Chapter Thirty
11:55 p.m.
Sebastian stood unnoticed in the doorway and watched Olivia pace. Fifteen steps from the fireplace to the foot of his bed. She was his. At last. For the first time in more than a year, the world felt right. Hell. For the first time in his adult life. He’d done a splendid thing, marrying her. Tonight, at long, long last, he would in reality unfasten her hair and thread his fingers through those curls. His mouth would cover hers in fact instead of in thought. Tonight, he would hold her as tenderly and lovingly as any man ever held his own wife.
He kept his hands on either side of his thighs, thinking of how he would uncover her and how he would ask her to use her mouth on him. All manner of shocking requests entered his head, but in the main he wanted to lay her down on the bed right now, flat on her back and come into her as a man was meant to come into his wife.
One lamp burned in the room so that she walked in soft and furious darkness. Any minute she would see him, turn those gold-as-honey eyes on him, and he would be unable to do anything but fall on her in a mad, rutting lust when he ought instead to maintain a comfortable and distant aloofness. Jesus. He needed control over himself. Her bare feet trod the silk carpet, the thick braid swinging with the rhythm of her step. Her arm swung forward, and the ring he’d put on her finger flashed in the lamplight. He reached behind him for the door and gave it a push. Metal parts slid past each other with a sharp click as the fittings engaged.
She whirled. “My lord.”
“Olivia.” He stepped away from the door between his sitting room and his bedchamber. There hadn’t been time to prepare the adjoining room which had once been Guenevere’s, so their wedding bed was his. He’d practically pushed McNaught out the door in his haste to join his bride. Jesus. He’d made Olivia his countess. His. Even in the dimness, her eyes shone like gold. He walked to the center of the room. She looked him over, pausing at the V made by the two halves of his pewter robe. Good, he thought. Let her think what that meant, his bare skin showing. “My apologies for keeping you waiting,” he said, pleased he managed not to sound as impatient as he felt.
Her hair caught the light and flared like molten fire. Tonight, at long last, he would have his hands full of glorious copper curls. He would know exactly how they felt against his fingers. With some effort, he looked at her face instead of her bosom. Her eyes threatened to swallow him whole. A man could lose himself in her eyes. “This is just an awful mistake,” she said.
“No, it isn’t.”
“I feel like jumping out of my skin or screaming or maybe just dissolving into a shapeless heap.”
“Restrain yourself, if you will.” He smiled. “For now.”
“This must be a dream. It must be.”
“I don’t see the Black Earl anywhere, do you?”
“Then it’s a dream. An ordinary dream. Tell me it is. That I’ll wake up any moment now.”
“Not until sometime tomorrow morning. Late. If I have anything to say about it. Think, Olivia, of how you feel. You know this is real. The Black Earl isn’t here because we’ve done what we wants. We’re alone. At last, by God.” He tilted his head. “Now, what am I to make of that panicked look?”
She bit her lower lip.
“Olivia?”
“I’m afraid.”
His hope of a relatively uneventful wedding night evaporated in the face of what he knew was more than the usual bride’s trepidation. “Of me or of the unknown?”
“Both.”
“Do you think I will hurt you? I won’t.” But he knew he might. What he did tonight would affect them both. The thought of what his brother had done to her that day at Pennhyll made his chest tight with anxiety. What if she’d married Verney or James or, God forbid, her sodding cousin Hew Willow or even someone else entirely, with her not knowing what had happened to her? Believing, even, that she was a virgin? Men put such store in a bride’s innocence. At least he would not commit that crime against her. He didn’t want her to know. Not ever. That secret he meant to take to his grave.
“It’s that not. Not precisely, anyway.”
“What then?”
“This happened too fast. Neither one of us was thinking.” Her words came out on top of each other, like a waterfall onto rocks. “What happened to my dull life?” Her eyes looked suspiciously bright. “What possessed me to say I would marry you?”
“Whatever did possess you, Olivia, you accepted, and you spoke your vows before witnesses. Now, tell me why you are afraid when you must know I would never hurt you.”
“You don’t like me. You never have. Not from the moment we met. You were insufferably rude to me.”
