Chapter 176 - One Hundred-Seventy-Six: The Anatomy of Jealousy

//CLARA//

The wall hit my spine before I could even draw a breath to complain.

Casimir’s mouth descended on mine with a brutal hunger. We were standing in the upper gallery corridor, just literally twenty feet from where the guests were sipping champagne.

My protest was swallowed whole as his tongue forced its way down my throat, tasting of vintage whiskey and fury.

His hand swept down my torso. I wasn’t wearing some hundred-pound, multi-layered ball gown. I had designed this piece myself. It was sleek, modern emerald silk with a daring, razor-sharp high slit that traveled all the way up to my upper thigh.

Casimir used every single inch of that design to his absolute advantage.

He didn’t have to wrestle with heavy layers of tulle or petticoats. He simply slid his calloused hand straight up the high slit of my gown, his fingers dragging over the bare skin of my leg, brushing right past the leather sheath of his dual-knife strapped to my thigh as he hums with approval and shoved my undergarments aside with zero ceremony.

Two fingers plunged inside me. Rough. Demanding. No teasing, no patience.

He hit that exact spot that made my knees instantly buckle, my head cracking back against the stone wall. I bit my lip hard, stifling the gasp that threatened to betray us to the entire ballroom.

"I want to tear this fucking dress off you," he rasped against my throat.

"I want to lock you in a room and cover every inch of your skin so no one else ever sees you like this. I wanted to gouge out the eyes of every man down there who stared at this slit for more than three seconds. And then you let him touch you. Harding’s hand right on your waist."

"It was... tactical, you caveman," I gasped, my fingers knotting into his coat to keep from sliding down the wall. "He was five seconds away from catching you with the Marel contracts—"

"The dress was a weapon." He bit down on my collarbone. "And you wielded it like one. I wanted to fuck you in the middle of that ballroom so they’d all know exactly whose wife they were undressing with their eyes."

"Possessive much?"

"Always." His fingers thrust faster and deeper. "And you love it."

"Fuck," I gasped into his ear, my nails digging through his shirt into his shoulders, my hips involuntarily grinding against his palm. "... you."

He withdrew his fingers and lifted me by the hips. He positioned himself and in one fluid, brutal movement, he impaled me completely. My head snapped back, a silent scream caught in my throat as he established a pace that was fast, deep, and utterly unforgiving.

The wall scraped my shoulder blades raw. I didn’t care. I wrapped my leg around his hip as he filled me so completely I could feel every furious pulse of his heartbeat.

"Look at you," he growled against my ear, his pace relentless. "So desperate for me. And yet you let him—"

"I didn’t let him do a damn thing!" The words dissolved into a muffled moan as he angled deeper.

He kissed me again, slower this time, his tongue tangling with mine even as his hips maintained that savage rhythm.

Below us, the orchestra swelled into a quickstep in the main foyer. The thought of being caught should have terrified me.

Instead, my body tightened around him, racing toward the edge with embarrassing speed.

Then I fumbled.

Desperate to anchor myself against his crushing weight, my heel caught on the edge of a low display pedestal tucked into the wall. I lurched sideways, Casimir’s grip tightening to keep me from falling, but my elbow clipped a decorative glass vase perched on the ledge.

The vase toppled, hitting the stone floor with a sharp, echoing CRASH.

We froze instantly, his body locked flush against mine.

"—heard something from the upper gallery." Mr. Harding’s voice echoed from the base of the staircase. "Stay here, Mr. Russell, I’m checking it."

"Wait—Inspector Harding—" Gary’s voice pitched high with barely concealed panic. "It was probably just a servant. A clumsy maid. You know how they are. Clumsy. Very clumsy. All of them. You don’t need to go up there—"

"Get out of my way, Mr. Russell," Mr. Harding clipped out coldly, the sound of his boots refusing to slow down. "Unless you want me to cite you for obstructing an investigator."

