Chapter 32
Sebastian sprawled upon a chaise in one of Aphrodite’s most decadent chambers, his long body arranged in an attitude of careless ease that deceived no one who looked closely. Beneath the indolent sprawl of his limbs, tension held him rigid.
The chamber glowed like the interior of some forbidden jewel.
Walls of deep claret were softened by panels of gilded silk, and dozens of candles burned within mirrored sconces, multiplying every flame until warm light trembled over polished mahogany, bare shoulders, and bowls of dark roses opened almost indecently wide.
Low chairs and fainting couches curved through the room in intimate groupings, heaped with cushions of crimson velvet and gold damask. At its center, a broad bed stood upon a raised dais beneath a canopy of wine-colored silk, its sheets turned down in deliberate invitation.
Incense smoldered in pierced silver burners.
Sage threaded through amber, sandalwood, and something lushly sweet, perhaps crushed fig or warmed honey, until each breath tasted faintly of temptation.
Beyond half-drawn curtains came the whisper of silk against skin, a woman’s hushed laugh, and the muted clink of crystal.
It was a chamber fashioned to loosen restraint one exquisite thread at a time.
Tonight, an easel waited before the dais, its blank canvas pale within all that red and gold, while brushes, pigments, and a carefully placed chair awaited the artist who would immortalize the evening’s excess.
Rebecca had invited Sebastian to participate in what she called her pièce de résistance, an orgy composed as carefully as a history painting.
He had declined.
Once, such a room would have stirred appetite before he crossed its threshold.
Now the women drifting through the adjoining chambers, lovely and languid in the candlelight, awakened nothing.
Their laughter rose and fell around him like music heard from another house.
He remained untouched by it, a hollow likeness of the man who had once belonged effortlessly to this world.
Darcy had undone him.
No softer truth remained with which to deceive himself.
Her taste haunted every glass he lifted.
Her warmth returned whenever he closed his eyes.
He heard her unguarded laughter in quiet rooms and remembered the luminous intelligence of her gaze whenever another woman attempted to hold his attention.
Even here, amid every calculated enticement Aphrodite possessed, desire had narrowed to one woman and become inseparable from tenderness, fury, admiration, and loss.
His gaze fell to his wrist. The crescent marks left by her teeth had faded to pale shadows, yet he traced them with his thumb as though they were the last proof that she had once touched him without restraint.
Want tightened low in his body, immediate and aching, but grief followed so closely that he could no longer distinguish one from the other.
He swallowed whisky. The heat burned down his throat and settled uselessly in his belly.
She had not yet appeared.
Only two nights had passed since the ball, yet the sight of her remained painfully vivid: Darcy in burnished gold, proud even beneath his mother’s cruelty, her eyes wounded when they met his.
Seeing her had been like placing water against the lips of a man dying of thirst, only to tear the cup away before he could drink.
He had done the tearing.
The knowledge sat within him like a blade.
The door opened upon a spill of brighter light and masculine laughter. Several gentlemen entered, shedding the restraint of the world outside with their cloaks and gloves. Among them was the Duke of Basil, whose untroubled expression belonged to a man entirely satisfied with his place in the world.
Sebastian lifted one brow. “Does your wife know you are here?”
The duke’s smile deepened as he glanced toward the doorway. “Perfectly.”
Sebastian followed his gaze.
The Duchess of Basil entered upon Rebecca’s arm in a dark yellow gown that skimmed her figure like poured sunlight. A delicate mask veiled the upper half of her face, but nothing concealed the assurance with which she crossed the chamber. Every man noticed her. She noticed only her husband.
The duke’s expression altered when their gazes met, softening with an intimacy so complete that, for one unguarded instant, Sebastian despised him for possessing it.
There had been a time when he had considered Basil reckless, even absurd, for surrendering so wholly to one woman. Now Sebastian envied him with a bitterness that tasted of whisky and self-contempt.
More guests arrived. Their bodies warmed the chamber, and conversation wove through the incense in a low, expectant hum.
