//CLARA//
Our shared air felt thick and heavy. For a second, the world stopped. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to ruin me.
But then Snow snorted, and just like that, the trance shattered. Casimir pulled back, his smirk returning, sharper and colder than before.
"We should head back. The dark suits you too well, and I'm starting to forget my manners."
I wanted him to forget all his fucking manners. The withdrawal felt like a slap. He stepped into my space again, but not for what I expected. His hands snaked around me, palm trailing slowly up from my waist, skimming the side of my breast. My breath hitched. It wasn't accidental. It was a territorial map.
Before I could protest, he gripped my waist and lifted me effortlessly onto Amber's saddle. His fingers lingered on my hip a heartbeat too long. Then he forced me into a lady-like side-saddle position, legs hooked over one side like a porcelain doll.
He grabbed Amber's reins and hitched them to Snow's. Towing me back like a prize.
"The sun has set, Clara. Aunt Cornelia will eat us alive if we're late for dinner."
He mounted Snow in that infuriatingly athletic jump and didn't look back. Confident I'd follow. He gave me no choice.
I sat there glaring, lips still swollen from the kiss that didn't happen, skin on fire where he'd touched me. God, I hate this man. I hate even more that I don't hate him enough.
By the time we reached the stables, I scrambled off and sprinted to my room, calling for Hattie before I hit the stairs. I needed the dirt, the horse scent, and the ghost of his touch scrubbed off before facing the firing squad.
Dinner was a slow-motion car crash. Aunt Cornelia sat across from me, face pinched like a dried lemon. She didn't wait for the soup course to clear.
"I gathered you took her to the stables." Her voice was sandpaper on silk.
Casimir didn't look up from his steak. "I did. Eleanor was… quite herself today."
The way he said it made my skin prickle. Her gaze snapped to me, sharp enough to draw blood. I should have stayed quiet, but my tongue tingled.
"Why, Auntie? Am I not allowed to ride horses?"
"Riding is one thing. Engaging in a race, unbridled and unchaperoned through the woods, is quite another. You look… disheveled."
I didn't answer. I just shoved steak into my mouth and chewed slowly, staring her down.
Deal with it, Karen.
Later that night, as the entire manor went silent, my brain was still Tokyo drifting to everything that happened. I stood out on the terrace in my thin white nightshift, a heavy shawl wrapped around my shoulders, watching the moon hang over the very woods we've just raced into.
A sudden, heavy knock at my door made me jump.
I opened it, expecting Hattie with more tea. Instead, I found Casimir leaning against the doorframe. His tie was loosened, his hair a mess, and the sharp, overwhelming scent of expensive bourbon wafted off him in waves.
He was a wrecked. A drunken wreck. Looking like a man who had been losing a fight against his own shadows all night.
"To…what do I owe this pleasure, Casimir?" I asked curiously. "It's a little late for a social call."
He didn't answer. He stepped forward, his heavy boots thudding on the rug, and pushed past me into the room. Before I could process the intrusion, he turned and clicked the lock.
"Now, you're just getting creepy."
I took a step back before composing myself.
"You need to get out. It's late," I demanded, but I could feel it, the necessary steel I needed to sound more convincing is slipping away.
I really wasn't in the mood for his games.
I'm too frustrated. Too tired of him playing this push and pull.
He didn't move. He just stared at me like he was trying to swallow me whole. His gaze was bloodshot and swimming, bright with a feverish gloss.
"Why?" he rasped, the word breaking in his throat like glass.
"Why do you haunt me like this? I've tried to drown you out, Clara. I've tried to drink you away. But you're in the whiskey, you're in the shadows… you're everywhere. And I am losing my goddamn mind."
I couldn't breathe. My lungs seemed to have forgotten how to function properly, leaden with his words. Why was he saying this now?
"You're drunk. Go, sleep it off."
I tried to push him toward the door, my hands landing on his chest.
"Casimir, move—"
Before I could use all my strength to move him, he grabbed my wrists, twisted me around, and pinned me against the door. The impact knocked the breath out of me. He loomed over me, his body pressing warmly through my thin nightshift.
I opened my mouth to curse him, to scream into his face, but I wasn't given a chance.
He didn't even give me the time to process what was happening. He moved with predatory speed, his hand sliding from the wood to the back of my neck. His fingers tangled in my hair, tilting my head back at an angle that left me completely exposed.
He crashed his lips onto mine. It was anything but a gentlemanly kiss. It was deep, hungry, and desperate. He tasted like an exotic kind of tobacco, rich, earthy, and spiked with a peppery heat, and the syrupy, charred-oak sweetness of perfectly aged bourbon.
The combination was overwhelming, intoxicating, and contagious.
I tried to fight it for a heartbeat, my hands fisted on his collar, the crisp fabric bunching against my white-knuckled grip. But instead of pushing him away, I found myself pulling him closer. My body betraying every coherent thoughts in my mind.
I was like a drowning person, and he is my oxygen tank, I was consuming him like a lifeline.
The world blurred.
The next thing I knew, I was kissing him back with matching desperation. My tongue battling for dominance, and loving the way I was losing against him, only to find the fire and challenged him again.
He groaned into my mouth, a tortured sound. In one fluid motion, he hooked his hands beneath me and lifted me off my feet. My legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, my nightshift riding up to my hips as he carried me to the bed.
He lowered me onto the mattress, his mouth leaving mine to drag fire down my jaw, my throat, the curve of my shoulder. His teeth caught the thin strap of my nightshift, tugging it down my arm until my left breast spilled free. My nipple peaked instantly, tight and aching in the cool air, while the other strained against the thin fabric still clinging to me.
His thumb found the exposed peak, circling slowly, and I sigh.
His mouth never stopped, leaving wet, open kisses along my collarbone, then sucking hard enough to mark on my sensitive skin. I moaned, fingers threading into his hair, pulling. My back arched off the bed, pushing my breast deeper into his palm.
He growled low in his throat, then lowered his head and took my tip into his warm mouth. His tongue swirled once, twice, tasting, before he sucked hard.
Then his teeth clamped down, not enough to truly hurt, just enough to pull a sharp cry from my lips, and dragged, releasing me only to soothe the sting with hot, languid strokes of his tongue.
I was molten, incoherent. My hands slid from his hair, down the rigid line of his shoulders, fumbling blindly for the buttons of his shirt.
He stopped.
Grabbed both my wrists, and single-handedly pressed them into the mattress above my head.
"I cannot," he rasped, the words torn from somewhere raw and bleeding.
He dropped his forehead against mine, his eyes squeezed shut as if the sight of me was too much to bear. Before he pulled back, finally looking at me, chest heaving, pupils blown, his own control hanging by a single, fraying thread.
"God help me, I cannot. Not like this," he whispered. "Not when you are mine to protect, and all I am doing is destroying you."
His thumb, still resting on my hip, traced one last circle.
He let go of my wrists, and I immediately scrambled to catch his hand, my fingers locking around his sleeve.
"Casimir," I whimpered, a real, pathetic whimper that made me want to slap myself.
I arched my back, trying to bridge the cold gap between us.
"You can't leave me hanging like this."
I didn't know if I was making a plea or a threat, but I was desperate.
"You can't."
The logical part of me was laughing at my stupidity, but I no longer care.
He didn't give in. Instead, he reached down, snatched my fallen shawl off the floor, and wrapped it around me as if he were trying to hide a crime.
"I'm sorry."
He didn't wait for me to say anything else. He bolted out of the room, the door swing shut behind him, leaving me alone, half-dressed, aching and with the taste of him engraved into my skin.