//CLARA//
He backed against the glass wall, the cool pane a shocking contrast to the fever of my skin.
His mouth crashed into mine with a jagged, desperate hunger that told exactly how thin his restraint had worn.
His tongue swept past my teeth, demanding entry. I t him with a tease, a flick of resistance. He answered with a bite—just shy of drawing blood—and the gasp that tore from my throat was all the invitation he needed. He pushed deeper, and we waged a war for control neither of us was willing to lose.
"Christ, Clara. You have no idea what it’s like." The words were torn from sowhere low in his chest, vibrating against my mouth. "To be in the sa room and feel miles apart. It’s been killing . Like I was being hollowed out from the inside just watching you. I’m done being empty."
His hands moved to cup my face, forcing to et his gaze. His eyes were wild, the controlled man I knew stripped away to reveal sothing desperate and aching beneath.
My fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. He kissed again, deeper, hungrier. His hand slid down my side, gathering my skirts, and I felt the cool air on my thighs.
"Don’t." I turned my head, breaking the kiss, and his mouth found my neck instead, teeth grazing the tendon there with just enough pressure to make gasp.
"Do not tell to stop." A jagged groan escaped him. "I cannot stop. I have been watching you all night, wanting you, and I cannot—"
"No," I whispered. "Don’t ruin this."
I pressed my palm against his chest, feeling the thunder of his heart.
"The dress." My voice cracked, and I hated it, hated the thought of Aunt Cornelia relishing the sight of my humiliation, of Bartholow’s cold eyes cataloging my dishevelnt.
"If you—if we—Please... I refuse to walk back into that crowd looking like I have been thoroughly debauched."
He lifted his head. In the moonlight filtering through the glass, his face was all hard planes and shadowed hollows, the beautiful symtry twisted into sothing feral. His hair had fallen across his forehead, and I watched his chest heave.
"I can’t promise that, little bird." A dark, almost predatory smile curved his lips as he leaned closer, his breath ghosting over my ear. "You ask to promise not to want you too much. Not to need you so badly I can’t see straight. I can’t—I won’t—"
"No." I wedged my hand between us, just enough to breathe. "If you can’t control yourself, I’ll stop you. I an it, Casimir. I’ll walk out of here and—"
He laughed, a broken sound that held no humor. His head dropped forward until his forehead rested against mine, his breath hot and uneven against my lips.
"God. You really do enjoy tornting ."
His thumb traced the edge of my bodice, skimming the upper curve of my breast.
"I bought this dress, Clara." His voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "Every stitch, every pearl, every inch of silk—I paid for it. That ans I can do whatever the hell I want with it."
I caught his wrist, holding it still. My pulse was hamring in my throat, between my legs—everywhere blood moved, it moved faster, hotter.
"You won’t." I whispered, feeling myself tremble with the effort not to just let him rip the silk to shreds and be done with it. "I won’t allow you to."
For a long mont, neither of us moved. The water dripped sowhere in the ferns. Outside, the city humd with distant carriages, with the eternal murmur of a world that had no idea we existed in this glass cage, this humid pocket of moonlight and aching want.
Then, slowly—so slowly I could track every movent—his hands moved to my skirts. His fingers brushed against my ankles, then glided upward with agonizing care, gathering the heavy silk, as though the material were tissue-thin, as though the wrong angle would tear it apart.
"Carefully," I breathed, a half-prayer, half-command.
"Reluctantly," he corrected roughly, with strained restraint.
He lifted my skirts higher, the cool evening air striking my stocking-clad legs, then the bare skin above my garters. I felt exposed, vulnerable, instantly sending a thrill through my veins.
I watched his face as he worked. His jaw was so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
Then his hands found my hips, sliding beneath the lifted skirt. His fingers dug into my bare flesh, hard enough that I gasped, my head falling back against the glass. The heat of his palms seared through , a sharp contrast to the cold at my back, and I felt my nipples tighten against my bodice.
"Fuck," he breathed, barely more than a shape against my collarbone. "You’re already wet and dripping for , aren’t you?"
I answered by arching into him.
His hand moved between my legs, two fingers sliding through my folds with no pretense of teasing, gathering the slickness there and dragging it upward, circling my clit with enough pressure to make my hips jerk against him.
"Tell ." His teeth closed on my earlobe, not gentle, and I felt the vibration of his voice in my bones. "Tell Bartholow had not touched you tonight. Tell he had not fucking breathed the sa air as you did. Tell , Clara. Tell and I’ll slit his fucking throat for you."
"God. No, he didn’t—" I gasped as his fingers pressed harder, circling, driving toward the edge with terrifying speed. "He wouldn’t dare."
He growled, a satisfaction that vibrated through his chest and into mine, and then his fingers were gone, replaced by the thick, blunt head of his cock pushing against my entrance.
He didn’t ease in. He didn’t give ti to adjust.
With one brutal thrust, he was inside , filling so completely that the breath left my lungs in a sharp cry that I choked back, burying my face in his neck.
"Clara..."
He pulled back and thrust again, deeper this ti, angling his hips so that he hit sothing inside that made my vision spark white at the edges.
My hands found his shoulders, gripping the fabric of his coat. Each thrust drove harder against the glass, and I could feel the vibration of it, the way the whole structure seed to sing with the force of what we were doing.
He set a punishing rhythm, relentless, his fingers leaving bruises on my hips that I would wear for days. The sound of our bodies eting—wet, obscene, rhythmic—echoed back from the glass walls, mixing with the harsh rasp of our breathing.
The air grew hotter, heavier, fogging the windows in spreading patches of condensation.
"Look at ." He commanded, and I forced my eyes open, eting up his gaze.
"Don’t you dare look away." His face was flushed, sweat beading at his hairline, and his eyes—God, his eyes were wild, sothing that looked almost like desperation. "I want you to feel exactly what you’ve done to , Clara."
He shifted his grip, one hand sliding from my hip to hook firmly under my thigh, hitching it up, opening wider. His other hand slamd into the glass beside my head, palm flat, bracing himself, caging in.
The new angle made him sink deeper, and I cried out, the sound bouncing off the fogged panes, surely loud enough to carry beyond the conservatory walls. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.
There was only the stretch of him inside , the burn of the friction, the building pressure coiling low in my belly.
"That’s it." He was watching my face with such intensity. "Let feel it. Let feel you co apart around . I want to feel that tight little cunt squeezing , milking , fucking drowning —"
His words were a jagged edge—filthy, explicit, vibrating through his chest into my bones, dismantling my facade word by word until I was nothing but heat, spiraling over the cliff.
The orgasm crashed through with a force that made my back arch off the glass, my nails digging crescents into his shoulders even through the fabric of his coat.
I ca with his na breaking from my lips with a broken sound, my body convulsing around him, gripping him in rhythmic spasms that seed to go on and on.
He followed, burying his face in the curve of my neck, his body going rigid, his hips stuttered, and as he pulled out—almost too late. A thin line of his release already streaked from my entrance as he dragged himself away, his groan muffled against my skin, hoarse and shattered.
"God, that was too close."
His hand moved between us, stroking himself twice, and the rest of him spilled across my thigh, dripping hot and thick on my skin. His forehead rested against my collarbone with ragged breath, his hair tickling my chin.
His heartbeat slowed against my palm where it rested on his chest.
The glass had ward where my back pressed against it, the condensation spreading in elaborate patterns that obscured the night beyond.
"Yes..." I wheezed. "Too close."
Damn.
Where exactly does one find a Plan B in 1879—the blacksmith?
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