His mouth quirked slightly, but he did not reply—merely inclined his head before offering his arm to Madame Rebecca. Together, they entered the private salon, Red falling into step beside them. Sebastian said nothing to Red, but he felt her quiet tension with every step. The room was already prepared: the chair and easel positioned near the window, brushes neatly arranged, oils and palettes waiting.
Red had only just taken her seat and adjusted the angle of her canvas when Lord Dunmore entered, exuding practiced sensuality. He strolled toward her, his gaze slow and deliberate, an unmistakable gleam of carnal curiosity in his light green eyes.
“What fortune has fallen upon me to be painted by such a beautiful woman? Permit me your name.”
She glanced up, startled. “You may call me Red, my lord.”
Hetsked. “No, I don’t like that. I shall call you?—”
Dunmore broke off when he spotted Sebastian standing by the mantel, calmly pouring brandy into a glass.
“Raine?” Dunmore said, brows lowering. “I thoughtIwas being painted this evening.”
“You are,” Sebastian replied smoothly, swirling the liquid in his glass. “I am merely observing.”
Awareness sparked in Dunmore’s eyes, sharpening into something less pleased. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but before he could voice a protest, Lady Lavinia made her entrance.
Rebecca referred to all her courtesans as “Lady,” a title she wielded like a dagger dipped in honey—half flattery, half mockery. Lavinia was striking, her figure slender but sensuous beneath a sheer silk peignoir that clung like mist to her skin. Waves of black hair tumbled over her shoulder, framing a face painted for pleasure. She didn’t spare Red or Sebastian a glance; all her sultry attention fixed on her client as she glided to his side.
Red looked over at Sebastian then, her expression caught between apprehension and determination. He offered a small, amused smile.
“They are the actors before your eyes,” Sebastian said, his voice deliberately low and smooth as silk pulled taut. He kept his gaze on her, not the couple entwined on the chaise. “Watch their congress and paint, Miss Red. Rebecca is particularly eager to capture the precise moment Lavinia peaks with pleasure.”
She stiffened, color rushing up her neck. “How will I know when she is… peaking?”
A flicker of surprise, brief but sharp, cut through Sebastian. The question was so honest, so untouched, that it jerked something unexpected inside his chest.
“You will know,” he murmured. “It is a sound of delight.”
Red cast him a quick, startled glance, the reaction unmistakable even beneath her mask. “Delight?”
“Yes.” Sebastian smiled. “You’ll hear it in the change of her breathing… when it goes ragged and desperate. In the broken moan that isn’t shaped by language but by need. Look at her body—it will tremble, hips lifting, hands grasping for anything to anchor her. Her lips will part, her lashes flutter, and her skin will flush as if kissed by flame.”
He tilted his head, watching Red’s throat work around a swallow. “It’s not subtle. When it comes, it’s a storm, Red.”
Red swallowed hard, her hand tightening around the brush before she set it down again with care. What little of her throat and jaw he could see above the collar of her gown had flushed deep pink—ripe as summer apples. She could not hide the quick rise and fall of her chest or the way her legs shifted beneath her skirts as if trying to dispel heat.
Sebastian didn’t look away. He wasn’t thinking of Lavinia and Dunmore on the chaise. He was thinking only of Red. And how he would very much like to be the storm that broke her apart.
Madness, he thought with some measure of good humor.To be so attracted to her is nonsensical madness.
Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy, amused and intrigued. She was already blushing furiously, and they hadn’t even begun. He didn’t watch Dunmore and his lover, though he typically savored the art of voyeurism—pleasure observed, not taken, yet deeply felt. There was something in witnessing desire unfolding that allowed him to indulge without surrendering. But tonight, his attention was fixed elsewhere.
Sebastian watched Red. She sat with her spine straight, chin tilted in concentration, lips parted just slightly. The flicker of candlelight played across the curve of her cheek and the slope of her neck, gilding her in warm hues that had nothing to do with sin but seemed to shimmer with it all the same. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, who she truly was.What had brought her here? What story lay behind the mask? What desperation had driven her to paint scenes so clearly at war with her sensibilities?
Red gasped suddenly, her hand lifting to her throat in a startled, almost helpless gesture. Sebastian lifted a brow, and shifted his gaze to the chaise. Lavinia lay sprawled back, her legs thrown over Dunmore’s shoulders as he licked her pussy with obscene greed. The wet sounds of his tongue and fingers working her slit filled the room alongside the low thrum of Lavinia’s panting breaths. Lavinia gripped the arm of the chaise, knuckles white, body arching helplessly into the relentless lash of his mouth.
Red gasped again, and this time her hand shot for the brush.
“Do not stop what you are doing, Lord Dunmore,” she said, her voice sharp and clear. “This expression she wears, Imustcapture it.”
Lavinia moaned, a sound pitched between pleasure and torment, and Sebastian watched as her limbs trembled. Her mouth fell open, eyes wild and unfocused. That moan deepened into a cry as her body jerked, thighs clenching around Dunmore’s head. Still, he did not relent, and still Red painted—quick, precise strokes that brought her subject to vivid, aching life.
Minutes passed. Maybe more. Time bent strangely around Red when she painted, folding in on itself as if caught in the grip of her focus. Her initial shock had clearly faded, burned away by something stronger: her passion for art. Lavinia came once, then again and then a third time, her cries sharp and frantic as she twisted against Dunmore’s mouth. Sweat glistened along her skin, and her hair clung in damp strands to her temples. Red’s brush flew, recording every grimace of rapture, every note of surrender carved into the courtesan’s face.
Her eyes flicked between subject and canvas with single-minded devotion, her lips moving faintly as if reciting some silent rhythm between light and shadow, motion and stillness. Her hand trembled once, then steadied. Only the image on the canvas lived.
Sebastian approached her, drawn by the need to see the work she painted. She didn’t notice. He glanced down, and for a heartbeat, he forgot to breathe.
