Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

éTIENNE

October 31, 1765

Palace of Versailles

It was some moments after the Comte and Comtesse de Brionne had left before Daphne finally exhaled. She sat heavily in one of the chairs and raised a hand to her forehead, rubbing a spot of tension between her brows. The defeat in her posture left a hollow ache in my chest and the mask of detached composure I'd been struggling to maintain began to fracture.

"Daphne…"

She closed her eyes and held up her hand to silence me.

"Please," she murmured. "I have lost much tonight. I do not wish to lose my temper, as well. Go away, étienne. I cannot bear your presence just now."

Frustration tumbled through me. I was desperate to pull her into my arms, kiss away her sadness, and move heaven and Hell to right her world, but those promises would tie me to her and to a future I knew we could not have. A future she did not want. No . The best way to help her would be to deal with the demon and his summoner, and leave her to the luxurious life she rightly deserved. Emboldened by that sense of rightness and quelling the selfish wrongness I felt at letting her go, I knelt before her and cleared my throat.

When she opened her eyes, they were shimmering with unshed tears. For all her exquisite beauty in her angelic silk, there was something tragic lurking in the depths of those large violet pools. After a beat, I was able to find my voice again.

"Have you encountered demons before in your work with The Order?"

She shook her head.

"We must find someone who knows how to perform an exorcism. The demon is the greatest threat to us now. If we remove him from the equation, the summoner is temporarily impotent. If we go after the summoner first, who knows what will happen. The demon may become untethered to Hell and be unleashed upon our world with nothing left to control him. Right now, he is bound by his ties to the summoner."

"We don't have time to wait on the Vatican. I don't suppose you know of someone who can help?" Her voice had lost its ragged edge and was frosty with irritation.

"Unfortunately, I do not often engage with men of the cloth," I said wryly.

She ignored my attempt at levity.

"I'm afraid I rather lost my faith after Michel died," she said. "I don't have many friends in the church. I would have sought assistance from The Order; they have several members familiar with some of the more indelicate religious practices, but I can't count on their help right now."

"Is there no one you could ask from The Order? Even if you do not petition the group as a whole…"

She looked at me murderously and gestured to the door. "Yes, there was! And there he goes! If you hadn't been here, étienne… If you just would have gone when I first asked, I could have convinced Philippe that Charlotte and I had snuck away to be in each other's confidence. Why did you follow me?"

"My apologies," I said, more curtly than I intended. "I wanted to make sure you were all right after our little balcony tête-à-tête ."

She stood and paced around the library, her skirts swirling in a soft rustle that sharply contrasted the resonance of her anger. I leaned against the desk, attempting to calm my own emotions.

"Yes, fine, thank you. Being caught kissing at a party is actually the least of my worries right now," she huffed.

"That's not what I was referring to," I said. I thought back to her words, what if it's not enough? Of course it wasn't enough—certainly not enough for me. But the possibility that the end of our investigation and return to our old lives was not enough for her filled me with a perverse kind of hope. It was the hope for a future neither one of us could have, and that I didn't deserve in the first place.

"Oh, that. Yes. You're right, of course. It doesn't make sense—the two of us. It was foolish of me to think…" She trailed off, her voice barely a whisper.

"Foolish to think what?" I pressed. Foolish to think there was something more for us? That, perhaps, you wanted me as more than a throwaway lover like the rest of the women at court do? Foolish to think that you'd be willing to sacrifice so much to be with me? I felt phantom beats from my dead heart in my chest, anticipating the rejection I knew would come.

"Nothing," she lied. "You were right, is all I'm saying. But we can't just give up on this investigation now. Especially not with…with Henri emerging. I've given almost everything to come this far and I won't stop until it's finished. If I do, I will have betrayed my friends, The Order, Michel's memory, and myself, in vain."

She turned her back to me and her shoulders slumped in fatigue.

"I don't know why you came tonight, étienne. After everything I gave you, I left you to your solitude. I came here to finish things on my own. But you are back, wanting me to let you in again and to just pick up where we left off. I don't know if it's out of guilt, or self-preservation, or morbid curiosity, or perhaps so you can feel like you have some kind of strange sexual power over me. Whatever it is, I do not know ," she stressed. "But…"

She faced me, tears gone, her face a study in fierce determination and exquisite beauty. Whether it was her pearlescent gown or the force of her will alone, she seemed to glow with an unnatural light. She was magnificent.

"What I do know, étienne, is that I do not need your blessing or your approval to finish what we started. I will do it on my own—for Jeanne, for Michel, for the people of Paris, and most importantly, for me. Your involvement, or the lack of it, will not stand in my way. And if it becomes necessary, I will go through you."

She stepped toward me, eyes narrowed and chin raised in defiance. She squared her shoulders and crowded me back against the desk.

"Now, tell me, étienne. Why are you here? Why did you come tonight? What do you want from me ?"

Everything, Daphne. I want everything. I want your body, your mind, your heart. I want to make love to you every dawn before I sleep so that I will dream of you every day. I want to spend my nights finding ways to challenge your incomparable wit and trying to draw forth that small smile that makes my dead heart beat anew. I want to give you pleasure and happiness and all that my wretched body and damned soul has to offer. I came here tonight for you—to see you safe and to protect you so that I can let you go, but God help me, I don't think I'm strong enough.

