Chapter 60 Stuck between two men (4)
Third person POV:
She heard his voice in the entrance hall, low, clipped, giving orders to his groom and felt her stomach drop to her slippers.
She had meant to compose herself, to lie abed with a sick headache and a cloth soaked in lavender water.
Instead she stood frozen in the morning room, lips swollen, pulse racing, the evidence of her sin still slick between her thighs.
The door opened without ceremony.
Sebastian filled the doorway, still in riding dress, dark coat, buff breeches, boots splashed with Wiltshire mud.
The crisp country air clung to him, along with something sharper: possession, certainty, danger.
His grey eyes swept the room once, taking in the overturned chair, the faint scent of sex beneath the beeswax and roses, the high colour in his wife’s cheeks.
He closed the door with a soft click that sounded louder than a gunshot.
“Arabella.”
One word. Her name, spoken in that rough voice, turned her knees to water.
She attempted a curtsey; it wobbled. “Your Grace. You returned early.”
“Did I?” He removed his gloves one finger at a time, never taking his gaze from her face.
“I found I could not concentrate on drainage ditches and turnip yields when my wife was alone in London.”
He stepped closer. She smelled leather and horse and the faint bite of bergamot that was uniquely his.
When he reached her, he did not touch her, not yet. He simply studied her as though she were a sonnet he intended to commit to memory.
“You look,” he said at last, “thoroughly ravished.”
Heat flooded her face. “I…I was resting…”
“No.” His voice cut across the lie easily.
He cupped her chin, tilting it so the light fell full on the faint red marks Edmund’s mouth had left along her throat.
“You were fucked, Arabella. Quite recently, I should say.”
She tried to jerk away; his grip tightened, not cruelly, but with absolute authority.
“Should I send for your lover?” he asked conversationally. “Have him brought here so we may all three discuss the matter like civilised beings?”
“No!” The word burst from her in panic. “Sebastian, please…”
His eyes flared at the sound of his name the first time she had ever used it unforced.
Something dark and hungry moved behind the cool grey.
“Then you will tell me yourself.” He released her chin only to begin unfastening the tiny pearl buttons at her throat, one by one. “Every detail. Leave nothing out.”
Her gown loosened; cool air kissed the fevered skin of her breasts.
She wore no stays, only the thin chemise Edmund had pushed aside in his haste. Sebastian’s knuckles brushed her nipple; it stiffened instantly, traitorously.
“Sebastian…”
“Begin,” he said, “with how he tasted you under this very table while your mother massaged your shoulders.”
Her breath caught on a sob. “How could you possibly…”
He smiled, slow and lethal. “Because I know the look of a woman who has spent hard and often, Arabella. And because the rug beneath that desk is soaked.”
His hand slid lower, gathering her skirts until his fingers found the bare, swollen folds beneath.
He stroked once, lightly, and brought his glistening fingers to his lips. Tasted her and Edmund without flinching.
“Salty,” he murmured. “He came inside you, didn’t he?”
She whimpered.
“Answer me.”
“Yes,” she whispered, tears burning her eyes. “God forgive me, yes.”
Sebastian’s expression did not change, but something fierce and possessive blazed behind his eyes.
He lifted her effortlessly, turned, and set her on the edge of the morning table, the same table beneath which Edmund had knelt not half an hour ago.
Plates and a small vase of hothouse roses crashed to the carpet.
“Spread your legs,” he said.
She obeyed without thinking, thighs parting as he stepped between them.
He did not undress. He simply unfastened the fall of his breeches, drew out his cock, thick, hard, already wet at the tip and pressed it against her entrance.
“Feel how ready you are,” he said against her ear. “Your body does not lie, even when you do.”
One thrust and he was inside her to the hilt.
Arabella cried out at the sudden fullness. He was larger than Edmund, longer, and the angle on the table drove him deep enough to steal her breath.
Sebastian gave her no time to adjust. He set a punishing rhythm, each stroke dragging over that sensitive place inside her until her head fell back and her nails scored his shoulders through linen and wool.
“Tell me,” he growled, teeth scraping the tendon in her neck. “Tell me what he did.”
She broke.
Between sobs and gasps she told him everything, how Edmund’s tongue had felt, how she had spent on his mouth while her mother hummed behind her, how Edmund had lifted her against the wall and taken her in frantic silence, how she had bitten him to keep from screaming.
Sebastian listened, eyes black with lust and something darker.
Each confession drew a harder thrust, a deeper claim.
When she reached the part where Edmund spilled inside her, Sebastian’s control snapped.
He pulled out, turned her roughly, bent her over the table so her cheek pressed to the cool mahogany.
Then he drove back in, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise.
“Mine,” he snarled, punctuating each word with a thrust that rattled the silver on the sideboard. “This cunt is mine. This body is mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” she sobbed, the words torn from her throat as pleasure coiled unbearably tight. “Sebastian, I’m yours…”
He reached beneath her, fingers finding her clitoris, rubbing in merciless circles.
She came with a wail that echoed off the painted ceiling, inner muscles clamping down on him so hard he groaned her name like a curse.
He followed moments later, hips jerking as he poured himself into her in long, pulsing waves.
When he finally stilled, he did not withdraw. He stayed buried inside her, arms banded around her waist, mouth against the damp nape of her neck.
For a long time there was only the sound of their breathing and the distant clatter of servants in the hall.
At last he spoke, voice low and raw.
“I will not share you, Arabella. I find the thought of another man’s seed inside you…intolerable.”