Page 62 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

“So do I,” he said hoarsely. “I am done denying us.”

Darcy cried out into the pillow as Sebastian drove into her harder, each deep thrust sending a fierce jolt of pleasure through her. His thumb worked her clitoris in tight, relentless strokes, mercilessly feeding the pleasure already burning between her thighs. She pushed back to meet him, desperate for every hard glide of his cock inside her, until the exquisite pressure wound so tight she could scarcely breathe around it. She clenched her fist tighter upon the sheets as tension knotted and quaked in her belly.

Sharp, helpless whimpers broke from Darcy as pleasure tore through her in sensations more intense than anything she had imagined. His touch upon her clitoris was relentless, circling and stroking before pressing with just enough pressure to make her entire body tighten beneath him. Each caress drove the pleasure higher, until her thighs trembled and she could scarcely endure another stroke without shattering.

“Sebastian,” she cried out.

His deep, hard rhythm was both relentless and reverent, each stroke driving her higher, deeper into the madness of him. Darcy was utterly, gloriously lost, her body no longer governed by thought, only by his touch and her own ravenous demand for more. The first release came without warning, a sharp, keening cry torn from her throat as her inner walls clenched around him, pleasure pulsing through her in wave after blinding wave. Sebastian did not stop. He rode her through every spasm, his breath ragged against her neck.

“Again,” he growled, his voice raw and broken. “Let me feel your pussy rippling over my cock.”

The second release rose more slowly, coiling low in Darcy’s belly and tightening with each inexorable thrust. When it finally broke, it shattered her completely. Her body collapsed against the bed, a broken sob of his name spilling from her lips as she convulsed around him, undone and remade in the same breath.

With a guttural groan, Sebastian pulled free. His hand closed around his slick, straining cock, and moments later he spilled himself across her buttocks. A violent shudder went through him before he folded over her, his forehead pressed against her shoulder, his breath coming in ragged, broken gasps.

For a long moment, neither moved. The lamplit chamber seemed to close around them, the scent of sandalwood and sex thick in the air. At last, he shifted, found his handkerchief, and cleaned her gently before gathering her into his arms.

“Burning in mutual madness is vastly appealing,” she murmured, sated and on the brink of sleep.

Sebastian’s eyes were dark and tender, and he shifted to press a soft, lingering kiss to her lips. “Will you be my mistress?”

CHAPTER 21

Red did not answer at once. Sebastian could still smell the decadent fragrance of her passion in the air, taste of her sex, and hear the echo of her lovely cries of release.

He waited, an unfamiliar tension gathering within him as the silence lengthened. Already his mind moved ahead, considering how thoroughly he would ensure she wanted for nothing. A house, servants, gowns, jewels, whatever comforts or indulgences pleased her. Red would never need to ask twice for anything within his power to give.

His gaze remained fixed upon her, his body deceptively relaxed while something inside him drew increasingly taut.

The silence stretched, measured and deliberate, before she answered with quiet certainty, “No.”

Sebastian closed his eyes, the refusal landing with a force he had not anticipated, made sharper by the soft steadiness of her voice.

“Red—” he began.

“I will be your lover,” she said, cutting him off with gentle firmness. “Until I leave.”

His chest tightened as a sensation he had never known in all his eight-and-twenty years cleaved through him. “Leave? To where? When?”

She pushed herself upright, her hands braced against his chest. The tenderness in her eyes damn well robbed him of breath.

“Perhaps I shall leave London five months from now,” she replied. “Perhaps in a year. I might go to the seaside, or travel upon the Continent. I have always wished to live abroad for a time. I shall be your lover…” A becoming flush crept up her slender neck to her cheeks. “Even your friend. But I will never be a kept woman. I shall make my own way in this life, relying on my own wits and determination.”

Something complicated shifted within him.

Admiration came first, sharp and undeniable. He admired that pride in her, that stubborn insistence upon standing upon her own feet when accepting what he could so easily provide would make her life infinitely more comfortable. Yet beneath the admiration came another feeling he was less willing to examine. An odd familiarity.

Bloody hell.

Miss Darcy Whitley.

The same quiet pride lived in her. The same refusal to be beholden. Darcy would sacrifice until she had nothing left for herself, yet he suspected she would sooner walk barefoot through London than accept a pair of boots if she believed the gift came with obligations attached.

How peculiar that the two women who had begun occupying far too much of his thoughts should possess the very quality he had never before thought to seek in a woman. And more troubling still was how deeply it appealed to him.

His gaze lingered upon Red, something tightening low in his chest. He had begun this affair wanting her body, fascinated by her innocence and the unexpected sensuality beneath it. Somewhere along the way, he had begun admiring the woman herself.

Just as he was becoming far too enthralled with Darcy. The realization left him distinctly uneasy.