A Passion for Pleasure(44)
“Stop.” Fairfax flung his arm out to arrest the boy’s flight. Andrew slammed into the barrier and stumbled backward, his wide-eyed gaze locked to Clara’s. Even then, she saw the desperation seething in his young soul.
Before Clara could move forward again, the footman hurried down the steps to grasp Andrew’s shoulder and pull him back toward the house.
Fairfax stepped in front of Clara. Her breath lodged in her throat as she lifted her terrified gaze to her father. Cold laced his expression, his features as immovable as the rocky outcropping of a cliff.
“Please…” She whispered the desperate, broken plea. Sebastian’s hand closed over her arm.
Her father didn’t acknowledge the other man’s presence. Fairfax stood rigidly, feet apart, the stance of a man of power. He stared at Clara, his eyes stamped with utter detachment, stark and hard as a fossil.
In that instant, Clara knew whatever love he might have once felt for her had dissolved into nothing. Just as she knew her own heart had long ago cast him out.
A second footman stepped in front of her.
“Get out of my way.” A flame of renewed fury spilled over Clara. She lunged at the man, clawing at his face, kicking his shins, but he was an unbreachable wall until his big hands closed over her shoulders and pulled her toward the dark interior of her father’s carriage.
Another pair of arms closed around Clara from behind, yanking her from the footman’s grip. Sebastian half-dragged, half-carried her away as Clara frantically struggled to get loose.
People had stopped to gape at the commotion, but there was no sign of a seven-year-old boy with eyes the color of toffee…
The black door of the town house slammed shut.
He was gone.
Clara collapsed to the ground, sobs wrenching her, every breath pulsing anguish through her entire body. Sebastian pulled her closer, his arms tightening, the wall of his chest solid against her back. He was saying something, she felt the movement of his lips against her hair, but she couldn’t hear him past the sobbing inside her head.
Finally, when her last cries had left her wrung out and empty, she let him guide her back to his carriage and crumpled against the seat. She wanted to beat on the town house door until her knuckles bled, but no amount of screaming would convince her father to admit her.
Just the opposite. Now that she’d caused a scene, Fairfax might very well fortify his stronghold around Andrew.
A fresh wash of tears streamed down her face. Sebastian sat beside her as the carriage rattled into motion. She stared at him, the hard set of his jaw, the burn of his dark eyes. Contained energy vibrated from him, as if he sought to keep leashed a vivid anger.
Awareness seared through Clara’s despair—the memory of his touch, his mouth, the cloak of forgetting he offered her without the slightest knowledge that he held such power.
The carriage lurched to the right, tossing her closer to him, and the length of his thigh pressing through her skirts sent a bolt of need arcing through her. Clara released the tight breath from her lungs, forced the anguish down into an icy ball, burning it beneath the simmering heat Sebastian’s presence wrought in her.
He will banish all that is painful and leave nothing but pleasure.
There could be, Clara knew, a fragile thread between pain and pleasure, a thread broken with a brush of fingertips. But she alone could withstand Sebastian’s ability to cause her pain by sealing her heart against him, even as she opened her body to him.
With a muffled groan, she twisted on the seat to face him, her skirts tangling as she clambered to her knees and wound her arms around his neck. Shock rippled through his lean, muscled frame as he started to speak, his left hand grasping her hip to steady her in the shaking carriage.
Clara slanted her lips hard over his, relief billowing in her at the first touch of his beautiful mouth, the scrape of his whiskers delicious against her palms as she positioned herself to deepen the kiss. Thought fell away, subsumed by the heat breaking over her skin.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened on her hip, the strength of his hand burning clear through her skirts. She thrust her hands into his hair and relished the glide of the thick strands against her palms. She moaned against his mouth and shifted to straddle his hard thighs, pressing herself against him.
Sebastian cursed, the sound deep and guttural between them. Clara gripped his shoulders as if he were the only secure element in a sea foaming with angry waves. His breath was hot, his restraint evident in the tight muscles of his arms, the stiffness of his grip as he sought to keep space between them. Not wanting to allow it, Clara thrust her tongue past his lips, drank him in, and reveled in the sizzling desire traversing her every nerve.