by Isadora Rose
“We barely saw each other after that, Tristan.” Esther choked back another desperate sob. “Just three months later, he died in a duel over the latest paramour he had taken after we lost Max. I needed him, Tristan, desperately so; but all he wanted to do was fuck any other woman he could get his hands upon, any woman but me.”
The uncharacteristic swear word falling from her lips was, somehow, more startling than any of the revelations she had shared with him. “Then he was a fool, Esther! But…” Tristan ran his hands through his hair in agitation as he battled for control of his emotions. “But you say you needed him even after what he did to you?”
She shifted uncomfortably against him. “I needed my husband, Tristan. He had me closeted away in the countryside, alone with my grief – he was the only one I could turn to. It was never a happy marriage between us, though, even when we were newlywed. All he wanted was for me to be in his bed and to adorn his arm, nothing more.”
“Did you desire him?” Tristan’s slow words were underlain by a bitter jealousy he had never known before.
Esther swallowed hard as she sought out Tristan’s hand with her own. “I...I was eighteen when I married Andrew. I idolised him. Yes, I did desire him; he was a handsome man and my first lover. All the hardships of the days with him were soothed by the pleasures he gave me in his arms at night – and when he died less than four months after Max, I tried to seek out similar comfort in the beds of other men.”
Tristan’s face tightened but he did not interrupt her, for he instinctively sensed how cathartic Esther was finding it to confide in him.
“The men who had called themselves my husband’s friends were all too eager to bed his widow. When I was with them, I could forget all that Andrew had done to me – and I could forget Max. The moment it was over, though, the pain always came flooding back. I could not bear it, Tristan, but it was Anton who finally made me see the truth.”
“Anton?” Tristan sucked in a sharp hiss of breath through his clenched teeth as a terrible suspicion took root inside his mind. “You and he – you did not –“
“No!” Esther was astounded by both his halting accusation and the fierce jealousy behind it. “No,” she repeated more calmly, her lower lip trembling as she stared up at him in confusion. “Had he suggested it, I was in such a mess that I would have known no way to decline, but Anton is a good man. He took me aside and made me see that I was doing myself a disservice by behaving in the way that I did – the men who would take advantage of me in my grief did not deserve to have me, he said.”
“He was right.”
“I...thank you.” Wrong-footed, she lowered her gaze as he fought to recompose himself.
“So how long has it been since you were with a man before I came along?” he finally ground out, still afraid of the snarling and enraged jealousy that had taken hold of him at the idea of his friend taking advantage of Esther, even though he knew now that it had not happened.
“A year at least now, Tristan. Anton’s kind words convinced me that I did not need to let myself be used to cope with my grief and that I was far too vulnerable to allow the men who would so coldly fuck me to do so. I shut myself away with my grief and dealt with it alone. Perhaps I took it too far to the other extreme, but once I had shut myself off I could not bring myself to undo it.”
All of Anton’s protective warnings finally made sense to Tristan. He turned away from Esther and swung his legs over the side of the bed as he buried his head in his hands. “And is that why you allowed me in this week - to distract you from your fresh pain in the way you had once resorted to, the pain re-awoken by being around little Catherine?”
Esther’s heart was now pounding so rapidly that she could barely even think straight as she twisted towards him, pressed her bare breasts into his back and rested her aching head on his shoulder. “Why should that even matter, Tristan? You told me to fuck you, not to love you – or do you not remember?”
A shiver rippled through his body as her soft fingers began to trace the thin line of hair that ran down the centre of his toned abdomen. “I remember...I remember everything that has passed between us, Esther. Everything.”
When her hands reached the head of his cock, Tristan turned to the side and pulled her into his lap. His guts twisted and his head pounded when he saw just how much pain was etched into her pale face. “Merde, Esther!” he swore. “Ma belle, all I want to do is take this agony away from you!”
Esther nodded urgently as she felt his cock surge against her. “But you do, Tristan; every time that you take me in your arms, every moment I spend with you it leaves me!”
“Then I am going to take you again now, Esther. Tell me how you want me.” His words were slow, deliberate – and drenched in pain.
A startled gasp flew from her lips as he forced her back down onto the sheets and seized hold of both of her wrists to pin them above her head. “Tristan –“
“Tell me! However you want it, however will ease your pain – I am yours to command, Esther, all of me is yours. Tell me now how to love you.”
She closed her eyes and shuddered against him. “P-precisely that. I want to feel loved, Tristan. I want...I want to be cherished and adored.”
A solitary tear snaked down Tristan’s flushed face as he readied the head of his cock against her entrance. “That, Esther, I can do for you. Let me love you.”
The double meaning of his words was more than apparent – but she could do nothing but willingly submit to him. Here in the bed alone with the Comte, he was all that mattered. With any other man, the comfort they offered faded away along with her climax, but the Comte – Tristan – was different. The mere touch of his hand or the sound of his laughter was enough to make her feel something she had never dared hope to feel again after losing her son and her husband in so cruel a way.
He watched her face contort and then, to his desperate relief, the acceptance that passed across it. “May I, chérie?”