Some ladies wore jeweled masks, and gowns cut daringly low across the breast. Others appeared in translucent peignoirs of ivory, sapphire, and deep crimson, the fabric drifting over nipples, hips, and thighs with every unhurried step.
Pearls gleamed at throats. Anklets chimed softly beneath trailing hems. Their hair had been loosened into artful disorder, as though each had only just risen from a lover’s bed or intended soon to fall into one.
Six ladies ascended the dais and arranged themselves across the bed and surrounding chaises with the composed sensuality of women fully aware they were being watched.
One reclined against a mound of crimson pillows, a bare leg revealed from ankle to thigh.
Another knelt beside her, trailing idle fingers through spilled black hair.
Their poses suggested invitation without submission, pleasure offered because they desired it rather than because any man had earned it.
The woman in blue captured Sebastian’s attention before he could resist. Her peignoir was the color of moonlight upon deep water, sheer enough that candlelight traced the softness of her breasts and the curved line of her waist beneath it.
She moved with an unstudied grace that struck him like recognition before his mind could supply a name.
Her hips swayed gently as she crossed the dais, and her dark brown hair, threaded with glints of gold, fell in loose waves nearly to her waist.
Sebastian’s pulse changed. He tore his gaze away, irritated by the force of his response, and looked toward the easel.
Then went still.
A man occupied the artist’s chair. He arranged brushes and pigments with quiet efficiency, unfamiliar and wholly wrong.
Darcy was not there. Unease slipped beneath Sebastian’s ribs.
Had she abandoned the commission? Had his mother’s public cruelty driven her from Aphrodite, or from London altogether?
The possibility left the room abruptly airless.
Rebecca brought her palms together once.
The delicate clap sliced cleanly through the murmurings.
She crossed the chamber in a gown of lacquered red satin, its bodice cut low and severe, its skirts opening with each stride to reveal flashes of a jeweled garter.
Yet Sebastian noticed something stranger than the daring gown.
She had softened the cosmetics with which she usually fashioned herself into an ageless creature of Aphrodite.
Candlelight revealed the youthful line of her cheek, the natural curve of her mouth, and a vulnerability beneath the practiced allure.
Curious.
Rebecca turned before the dais, and a slow smile gathered every gaze in the room.
“My friends, over these past weeks, I have commissioned a series of paintings for your private delight. Tonight we arrive at their culmination. Not merely an exhibition of bodies, but a celebration of appetite, freedom, and the exquisite pleasure discovered when restraint is surrendered by choice.”
Anticipation moved through the chamber like a warm breath.
“Six ladies await upon the dais. Each has come willingly. Each will accept only the touch, act, or partner that heightens her pleasure.” Her gaze traveled over the gentlemen. “I invite six men to join them and create a moment our artist shall render immortal.”
Several women laughed softly. A gentleman near the bed loosened his cravat.
“And those who remain spectators shall not be forgotten,” Rebecca continued. “You will live within the painting as shadow, profile, reaching hand, or watching eye. Enough to tempt the imagination. Never enough to satisfy it.”
Several gentlemen rose at once and moved toward the dais with eagerness poorly disguised as composure. Sebastian remained where he was. The spectacle offered him no temptation. He had not come to watch strangers surrender to pleasure.
He had come hoping to see Darcy. The admission formed at last. He set down his glass and turned toward the shadowed corridor, intending to depart before longing drove him to seek her elsewhere.
Rebecca intercepted him with effortless precision.
“Darling,” she murmured, amusement curling through her voice, “surely you are not leaving before the most interesting part.”
“I have no interest in your display.”
Her smile did not waver. “How disappointing. I imagined you might wish to claim her.”
A chill swept through him. Sebastian turned. His gaze cut across silk, candlelight, and moving bodies until it found the woman in blue. The delicate slope of her shoulders. The dark-gold fire in her hair. The profile he had kissed beneath rain and moonlight.
Darcy.
Recognition struck first. Then something dark and fiercely possessive surged through him, so powerful it nearly overwhelmed every rational thought.
