Sebastian expected to find Ivy in his bed. He expected to climb between the sheets and hold her close, even while his body screamed for release. Sleep would be elusive, but he expected that too.

His bed was empty; the coverlet pulled back, the sheets icy cold. No warmth lingered on Ivy’s pillow. The adjoining bedchamber was empty and unused and she was not in the bathing room. Sebastian stood in the middle of the suite. Where could she be?

Perhaps the library. She was quite taken with it - his search would begin there. Then he would rouse the whole damn house to search for his wife.

The faint glow of firelight emanating from the library flooded him with relief. Securing the doors behind him, the soft click of the lock barely discernible, Sebastian scanned the room. A divan was pulled close to one of the two fireplaces. Its high back concealed the plush cushions, but a flimsy, pale blue robe trailed over one of the gently rolled arms, the edges brushing the floor. A lamp cast a feeble radiance on a stack of books piled haphazardly upon a large table beside the divan.

Ivy lay curled on the dark cranberry hued settee, like a delicious bonbon on a wrapping of velvet just waiting to be consumed. The fire snapped as he gazed down at her, the popping sounds loud in the stillness. With the drapes drawn shut on the wall of windows, only the light of the flames and the single lamp cast wild, elongated shadows on his wife. A thick, cream colored blanket covered her and one foot, clad in a delicate blue silk slipper, hung from the edge of the cushioned seat.

Her hair was not pulled into the usual braid she wore to bed. Tangled in it, tucked under her cheek, her hand cradled her face. Sebastian smiled. It was his wife’s favored position when she slept. He woke every morning to find her thus against his chest. It was impossibly endearing.

Kneeling beside the settee, he used his forefinger to gently traced the stains tracking down her cheeks. She’d been weeping.

“Ivy.” He brushed a honey sparked curl from her brow. “Wake up.”

She mumbled something unintelligible, eyelashes fluttering as she drew the blanket closer to her chin. Sebastian leaned forward, his mouth pressed to hers. He kissed her more insistently until her eyes drifted open.

“Hello, love,” he murmured.

Ivy reached out, her warm fingertips drifting over his jaw. A strange expression, something bordering on relief, flashed across her features. “You came back.”

“And what else could I do? I cannot exist without you.” Sebastian did not expect to find his arms filled with her.

Ivy’s embrace was fierce, her arms wrapping tight about him. He moved to sit on the divan and she immediately adjusted until she was completely in his grasp, her face buried in his neck.

“I said I would be back by dawn.” He tried to sound nonchalant, tried not to notice the frothy excuse for a nightgown she wore. The same pale blue, it matched the discarded wrapper and Ivy’s flesh glowed through it. The sight and scent of her made Sebastian’s body react violently. His hands, curled about her waist, shook as her warmth seeped through the fabric of her gown to heat his palms. He felt both hot and cold. “Did you think I would not return?”

Damn, he tired of sidestepping their issues, tired of hoping his wife might open her arms and her heart to him.

It was time to resolve matters. Tonight.

* * *

“I did not know what to think.” Ivy knew it was impossible to tell Sebastian she could not sleep in his bed, surrounded by his scent, tortured by memories of how gently he held her that first morning at Beaumont. How could she explain that his kisses rattled her soul when she did not understand it herself? How to explain that she could not bear to be where he was not?

She came to the library, thinking a book would help her sleep, to ease her mind. But nothing pulled from the shelves captivated her. Instead, she roamed the library until collapsing in self-defeat on one of the divans.

She could not tell him she foolishly cried herself into an exhausted slumber.

“You thought I would not return,” Sebastian prodded, grasping her by the shoulders to peer into her eyes.

Ivy knew she could not answer that. She could not put to words how devastating it felt, knowing he was gone and might never return. Watching him ride away caused a burning, empty ache in the pit of her stomach.

Her brow knitting in confusion, she shied from acknowledging his statement. “I don’t understand. Duels are undertaken at daybreak. Is the viscount dead?”

