She could feel her face turn rosy. “That’s different.”

“Hardly,” he said. “Indulge me. Then ask.”

She sighed. “Sebastian.”

His lashes lowered and he made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a purr.

“Sebastian,” she said huskily, just to see what he would do.

His eyes slitted open. “Am I amusing you?”

She giggled, she who never giggled. He slowly smiled back, crinkling the corners of his eyes and showing straight white teeth. Ah, but a smiling Sebastian was a devastating sight.

She almost regretted having to ask.

“Sebastian. Why did you divorce your wife?”

Chapter 25

There was a clock in his bedchamber. She could hear it now, loudly and clearly tick-tocking away another minute of uncomfortable silence as Sebastian lay still as stone. Sharing his bed evidently did not entitle her to ask nosy questions.

“I hadn’t much choice in the matter,” he finally said. He was staring up at the bed canopy, looking thoughtful rather than annoyed. “Six months into our marriage, she ran away with another man. A baronet’s youngest son, of the estate that bordered her father’s. It turned out she had fancied herself in love with him since childhood. I found them in an inn on the way to France.”

Oh.

“That’s dreadful,” she finally said.

He gave a shrug. “It is what it is.”

But the images came with startling clarity, of Sebastian taking a pair of creaky stairs, a distressed innkeeper hard on his heels . . . of him bursting into a dimly lit room to the shrieks of the terrified lovers . . .

“Why did you not . . .” Her throat became strangely tight.

Strong hands locked around her waist, and he pulled her on top of him. Her thoughts scattered at the feel of his hard, warm body beneath her. But his expression was pensive and wry; clearly lovemaking wasn’t on his mind.

“Why did I not shoot them when I found them?” he suggested.

She gave a tiny nod.

“Because it would not have been worth it, neither in this life nor the next.”

Oh, Sebastian. What did it take, to make him lose his head?

Her face warmed. Well, she now knew one thing that made him lose his head.

“Most men would not have thought that far,” she said. “Most wouldn’t have thought at all.”

He stroked her flanks, his palms pressing deliberately as if to draw comfort from the soft feel of her.

“I stood there at the foot of the bed, and they stared back at me with a look in their eyes that said they fully expected me to shoot them,” he said. “But in that moment, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. So I could weigh my options. I had them apprehended. I made it a condition that she move to Italy not to return. But I didn’t lay a finger on either of them. She always felt I had a heart of ice, and lucky for her, she was right.”

“No,” she said, “I cannot believe that about your heart. She sounds like a—a rather disloyal person.”

His roaming hands began to brazenly fondle her bottom.

“How fiercely you come to my rescue,” he murmured. “She was disloyal, yes, but most of all, she was an overemotional girl, and I should never have married her.”

“You must have loved her very much to propose,” she said, resenting how hollow she felt at the thought.

He shook his head. “I married her because my father had sold her father one of our estates, and the man knew how to play his hand. He wanted a duchess for a daughter, and I needed a wife, so acquiring one with my rather expensive estate thrown in as a dowry seemed efficient.”

“Oh.”

“A strategic move, but it backfired.”

How calculating he made it sound. But that was how his class used marriage, didn’t they? To secure alliances that brought more of the same: money, power, land. For pleasure or love, a man might keep a mistress.

“I thought taking lovers was commonplace?”

His gaze darkened. “Not until there is an heir. Any boy child she would have conceived while married to me would have officially been mine, but short of incarcerating her in her chambers, there was no way I could have guaranteed that my heir would be my son. She had already proven that she was willing to risk everything. Besides . . .”

He fell into a brooding silence, but his body had gone tense beneath hers. She brushed her lips against his throat. When that didn’t help, she used her tongue.

He gave a soft grunt, and his member stirred against her belly. There was a responding flutter between her legs, and she sat up, straddling him, shifting aimlessly until he stayed her with a firm grip on her hips.

His cheeks were flushed as he stared up at her. “I didn’t see it. She either loathed me enough to risk everything to get away, or loved the boy more than anything. Either way, I had not expected it to happen.”

She was tempted to tell him that most husbands did not have to expect that their wives would run away to France, but there was more to it, wasn’t there.

She slid her palms over his hands on her hips and entwined her fingers with his.

“How do you ever trust anyone?” she whispered.

He moved unexpectedly, and she was on her back and he on top of her. She gave a startled wiggle. And found she could not move. The hard ridge of his arousal was pressing demandingly between her thighs, and her knees came up to cradle him on their own volition. She groaned. Yes, no morals or modesty when it came to him, none.

His eyes lit with a knowing gleam. “I pick my confidants carefully,” he said, “and when they look me in the eye, and are hopelessly incapable of keeping an opinion to themselves, I find myself inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

She gave a laugh. “Don’t ever let it be known. Your life would become infinitely more difficult.”

The sudden intensity in his stare should have alarmed her.

She only felt a powerful throb of anticipation.

He flipped her onto her belly.

His hand brushed the tangle of her hair over her shoulder and his tongue was hot against the side of her throat. There was hunger in his kisses, in his exploration of downy skin and sensitive places that came throbbing to life again. She arched her back, enthralled by the feel of firm muscle and crisp chest hair against her shoulders.

“I like hearing you laugh,” he murmured between nips. “It’s a beautiful sound.”

“Better than Mendelssohn?”

She gasped when he bit down on the curve of her neck, lightly enough, mind.

“Yes,” he said, “better.”

His hands slipped between the mattress and the silky weight of her breasts, and the caress of his palms against the excited pink tips tore a surprised moan from her lips. He knew things about her body she hadn’t known, and the more he showed her, the more she could give over, until she was nothing but sensation, until . . . his thighs pressed against hers from behind, spreading her open to fit himself against her.

She stilled when his intention sank in.

His voice was dark and smooth like midnight silk against her ear. “Will you have me like this?”

She swallowed.

His mouth was so soft, so eager, against the curve of her jaw, nipping gently, grazing her tender skin with golden stubble.

“Yes,” she whispered. Yes and yes and yes.

She’d be saying yes to everything soon, so deeply was he already under her skin.

There was no struggle this time, only a smooth, hot glide, the relief to be joined to him again. She buried her flaming face against the cool sheets when he hitched her hips a little higher. Her fingers helplessly curled into the mattress.

Plato was wrong. It wasn’t a satire, the missing half of a soul. The sense of completeness as Sebastian filled her was frightfully, joyfully real. So right, so real, it should never end. But again he nudged her steadily onward with the slide of his thrusts, with his fingers sliding over the slickness between her legs, until she was dissolving to the distant echo of her own cries. In the thick of her pleasure, there was a pang of regret when he pulled away rather than finding completion inside her.