With a quaking sigh, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him down onto her. “Yes, Tristan. I need you, my comte. I need you to make love to me.”
Tristan lowered his head to cover Esther’s lips with his own as he slowly pushed his cock into the tight heat that welcomed him. Their bodies were a perfect fit together, as always – he knew now that he could never get enough of the way that she arched against him and took the full length of his shaft inside her as he eased himself in with a soft groan that she echoed.
Esther was bliss. He was convinced that he could gladly stay locked in his moment of personal heaven for the rest of his life, his cock buried inside her and their bodies joined as one. Her breath was already coming in shallow gasps even before he gently lifted his lips away from hers and transferred them to the side of her throat to kiss his way down along her collarbone and across each of her breasts, teasing his way around the pebbled nipples before finally drawing them into his mouth in turn.
She whimpered as he slowly wrapped his tongue around each nipple, lavishing his attention on her to coax her pleasure ever higher in his attempt to wordlessly convey the strength of his complete and utter adoration of her.
When her low moans were constant and desperate, Tristan pulled back and stilled the thrusts of his cock, waiting for Esther to relax underneath him before he began to move inside her again. He released her wrists to wind his fingers through her tousled hair, took her head in his hands and stared down into her eyes. “Would you ever marry again, Esther? Would you risk your heart again?”
Esther stiffened as he held her gaze. “Why do you ask, Tristan?”
He claimed another bittersweet kiss from her lips before replying. “Humour me, chérie. Would you?”
She pressed her bare heels into the small of his back and sighed softly when he began to trace every contour of her face with the tips of his thumbs. “It...it would have to be a spectacular man indeed to convince me to do so,” she finally whispered.
“But you would do so?”
S
he hesitated.
“Esther, please – I must know!”
Her hands shook as she reached up to caress the Comte’s face with as much intimacy as he was doing to her. “If I found a man whom I could not live without, a man who could convince me that he was worth taking that risk upon…then yes.”
Emboldened by the touch of her hand, Tristan closed his eyes to revel in it before capturing her ear between his lips and kissing it gently, too afraid to see her response to his next words. “And in little more than a day, Esther, you will be living without me.”
Her breath hitched. It was a truth that she had been hiding from ever since she had realised how very much she wanted the salacious Comte for her own. “Just a – just a day?”
“Give or take a few hours, ma belle.” He slowly rocked his hips against hers, deliberately grinding against her clitoris as he rested his mouth against her fluttering pulse point. “I hope, Esther, that that does not cause you more pain?”
“But you know that it does.”
Her soft words were barely audible, but in the still of the bedchamber Tristan heard them – and thrilled in them. He covered her parted lips with his own again as he slipped his arms underneath her body and rolled onto his side to cradle her against his chest. The intimacy of their entwined bodies was far more than he had ever had or wanted with any other woman, but with Esther it felt entirely right.
When he broke the kiss, fresh tears were shining in her heavy-lidded eyes. As they began to silently fall, he wiped each one away as the slow, steady thrusts of his cock inside her lifted her effortlessly towards a powerful, all-consuming climax.
“Je t’adore, Esther,” Tristan whispered painfully as he felt the heat of her tight muscles contract around his cock and she cried out her pleasure. “Je t’adore, mon ange.”
Esther was exhausted by all the emotion she felt and the release of the slow-building and intense orgasm, but she sought deep within her for the strength to respond to the words that had flown from Tristan’s lips. Her hands shook wildly as she touched his face and kissed him again before hiding her face in his shoulder. “This week with you has been spectacular, my comte – my Tristan. You have shown me such pleasure; but more importantly, you have given me back the sense of self-worth and confidence that I lost so long ago. How can I ever thank you?”
Her wavering words were both a thrill and fresh heartache – for once more they were laden with the unshakeable weight of the nearness of their parting. “The gift of you sharing yourself with me is more than enough, Esther – for you are perfect, in every way!”
With a low, agonised groan, he fisted his hands in her hair and jerked his cock out of her as, without barely a warning, his orgasm stole over him. A feverish wave of heat exploded outwards as Esther caressed his face and kissed his racing pulse point.
Tristan craved her. Even as his climax burned inside his body he needed more of her – and she needed him. Now that she had finally revealed just how much, he was determined never to let her go. He steeled his courage and lifted his heavy head to look down at her. “You realise that tomorrow is the last day that we can spend together in secret like this, Esther.”
Esther held back her tears as she revealed something that she knew he would not want to hear – something that, in truth, she wished were not so. “Yes, but we will have to be even more careful than we have been this past week – my uncle arrives tomorrow.”
He inhaled sharply. “The Earl Montfort?”
“And his daughter. Yes.”
“They will no doubt wish to monopolise your time, then – time that you should be spending with me.”
His bitter and possessive words were the guiltiest of thrills. Esther bit on her lip as she nodded without meeting his intense stare. “I...I suppose they will, yes. They are the only family I have left to me, after all, and Uncle Charles is as good as a father to me now.”
The slow-burning flicker of hope that had taken root inside him whilst they had made love so intimately faded away. “You are close to him, then?”
