jessica. Watch your master fuck your pussy.”
Holding her breath, Jessica nodded as his hands smoothed down her body, then pulled the dress over her head. In seconds, her bra joined it on the tile. His hands covered her breasts, fingers fondling roughly before pinching and tugging on her nipples. With a moan, she leaned back against him, her eyes fluttering shut.
“No,” he told her. “Watch. See how your hot little body responds to me.”
“Master,” she pleaded, undulating her hips back against him. “Please. Please.”
“Oh, no,” he chuckled, slapping her hip. “I’m in control.” His hand tangled in her hair, holding her head still. “Hands on the counter to brace yourself. Tilt your hips back. There.”
More turned on than she could remember being the last two weeks, Jessica obeyed.
“Mine,” Sean growled, both hands on her hips now, holding her the way he wanted.
She could just see his cock stroking in and out of her pussy. The expression on his face was sheer determination, total domination. The heat in his eyes when their gazes met in the mirror pushed her to the edge. She could feel her pussy dripping, the fire gathering in her belly.
“Master,” she gasped. “I’m…I’m there. Please.”
“No,” he growled, his rhythm increasing until she fell forward on the counter, unable to stay upright. “Watch.”
Struggling to not orgasm, she lifted her head, pleading with her eyes for permission. “Master, please. Please, may your slave come?”
“No.”
His fingers ruthlessly held her hips until she knew she’d have bruises in the morning. His lower half pumped forward harder and faster. His hard length filled her, hit nerves already on edge and sensitive.
“Master,” she screamed her need.
Their eyes met in the reflection and held as he pulled out of her. She held her breath at the intense expression, the heat and pleaded with her gaze. His chest heaved in a breath and her fingers flexed on the edges of the counter.
“Come,” he ordered, filling her again.
With a jubilant shout, she felt the orgasm sweep through her as he pulled out. Her pussy walls clamped around him as he stroked in and pumped his release into her. His fingers went to her clit and rubbed.
“Come,” he commanded.
Her body obeyed, soaring higher. His other hand found a breast, pinched the nipples.
“Come for me,” he told her again, pressing her against the marble. “Come.”
Jessica writhed as he pinned her, pushed her body and mind further than ever. Behind her closed eyes, she saw stars and felt her body fly.
“Come.”
Even though she didn’t think she could, her body responded, her pussy milking his cock for every last drop of his release. The “little death” over took her as she heard his murmured approval.
“Good girl, my Jessica.”
At some point in the night, Jessica cuddled against him. Sean watched her sleeping, unable to believe that she’d agreed to marry him. She didn’t quite have the whole sex slave thing down but he could teach her, and she was certainly submissive and eager to learn. She stirred as if sensing his gaze and opened her eyes.
“Hi,” she murmured sleepily.
“Hi, yourself,” he replied, smiling down at her.
Unable to resist touching her, he caressed her arm. “Feel better?” he wondered.
“Mm,” she purred, stretching and pressing her nude body against his. “Any better and the angels would be jealous of how good I feel.” Her fingers wrapped around his cock. “Actually, I think I heard them singing a few times.”
“Really?” He smiled, loving how she stroked his length. “How about I see if I can get you to hear them sing again?”
“Why don’t you?” she agreed, tilting her head for his mouth.
“God, you are so perfect,” he murmured.
Chapter Fifteen
“Good afternoon, Mr. Livingston,” the maître d’ greeted him.
Ignoring the attention he was getting, Sean smiled in response.
“I’m here to meet Monsieur Comte de la Lavendal de Provence and his wife.”
“They arrived a moment ago,” came the confirmation. “Sebastian.” The senior waiter stepped up. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”
Focused, Sean wove his way through the tables. It was easy to spot the French couple. They were a matched pair of sophistication and elegance, with an elan few in the room could match no matter their designer clothes. The woman noticed him first, and Sean could see Jessica’s manners echoed in her movement as she leaned toward the man and murmured.
“Mr. Livingston, the Comte de la Lavendal de Provence and the Comtesse.”
“Monsieur,” the Comte condescended to respond.
“Comte, Madame,” Sean greeted them, sitting across from the comte. A waiter appeared in an instant. “Just ice water.”
The young man poured water in the crystal goblet and backed away. Calmly, leaning back, Sean sipped, waiting. He was going to give them rope to hang themselves. The silence dragged out and he could see the growing concern in the woman’s eyes as she searched the path to their table. Eyes the same deep blue as his Jessica’s. He couldn’t see anything of her in the comte’s face.
Finally, clearly exasperated with the American actor who dared sprawl in the chair across from him, the comte cleared his throat. Sean nearly laughed in his face.
“Where is Jessica? We thought she would be with you.”
“Did you?” he murmured, sipping from the glass.
The comte’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. Ah, there was the resemblance. His Jessica had the look on her face when she dealt with people who crossed the line with her.
“She is my granddaughter.”
“She is,” Sean agreed affably.
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“Safe?” An elegant eyebrow rose. “She has been anything but safe with you.”
