Page 74 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

Instead, she lifted her chin higher, meeting his gaze with a steadiness that belied the quickening rhythm of her pulse. “Then it would seem,” she said softly, “that I should be most careless indeed.”

His mouth curved, and the slight distance remaining between them seemed suddenly impossible to preserve.

Darcy’s breath brushed Sebastian’s mouth as she lifted her lashes and met his gaze. Thought deserted him. There was only the undeniable pull of her, the quiet invitation in her eyes, and the almost desperate desire to taste her. She did not step away, and the answering lift of her face gave him all the permission he required.

“Darcy,” he said, her name escaping him on something perilously close to a groan.

“Sebastian,” she murmured, taking a single step nearer.

Her scent enveloped him, warm and intoxicating. He inhaled deeply, as though he might draw her into his lungs and keep some part of her there. Sebastian cupped her face with a certainty that spoke of possession he had no right to feel, yet his thumbs moved gently along her jaw before he drew her closer.

Why was it so damned difficult to resist her?

Sebastian drew another slow breath, lowered his hands, and forced himself to step back.

Confusion clouded her eyes. “Why⁠—”

“I find you unspeakably lovely, and I am attracted to you. I will not pretend otherwise,” he said quietly. “But I will not act upon it. My loyalty presently belongs to another.”

Her eyes widened. Then, to his surprise, her expression softened.

“You have a lover.”

“Yes.”

“She is not your wife, yet you would give her your fidelity?”

“Yes.”

He retreated another step, summoning the cool detachment that usually came to him with effortless ease. Red had promised him nothing permanent, nor had he offered her any such assurance. What existed between them might be temporary, but that did not render it meaningless. Fidelity mattered to her. He had given her his word, and loyalty mattered to him too. Whatever this bewildering attraction to Darcy might be, he would not betray the woman currently sharing his bed.

Bloody hell.

Even the thought was absurd. Never in his life had Sebastian imagined himself caught between a desire for two women, much less denying himself one because of loyalty to the other. He shook his head, still astonished by the predicament. “I am going outside.”

Amusement flickered in her beautiful brown eyes. “Out into the rain?”

“Yes.”

She closed the small distance between them, raised her hand, and gently brushed her fingertips along his cheek. The softness of that touch moved through him with startling force, stripping away defenses that had survived far more practiced seductions. How could something so simple undo him so completely?

Sebastian turned sharply, intent upon putting more distance between them before he surrendered to the need pressing hard and insistent within him. The rain and cold beyond the cottage walls might prove miserable, but perhaps the wind lashing across the land would beat some sense into him.

Her arms slipped around his waist from behind.

Sebastian stilled as her cheek came to rest against his back, the simple tenderness of the embrace somehow testing his restraint more severely than seduction might have done.

“Stay inside with me,” she murmured. “You will catch your death out there.”

“No.” The word emerged roughened by the effort of holding himself in check.

He felt the curve of her smile against his back. “Will you look at me?”

He frowned, but turned within the circle of her arms.

“I want you too, Sebastian,” Darcy murmured.

There was no coyness in her expression, no pretense. She looked up at him with a quiet, breathtaking honesty, offering him the truth of her desire. Sebastian searched her face, trying to comprehend the courage, or perhaps the folly, that allowed her to admit such a thing when she knew precisely why he had refused her.