“There will be no duel. And when I left Basford, he was very much alive. Frightened half out of his wits, what little he has, but alive. More’s the pity, I think.” Cupping Ivy’s chin, Sebastian tipped her face so the firelight illuminated it. “The last thing I want to do is discuss Brandon Madsen. I wish to speak of us and our particular situation.”

“Why is there to be no duel?” Ivy believed it unlikely Sebastian would relinquish the opportunity to make Brandon pay for his crime. Why would he?

The sound escaping Sebastian was both groan and chuckle. “We won’t move past this unless I explain. So, listen carefully, my love. The viscount will be taking an extended trip abroad. Indeed, he may never set foot on English soil again; at least not while either of us live.”

Suspicion glinted in her eyes. “Why would he do that?”

“I persuaded him to it. There will be no duel and no talk of scandal. No one, other than those close to us, will know what occurred. You can be certain Basford will never mention it, at least as long as he values his life.”

“But Basford’s coachman. He -”

“Is now in my employ, happy and handsomely paid, I might add. Your next question undoubtedly concerns my aunt. The threat of exile to one of my northern estates in Scotland and the cutoff of her generous allowance gains her silence as well. Our dearest friends, Alan and Sara? You know they will never breathe a word. I have taken care of it. I will always take care of things.” Sebastian’s eyes held hers, burning and dark. “I will always take care of you.”

“I know I was abducted.” Ivy’s challenge was soft but direct. “You cannot make it disappear as though it never happened.”

He smiled. “Can’t I? Are you a loose string, my dear? Shall I tie you up as neatly as I have the others? I have ways to make you forget that awful night. To erase it from your mind until it never existed.”

Tugging her to him, his mouth descended upon hers in a flurry of heat and desire and for an instant, Ivy almost wrenched herself from him, the fear of giving into him almost a conditioned response.

But she did not. Instead, she melted, hot and fluid, squirming closer to the heat of his body. Sebastian kissed her almost roughly, but she loved it. His tongue swept the inside of her mouth, meeting and entangling with hers until she wanted more. She sighed low in her throat, ready to capitulate to him.

Drawing back at the sound, Sebastian appeared to contemplate his next action, and Ivy did not dare look away from his diamond bright eyes.

“Unbutton my shirt,” he finally said in a hoarse whisper.

As she did his bidding, her hands trembled. One by one, the ivory buttons slipped from their moorings until at last, the garment lay open to his waist. Without his directive, she pulled the shirt tails from his breeches until the edges fluttered open, exposing his chest and the slabs of golden, sleek muscles there.

Sebastian sucked in a quick breath as her fingertips skated across his flesh. With her feet tucked underneath her, Ivy could get no closer unless she crawled across his lap or she laid back against the divan. She was not sure which she wanted. With a brazen decision, she pressed herself to him, laying across his thighs.

“I like this nightgown.” He traced a pattern on her back while she huddled against his chest.

Ivy trembled with the reality of her decision. She was about to become Sebastian’s wife. His real wife. Kissing him and touching him like this, there was no escaping the path she’d set. “Should I remove it?” She ached for him to say yes.

“There’s no rush.” Sebastian shifted, slipping the shirt from his shoulders to toss to the side. His eyes, dark and solemn, locked with hers. He gently pushed until she was prone on the settee and he loomed over her. The slide of her gown against the sensitive peaks of her breasts when he moved was both tantalizing and torture. Ivy wanted to arch while at the same time she wanted to pull his body down more firmly atop hers. She groaned in frustration when he placed more distance between them.

Bracing himself with elbows on either side of her head, he leisurely traced the outline of her lips with his tongue, playfully teasing the corners of her mouth before taking it fully. He swirled and teased and dipped and tasted until Ivy was breathless and straining, her hands plunging into the dark silk of his hair.

Sebastian tore his mouth away to drag kisses across her throat, down to the vee of skin exposed by the bodice of the nightgown. She held his head tight, desperate to feel his mouth upon her. Sensing what she wanted, he moved even lower, until the heat of his lips closed over her nipple, wetting the flesh through the thin cloth as he bit and nibbled.

Ivy couldn’t help but moan. She wanted more. She wanted his mouth on her bare skin. She wanted his hands on her nakedness. She wanted his fingers inside her, his body inside her. She wanted him to take her to heights that left her drunk with pleasure.