“Safer than she was with you,” Sean riposted, his eyes going to the woman. “Or with your son, madame.”
Her eyes closed briefly and were brimming with tears when she looked at him again.
“Please,” she whispered. “You don’t understand.”
“I know more than you think,” he told her.
“You can’t know all because she doesn’t,” the comte said arrogantly. “No more than her mother did.”
“Ah, the little martinet, were you?” Sean murmured. “So determined to control those around you that you still don’t understand why or how the strings snapped.” Another sip of water. “As the father of a daughter, your mistakes have taught me some valuable lessons.”
“My mistakes?”
The haughtiness in his tone nearly had Sean throwing the water at him. No wonder Jessica had left as soon as she could. His phone rang—the ring tone from the song Jessica had helped him with—and he smiled slightly, removing it from his inner jacket pocket.
“Excuse me, but I always take this person’s calls.” He tapped the phone, managing not to grin at the comte’s frustration. “Hello, darling. Having fun?”
“Sounds like you are,” Jessica replied with a drawl. “Can I come in now?”
“Of course, spend as much as you want.”
“I already did,” she laughed.
Chuckling, he tapped the screen and returned the phone to his pocket. Glancing across the table, he thought showtime.
In the alcove, Jessica took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and step
ped forward.
“Yes, miss?” The maître d’ greeted her with a glance and then returned to his reservation book. Her face registered and he raised his head, eyes wide.
“Jessica Longworth. I’m meeting Sean Livingston and my grandparents.”
“Long… Longworth? Grand…grandparents?” he stuttered.
“The Comte and Comtesse de la Lavendal de Provence,” she supplied with a slight smile. “I know they’re here. I just spoke to Sean on the phone.”
“This way, Miss Longworth,” he said in a slightly raised voice.
Heads turned as she followed him. She was hidden just enough behind him that no one at the table saw her until he paused and stepped aside.
“Miss Longworth has arrived to join you, Mr. Livingston.”
Sean was already on his feet, taking her hands and kissing her cheek.
“There you are, darling. Good time shopping with Charlotte?”
“It was a marvelous time. I couldn’t decide which of two dresses to get for the premiere,” she replied as he guided her to the chair opposite her grandmother. “So I got them both because, well,” she winked up at him, “I don’t think I’ll get out of the bedroom much less the apartment in one of them.”
“Really?” he murmured, smiling as he retook his seat.
A waiter appeared at her side.
“Anything to drink, miss?”
Her head turned as she recognized the dialect and she smiled. “You’re from Kent.”
“Yes, Miss,” he replied, grinning broadly.
“Oh, divine. Is there any way I can get a proper cup of tea? Chamomile mint and a hint of lavender if possible?”
“Miss, our sous chef is English.”
She caught Sean’s hand in delight as she beamed up at the man.
“I know it’s early here, but you will understand and I’m sure he will as well. It’s the right time in London,” Jessica said, speaking quickly from nerves at the expressions on her grandparents’ faces.
“A high tea, miss?” Understanding appeared in the man’s eyes.
“Is it possible?” she wondered with a nod.
“Five minutes, Miss Longworth,” he promised, hurrying off.
“A proper high tea,” she murmured with satisfaction.
“I thought I did all right with your tea this morning,” Sean mentioned.
“You did just fine,” she assured him, plucking lint off his jacket sleeve then smoothing her hand down his arm. “But, well, it’s something Papa and I would do in London when he had a showing.”
The comte harrumphed and she finally turned her gaze to her grandparents.
“What do you want?” she demanded, feeling Sean squeezing her fingers, reminding her to stay calm. “Why are you here? Why did you contact Sean about me?”
“Because you managed to get yourself on the front pages of every tabloid in the world,” her grandfather replied.
“I knew it,” she muttered, glancing at Sean who nodded. “You didn’t give a fig about me. All you cared about was the possibility of scandal.” She gave him a knowing glance. “I’ll bet within a few days, the vineyard’s orders doubled, and have probably tripled by now. Just the way they did after each of Papa’s showings. Especially if they were in Paris.”
“You are our granddaughter,” the comte told her. “Of course, we care about you.”
“Why would I believe that? When have you shown me you cared about me?” Her gaze went from one to the other. “The first time I met you at my parents’ funerals? Or the next day when you announced, Grandpapa, that I would be moving to France, going to school in Paris, and that my beloved dog would be put down that evening? Or would it have been when you ordered,” she sneered the word, “me to marry Oncle Pierre’s financial backer? Which of those most demonstrates your caring for me? Mm?”
Her words disconcerted her grandmother enough that she leaned forward slightly.
“Ma chére,” she murmured. “Your mother didn’t want us to see you. We tried desperately to, but Dominique wouldn’t permit it.”
“I wonder why,” Jessica countered. “Considering you had disowned her when she married Papa.”
“I didn’t disown her,” her grandfather’s voice rasped with emotions. “I couldn’t if I had wanted to.”
