Chapter 24 #2
Before Sebastian could make sense of it, Darcy pressed herself against him, rose onto her toes, and placed her mouth upon his.
This was no teasing kiss, no slow exploration meant to entice or instruct.
Hunger drove it, sharpened beyond reason.
His control slipped for the smallest fraction.
Her sweetness struck low in his body like a draught of heated whisky, familiar enough to disturb him even before he understood why.
Red.
The knowledge struck through him with sudden force. Her taste, the warmth of her skin, and the fearless way she met his hunger were all the same. Then he recalled the look in her eyes just now. Those rich brown eyes held the luminous depth he had known beneath Aphrodite’s candlelight.
Bloody hell. How did I not see it?
He blamed the damn wig and mask, the shadows, and the deliberate lowering of her voice.
Darcy Whitley and Red are the same woman, driving me mad with want.
The last of Sebastian’s restraint gave way. He caught her face between his hands, taking command of the kiss with all the hunger he had fought so fiercely to deny. He kissed her deeply, almost desperately, without the impossible division that had tormented him.
Their tongues tangled together in a hot glide as he shifted, angling his head so they kissed deeper and with more evocative intent.
Darcy moaned, and he swallowed it. She answered him with an intensity that only fed his hunger, and a low sound escaped him.
He found her waist and drew her closer until no space remained between them, until he could feel the rapid beat of her heart against his own.
He had kissed countless women, yet none had ever felt like this. Something reckless stripped away every boundary upon which he had long relied. With her, there was no artifice or performance, only sensation, need, and the overwhelming certainty that he did not wish to stop.
Sebastian might have gone on indefinitely, lost in her taste and the way her body fitted against his as though she had always belonged there.
He broke the kiss, breathing raggedly. He had held Darcy as Red, touched her, learned the shape of her in darkness, and still failed to recognize her in daylight.
Or perhaps he had not wished to see what should have been obvious.
His forehead rested against hers, his breath uneven and his hand still firm at her waist, as though releasing her were not yet within his power.
“Darcy,” he murmured again. The truth should have simplified everything. Instead, it made her infinitely more precious and the temptation infinitely more dangerous.
Worse, his body and something deeper now recognized Red and Darcy as one woman. He knew the taste of her, the feel of her yielding beneath him, and the heat with which she answered him. What had once seemed safely contained within Aphrodite’s shadows now stood before him unmasked.
He understood why she had refused to become his mistress. She would belong to no man for money or comfort. Yet she stood before him offering herself freely, without condition or promise.
What did that mean?
Did it matter when every instinct urged him to accept what she freely offered? He cupped her cheek, his touch gentle as he kissed the corner of her mouth. The tenderness moving through him felt foreign, as though it belonged to another man entirely.
She turned her face into his hand, brushing against him with a soft, sensual caress that sent a slow, dangerous heat through his body. Then her lips found his, her quiet sigh slipping against his mouth.
He should be demanding answers, not surrendering to the arousal pounding through his cock. “Darcy—”
“I want you,” she breathed, nipping the corner of his mouth.
Sebastian’s restraint faltered. He drew the pins from her hair one by one until the rich brown tresses fell over her shoulders and down her back in damp, shining waves. Even this new intimacy was not enough. He suspected nothing about her would ever be enough.
I know you are Red.
The words whispered through his mind, but Sebastian did not speak them. Whatever reason she had for keeping the two parts of herself separate, he would honor it. Let her take what she wished from him, in whatever manner she chose, for as long as she chose.
Even had he not recognized her taste, her willingness to kiss him would have revealed the truth.
He knew Darcy’s character too well. She would never knowingly betray another woman by taking her lover.
The kiss itself had been a confession, though she seemed unwilling, or perhaps not yet ready, to give that confession voice.
Still, he wanted to know why she maintained the deception when surely she must realize how many pieces had already fallen into place for him. But he would not force the revelation from her. For now, he would allow Darcy to choose when the mask finally came away.
Right now, she wanted him as Darcy, and that knowledge satisfied and unsettled him in equal measure.
A part of Sebastian resisted the very notion of wanting a woman with such depth.
He had always prided himself upon mastery of his actions, desires, and attachments.
Now that mastery was slipping, as though something beyond his will determined how deeply she would take root in his thoughts and, far more dangerously, in his heart.
He did not like it.
“You are thinking too much,” she murmured against his mouth before deepening the kiss.
A low groan escaped Sebastian as her sweetness swept through him, heady as the strongest whisky. Her perfume enveloped him, jasmine mingling with something subtler and more intimate, a fragrance he had come to recognize as uniquely hers.