Page 65 of The Scarlet Ball

There was an iron-cold conviction to his words. I had stood at the White Ball, I had been chosen at the Rose Ball, and now this would be mine so long as I could survive it.

Survival, I thought suddenly, was not promised, but who the hell got promises? Perhaps rich people did. Perhaps white people did. The only thing I could rely on was Sebastian being what Sebastian was.

Now we were face-to-face, our noses almost touching, his arm still slung over my hip.

“You are a monster,” I said as if that would mean anything to him, and before I could stop myself, my hand shot out and latched in his dark hair, pulling hard. It should have hurt him, but the possibility that it didn’t incensed me. He hissed with surprise, and his hand came up to wrap around my wrist.

“If you wear a man’s form, you might have the courtesy to bruise and to bleed like one.”

I swung my hand wide. This time he let me box his ears, and when no harm came to me, I let loose a barrage of blows on his face, his head, and his shoulders.

Once I started, I could not stop. I did not use my fists on him, but it was a near thing. I wanted to see his fair skin redden, I wanted to split his lip, I wanted to see him bleed. I think I swore at him, and all he did was agree, yes, yes, I was right, I was right, and he would love me forever, not in spite of what I did but because of it.

I leaned in, perhaps to bite him as I had bitten Odile, but his hands came up on either side of my throat. He could have choked the life from me, but he only wanted his skin on my skin, more of me, more of everything, and with a growl, I sealed my mouth over his. The noise he made, surprise and shock and need, was like kerosene thrown over the fire that was crackling ominously inside me, and I kissed him harder.

He may have been a submissive monster, but he was never a tame one. He let me do as I liked: tear at his throat, grope his chest hard enough to bruise, twine my leg around his so that I could ride it a little. Then he flipped me to my back, kissing me just as I had kissed him, just as hungry, just as hard. I laughed.

Someday, I was going to let him tear the clothes straight off my body. He would make short work of my corset, the layers and layers of fabric that constituted a ball gown. He’d find me naked inside all of that, unwrapped like expensive chocolate, and then he’d give me the world. That was for the future. For now, I reached down to grab him between the legs, and he moaned. I could feel how hard he was through his well-cut trousers.

I wasn’t feeling particularly merciful, so I showed him no mercy. I dragged him to the brink of release twice, and by the end, he said my name like he’d been mortally wounded. He whined when I touched him, but he groaned when I took my hand away.

“Please.”

“That word sounds good in your mouth. Say it again.”

He repeated it like a curse or a prayer. I positioned myself above him, spreading the parting of my drawers open so that I could feel the coarse fabric of his trousers against my slit. I rode him as if he were inside me, rocking back and forth while his hands tightened on my hips.

“Don’t,” I said, my head thrown back so that all I could see was the ceiling. “Don’t give in. Give me this. First me, then you.”

I wanted him hanging on by his fingernails, and he still was when I started to rock faster on top of him. God, he would reek of me and what we had been doing, he’d be marked, he’d be mine. That was the thought that carried me over, how chains went both ways, fucking with iron collars around both our necks and a chain running between.

I crouched low over his body when I shuddered to my climax, my hands buried in the wool of his jacket, forehead bowed to his chest. The force of it blotted everything out, made my blood ring in my ears, and it was me alone in the heavens, sailing through the stars.

But Sebastian is still there, I thought distantly. He is the moon acting on the tides, he is the storm driving the fish to shore.

I should have slid off of him, started putting myself back together, but I leaned down to kiss him again. The sound he made was deep and longing. He was still hard between my thighs, and the heat of his cock made me lightheaded. I needed to feel it against my skin. You have so many good intentions, so many things you know you shouldn’t do without a man on the door or a friend to watch your back or a lambskin snug in place, and then it goes out the window because he takes just the right breath. His hands tighten perfectly on your thighs, and he looks at you with a mix of such wonder and need that of course you will. I shifted slightly, refusing to give up my superior position, and I caught my lower lip between my teeth.

“Miss Marshall—”

“No,” I said harshly. I opened his pants, rocking myself down on his length. “No, right now, call me Judith.”

He did, and he did it again when I was fully seated with him inside. There was that moment of strangeness as my body remembered that it liked this, and then I pressed down hard, almost vicious, and he called my name a third time.

“No,” I said again. “No. Not yet, do you understand?”

“Yes … yes.”

He got the trick of it in another few moments, learned how to take firm hold of my waist by the smallest point of my corset, how to push up with his hips. When he started moving too fast, I made him slow—See, all the way in and almost all the way out—and he followed where I led, fucking up into me as if he had never had better. I swallowed back a laugh when I realized he hadn’t. This was his first, I was his first, and a possessive delighted warmth spread through me.

I didn’t need another climax, but I let him have it this time. He made a half-human noise, grabbing me and dragging me down to his chest. It was like it would be with any other man I’d allowed to do this, but remembering Mrs. Howard’s words about the need to bear children elsewhere, I thought it might be better in all particulars.

I moved like I was drunk when I pulled off of him. He allowed it, but when I tried to stumble to my feet, he clasped me around the waist and held me back.

“Stay,” he whispered. He pressed his mouth to the side of my throat, biting me as I had bitten him. He was learning fast. I relented, sinking back into the bed with him. I showed him how many ways there are to enjoy each other, mouths, and hands, and holes, with nothing held back or forbidden. He wanted to know all of it. He was after every lesson like the eager virgin he wasn’t anymore, and when he realized that the sounds I made were good things, he couldn’t get enough of them.

By the end I was an exhausted mess, dizzy and not altogether well for all that pleasure danced under my skin. It verged on too much, and I pulled my arm out from underneath him to sit up. The room looked strange, swimming in front of my eyes, and then I bit back a yelp when he dragged me back down.

“Hey!”