“Why should I believe that when it’s precisely what you told me when I refused to marry Pierre’s backer?”
Now her grandfather shifted in his chair. Her grandmother sighed.
“Life is more complicated than it appears to a child.”
In disbelief Jessica glanced at Sean who shook his head.
“She’s not a child now,” he stated. “Why don’t you explain your reasons to her?”
“Start with my mother,” Jessica suggested.
“Your mother was a wild, willful girl. Never thinking, always plunging into things. She met Henrí and,” the comte shook his head. “He was nearly twice her age, so much more experienced in life. And English.”
“Be careful there,” she warned, taking Sean’s glass and sipping.
“You do know that you were born when they’d only been married six months, don’t you?” the comte stated baldly.
Guessing her first instinct, Sean took the glass and put it down out of her arm’s reach.
“Spoilsport,” she murmured.
“I’ll throw it if necessary,” he promised.
Giving him a tight smile, she looked at her grandparents.
“Let me guess,” she said with a bright smile. “That’s because you told her if she had the baby, me,” she pointed to herself, “that the disgrace would be more than the Lavendal name could bear and she would be an outcast.” She gave her grandfather a steady look. “I get that more or less right?”
“More or less,” her grandmother murmured.
“Madeline,” hissed her grandfather.
“Well, considering you wanted me to marry the bastard son of your grandfather’s brother,” Jessica threw out and waited for their reactions.
The couple across the table froze, staring at her.
“How did…”
“Bertrand, enough,” Madeline de la Lavendal stated firmly, putting a hand on her husband’s arm. “Your pride has driven away first our daughter and then our granddaughter.” She looked at Jessica. “Dominique’s behavior was wild, deliberately so in response to the rules her father gave her. He was desperate to protect her from the world. She’d go to clubs, flit from one weekend party to another, and do everything she could to get a reaction from Bertrand.” With a sigh, she shook her head. “Nothing either of us said got through to her. And then she met Henrí.”
“My papa.”
Madeline nodded. “He got to her the way no one else could.”
“And Grandpapa couldn’t deal with that,” Jessica deduced. “An Englishman, an artiste, being able to ‘control’ his daughter, get her to listen to reason. The horror,” she taunted.
“That was quite a bit of it,” her grandmother conceded. “When Bertrand last spoke to her, we honestly didn’t think she’d marry him. We never dreamt she would simply disappear out of our lives like that. She’d always come back.”
“But you pushed her too far, didn’t you?” she questioned her grandfather furiously. “She was pregnant, in love, and you made her choose, didn’t you? The man she loved and their child or her parents? And you thought she’d come back after that? Did you not know her at all?”
“I feel like I should be taking notes,” murmured Sean.
Jessica smiled at him. “As if Charlotte and I would let you be like that toward Maisie.”
“Not likely,” he agreed. “You’d take a frying pan to my head. Or elsewhere.”
“The head, darling,” she told him, leaning toward him. “I value other parts.”
“Just not my brain?” he grinned, giving her a quick kiss.
“This is going nowhere,” the comte declared.
“Why did you kill my dog?”
“Oh, mon petite,”
Madeline whispered. “He had cancer. He was dying already.”
“No,” Jessica denied, shaking her head. “No. Mum and Papa would have told me.”
“Your parents tried to protect you as much as we tried to protect her,” her grandmother insisted.
Unbidden, images of her parents whispering the two weeks before the plane crash came to mind. Sad voices, tears, then bright smiles and happy tones when they saw her. The truth hit her like a sledgehammer.
“And failed as we did,” grumped her grandfather.
“I can’t believe it. Why didn’t they tell me?” She whispered, turning to Sean who wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Georgie was…”
“Sh, baby,” he murmured.
Sean wasn’t sure what to think. Yes, the couple was extraordinarily arrogant and he wanted to shout at them for how they’d treated their daughter and granddaughter, but he was slowly seeing where they were coming from. Their generation, their country, had been recovering from what amounted to three decades of war and deprivation. What he couldn’t get a handle on was the financial backer.
“Why did you demand Jessica marry the moneybags bastard?” he asked.
“The money had nothing to do with it. Never,” the comte insisted. “She was already some of her mother’s wildness,” Bertrand replied. “As a child, she’d been even more willful, more disobedient. Nothing we did got through to her.”
“Did you beat her?” Sean demanded.
Their horrified expressions reassured him on that.
“Non, non,” Madeline insisted. “But we were so worried about her. She seemed like a lost little ship bobbing about the ocean, and we thought that a marriage to an older, stable man would work for her.” She smiled and shrugged slightly. “Much as it had for her mother.”
Jessica lifted her face from his shoulder.
“Mum was in love with Papa,” she reminded her. “That’s the difference. Mum chose Papa. She wasn’t ordered to marry him.”
Her grandfather sighed and Sean watched him exchange a look with his wife. They seemed to have an understanding acquired through time.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he relented. “Pierre and Giscard did not tell me who he was until they realized you were gone. It may be a blessing you weren’t there in Provence.”
