Page 8 of A Royally Fake French Menage (Rippton U Creatives #3)

BARCLAY

J acques held out my dinner jacket. Gray eyes traveled over my body. Not a word slipped from his lips of what we’d done earlier, or how I walked away. As always, he remained the epitome of discretion.

I followed that lead, slipping my arms into the garment and tried to ignore his presence as he worked on my cufflinks.

Neither of us had spoken since I stepped out of the shower to find him in my room, presenting me with two dinner options after I’d slept off the ex-lover hangover of epic proportions.

All after he’d made me lose control not just once, but twice within half an hour of arriving at La Borde.

One long finger traced across my pulse point, lingering across my bare flesh. My heart rate ratcheted up a notch, and I knew we both understood just what sort of power Jacques still held over me. I snarled my discontent at him, and reached out to do my own buttons, but he batted my hands away.

"You've forgotten how things are done here, my lord.

" He shook his head, making a mockery of my own attempt to dress myself.

Talented fingers slid each button together in an out of order dressing that left his hands skating over my bare skin on my torso as often as possible.

Jacques reached around my waist to tuck the shirt into my pants at the back, his chest almost pressed against mine.

Almost.

The man was a study of decorum, but also a master of control and flirtation. He could wring a tease out for hours, days.

Fucking weeks until I crawled and begged for what only he could offer.

We both knew that.

Only, this time, I didn’t have weeks at hand for him to fine tune his greatest weapon.

"I can put those on myself, " I said dryly. "America hasn't changed me quite so much."

Liar.

He didn’t need to say it. I read the truth in his gray eyes.

Jacques stood a good head above me. His shoulders were wider, too.

The man could flatten me if he so chose, and for good reason.

Rather than tip my head back the way he wanted so our mouths aligned, the perfect height for kissing or spitting— Christ, how many times had he done either of those things to me?

— I focused my gaze a little lower after risking a glance upward without moving my chin.

A mistake, as that left me staring at his arched mouth that had kissed me so roughly I’d come in his hand hours before. My cock jerked to attention in my pants and I closed my eyes, trying to refocus but nothing seemed to work.

"Perhaps it has." Jacques finished with my buttons. “You have changed, my lord. Perhaps too much."

I didn't bother to answer though I knew I should berate him, put him back in his place. But I didn’t have the energy to fight when I still had dinner with Monique to go. And Genie…

“Fuck,” I muttered, neither aiming the curse at him or myself.

Instead, I let him manhandle me, looking out at the darkened hedge illuminated by lamp posts that studded walk that decorated the entire front of the house where this bedroom looked over. The greenery formed a seasonal labyrinth beyond my window.

A perfect place for midnight rendezvous, a child’s imagination or to walk straight into the middle should one know the way and have the desire to scream themselves silly.

"Did we confirm which maid was assigned to Genie? Monique has…"

Specific taste in her spies.

I wasn’t so sure on Genie’s aptitude about intrigue, though she must be reasonably business savvy.

But there was a difference between a boardroom and a French salon.

Both were savage places where a word held several meanings.

Not that she was a stranger to our language by any means, nor probably as half as out of practice as me.

But I hadn’t had a chance to warn her before Jacques accosted me before, either, or when I crashed afterward.

I only wished it had been in their arms.

Either of them.

Both.

"I didn't check who Monique sent to her." Jacques pulled my belt from around the back of his neck, snapping the leather between us. “I’m sure we will find out shortly. You may rearrange the household as you see fit.”

"Bullshit." I didn’t so much as flinch when he snapped the leather, though it annoyed me that he lied to my face.

The man knew everything that happened on the estate. But we both knew that any chances I made her this weekend would simply be changed back the moment I drove back to the airport and my other life.

So far, the only staff that had spoken to me was Jacques. The rest were either feeling their way along to who I'd become, didn’t trust me any longer, or the step monster had threatened them unsuitably before I stepped over the threshold.

I voted for a heady mixture of the last two.

Thank fuck I’ll be out of here in just over forty-eight hours.

“Probably.” Jacques answers my unspoken sentiment, reading my mind, as always.

Another skill I admired in him. His talent to be able to read a room and slide into conversation anywhere.

It was as though I were the unskilled one, and him the courtier in this situation.

He pressed the button on my pants, and finished tucking my shirt in, pleating the folds meticulously.

I closed my eyes at the sensation of his hands on me, remembering the last time we were together, before I left. How his palm gripped firmly around my throat, his cock lodged deep inside me while I dampened the sheets beneath us with my sweat, cum and tears.

"I enjoyed making you come, my lord." Jacques’s fingers brushed over my cock.

My eyes drifted shut at the reminder. Still lost in my memories, I hardened beneath the silk blend of my pants as he tugged at my fly.

He stopped halfway, and my eyes fluttered open.

"Did I catch on something?" he asked, quietly.

My cock throbbed against the knuckles that nestled just inside my pants as he worked the zipper, rubbing up and down a few times.

The world dimmed the edges as I stared at him. "Perhaps you’d best take a closer look."

“I’m not sure it needs quite that, my lord.

” His affection, the way he spoke to me, sent my body into an arch as he rubbed his fingertips over the front of my pats.

Fuck, he’d ruin me before I left for dinner at this rate.

