Chapter 63 Stuck between two men (7)
Arabella’s head fell back on a broken moan.
Sebastian gripped her hips and began to move deep, deliberate strokes that dragged over every sensitive place inside her.
The table creaked beneath them; books trembled on their shelves.
“Feel that?” he growled against her throat. “Feel how perfectly you take me even after he’s had you?”
She could only whimper.
He fucked her steadily, ruthlessly, until her thighs shook and her breath came in sobs. When she was on the edge teetering, frantic, he slowed, denying her.
“Say the words,” he commanded. “Say you accept the bargain.”
“Yes,” she gasped. “God help me, yes…”
He drove into her hard enough to rattle the candelabra and rubbed her clitoris with devastating precision.
She came with a scream that echoed through the silent library, inner muscles clamping down on him in endless waves.
Sebastian followed, hips snapping forward as he spilled deep inside her, marking her again, claiming what Edmund had so briefly held.
When it was over he did not withdraw. He stayed inside her, arms banded around her waist, mouth against her damp temple.
“Good girl,” he whispered, the same words he had used in London, but softer now, almost tender. “The bargain is sealed.”
He lifted her carefully, still impaled, and carried her to the long leather sofa before the fire.
There he arranged her on her knees, chest pressed to the cushions, and took her again from behind slower this time, almost reverent, drawing out every aftershock until she was sobbing with overstimulation.
Only when she was limp and boneless did he finally pull out, gather her into his lap, and wrap a cashmere throw around her trembling body.
Arabella buried her face in his throat, breathing in bergamot and sex and something that felt terrifyingly.
“What happens now?” she whispered.
Sebastian stroked her hair, the gesture achingly gentle.
“Now, my darling wife,” he said against her temple, “we go to war for your heart. And I intend to fight dirtier than Vale could ever dream.”
Outside the library windows, dawn was still hours away.
Inside, the fire crackled, the candles guttered, and the Duke of Ashford held his duchess close knowing the next battle would be fought in daylight, with smiles and whispers and touches beneath dinner tables.
And for the first time since their wedding, Arabella fell asleep in his arms without dreaming of escape.
The sky beyond the glass was the colour of tarnished pearls when Arabella slipped from her bed.
Sebastian had left her just before sunrise, pressing one slow, drugging kiss to her mouth and murmuring, “Go to him if you must. But remember whose name you will cry tonight.”
Then he had gone, silent as a shadow, leaving her body humming and her conscience in ruins.
She told herself she would not go.
She told herself she was stronger now.
She lied.
The conservatory doors were unlocked. Inside, the air was thick and green, orange trees heavy with fruit, jasmine threading its sweetness through the heat, the faint metallic scent of dew on iron and glass.
Water trickled somewhere in the darkness, a secret heartbeat.
Edmund was waiting beneath the great central palm.
He wore only a shirt and breeches, collar open, feet bare. Moonlight and the first pale hint of dawn painted him in silver and gold, and for a moment Arabella could only stare, her throat tight with the ache of memory.
This was the boy who had once stolen strawberries for her from the walled garden, who had kissed her behind the haystack until they were both dizzy with wanting, who had sworn he would never let her go.
He opened his arms.
She ran to him.
They collided in a storm of mouths and hands and broken apologies.
Edmund lifted her off her feet, spun her until her back met the warm glass wall, and kissed her as though she were water and he had crossed a desert.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips, her throat, the frantic pulse beneath her ear. “I never stopped. Tell me you still feel it.”
She could not lie to him. Not here, not now.
“I feel it,” she breathed, and the words tasted like both salvation and damnation.
He sank to his knees in the mossy path, hands pushing her nightgown up to her waist.
No drawers. Sebastian had forbidden them since the bargain, only bare skin and the slick evidence of how easily her body answered them both.
Edmund made a reverent sound and pressed his mouth to her.
It was nothing like the frantic, hidden devouring in the morning room, nothing like Sebastian’s deliberate, conquering worship.
This was slow, almost sacred. He licked her with long, languid strokes, as though memorising her taste, as though this might be the last time.
When he circled her clitoris with the flat of his tongue she had to bite her fist to stay quiet; when he slid two fingers inside her and curled them just so, she came apart with a soft, shattered cry that echoed off the glass roof like birdsong.
He rose only long enough to free himself, then lifted her, guiding her legs around his waist.
The wall was cool at her back; Edmund was furnace-hot inside her. He entered her inch by inch, eyes locked on hers, letting her feel every throb, every pulse.
“Arabella,” he said, voice cracking. “Look at me.”
She did.
He began to move slowly, rolling thrusts that dragged over every sensitive place, that made her feel worshiped rather than claimed.
His forehead rested against hers; their breath mingled.
“I would still take you away,” he whispered between thrusts. “Tonight. Gretna. The Continent. Anywhere. Say the word and I will carry you out of this house and never look back.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, salt on both their lips as he kissed them away.
“I would burn the world to keep you safe,” he said. “I would kill him if he hurt you. Tell me to do it, love. Tell me to end this.”
For one dizzying heartbeat she almost said yes.