He stroked his tongue over her lower lip and grasped the coil of hair at the base of her scalp. With a few tugs, her hair unraveled in a long skein down her back. Sebastian muttered another oath and speared his hands into the thick mass, angling her head to allow him access to the innermost recesses of her mouth.
Clara melted inside, her tongue tangling with his, her body pulsing with urgency. Sebastian pushed his hips upward and rubbed against some secret, throbbing place at her core, heat building like a kindled fire poised to erupt into flames.
Clara lifted her head, her breath steaming as she stared into his blazing eyes. Her breasts strained against her corset, her dress heavy and stifling in the dark heat of the carriage.
“What…” She couldn’t voice the question as her hips shifted again. She flared with the desire to be free of clothing, to feel the glide of his erection against the shell of her body, to reach whatever completion lay beyond her grasp.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened on her thighs, his own lean frame still vibrating with restraint. Uncertain, Clara felt her body strain for more, sensing that all these uncoiling sensations would compel her toward a shattering pleasure she had never before known.
She clutched the fabric of his shirt in her fists, her throat rippling with a hard swallow as she sought the pleasures of his mouth again. His stubbled jaw scraped her cheek as he shifted, his lips brushing the corner of her mouth on a path to her left ear. He spoke then, his chest rumbled with the sound, but whatever words he voiced were lost in the silence of her damaged ear.
Clara tightened her grip on him, panic mushrooming in her belly to subsume the taut urgency of lust. She clenched her thighs around his hips and fought again to seize the hot, silken threads she already felt slipping from her grasp.
Sebastian’s hands cupped either side of her face, his thumbs easing away the lingering dampness on her cheeks. His resolve was conquering his lust; Clara saw the evidence in the set of his jaw and the flare of regret brewing in his eyes.
She gripped his shirt harder, tears spilling over when Sebastian slid his hands from her thighs, allowing her skirts and petticoats to flood back over her legs and conceal her wantonness.
Hating her desperation, she crushed her mouth to his again, pressing her breasts to his chest, fighting for his response. He closed his hands around her waist and began to lift her away from him.
“No.” The word broke between them, frantic and shattered.
Clara clung to him, refusing to unclench her fists from his shirt, locking her legs around his hips. Fear pierced her to the bones, for she knew that if she released him, if she let him break this blinding hot spell of passion, then the isolation would descend upon her and freeze her soul to ice.
Sebastian tugged at her grasping hands, pulled her legs from their circled clamp around him. A muscle throbbed in his clenched jaw, betraying his own inner fight. But he was so much bigger, stronger, that Clara already knew she stood no chance against his determination to separate them.
A bolt of rage pierced her. She forced herself to sever her body from his, shoving at his chest as she flung herself across the bench and away from him. She huddled against the opposite side of the carriage and wrapped her arms around herself, smothering the new sobs welling in her throat.
For a long moment, the rasp of their hard breathing sliced through the noise of the carriage. Then Sebastian swore again, a sound of pained frustration, and scraped a hand roughly through his hair. He turned to her, eyes glittering with banked lust.
“Not here.” Steel threads of determination wove through his hoarse voice. “Not like this.”
Clara wrenched her gaze from him and stared out the window, unseeing, blinded by tears. Cold slithered across her skin from the inside out.
“Goddamn you,” she whispered.
A humorless laugh shattered the brittle air. “He already has.”
“What is he doing with Clara?” Lord Fairfax lifted his head, stretching the corded muscles of his neck. Pressure collected behind his eyes, causing a throb of pain.
Saunders, his secretary, shifted his weight as a glimmer of discomfort rose in his expression. “Er, it seems as if they are to be wed, my lord. Mr. Hall applied for a special license last week.”