Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo by Colette Gale

She looked down at him, but his face was in shadow; someone had extinguished more of the candles, leaving only a few across the room.
    He moved his demanding hands to her hips and lifted her over him, easily. She spread her legs, settling his cock’s head into the entrance of her quim, looking down as she placed her hands on his smooth, hairless chest, covering the gold ring jutting there.
    She felt the slam of his heart beneath her fingers, the deep, desperate need of his breathing, and teased his cock with her slippery quim. He would have none of it; he grasped her hips and slammed up into her with the groan of a dying man. Mercédès matched the sound, her own gasp of pleasure riding into a long moan as he held her hips to thrust in again.
    That was it. . . . He surged up a third time and let it go, and she felt the undulant pulsing inside her quim as he froze in the throes of release.
    She collapsed on his chest, her mouth near that fascinating gold ring, and his hands fell away onto the fur. Their hair was plastered and tangled, and her legs ached from being spread wide, straddling him and holding herself up.
    It wasn’t long—not long at all, for her breathing had barely eased—when she felt him move against her, inside her. A little jolt of his hips, the change in breathing, the return of his wide hands to her torso, raising her.
    He was growing hard again, inside her, and Mercédès felt her own response as her sex throbbed gently between them.
    “Ride me, Countess,” he said again. His voice was strained and flat, and she couldn’t see his eyes—they were too shadowed. His fingers bit into the sides of her hips as he shifted her over him.
    She moved, feeling the sweet swell of desire building again, rising and lowering on her thighs, her hands flat on his chest as he helped her shift back and forth, up and down.
    “Reach up,” he commanded. “High.”
    She did, settling back on her haunches, taking his thick length inside her, releasing it, lifting and falling, jolting back and forth in an increasing rhythm. Her breasts tightened, her nipples puckered and thrust, and his palms closed over them, warm and solid. She lifted her hands in the air, reaching toward the olive branches above from that day in the sun.
    She reached and tipped and tilted, faster and faster, Edmond beneath her, the sun beating down on her, his hands on her breasts, the olive leaves just out of reach.
    His hips thrashed below, his hands tight on her flesh, his breathing harsh and the shadowed planes of his face stark and hard. He was saying something, muttering it as if delirious, but she couldn’t hear him, it was lost in the whirl of sensation and memory. Tears spilled from her eyes as she worked, and he worked, and they slammed into each other, hard and angry, grief-stricken and regretful and desperate. So desperate.
    When she finally reached that last pinnacle, the hardest, most draining one yet, Mercédès slipped over, crashing into brightness, and she felt the tears pouring down her face.
    She fell to the side, sobbing silently, and slipped into oblivion.

FOUR
    The Return
    Four months later
Paris
    "Maman! I am so glad to be home,” Albert said as Mercédès pulled him into her embrace. Instead of waiting in the parlor for him to be brought to her, she’d rushed to meet him in the foyer of their home on rue du Helder.
    “At last,” she said, burying her face into his neck, smelling the scent that had been her comfort since he was but an infant. She barely managed to keep the tears of joy from turning into ones of fear. Fear that she had almost lost the one that she loved above all else in the world. “Those bandits, they didn’t hurt you?”
    She stepped back to look at him, just to make certain. He certainly appeared unchanged, except for a more worldly, experienced air. His dark hair was combed neatly, his clothing was fashionable and pressed, and if his face looked a bit more mature . . . well, that wouldn’t be