She wanted him. Wanted. Needed. Craved.

Sebastian lavished the same treatment on her other breast until Ivy writhed beneath him, the hem of her nightgown riding high on her hips. He swept the bare skin of her outer thigh with his hand before settling in a firm grasp of her buttocks. She felt the ridge of his sex trapped as it nestled against the damp cleft of her body when he jerked her closer.

With an impatient growl, he whipped the nightgown over her head. Ivy’s sigh of surrender echoed in the room. Clutching his shoulders, she opened to him when his hand slipped between their bodies.

A whimper of gratification escaped her. With maddening deliberateness, he speared through the chestnut curls at the junction of her legs before dipping inside her.

Ivy’s body clenched around the invasion.

"Sweet Jesus, Ivy,” Sebastian muttered, ravishing her mouth while she quaked with need. His finger leisurely plunged in and out of her slick passage, pausing to swirl the pinpoint of her desire, his thumb nudging the exceedingly sensitive crest there.

Beyond the point of shame, Ivy clasped his hand, pressing it urgently against her throbbing flesh. She sobbed aloud from a frenzied torrent of sensations.

Sebastian froze, all exquisite movements coming to an abrupt halt. Slowly, he lifted his head, the glowing victory in his gaze unconcealed, but Ivy did not care. She wanted him too desperately to care.

"You will recall my words, Ivy.” His eyes deliberately bored into hers.

"Sebastian.” A thread of panic laced through the solitary word. Not for what he might do, but because he might stop doing these wonderful things.

"Tell me,” he demanded in a raspy whisper, his eyes burning like pieces of silver in the firelight. "Not because I must hear it, but so you acknowledge you want this. There will be no going back. No changing your mind. And I won't have you accuse me of deceiving or forcing you.” He bit the words out, his voice strangled, his body taut with need. “If I must stop, if you still need time to accept the fact you are my wife, then tell me. Tell me now so I may set you from me while I still possess the strength to do so.”

Ivy gazed at him, her eyes slumberous, every nerve thrilling to the feel of his finger filling her. He did not move, just waited for her to decide. Her hand, which only seconds ago feverishly pressed his palm to her flesh, came up to tentatively caress his clenched jaw.

Expecting a rapid halt to the seduction, Sebastian regarded her, wary frustration unmistakable in the hardness of his face. He started to slide away.

"Don't…,” Ivy panted, the glide of his fingers dissolving her insides into an inferno, “…stop.”

She arched to him, pressing desperate kisses to his throat, dragging him down to her, the words a breathy entreaty inflaming them both. "Don't stop. God, don't stop. I need you. I want you. If you wish to hear me beg, then I shall. Please, Sebastian, please don't stop...”

Sebastian hesitated, and with a gruff cry, claimed what was his. What was always his.

An answering thrill of wild sweetness raced through Ivy's veins. There was something wickedly carnal in the fact she was utterly naked while he still wore breeches and boots, only his chest bare to her exploration. She wanted to discover every part of him, to learn why his muscles rippled when he moved a certain way, why he groaned as her fingertips skimmed his hard, dark nipples, to know why his breath rattled harsh and hot as her hand drifted to the top of his breeches and coasted along the flat plane of his abdomen.

Sebastian had other ideas.

"Damn it, Ivy. It seems like forever since I touched you, held you. A lifetime since I made you quiver with pleasure.” Capturing her hands in one of his, Sebastian dragged them above her head, and bending his head to her breasts, he took each into the wet furnace of his mouth in turn, licking, biting with restrained excitement until her nipples hardened into sensitive peaks. He resumed the exploration of the junction between her thighs, his fingers gliding in and out, over and around until Ivy trembled uncontrollably and waves crashed over her without warning.

When she cried out, he smothered it with the heat of his mouth, sweeping it away until the only sound in the room was the popping crackle of the fire and their mutual, harsh breathing. When he finally released her hands, she weakly wrapped her arms around his neck.