"What? I’m not obstructing—" Gary squeaked, shuffling into Mr. Harding’s path for three glorious seconds of desperate stalling.

My blood turned to ice. Casimir’s dark eyes met mine, wild and feral, completely devoid of fear.

"Don’t move," he commanded in a low rasp.

He pulled out with a slick sound that made me shudder, but he didn’t set my feet down.

Instead, he kept his arm locked under my thighs, shifting my weight effortlessly against his chest as he carried me two paces deeper into the shadowed recess behind the heavy velvet window drapes.

His free hand slammed against a concealed latch in the stone paneling, carrying us directly into the tight utility space meant for maintenance workers, a cramped gap barely two feet wide.

My back pressed against the freezing stone wall. Casimir’s body crushed against my front, his chest heaving, his frame leaving zero room to breathe. The panel clicked shut with a tiny thud, plunging us into darkness broken only by a hairline crack of light near the seam.

Through that sliver, we saw him.

Mr. Harding’s silhouette passed the velvet curtain, his boots crunching right on the shattered glass fragments. He paused, looking down.

His gaze swept right over our hiding spot.

I stopped breathing entirely. My heart was hammering so hard against my ribs I was convinced Mr. Harding could hear it through the wood, utterly convinced he could hear the wet, unmistakable sound of Casimir shifting his hips in the dark, sliding slowly back inside me.

Oh God.

He wasn’t stopping.

Casimir began moving again in slow, shallow, excruciating thrusts in the pitch-black space. His hand clamped firmly over my mouth to muffle the sharp gasp that escaped me, while his other hand dug into my hip to pin me flush against him.

Mr. Harding lingered literally a feet away. I could smell the faint scent of tobacco on him. One wrong move, one tiny sound, and the press outside would have the front-page scandal of the century.

Casimir didn’t care.

My body was on fire, every nerve ending screaming for release, but I was completely trapped, forced to endure the overwhelming wave of pleasure in suffocating silence.

"Perhaps I was indeed mistaken," Mr. Harding muttered outside, his boots finally pivoting on the stone.

"See?" Gary’s voice drifted up from the base of the stairs, dripping with theatrical relief. "I told you it was nothing. Probably just a clumsy footman and a tragic loss of imported porcelain! Now please, Inspector, let’s get you back down to the champagne."

Mr. Harding didn’t respond, but his footsteps began to recede, heading back down toward the grand staircase alongside Gary’s nervous chattering.

The second those footsteps faded into the roar of the party below, Casimir’s restraint completely snapped.

He drove into me hard and deep, his hand still clamped over my mouth as my world completely imploded. The climax hit like a freight train. My body shuddered uncontrollably against his, my nails scoring lines through the fabric of his coat.

He followed seconds later, burying himself to the hilt, his low growl swallowed by the dark as he spilled inside me.

We stayed pinned together in the dark for what felt like an eternity, our chests heaving in ragged sync.

Casimir slowly pulled his hand back from my mouth, his forehead dropping against my shoulder, his pulse slowing by degrees.

"You are a literal, unhinged lunatic," I whispered, trembling while my hands remained locked around his neck.

A low, dark chuckle vibrated against my collarbone. He pulled back just enough to look down at me in the dim light filtering through the seam, his dark eyes gleaming with possessive victory.

"Worth it?" he rumbled softly.

I leaned up and bit his lower lip hard enough to leave a mark, before kissing him deep and slow.

"I am going to make you pay for ruining my dress."

He reached out to adjust the torn emerald silk at my shoulder and smoothed down the high slit over my thigh.

"I’ll buy you ten more."

"You’d better."

We waited until the upper gallery was completely silent before stepping out from behind the panel. I smoothed down my emerald gown, checked my hair in the reflection of a dark glass pedestal, and took a deep breath to reset my host-zilla composure.

My reflection stared back at me, thoroughly wrecked, though loving every single second of it.

I turned to Casimir, giving him a smile.

"Now go back out there and look intimidating. I have a gala to finish."