Chapter 61 Stuck between two men (5)
Third person POV:
His teeth closed on the soft skin where neck met shoulder not gently.
He sucked hard, marking her with a dark, deliberate bruise that no amount of rice powder would hide.
“There. Now every man at Harrington Park will know exactly whom you belong to.”
He pulled out slowly, righted her skirts, and only then allowed her to turn and face him. His eyes were no longer cold; they burned.
“You will come to my bed tonight,” he said. “And every night. And if Vale dares touch you again, I will kill him. Do you understand?”
She nodded, trembling, tears still wet on her lashes.
Sebastian brushed them away with surprising tenderness. “Good girl.”
He pressed one last kiss to her swollen mouth, almost gentle and left her there among the scattered roses and broken porcelain, his release mingling with Edmund’s between her thighs, his brand burning on her throat.
Arabella slid slowly to the floor, knees giving way, and realised with a thrill of terror and exhilaration that she was no longer merely caught between two men.
She was claimed by one body and whether she wished it or not began to be claimed in ways far more dangerous.
And the house party at Harrington Park had not even begun.
The House party at Harrington park
The great house blazed like a jewel box against the Wiltshire night.
A thousand candles glittered in the chandeliers, turning the ballroom into a fever-dream of gold and shadow.
Every window stood open to the warm August dark; music spilled out across the lawns, entwined with the scent of late roses and gunpowder from the fireworks that would crown the evening.
Arabella moved through the crush like a ghost in silver.
Her gown was tissue-thin silk the colour of moonlight on water, cut daringly low across the breasts and laced at the back so tightly that every breath felt stolen.
A black domino masked the upper half of her face; diamonds glittered at her throat and wrists as gifts from Sebastian, delivered that morning with a note in his cool, elegant hand, “Wear these. Let them all see what is mine.”
The bruise he had left on her neck was hidden beneath a rope of pearls, but she felt it throb with every heartbeat.
Edmund found her near the terrace doors.
She knew him even before he spoke, the way he held his shoulders, the reckless tilt of his head beneath the plain black mask.
He wore no powder, no elaborate costume, only dominos and midnight blue, as though he had no patience for the game tonight.
“Arabella.” His voice was raw. He did not bow; he simply caught her gloved hand and pulled her through the doors into the velvet dark.
The terrace was deserted, the guests all inside waiting for the fireworks.
Torches flickered in iron sconces; beyond the balustrade the gardens fell away in scented tiers.
Edmund backed her against the stone parapet, hands already sliding beneath her domino to cup her face.
“I have been dying,” he whispered against her mouth. “Every minute since London.”
She should have stopped him. She should have remembered Sebastian’s warning, the bruise, the promise of death.
Instead she kissed him as though he were air and she had been drowning for days.
His tongue swept her mouth; his thigh pressed between hers, forcing the delicate silk of her skirts to ride high.
She felt the hard length of him through layers of cloth and whimpered into the kiss.
“Now,” she breathed. “Edmund, please…”
He spun her, hands sweeping down to gather fistfuls of silver silk and petticoats.
Cool night air kissed her thighs, her buttocks. She wore only the thinnest stockings and a whisper of lace drawers, Sebastian's choice again.
Edmund tore them aside with impatient fingers.
The first rocket burst overhead, showering the sky in gold.
Edmund drove into her in one powerful thrust.
Arabella cried out, the sound lost beneath the boom and whistle of fireworks.
He filled her utterly, stretching tender flesh still faintly sore from Sebastian’s earlier claim.
The contrast Edmund’s frantic passion against Sebastian’s deliberate dominance made her head spin.
He took her hard and fast, one hand clamped over her mouth to muffle her cries, the other gripping her hip as he pounded into her from behind.
Each thrust sent sparks skittering along her nerves; the stone parapet scraped her breasts through thin silk.
Above them, unseen in the deep shadow of the balcony, Sebastian watched.
He had come searching for her the moment the fireworks began, drawn by some instinct he neither understood nor trusted.
Now he stood motionless, gloved hands curled tight around the iron railing, grey eyes burning as he watched his wife fucked against his own terrace wall by the man he had sworn to kill.
He should have been enraged.
Instead, heat surged through his blood so violently he had to grit his teeth against a groan.
Arabella’s head was thrown back, throat arched in abandoned pleasure; silver gown rucked high, pale thighs trembling as Edmund rutted into her like a man possessed.
Every cry she gave was swallowed by Edmund’s hand and the night.
Sebastian’s cock throbbed, aching against the confines of his breeches.
He did not move to stop them. He could not have moved if the house burned down around him.
Another rocket burst emerald and sapphire this time, painting them in shifting jewel-light.
Arabella’s masked face turned toward the sky; even though the domino Sebastian saw her eyes flutter shut, saw her lips part on a silent scream as she passed around Edmund’s cock.
Edmund followed moments later, hips jerking, burying himself deep with a muffled curse.
Sebastian watched his wife sag forward, spent and trembling, watched Edmund press reverent kisses to the nape of her neck, watched the way her hand reached back blindly to clutch at her lover’s hair as though she could not bear to let him go.
Something cracked open in Sebastian’s chest sharp, painful, and utterly irrevocable.
He had claimed her body. He had thought that would be enough.
It was not.
He wanted the look she gave Edmund beneath the fireworks, the helpless surrender, the love shining raw and bright as the rockets overhead.
He wanted her heart, damn her, and he wanted it so fiercely that the wanting felt like dying.