'Umm?'
'Tell me about your family.'
He sighed. 'They are a pack of vultures, sweeting. The entire lot of them.'
'Surely there must be some members of your family whose company you enjoy.'
'I was quite fond of my brother, Edmund.'
She frowned. 'What about your mother?'
He stared at the canopy again. 'There is nothing I can tell you, other than she was very beautiful, and I know this only because I've seen her portrait. I don't remember her at all.'
'How did she die?'
He slid his hands through her hair and cupped the back of her head. 'I don't know that she is dead. She ran off when I still an infant.'
'Oh, Sebastian.' Having caught the bitterness in his voice, hers rilled with sympathy.
He choked out a laugh. 'Don't pity me, Olivia. I won't have it. I don't want it.'
'I won't,' she soothed. 'I know how it is to grow up without a mother. You and I are so alike, in the most unexpected of ways.' Her small hands came up to cradle his face. 'Do you know why she ran away?'
'Marriage to my father would do it, I would say. You'll never have the misfortune to meet a colder or more vicious man.'
'That is something I cannot imagine.' Olivia fell silent, her fingertips drawing circles across his chest. 'When was the last time you saw your father?' she asked finally.
He didn't want to think about the marquess. Ever. 'Five years ago.'
'Are you worried about seeing him again?'
Sebastian considered that for a moment. 'I don't believe so. After all, I am returning with the bride of his choosing. He should have no complaints, at least none outside the usual, which entails everything else about me.'
Olivia took a deep breath, the movement pressing her breasts more fully against his chest.
'Tell me what you're thinking,' he urged when the silence stretched out.
She hesitated, then her natural forthrightness won out. 'Would I have been your choice for a bride? Or did you-'
'Yes,' he interjected, deducing the nature of her query. 'If I'd been of the mind to be leg-shackled, I would most definitely have selected your fetter over any other. And no. What is between you and I has nothing to do with my father. If you think on it further, love, you will see that discarding you would have served my rebellion better.'
She sighed and offered a relieved smile. 'When will we arrive in London?'
'A week perhaps.'
'That's all?' Her smile faltered, then faded completely.
Sebastian frowned. 'Why so miserable, sweet?'
With a wriggle of her hips, she positioned his cock at her entrance and engulfed him easily, her passage slick with his seed.
His breath hissed out through his teeth as pleasure, searing and almost painful, coursed through his blood. '
'Do you intend to leave me immediately after we return?' Olivia rose up to a seated position, taking more of him into her body until the dark honey curls of her sex tangled with his black ones and he felt the warmth of her womb cap his erection. The visual and physical combination made him swell even further inside her, stretching her until she moaned.
'W-what?' He couldn't think.
She rose up on her knees and then slid back down along his shaft, killing him softly. 'Will you leave me in London immediately?'
He caressed the satin skin of her thighs, his entire body consumed with fever. 'No… I don't know…' He gasped as she rode him again. Lightning bolted into his spine and radiated outward. 'What do you want… me to do?'
Olivia undulated around him, over him, against him, her fingertips swirling over his flat nipples. Damn, she'd become so familiar with his body, she played it with the skill of the finest courtesan. She knew just where to touch him, where to stroke him, to turn him to putty in her hands.
'I want you to stay with me, just for a short time.' She moved again, slowly, caressing his throbbing cock with silken, drenched heat. Sebastian gritted his teeth, his back arching against his will. 'There will be balls and luncheons in our honor, callers to our home. I don't want to endure it all alone.'
She tightened her inner muscles on him and tweaked his nipples. His sac grew tight, his seed rising, heating. Bloody hell, he was ready to spend himself and she had just begun.
'Of course, love,' he groaned, willing to give her anything she asked. 'There's no rush… for me to depart. I'll stay… as long as you… think is best. Just do that again… oh, yes… again…'
Olivia's smile was triumphant as she rested her palms flat on his chest and began to ride him in earnest, lifting and falling in a pounding rhythm, moaning in a way that drove him insane. The part of his brain that still functioned realized she'd managed him to her liking with the use of her body, but the part of him presently being milked inside her didn't care. She loved his cock-loved to ride it, kiss it, suck on it-and he loved to give it to her. He was mad for her, mad for her pleasure, mad for her touch.
As her body spasmed around him and she cried out his name, Sebastian found he didn't mind being managed at all. He clutched her hips in his hands, holding her still while he thrust upward into her, prolonging her pleasure. Only when her head fell forward in exhaustion did he allow his own release, spurting his seed in endless bursts against her womb, his body wracked with a pleasure so piercing it robbed him of all thoughts but one: she wanted to keep him with her.
'What in hell are you doing?' Olivia cried as she stepped into the cabin.
The knife in her husband's hand clattered into the bowl of water on the vanity, creating a fine mess. Sebastian stood in front of her cherry-framed mirror, naked from the waist up and impossibly gorgeous. As always, her heart skipped a beat just looking at him.
In the last few weeks, he'd shared daily living with her in every way a man would share his life with his wife. He'd observed her in the bath, watched her eat, and assisted her toilette. In return, she'd become fascinated with watching his masculine ablutions. She relished brushing his hair and mending tears in his clothing. She adored taking care of him and giving him the affection he'd gone so long without. Sebastian absorbed every drop with an awed appreciation that tugged at her heart.
'Damnation,' he groused, brushing the splattered water off his torso with a towel. 'You are like to scare the wits from me, woman!'
'I'll be scaring more than your wits if I ever find you attempting that again!'
He took a deep, slow breath. Olivia set her arms akimbo and tapped her foot indignantly.
'You said it was unfashionably long,' he explained, still holding his hair in his hand.
'So it is.'
'Well, we're docking in a few hours.'
'I'm aware of that.' And she hated it, hated that soon they would lose the wondrous intimacy of their long sea voyage and endless days of pleasure in their bed. Within hours, she would be simpering and smiling at the vultures of Society, the very ones who had picked her flesh to the bone only a year ago. And she would have to share her darling husband with them, a man who bore wounds that still festered. The thought made her stomach turn.
'Therefore I'm cutting it,' he said curtly.
'No, you are not.'
His blue eyes met hers, capped with a frown. 'Make sense, Olivia, and hurry up about it!'
She released her breath and stepped toward him, not stopping until her body was pressed against his. She wrapped her arms around his lean waist. 'I like your hair the way it is.'
Disbelief etched his handsome features.
'I like running my fingers through it when you are sitting down and I'm standing at your shoulder. I like seeing strands of it left on my pillow. I like it swaying around my shoulders when you are thrusting deep inside of me.'