He shrugged. “Put that notion out of your head, please, that I don’t like you.” He walked toward her.
“You want me to remember. I know you do, but what if I can’t? What if I never do?”
“For tonight, my dear, put that worry out of your head as well. I will be satisfied with you whether you remember or not. You must believe that.” He took another step toward her, but she retreated with each step he took. He wanted to murder the man who’d hurt her. The fact that it was his own brother made the anger deeper, a betrayal that he could never, ever forgive. “Have you forgotten the other reason I married you?”
She shook her head. At last, she could retreat no farther unless she meant to step into the fire. He put his hands on either side of her head and looked into her face. The heat of sexual desire uncurled in his belly like embers rising into fire. “I adore you, Olivia.”
“Why?”
“From the first moment I first saw you, I wanted you. And I adore your red hair.”
“That makes no sense. No one adores red hair, least of all you.”
“But there it is.”
She grasped both his wrists. “What if I disappoint you?”
“That is not possible.” He slid his hands to her shoulders, pulling her toward him so she pressed against him. His fingers caressed, soothing, following the curve of her spine. “What pains I’ve been at to tell you all I dislike about you. God knows the list is a long one.”
“There, you see?”
“If I ever I took you to task for your joy, Olivia, it was because I lack the capacity myself.” He brought her tight against him with just the pressure of his hand in the small of her back. “I have for too long believed the world a cheerless place. Then I met you and could not fathom you. If anyone deserves to see all that is dark and bitter in life, it’s you. And you don’t.” He spread his fingers, angling them downward so that the tips of his fingers touched the upper curve of her backside. “You’re a mirror of my soul, Olivia, exactly my opposite. Can you wonder that I dislike you so when you cannot help but reflect everything lacking in me? You burn with life, Olivia, and I would at least bask in your warmth before I spend eternity burning in Hell. You cannot disappoint me. It’s I who will disappoint you.”
“No.”
He stepped back. “Enough talk. You’re too clever by half, Olivia. If I let you, you’d talk all night until you’d convinced yourself the moon will rise in place of the sun and that I would rather have Diana than you. Come now, I want to see you with your hair down. Do as I say.” Sebastian watched her bring her braid over her shoulder and slip the ribbon off the end. Her fingers trembled. “Allow me,” he said. “Turn around.” She did, facing the fire while he unplaited her hair. “A stream of copper.”
“Exactly like a new pot.”
He shook out twisting curls that reached to the middle of her back. Hands on her shoulders, he turned her to him, threading his fingers through her hair. “The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you a pretty woman. Oh, it’s true, Olivia, never believe it isn’t. And since that day, you don’t know the times I’ve imagined you with your hair like this, a creature of faerie, a nymph. Enchanting. Enchanting me.” He slid his hands free of her hair. He had all the time in the world, but he felt every moment’s delay. “I want to see you, Olivia. All of you.”
Her cheeks turned as red as her hair.
“Very well.” He reached for the tie around his waist and unfastened the knot. The silk fell away from his body. With a shrug of his shoulders, he let the fabric slide off. “Look at me.”
“Oh. Oh, my.”
“You see, I have imperfections. All of us do.”
“No. You don’t.”
“I have an ugly scar.” He touched his ribs.
“You’re beautiful.”
“Good of you to say so.” His mouth twitched. “My body, such as it is, is yours, Olivia. When we are alone, its purpose is to give you pleasure. I expect you to take it.” She flushed. “I see I must teach you something of that. So be it.” He reached for the fastenings of her nightrobe. “Ladies wear far too many clothes.”
“I thought so until now.”
“Particularly on their wedding nights.” She turned bright red, and Sebastian laughed. “Olivia. You are a constant delight.” He watched her face while he gathered her chemise in his hands. “This, too, must go.” He pulled upward until she had no choice but to lift her arms. His breath left him, utterly abandoned him. All this time he’d thought her a bit slender for his taste, and she was, but Lord, what lovely, sinful skin. All in proportion to her size, long legs, her bosom curving as if made for a man to cradle. Her belly not so flat as he would have supposed, considering how slender she was, but her waist was indeed so narrow he could circle her with his two hands.
