Page 79 of Taming Ivy
Silence trembled between them until Sebastian scowled, “Damn it. How long?”
“I don’t know.”
He pushed off the door, shrugging out of his coat and subjecting Ivy to an unfathomable glance. Disappearing into the dressing room, he emerged with a fresh, white linen shirt and pair of dove gray breeches. Flinging the items onto the bed, Sebastian’s eyes held hers as he unknotted his cravat, pulling it free so it dropped to the floor. The shirt was stripped away next, pitched into a chair with the previously discarded coat.
Bare-chested, he opened another door at the opposite end of the chamber to reveal a spacious room. Inside, Ivy saw an enormous porcelain clad bathing tub. Tracing down the wall, a streamlined network of piping attached to two gold spouts in the shape of dolphins with levers feeding directly into the tub. Close to the tub, a large basin sink sat mounted on a mahogany stand with two additional dolphin spouts jutting from the wall above it.
Taking a cloth and a bar of soap, Sebastian stepped to the sink, spun the levers and within seconds, water poured from the dolphin’s mouths. Steam rose in curling ribbons as he washed away the grime of their journey from his face and upper torso. He did not care she witnessed his actions. He did not care she imagined dragging that cloth across his skin, her hands slippery with water and lather sliding over his flesh...
Ivy’s face grew hot, her cheeks burning as she gazed at Sebastian’s broad back, the muscles rippling as he bathed. The scent of sandalwood and spices drifted with the steam and she grew unaccountably lightheaded. The intimacy, the casualness of such ordinary things as undressing and bathing brought home an unavoidable fact. She was really and truly married to this man.
Married…
And, in the eyes of English law, his to treat however he pleased. An exercise of his husbandly rights did not require her permission. He could throw her on that massive bed, take his pleasure and she could not do a blasted thing to stop him.
Briskly drying himself with a fluffy towel, Sebastian exited the bathing room to sit on a dark blue velvet tufted bench at the foot of the massive bed. Methodically removing his boots, he allowed them to drop one by one. Ivy’s rapid pulse gave an answering thud of apprehension and, God help her, excitement as each boot hit the floor with ominous thumps. She could not look away when he slowly stood to his full height, eyes dark and unreadable and locked on hers, hand resting lightly on his hips. For what seemed an eternity, he regarded her while Ivy tried remembering how to breathe, her lungs aching as if ready to burst from her chest.
Light from the late afternoon sun spilled through oversized windows, dancing about the large room to bath Sebastian in gold. He could be a pagan lord from another time, with his raised brow and wickedly sly smile. His fingers hovered over the fastening of his breeches and in slow motion, the buttons slid from their holdings, his eyes holding hers as the fabric shimmied down his hips and lower, revealing the vee-shaped indentations above his hipbones. When the breeches dipped past the point of indecency, Ivy gave a muffled cry, whirling to present her back.
A sharp bark of laughter echoed behind her. “It’s not anything you haven’t seen, or touched before.”
There were the rustling sounds of Sebastian redressing in fresh clothing. She heard him pulling back on his boots, the slide of fabric against fabric as he tucked the shirt into his breeches. Ivy closed her eyes, heart pounding, blood thrumming through her veins. As if a charge of electricity jolted her, she tingled from head to toe. The image of his chest, the ripple of muscles, the leanness of his hips as the fabric slid lower and lower. It all burned into her brain until she wanted to shake her head to dislodge it.
Sebastian gripped her shoulders, spinning her to face him. It startled her when he released her just as fast, stepping away as if he did not trust himself to touch her an instant longer than necessary.
“Sleep where you will, either my bed or in your own. But understand this.” He paused and Ivy swallowed hard, pinned to the spot by the heat of his gaze. “You have experienced the act of lovemaking twice. The first I forced upon you. The second, you were so damned intoxicated that I can’t imagine you remember much at all, although the night of the Faringdon’s Ball is forever burned into my brain. I know you found your pleasure; however, I assure you, the full experience of it, minus the fog of alcohol, is something you cannot comprehend. And you won’t, not until I show you.”
Wordless, pale, hating the memories crowding her mind, Ivy stared at him. Sebastian was wrong. She remembered. Every moment. Like a silky web, his words wrapped about her, holding her in place. A tiny victim waiting to be devoured.
“I shall convince you that my bed is where you belong. I will not force you. However, I will use every weapon I possess to persuade you. To draw you to me. To prove you belong to me.” Leaning closer, his face mere inches from hers, Ivy had nowhere to look other than his stormy eyes. “I will entice and seduce and tempt you until you surrender. Eventually, you will beg me to take you. You will beg to become mine in every sense of the word. You will beg to have me inside you, plead for me to taste you, to caress you, to discover every hollow and curve of your body with my tongue and fingertips…”
Swallowing hard, his voice dropped to a husky whisper, “While patience and desire war with each other, my temper is another matter entirely. I would never physically hurt you, nor could I bear to seek another’s bed, but I am merely a mortal man. Not a bloody saint.” Sebastian brushed past her, jerking the door to the suite open. Giving her body one last scorching sweep of a glare, he exited, slamming the door with enough force to shake it on its hinges.
Ivy involuntarily jumped at the violence of his departure, tears stinging her eyes. His voice echoed from the hall, barking orders at the little army of servants gathered there before his angry footsteps stomped away. There was no time to regain her composure before the door cracked open to reveal Annie’s weathered face.
Moving to the window, Ivy stared blindly over the perfectly landscaped grounds, not wanting the housekeeper to see her tears.
“Milady?” Annie let herself in, motioning for Lizzie to enter as well. Two footmen hovered in the hall, waiting to see if the trunks would find a home in the countess’ apartments or be left in the middle of the earl’s bedchamber. They whispered to each other.
“Still slamming doors,” Annie chuckled, bustling about the room, retrieving discarded clothing and the used towel. “Drove his mother to distraction, it did, God bless her. Don’t you go bothering your lovely self about it, my dear. Milord doesn't hardly mean anything by it, and I vow, when you see him next, he’ll have forgotten why he was banging things about in the first place.”
Ivy stared at the housekeeper over her shoulder, choking back a laugh when Annie gave her an audacious wink.
“Ah, a smile. That’s better, it is.” The older woman grinned. “The best way to keep a man’s interest is give him a reason to slam a door. “Giving a man something to slam doors about is the best way to keep him interested.”
CHAPTER 26
Sebastian poured a healthy splash of bourbon into a tumbler and swallowed it in one gulp. He poured another.
Then another.
Gabriel watched impassively, brown eyes flickering with amusement. While Sebastian sipped the third ration, he acquired his own, and glass in hand, took a seat in one of the oversized leather chairs situated in Sebastian’s study.
The earl paced before the fireplace in agitation.
“I assume milady has not adjusted to the idea of being your countess,” Gabriel remarked dryly. “Or your wife.” He amused himself by counting how many times Sebastian completed the pattern on the expensive rug.
Sebastian halted just long enough to throw a black scowl at Gabriel. The stalking resumed for several more minutes before he flung himself into the chair behind his desk. “Damned if she’s not going to drive me to drink.” The two men, in a masculine salute to exasperating femininity, clinked glasses across the massive desk.