She nestled further into his arms and tugged the sheets up over their bare bodies. “Tristan, he and Charlotte are all I have left. I can neither deny nor defy them.”
“I see,” Tristan said stiffly as he allowed her to rest her head on his chest. As he absently stroked her hair to soothe her back into what would hopefully be a more restful sleep, he silently cursed Charlotte Tennyson and her father. Were it not for them, he was convinced that Esther could be persuaded to be his wife, for the love he had for her could break down any protest she offered up – it was a love that he knew now she too could feel for him, if only she allowed herself to.
Nonetheless, he would not give her up without a fight, no matter how futile it seemed his efforts would be. Tristan had never wanted anything or anyone as much as he wanted Esther – if he had to prostrate himself in front of her, her family or even all of England to win her, then so be it.
Neither of them slept well that night.
Chapter Ten
The Earl Montfort and his daughter had arrived at Fleetwood Hall less than ten minutes after Tristan had left Esther’s bedchamber with one last impassioned kiss that had her wordlessly clinging to him. Tears had filled her eyes again when he had mutely detached himself from her, his jaw clenched tightly when he had caressed her flushed face before departing.
Her uncle had gone to look over the grounds with Anton, leaving Charlotte and Esther to become reacquainted – Esther had not seen her since the previous summer she had spent in London, the summer when she had thrown herself into the arms of any man who would oblige her.
She had never liked her frivolous cousin. Charlotte Tennyson was filled with delight in her own beauty and had no wish to do anything but attend balls and fritter away her father’s vast fortunes on gowns, jewels and soirées. It seemed that in their year apart, she had not changed.
Esther could pay no attention to Charlotte’s enthusiastic and inane prattling about the ton, for her thoughts were consumed by the memory of the fierce possessiveness in Tristan’s eyes when he had made love to her after the painful secrets she had shared with him. She closed her eyes briefly and allowed herself to imagine a world in which he and her cousin had never met, had never shared the night of passion that had so ruined Charlotte’s prospects.
It was not the act itself which bothered her, for she knew that she herself had many such liaisons in her past. The issue was that Tristan had been so careless and selfish in seeking out his passion; Charlotte said that he had known she was a virgin and betrothed, but that he had only seen her as a challenge and seduced her regardless.
Were it not for that knowledge of how cold and cruel he could be, then Esther knew that she would still be in Tristan’s arms and eagerly accepting all that he had seemed to be offering to her. Though deeply unsettling, far more troublesome was the certain knowledge that she would soon be without him. The mere thought of it was enough to set a spiralling panic inside her.
Still, though, now that she was out of his intoxicating presence, it occurred to Esther that perhaps the man she thought she had come to know was only what he had wanted her to see. He had made it very plain from the first moment they met how much he desired her; the tender sensitivity he had displayed had been so precisely what she needed that it may have been no more than an act to coax her into his bed and keep her there as long as possible.
She doubled over in her chair, gut-wrenching agony suddenly twisting through her as she fought for breath. No! She could not believe that to be true, for if it was, she feared her heart might break all over again. This was precisely why she had tried so hard to resist him. Tristan was without a doubt the most dangerous man she had ever known, and even if they parted after the christening Esther knew he would haunt her forever. Far from purging herself of the lust she felt for him, being with him had captured her inescapably in its grasp.
“Esther, whatever is the matter with you?”
Charlotte’s exasperated cry
wrenched her attention back. Esther lifted her head as her chest heaved and she battled back a rising tide of nausea. “S-sorry, Charlotte – what did you say?”
“Why, I do not believe you have listened to even a word I have said, Esther! Really, you are being very rude. You do not even seem pleased to see me.”
Her tolerance evaporated entirely. Esther shoved her chair back without dignifying her cousin’s words with a reply and gathered up her skirts to storm towards the door, but it was opened from the outside before she could reach it. “Uncle!”
Charles Tennyson, Earl Montfort, smiled down at her as he caught hold of her arm. “Just the little lady I was looking for, my dear Esther – but am I interrupting?”
Her eyes flickered towards her furiously reddened cousin as she gave a soft snort of disdain. “No, Uncle. If you have a wish for my company, I will more than gladly oblige you.”
“Company? Conversation more than company, my dear.” With those cryptic words, the earl pushed past her into the parlour and beckoned his daughter towards him. “Charlotte? I need a few moments alone with Esther. Do try to behave yourself in my absence, won’t you?”
The other woman’s flush deepened, but she jerked her head. “Yes, Father.”
When the door slammed in her wake, the genial smile faded away from the earl’s face as he steered Esther over to the armchairs and sat down facing her. “It has been many months since we last saw each other, my dear girl – how have you been?”
A further reminder of Max and Andrew was the very last thing she needed when her emotions were already so heightened by her nights with Tristan. Esther tilted her head to the side and breathed in deeply as she tried to bring herself under control. “Well enough, Uncle Charles. The quieter pace of life away from London suits me better these days, so I am afraid you will likely not see me in the ton this season either.”
“Is that so, Esther? You are out of mourning now, you know – no one would think badly of you were you to rejoin society, and you would be welcomed back with open arms. I am often asked of you, you know.”