“My God, just look at you.” He took her chin between thumb and forefinger. “Open your eyes.”
Her eyes closed tighter yet. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t look at me.”
“Have I married a disobedient wife? Open your eyes. That’s an order.”
She fixed on his face with a blandness that made him want to weep. “As you say, too short, too small, too pale, too red.”
On the instant, his eyes met hers. “At the moment,” he said, “you are too noisy. And that is all I wish to say on the subject of your many shortcomings.”
“That doesn’t leave us much in the way of conversation, does it?”
He tipped his chin toward the ceiling. Sod it. This was his fault. “I don’t know exactly how to proceed. I can’t get it out of my head that we’ve done this before. But we haven’t. And he isn’t here….” He was once again overtaken by the sight of her nudity and her vulnerability to him because of it. Jesus, but women were exquisite things, and the one he’d married most exquisite of all. “Mm, no,” he said when she moved her hair. “Leave it behind your shoulders. Do you remember the day I escorted you to Far Caister? When you were carrying away bread from my kitchens which you later had the effrontery to serve me as if it had just come from your larder?”
She nodded, which he knew from the flash of movement in his peripheral vision, for he was devouring her figure, studying the shape of her chest and the way her ribs melted away to her waist.
“I imagined then you must have long legs, and I was right. If I was wrong in any particular, it was about your bosom, which I find admirable indeed. You’re the most delicate thing I’ve ever seen. You ravish me. I told you once you make me feel a brute, and now I’m glad that you do. You’re the only woman with the mettle to accept me as I am. I’ll show you absolutely no mercy in that quarter.” Her eyes flew to his, and he gave her his coldest, most chilling stare. “If you give in to your fear now, Olivia, you won’t be able to stand against me in anything, and I might as well be married to Diana. Show me some backbone.” He smiled just the slightest bit. “I trust I’ve made myself plain.”
She nodded.
“Excellent. Because I have not the time nor the inclination to coddle any woman, particularly not my wife.” He put his arms around her. His thoughts kept slipping off to his dreams of her, how she’d already satisfied him a dozen times over. Now, it would be real.
She stepped forward, sliding her hands to his shoulders. He groaned when she went on tiptoe to reach his mouth. He buried his fingers in her hair and brought her head toward his, curls sweeping over the backs of his hands and down his forearms. His dreams crashed over him, how he’d already held her, taken her mouth, his overwhelming longing to sate himself with her again and again. Their lips met, brushed, and then his mouth opened over hers. He didn’t bring her along slowly or start out mildly. He ravished her mouth they way she ravished his senses. He could no more hold back his passion than he could stop an incoming tide. He caught her in his arms and sat on the bed with her across his lap.
The kiss slowed. He savored every moment, exploring her, touching and seeking. Her arms tightened around his neck, and he took advantage by sliding his hand down her side, following the outside curve of her waist, hip and thigh. Her skin warmed beneath his fingers. He wanted to learn every inch of her by touch alone, to memorize her just from kissing like this, slow and deep. He opened his eyes and saw a fan of copper curls around her forehead, more spilling over her shoulder and across her chest. He threaded his fingers in flame and pulled back, turning his head away from hers to study her body. He put one hand on her thigh, enjoying the contrast between color and texture.
“You sat in my office with your stiff back and your gloved hands clasped on your lap.” He spread his fingers over her outside knee, pulling her leg away from the other. “These lovely thighs pressed together. Your prim mouth and eyes that deceived.” His fingers touched the curls between her legs. “A modest gown covering this body, stockings and garters clinging to these legs. Corset, petticoats. Everything polite and proper and so respectable.”
“You didn’t believe it.”
“But you looked it. You can’t begin to image how badly I wanted to ruin you. A lovely, respectable, innocent young lady.” He pressed his palm over her. “Fix that image in your head, Olivia, because later, after you’ve lost yourself in me, you’ll know just how far I’ve taken you.”
“Sebastian.”
He moved his head back to meet her eyes. “I think, for now, I would prefer that you call me my lord. There can be no question then of what’s real and what may not be.” His index finger slipped between the curls and then inside her. Tight and damp. “Besides, I have an inclination tonight to have some mastery over you, so, for now, it’s my lord.” He slid his finger along her. “Say it. Not ‘Sebastian,’ but my lord.”