“What the devil is she doing upon that dais?”
Rebecca’s expression cooled. “Her heart has been broken. She has chosen pleasure as its remedy.”
Sebastian moved with deliberate purpose toward the dais, every step measured, though the dark surge within him threatened to break through restraint.
“Do not do this,” Rebecca said, stepping into his path. Her voice had lost every trace of playfulness. “You cast her aside. You do not now possess the right to remove her because another man may give her what you refused.”
He cast her a cold, unyielding glance.
“She will not have you,” Rebecca warned. “And I shall not permit you to take her against her will.”
“I would never take her against her will.” His gaze remained fixed upon Darcy. “But no man in this room will touch her before she looks into my face and tells me she truly wants him.”
Rebecca searched his expression. Whatever she saw made her step aside.
Sebastian mounted the dais, outwardly controlled while fury, fear, and love tore through him beneath the surface.
The tableau had already begun to awaken around them.
At one end of the dais, a gentleman knelt between a woman’s parted thighs, his mouth moving against her pussy as she arched upon the crimson sheets and released a low, broken cry.
Nearby, two women kissed while a man’s hands traveled slowly over their bodies.
Silk slipped from shoulders. Bare limbs tangled.
The watching guests murmured encouragement as candlelight glazed sweat, jewels, and flushed skin.
Sebastian saw none of it clearly. The entire chamber contracted around Darcy. Viscount Beaumont stood before her, bowing over her hand with polished gallantry.
“Red.” Her name left Sebastian low and controlled, but command sharpened every syllable.
Beaumont straightened with a faint smile and reached to tuck a loose curl behind Darcy’s ear. “The lady has already granted me the honor of her company, Raine.”
Sebastian caught Beaumont’s wrist before his fingers could reach her.
“If you touch her,” he said softly, “I shall break your fingers.”
He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The quiet certainty of the threat wiped the smile from Beaumont’s face, leaving shock in its place.
Sebastian released his wrist and stepped closer to Darcy.
Her gaze met his, hurt, fury, and defiance burning together in her eyes.
She turned from him with exquisite deliberation and crossed toward the bed. The blue silk floated behind her, revealing the shadowed curves of her body with every step. She seated herself upon the edge of the mattress, one knee parting the peignoir, and crooked a finger at Beaumont.
The gesture was slow, sensual, and devastatingly clear.
Beaumont stepped forward. Sebastian placed himself between them. He held Darcy’s gaze, his body taut with a violence he was barely containing. “Do you wish him dead?”
Darcy lifted her chin. “Why does the man who does not want me presume to dictate the person to whom I may give my body?” Her gaze did not leave his.
Defiance sharpened her beauty, though pain trembled beneath every word.
“You ended what existed between us with a letter. You left me to grieve it alone. How dare you ravage my heart and then stand before me as though you possess any claim upon what remains?”
Every accusation found its mark. She was right. Honor demanded that he step aside. He had relinquished every right to question her choices when he had reduced tenderness, desire, and friendship to a cold page signed with his title.
He could not move.
Not because she belonged to him. She did not. Because he belonged so completely to her that the thought of another man touching her felt like the destruction of the only life he now wished to live.
“I do want you.” The words tore from him, stripped of elegance and pride.
“God help me, Darcy, I have wanted nothing but you from the moment you entered my life.” Around them, the chamber had fallen strangely distant.
“You are in every waking thought and every restless hour of the night. I taste you when I drink. I hear your laughter in empty rooms. I wake reaching for you and remember, anew, that I am the fool who sent you away.”
He stepped nearer but did not touch her. “My heart is yours. My body has known no true hunger since it learned yours. Even the life I once believed sufficient has become unbearable without you in it.”
His voice roughened until the final confession was scarcely more than a vow.
“I had pleasure before you, Darcy. I had freedom, friendship, every indulgence a man could want. I thought that was enough. Then I met you, and you made me want more from life than I had ever thought to ask of it. I have never felt more wholly alive than when I am with you.”