Sebastian sat up, pulling Ivy sideways into his lap, her legs dangling over his thighs. His palm coasted down the smooth expanse of her back, tracing the delicate line of her spine while she shivered, overwhelmed by sensations and emotions. Huddling against him, she absorbed his heat until he reached for the cream-colored blanket, settling it over her shoulders.

"I'm not cold,” Ivy murmured against his neck, kissing the corded muscles there with soft, presses of her mouth. She did not make any effort to remove the blanket, wondering if he believed she needed it for modesty's sake. She would not take it away just yet. What went on beneath that blanket was secret and hot and private, a little world where nothing else existed except kisses and caresses and whispers of desire.

She alternated the kisses with little bites as he had done to her in the past. Every time her teeth raked his skin, he groaned in approval. Experimentally, she licked a spot below his jaw before lightly biting his earlobe. He tasted salty and clean, shuddering in response to her exploration.

"Is it alright to do this?" Her palms spread across his chest, feeling the powerful muscles bunch beneath her fingertips.

"God, yes.” His sharp laugh was incredulous. “Touch, kiss, bite to your heart's content. If you don’t kill me first.”

"Even here?" Ivy whispered, her hands drifting down to the bulge in his breeches. Running a shy finger over the rise beneath the fabric, his low groan thrilled her. It was a revelation to discover she could tease and torment him as he did her.

"No. I won't be able to control myself if I allow you that,” he said. “I've no intention of making love to you, our first time as husband and wife, on a damn settee in the library when we have a magnificent bed at our disposal.”

"I want to touch you. To feel you in my hands. Like I did that day by the stream. Please, Sebastian.” Ivy kissed him, using her mouth to persuade him while her hands worked the buttons to his breeches.

Sebastian stared at her as though he’d lost all his wits, and she continued to undress him when his hands quivered, unable to halt her progress. She explored the hollow of his throat, pressing her lips where his pulse beat in quick thumps. One by one, each button slipped free until his erection eased from the tight confines of the breeches and into the warmth of her hands. Sebastian adjusted the blanket, hiding the wickedness of her fingers as Ivy leaned back.

The breath hissed through his teeth in a desperate bid to hold tight to his sanity. She gently traced the length of him, her fingers closing about him, encircling the silky hardness and his eyes shut as if he could not bear it. Her hand moved from base to velvety tip, marveling that his skin was both soft and hot, burning her palm.

At Bentley Park, she’d not taken the time to learn the length, the shape, or the true extent of his size, but she did now. Her fingers drifted, soft at first, then with a firmer grip as he grew even larger with her touch. When Sebastian muttered a curse beneath his breath, Ivy’s courage faltered. "Does this hurt? I'm sorry.”

"No, it doesn't hurt.” His laugh was shaky as he removed her hand from his body. "It feels good. Too damn good. But you have to stop. Before you drive me completely mad.”

While he held her wrist in a grip that should have frightened her, Ivy slid to the floor between his knees. Somehow, the blanket stayed draped over her shoulders and she was glad for the little bit of concealment for what she was about to do.

He stared at her and she at him until with an inarticulate sound of pleasure, Ivy did the only thing reasonable at that moment. Lowering her head, she wrapped her mouth around his erection until its silken thickness of nudged the back of her throat.

Sebastian buried his free hand in the mass of her hair, fingers raking her scalp as if to pull her away. The grip on her wrist tightened to the point of bruising her, but Sebastian seemed unaware.

“My God…”

The oath, and the others following, were incoherent as Ivy instinctively moved her head, twisting her tongue in a leisurely exploration of his thick length, mimicking what she'd done with her hands only moments before.

He was so hard and yet the skin stretched so thin and impossibly tight over a surging of power. There was a swelling of feminine potency within her, learning that she could render him helpless. She lifted to the top of his shaft as if to stop, then filled her mouth with as much of him as possible, moaning in response when he uttered a word she’d heard him say only twice in anger.

“Fuck…”

The next thing Ivy knew, she was up in his lap once again, his eyes boring into hers. A wildness existed in those depths and Ivy felt a sense of power like nothing she’d ever experienced. It was heady and dangerous. And addictive.