“My lord.”
“Did you ever guess what was on my mind when I looked at you? I’d be sitting at supper watching you eat and, Jesus, I wanted your mouth on me. Yes, there.” He laughed. “There’s fire inside you, Olivia, and I mean to touch the very center of it.”
With her still in his arms, he lay back, turning as he did so that she ended on her back, both of them crossways to the length of the bed. His battle plan was simple enough to be foolproof. Distract her such that when he came into her, she knew nothing but pleasure. Every advantage lay on his side, knowledge, experience and tactics. She knew nothing of men, their bodies and needs. She was unsure and already rattled by the nature of his demands on her. He meant to continue.
He slid down, feathering kisses along her throat, breathing in verbena and the essence of Olivia. In all his life, he’d never felt more alive, more aware of the moment. Considering how much time had passed since he last made love, he felt in control of his passions. He had, in the course of his life, indulged in sexual relations to satisfy the urges of his body but, in the main, he’d not been one to love indiscriminately. He’d found he did not care much for intimacy with women for whom he felt nothing. And on the open sea, women of any sort were few and far between.
His hand stroked the curve of her breast, a shape and size in keeping with her body, enough to comfortably fit his palm. Not insubstantial, considering the size of his hand. He slid a palm over her, feeling the peak of her nipple against his fingers. Her body arched. With a sigh of pure contentment, he opened his eyes. Coils of copper hair shone against the emerald coverlet. With his free hand, he gathered a handful, closing his fingers around the mass of curls. “You’re so very beautiful, Olivia.”
“My lord.” A whisper caught on desire.
He parted the fingers that cupped her breast and lowered his head. She gasped when his mouth closed around her. He felt one of her legs bend, pressing against his side, and he let go of her hair to caress as much of her leg as he could reach. He slid farther down her body, caressing and kissing her belly. He blew across her navel. Her skin prickled in response, and he was pleased as well to hear her moan. His fingers slid between her legs, and he smiled, a slow, knowing smile just for himself because he knew the pleasure he would bring her. When his mouth settled there, just there, her body tensed but he refused to ease up until the moment he believed she would have her release. He moved until he was looking at her face, very nearly in exactly the right position.
The campaign was nearly won, passion and the frustration of pleasure denied clouded her eyes. He held himself over her, settling himself between her legs. He was a brute, twice her weight and every nerve in his outsized body screamed at him to hold nothing back. “God in heaven, Olivia, you are too dainty for me. I am afraid I’ll hurt you without meaning it.”
But even as he spoke, his hand curled around her thigh, pulling up and easing them both into better position. He adjusted himself, found her entrance and discovered she was small inside, too. She tensed, and he had to push harder than he expected, considering she was as ready as any woman could get. Whether he was larger than other men he had no real notion. What he did know was that she was small, and he was not. “Relax, love. I have you.”
She eased a little. Heat and wet surrounded the part of his sex that was inside her, and it wasn’t enough. He wanted all of him inside that warm, slick place. Each millimeter of penetration brought him that much closer to losing himself. How could a man think tactics when his prick was snug to the brink of torment? He felt his foreskin sliding down, exposing him to her body. “Oh, Jesus,” he said.
She made a noise in the back of her throat. He opened his eyes and met eyes wide and anxious. In fact, he could not just push through to her core. She wasn’t perfectly placed, for one thing, and for another, if he surged into her as he wanted to do, he would hurt her. He withdrew a bit, something his body told him was beyond stupid. In. Farther. Deeper.
“Olivia. Olivia, lift your knees. You must meet me.”
She did.
His pelvis rocked forward and at last, she understood the point of the maneuver because her hips tipped, and he came all the way in. Their eyes met, but he was beyond speech, mindless with sensation. That sweet spot right at the base of his spine tightened, his throat closed off any words. Her palms, which had been just touching his biceps, slapped the mattress. She got a breath of air, a feat beyond him, and her hips raised up again.