I briefly considered prevaricating, but the bold frankness on her face prevented me from lying to her outright. I met her gaze unflinchingly, a cool smile on my lips. It was becoming harder for me to affect an air of detachment when every part of me felt like it was reaching for her. She waited for my answer, but because I couldn't lie and I wouldn't tell her the truth, I had no other alternative.

I pulled her to me and kissed her.

I could taste her conflict—torn between her body's desire for me and her mind's recoil at that need. I didn't give her time to think—to object. I licked her lips and she opened to me on a resigned sigh, meeting my tongue stroke for stroke. She tasted like brandy and fire, igniting every nerve in my body. I tugged at the neckline of her bodice, gently lifting her breast from the satin. I lightly caressed her pretty, pink nipple until it hardened beneath my touch. Breaking from the kiss, I bent and put my lips to it, sucking at it delicately until Daphne threw her head back and moaned in a rough tremor. I scraped my teeth across it and lifted her other breast from her gown, kneading it softly in my hand. She gasped and the sound went straight to my cock, already stiff and straining in my breeches. Mindless with want, I almost didn't hear her tortured, soft-spoken words.

"So, this is what you want from me. I hate you for it, étienne, because— damn us both —I want it, too."

I ignored the guilt snaking through me, resolving to devote myself solely to her pleasure in this moment. I lowered my hands to her waist and pushed her back against the wall of bookshelves in the darkest corner of the library, then dropped to my knees. For once, it felt right for me to be here, kneeling before this powerful, luminous goddess.

"étienne, what are you?—?"

I bunched her gown and lifted it, gazing upon pale blue stockings and the leather garter that strapped her flintlock pistol to her upper thigh. A growl of desperate lust issued from my chest at the sight of the contrast. Delicate, proper undergarments topped with lethal practicality. If that didn't sum up Daphne as a woman, I didn't know what did.

Her hands had threaded their way through my hair, and I took them in my own. I handed her the bundle of skirts.

"Keep it there, Duchesse," I purred, sliding my hands up her legs. "I'm going to need both of my hands for this."

Her eyes danced with excitement, but her mouth was a tight line.

"You say I have some kind of sexual power over you?" I blew a stream of cool air against the thatch of blonde curls at the apex of her thighs. Her knees trembled.

"Perhaps you do," she gasped. "Perhaps it is this way for all of your women."

Pleasure thrummed through me at her ill-disguised jealously and I slid my hands further up her thighs, caressing her curls with my thumbs.

"Perhaps you are afraid to admit that you desire me, Duchesse," I said, lightly rubbing my index fingers along the outer folds of her sex.

"I am not afraid." I watched a blush creep across her chest and cheeks.

"Then say it." The command was as much of a challenge to her pride as it was a need for me. I looked up at her, meeting her eyes above her gathered skirts. One long, languid stroke of my finger through the wet seam of her entrance and her eyes snapped shut, her mouth falling open on a whimper.

"I desire you," she breathed.

"Brave girl," I chuckled, rewarding her by finally setting my tongue to her, licking every sweet, perfect inch of her. I circled the peak of her pleasure and her soft cries became louder, more insistent. She fell back against the books and I held her hips to my face, worshipping her feminine perfection with lips and teeth and tongue. One of her hands dropped the bundle of satin and I felt her fingers wind through my hair again. She bucked against my mouth, driving for the friction against the places where her pleasure grew. Her instinctive pursuit of her own bliss made me wild.

"Am I the first man to touch you like this?" I panted, sliding a finger into her soft, wet heat.

"Oh, yes. Yes." She fisted her hand in my hair, pulling my lips back to her sex.

A primal sense of possessive triumph coursed through me as I pulled one of her legs over my shoulder. I dropped an airy kiss to her tight bud, then sucked it between my lips and worked it with firm strokes of my tongue.

" Oh, mon Dieu. Putain de merde ," Daphne swore, guttural and lewd. I nearly spent in my breeches.

Fighting the animal urgency to take her hard and fast, I focused instead on her—on the beautiful way she embraced her sensuality. The way she looked above me, eyes half-closed in hunger, yet watching me bring her to the brink. I slid a second finger inside her, and her other hand let loose her gown, draping me beneath the weight of her skirts. I did not mind. I wanted to watch her come apart from every angle, and soon I heard the escalation of her cries telling me that I was succeeding. Her pleasure crested and she screamed, clutching my head as her legs gave way. In a moment of selfishness, I let my fangs extend and nipped at the vein in her thigh—not to feed, but just to taste. One last taste of perfection. She cried out again as a second orgasm rolled through her—my favorite benefit of drinking from this part of the body.

Dieu, how could I live without this? You must, logic argued. For her.

I licked the wound closed and caught her as she fell, holding her tightly and laying her down on the thick Persian carpet.

For one satisfying moment, she lay sated and panting in my arms. I still ached with need, but it was a small price to pay for such a thorough distraction from her damaging line of questions. She sighed, slung one arm over my chest, and nuzzled into my shoulder. My chest tightened at the tenderness in the gesture. She looked up at me, eyes finding mine in the flickering candlelight.

"As enjoyable as that was, you never answered my question, étienne. Why are you here tonight?"

Putain.