Jacques’s smile sharpened. He knelt, slowly bringing his face level with my crotch. "Perhaps there's a thread caught."

Any other time I would've laughed at his audacity, but his touch had me so fucking ready to blow. Again.

And I hadn’t done anything for him yet.

“I'd rather not leave a mess where anyone can see it," I said, keeping my face as expressionless as possible.

We both knew this game. If someone came in and saw us, he'd be sacked and would leave the residence without a reference. Another job with a family of repute would be beyond difficult for him to achieve at that point.

Monique excelled at destroying others, reveled in it.

He ran his knuckles along the length of my cock as I hardened painfully inside the slowly closing confines of my pants. "I think I've got it," he said, softly.

I stared straight down at him. My voice hardened, though I kept my volume low. "Use your teeth."

Jacques dropped his hands and leaned forward, gently taking my zip in his teeth and drew it upward.

When he reached the absolute top, he worked the flap over my zip, concealing the majority of my arousal and pressed dry kiss against my crotch, tracing his fingertips lightly over my shape until an unwilling moan tore from my lips. "Welcome home, my lord."

Once more, maybe twice, and I’d ruin everything he just fixed.

Or maybe that had been his goal all along.

Sensation fanned through my crotch, heating my concealed flesh until even the jacket felt too damn tight. I allowed the corner of my mouth to flick up. "I think the last time I was here I was screaming, and you were lodged inside my ass. "

"But that game has two doors." He pressed his mouth to my crotch again and kissed my aching cock.

I allowed another soft groan to tumble from my lips just as the door to my room opened.

I should have fucking locked it. But instead of the alarm I felt registering in his eyes, disappointment washed over his features.

I only had a brief glimpse before I spun away, flicking the button of my jacket over the damp mark he left as the only evidence of our favorite playtime.

"Christ and heaven, Barclay. You have your manservant picking up lint off the floor. We have maids for that sort of rubbish. Overpaying for his services. I’ve always said…” my stepmother ranted, her lip curling upward.

I closed my eyes against every response to that sexist remark, strangling the back of the vanity chair and wished it was her throat. "Monique. I thought we were meeting you downstairs?"

My stepmother invaded the space behind us, turning about the room until her back stood to me in an overt denial of the etiquette the bitch apparently clung to.

Jacques risked a glance upward, the faintest hint of a smile brushing his lips before he climbed to his feet and turned away, the picture of the perfect, subservient valet.

Who he had never been.

My heart ripped at the sight. All I wanted to do was launch myself at him and promise he was free to behave as he wanted.

In our world, that still wasn’t always the case.

Jacques watched me for a moment longer from his stilled position. Whatever he read of my body language hardened his face. A second later he removed himself from the room while I tried to regulate my breathing, his phantom touch both a tease and an absolute necessity for my survival.

"Celeste is looking after Genevieve." Monique dallied at the dresser, and then approached me with the bottle of cologne. "Your father loved this one. You should wear it."

Her words could be construed as caring and at worst condescending. But her pale, almost colorless green eyes reminded me of a viper in the nest.

"I shouldn't leave her alone too long. After all, she is American." The pretty lie Genie created and that I now fostered sat easy on my tongue.

Monique raised the bottle, her finger on the pump. I twisted away before she could spray the horrific smelling odour on my skin, desperate to retain Jacques’s faint scent of midnight illicit kisses despite that we hadn’t struck the appropriate hour yet. But we will.

None of us would sleep much tonight, I expected, not with how Genie had declared herself earlier.

But Monique, always the pushy, inappropriate bitch, stalked forward and attacked me with the bottle.

I froze in place, not allowing my fists to clench or my shoulders to tighten as I became a Barclay shaped statue beneath the glittery spray of nothing my father ever chose to wear.

All I smelled was an excess of cheap bullshit bearing a brand Monique purchased on his behalf. Every spray erased one more memory from his home. My home.

Until everything around us was hers.

Hers, hers, hers.

Sprayed with shitty perfume most likely purchased at a discount sale.

Monique pointed her bleached incisors in my direction, "There, that’s better, don’t you think? Now, your father can be with us all night."

"You make it sound like you had his ashes dropped into the thing." My gaze dropped to the swirling, purple liquid in its elegant cushion cut bottle, but no evidence of my father's interment was visible inside its glass prison.

I wouldn’t put it past her.

"You've become so American." Monique tsked at me, sounding more British by the moment. A chameleon if there ever was one.

"You’d know, stepmother. You were born there." I clicked my heels together against the floor, wishing like Dorothy to return home, and maybe take Genie and Jacques with me.

I was still recovering from seeing him again, figuring that after a few years of absence he would have sought employment—and love—elsewhere.

"That was a long time ago."

"Yes, because you're so old."

She clucked her tongue at me, her eyes narrowing, fake smile spread wide. "Come now.” She slotted her hand through my elbow, manipulating me like a boxed toy into the shape she preferred. "Our guests will be waiting. "

I didn't look at her as she towed me towards the door. "I thought it was just family. "

Her laughter dribbled down my spine in an unpleasured and far too intimate contact. “Whoever said that?”

You did, you time waste of a fucking liar.

A smile that barely hid her proverbial fangs was the only answer the wicked witch gave as I allowed her to drag me to my fate.