Absolutely nothing existed but him and the pressure around his cock. Nothing but an arc of pleasure that took him over. He teetered there, dying, and thank God she didn’t know what the hell she was doing because it would have been all over for him right then. But she didn’t. She didn’t move and that gave his incipient orgasm time to subside. In a manner of speaking, he was in a worse way now than just a moment ago, because he knew when he was there again, the peak would be higher, he would fall as hard as a man could fall and still live.
Right now, however, he had himself in hand, as it were. Enough himself that he could recall other parts of his body. And hers. “Now,” he said, “would be an appropriate moment to tell me I am too big, too powerful, too manly for your bridal state.” He moved in her, rolling onto his side and drawing her uppermost leg up over his waist. His hips came hard against her, his chest pressed to hers, his head near her ear. One hand cupped the back of her head, tangling in her hair. “Compliment my husbandly prowess, Olivia, and say not a word of your failure to please me.”
His hips came forward again, hand wrapped around her thigh bringing her close. She threw back her head but his fingers in her hair kept her near. Her breath came hard, timed to his thrusts. “My lord.” The words came hard and fast.
He rolled once more and lay on his back, keeping himself in her. Her hair hung down, a riot of corkscrew curls that partially hid her face from him. She knew just enough now to give herself time to adjust. With shallow breaths and fingertips curled around the top of his shoulders, her body eased around him. His entire being coiled around the new sensations of having her atop him, her thighs outside of his hips, of feeling himself farther inside than he’d have believed possible. His hands gripped her, thumbs just at her pelvis, fingers and palms meeting around her back. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, lifting her eyes so that they looked at each other, and he willingly drowned in the golden depths. Slowly, she straightened, a motion that opened her farther. He kept his hands around her, and after a bit, her fingers curled around his forearms and her pelvis rocked forward, taking him with her. “You’re inside me,” she whispered, looking down so that all he could see was the crescent spray of eyelashes on her cheekbones. “All of you. I feel as if you’re too big for me, but you aren’t hurting me.”
“I think,” he said, “because you are deep inside.” Her hips moved with more confidence. “Jesus, you feel good.” His hands tightened around her hips, pushing her down but slowing their motion. Their eyes met and he saw how very close she was, only they hadn’t done even the quarter of what he wanted from her. Worse, he was perilously close himself.
He rolled them over again, keeping himself inside and moved into her, as far as he could get. She gasped, arching against him, lifting herself, opening herself. He felt her tighten around him. Somehow, despite his thinking only about himself, he got it just right, a pause at the right moment, a deep push inside to exactly the right depth. She came apart.
Her eyes flew open, and she grasped his head, looking into his face while she shuddered beneath him. “I love you,” she said, straining upward. “Sebastian, I love you. I’ve always loved you. Since before we met.”
“I know,” he whispered. The confession made him want to shout with triumph.
When she was past the peak, he drew her arms over her head and held her tight while he reached for his own rhythm, harder and faster than perhaps she was ready for, only she was. Each time he went in, his belly slid on hers, over a layer of sweat, his and hers. He could feel her hands gliding down his spine to his backside, bringing him in, then her legs drawing up. He let go of her hands, but they stayed above her head, clutching the bed post to keep herself in place for him.
He shouted when he felt the first shiver, a wave that shook him as hard as anything in his life. Better than his dreams. Better than anything he’d felt in all his years. There came a moment right before his seed came that he thought he couldn’t reach his own pleasure, that he would be at this unendurable pitch of intensity until it killed him. But he did come, and it didn’t kill him, though it felt a close thing. He collapsed, the whole of his weight on her. Sweat dripped from him. He was wrung out and more alive than he’d ever felt in all his life.
She pushed against his shoulders. He pried open his eyes and to his astonishment, her eyes were panicked. He must outweigh her by a hundred pounds at least; he must be crushing her, lying on her like that. He lifted himself onto his elbows, easing his torso off her. Huge, silent tears slid down her cheeks. He slid out of her, and when he tried to take her into his arms, she turned away. “Olivia?”
“Don’t.”
“What is it?”
“I remember.” Her shoulders heaved. “I remember everything.”
He pulled her into the curve of his body and said, “Forgive me.”