Sebastian slid a palm over the curve of her hip and Ivy realized his intent to lift her away. Twisting almost violently, she shifted to straddle him. Gripping the back of the settee, one hand on either side of his head, she levered herself down. Her breasts bobbed eye level with his fascinated stare; to accommodate the width of his muscular thighs, her legs spread. If she lowered herself completely, she would be impaled. She wanted that desperately.

“For God’s sake, Ivy.” His breath was ragged. “Stop this madness.”

"No. I won’t stop,” she replied, staring into his smoky eyes. “Not yet.” Her gaze dropped to where their bodies almost touched. His erection strained to reach her softness beneath the shroud of the blanket.

Clasping both of his hands around her hips, Sebastian braced again to remove her from the tantalizing position. But he seemed incapable of forcing his body to obey the commands of his own mind when she rocked her hips forward.

"Bloody hell,” he groaned, his body jerking to awareness as the underside of his erection slipped through the curls between her thighs.

It was not penetration, just a maddening glide through silky wet heat.

Ivy was caught off guard by the sensation. She thought it might feel similar to when he used his hands and fingers to stoke her passion, but this was altogether more exciting. This was something else, something electrifying and provocative. Quivering with the need to do it again, she slid down a second time. Then a third time. A fourth, her arousal creating a slick, easy slide. It was all wicked and wonderful and irresistible. And she could not stop. She would not stop…

* * *

Sebastian fought for control, for sanity, for a reason to haul Ivy off him; to put an end to this glorious torture. Every time she floated up, then down, he burned to bury inside her, to plunge into her heat until he was so deep within her soul she would never escape. He gripped her with the desperation of a drowning man, feeling the trembling of her body as though it were his own. Every gasp of breath she exhaled burned him as if somehow, they passed through his lungs first.

If she did not cease, he would explode.

"Ivy, we must stop. I cannot…we can’t…I don't want to make love to you here, for chrissakes. It should be in my bed, where I can lay you out. I want to kiss you all over, caress every inch of you. Kiss you everywhere." His words came in a heated, jumbled, incoherent mess while she ignored him, sliding up and down. Again and again.

Until finally, Sebastian gripped her hips tight, holding her in position to prevent a downward stroke. Held open by the muscled width of his thighs, the entrance to her body bare and ready for him, she was undaunted by his callousness.

“Damn it, Ivy.” The words were a growl. “I said we are not doing this here.”

With a flash of something dangerous in her eyes, Ivy reached up to her shoulder. “We aren’t?” She dragged the blanket away.

Sebastian choked. And cursed.

Damn her. For all her innocence, she knew precisely how to tip the scales in her favor, to drive him past the point of no return. The abrupt exposure of his countess, riding him with the supreme confidence of a beautiful pagan goddess, backlit by the firelight’s glow, hair streaming in dark waves over her shoulders, curling around her breasts, tumbling to the small of her back, after she just wrapped her lips around his cock, was too much. He was only a man after all, and he had wanted her for too long to reject what she so sweetly offered now.

He was lost.

"Make me yours, Sebastian. Now. I don't care where we are…do it now. Now.” She kissed him, her tongue swirling to touch his.

His groan was one of defeat. He could not fight the power of Ivy’s arousal for it fueled his own to dizzying, scorching heights. His blood sizzled with the need to claim, to possess, to conquer. She was his. Every sweet inch of her.

"Except her heart.” Came a sly voice inside his head. "She has yet to give you her heart and probably never will again.”

Sebastian ignored that voice to focus on the exquisite creature in his arms. Now, he held her steady, guiding her down upon him and every heartbeat brought him closer to pulsating warmth, the silky tightness of her body almost more than he could stand, more than he thought it possible to bear. Once he was fully inside her, they both became motionless as Ivy adjusted to the full, burning pressure of his possession. Sebastian felt unaccountably dizzy, his body acclimating to the feeling of her holding him deep within her. He could not breathe. He gripped her with almost hurtful fingers attempting to keep her still upon him because her buttocks resting atop his thighs was both heaven and hell.

"What do I do now?" She whispered mischievously in his ear and he grinned.

"Little hellion. Now you ride.”