Page 81 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

“Never.” The certainty in his tone was absolute.

Darcy’s heart twisted, not for herself, but for her sisters. It meant he would never openly claim them as family, never acknowledge the blood they shared, even if he ensured they would never again know financial uncertainty. Gently she said, “Please remember they are your family, Sebastian. They are entirely innocent, and they have already begun to love you.”

His jaw tightened. “I know.” The admission emerged rough and unwilling. “I will remain in their lives. I will see them protected, educated, and provided for. They will never want for anything.”

“Provision is not the same as being claimed,” Darcy said quietly.

He went still beneath her. “No,” he answered after a long moment.

“It is not. But I will not destroy my mother merely to ease my own conscience. I do not yet know how to reconcile what they deserve with what the truth would do to her.”

Darcy could offer no easy answer. How could she ask him to weigh a few short weeks of newfound affection against the mother and sister he had loved all his life? Yet neither could she forget that her sisters’ hearts were now among the things he held in his keeping.

A breeze stirred across the water, cooler now, and she lifted her head, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear as she gazed upward. The sky stretched vast and dark above them, the stars scattered in quiet brilliance, and beneath it all, she felt suddenly, acutely small.

Never.

Darcy felt the word settle deep within her, a quiet and aching confirmation of everything she had already begun to understand. Their worlds would never truly meet. She would never be more than she was now—his lover.

Still, she would not retreat from every pleasure merely because society insisted a woman must surrender either her freedom or her heart. Darcy had vowed that the life she carved for herself would be governed by her own needs and choices, not by constraints fashioned to preserve everyone’s comfort but her own.

She slid from Sebastian’s back, her feet finding the shifting stones beneath the water, and turned to face him. Moonlight glistened over the sea while the vast world remained indifferent to the small, perilous choice unfolding between them.

“I know you offer me no future,” she said, her voice steady despite the emotion pressing against her throat. “Only the present.”

His gaze sharpened upon her, something dark and conflicted moving through his expression, as though he recognized the danger in what she offered and could not bring himself to refuse it.

Darcy placed both hands against his chest, feeling his strength and the hard, steady beat of his heart beneath her palms. “I ask for nothing beyond this moment, if what you fear is that I shall one day demand more.”

The restraint he had guarded so carefully frayed beneath the weight of her words and the unmistakable invitation of her nearness. Sebastian reached for her, one hand closing firmly around her waist as he drew her against him. The contact was immediate and consuming, her wet gown clinging between them and revealing far more than it concealed.

“You should not tempt me with promises you may one day regret,” he said, though desire had already stripped the warning of its force.

“Then do not ask me to live according to regrets I do not yet possess.”

He bent his head and claimed her mouth. The kiss was fierce and unrestrained, the cool sea a startling contrast to the heat that surged wherever their bodies met. Sebastian held her as though he might anchor them both within that single moment and shut out every truth awaiting them beyond it.

Darcy answered with equal hunger, her hands sliding into his damp hair as she poured into the kiss every emotion she had not the courage to confess. She knew it was reckless. She knew each surrender drew her deeper into a love he had never promised to return. Still, she could not make herself choose safety over him.

Sebastian slid his hands beneath her thighs and lifted her against him. Darcy wrapped her legs around his waist, her ankles locking behind him as one of his arms braced beneath her bottom and the other held her securely at the back. With her breasts pressed to his chest and the tide moving around them, she combed her fingers through his hair and kissed him with all the love she dared not give voice.

Sebastian broke the kiss and freed his cock from his breeches with one hand while holding her steady with the other. Darcy gasped when the broad, hard head pressed against her entrance. She was swollen and aroused, but the seawater had washed away some of her natural slickness, making the first slow nudge of his cock feel sharper, and she felt every inch of his penetration into her pussy. The mingling of sensation—pleasure edged with a sharp, almost unbearable intensity—sent a shiver through Darcy, and she whimpered.

He stopped at once.

“Too much?” he asked, his voice ragged.

“No,” she whispered, tightening her legs around him.

He eased into her by careful degrees. Darcy bit her lip as the thick stretch sent pleasure edged with a keen sting through her body. Her breath turned unsteady, her heart racing wildly within her chest. Sebastian stilled again when he was only partly inside her and looked into her face. Something had altered in his gaze.

“Sebastian?” she whispered.

“I know you are Red,” he said, each word deliberate. “I knew when I kissed you in the cottage. I should have understood long before that. I believed myself enthralled by Miss Darcy Whitley and tormented by my hunger for Red, when all along I was wanting every part of the same woman.”

The words stole the breath from Darcy’s lungs. Heat, fear, and a relief so profound it nearly weakened her surged through her at once.

“You truly knew?” she breathed. “Why did you say nothing?”