Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lydia felt giddy with her victory as she led Alexander to the bath. The fragrant water steamed, the fire crackled, and the heat played across her goosepimpled skin. He watched her as though he had never seen the female form before.
She couldn’t know for certain, but she fancied he had not been with another woman in a long time. Why that was, she did not know, but it felt gratifying, somehow, to know that this time, it was her. And he wanted her.
His staff jutted from him, the head red. It had felt like velvet-covered steel under her questing hands earlier, and she had seen the play of pleasure across his face.
She wanted this…
But here, he took control, taking hold of her shoulders and stopping her so he could climb into the water first. Only once he was inside did he beckon her closer.
Skin against skin.
For a second, she almost slipped, and he caught her. She laughed, and his eyes sparkled, too. When had she ever seen him laugh? Now she thought on it, she didn’t think she ever had. This wasn’t laughing either, but it was new.
Because of her.
Then she was in the water, almost scalding hot, and her limbs slipped against his.
They lay together for a time, his heart beating under his skin, hers keeping pace with it.
Curled around each other like this, they fit together like two puzzle pieces.
Her curves and softness against his hard lines.
His staff pressed against her stomach; her breasts pillowed against his chest.
“Is this all right?” she whispered, not wanting to break the moment. She had thought she could be like this with him and continue to dislike him, but her feelings were melting under the force of her desire.
No, of course she could not hate him! Nor dislike him. How could she dislike the way his hand skimmed along the subtle curve of her back, settling against the nape of her neck? How could she hate the way he drank her in, or the way his body responded to hers?
No, there was no dislike in her. There hadn’t been since before she chased him into the rain.
To answer her question, he reached up to kiss her.
For a long time, their mouths were the only things that moved.
He kissed her luxuriously, as though he had all the time in the world, and all her excited anticipation deepened into contentment and need together.
His teeth scraped against her bottom lip; she gasped, and he adjusted his hold on her so he could kiss her more deeply.
Slowly, the kiss took on a new life of its own, becoming something that whispered words of its own into the steamy air. Words of desire, of perhaps even affection.
They didn’t speak as he slid his hands across her body, each touch a worship. Stomach, breasts, thighs—he took his time with them all. The water cooled around them, and all he did was touch her.
She should have been impatient. Perhaps, even, she was, but more than that, she felt as though she was experiencing this outside of her body. Both inside it, and not; washed away on sensation and achingly present in the moment…
In return, she touched him. All the bare skin she had half been unable to believe when she’d removed his robe.
Men were such different creatures; all straight lines when she was rounded.
Muscles lurking just under skin, flexing every time he took a breath.
The sharp slash of his clavicle, the dips and hollows of his stomach.
A light dusting of hair as golden as that on his head.
It was a body ravaged yet honed. Flawed, yet so utterly perfect.
He pinched her nipple, and she rolled her hips against him, wanting friction. All that had been dreamy and slow snapped tight all at once.
Urgency replaced patience, and she dug her fingernails into his skin as she slid up his body, knowing now, instinctively, what she needed to do. She needed him to fill her, and then, when she would be whole, a question she hadn’t even known she had been asking would have an answer…
He was the answer to the question she had been asking since she was thirteen years old.
“Lydia.” He grasped her face between his hands, looking straight up at her. “This is not the time and place for—for what you’re asking.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated, and she had the sense he was choosing between reasons, selecting the one he thought she would accept the best. “Water will make it uncomfortable if we were to try… that.”
“What?”
He half laughed, and his staff scraped against her again. She both saw and felt the rush of pleasure that passed through him at this simple contact. “Are you going to make me say it?”
She delighted in his laugh. When he was here, like this, he seemed to have forgotten all the things that plagued him the rest of the time.
Unfamiliar—yet, in truth, familiar—fondness suffused her.
They were here, limbs sliding together in the water, bared to one another, and he was laughing. It felt as though there could be nothing more intimate than this.
“Say it,” she insisted.
“Sex.”
She shivered, the word doing delicious things to her. How coarse, and how fun! Who would have thought that staid, sensible, stern Alexander could be fun? This was the boy she had seen at the lake, the man he would have become if he hadn’t forgotten how to smile.
“Sex,” she repeated.
He groaned, thrusting up against her again. “If you are not careful, you’ll make me over-eager…”
“Is being eager not the point?”
“Mm, I’d rather ensure you are fully pleased first.” He readjusted them, so that when he next thrust up, his shaft slid straight through that precious bundle of nerves that so ached with desire. “Does this please you, Lydia?”
Light exploded behind her eyelids. This wasn’t everything, and yet it was already so much.
She made a little mewling noise which he caught with his mouth, absorbing the sound.
Her knees pressed against the side of the tub, and her fingers dug into his skin, and she urged him on, because there was nothing she wanted more than this.
In this, she had forgotten her aims, all the things she had hoped this intimacy would achieve.
All she knew was the pressure of his erection sliding through her folds, the friction delicious.
All she knew was his hands on her—her breasts, her sides, her hips, her backside.
The water sloshed as they moved together, and she gave herself over to the sensations in her body.
This wasn’t about victory; this wasn’t about ulterior motives. All she could think about was pleasure…
That same pleasure ran up and down her limbs as he thrust up against her, his head tilted back against the lip of the bath. There were no masks on now. His expression was raw with desire, and she knew she would carry this scene with her for the rest of her life.
The heat from the fire against her damp skin.
The press of his mouth against her jaw. The hardness of him as he rubbed against her, the pleasure blinding enough that she wondered if anything could be better than this, this mockery of sex.
They were in an erotic dance, and with every controlled movement, he brought her closer and closer to her peak…
Alexander’s face tightened, and he gripped her bottom, holding her in place as he rolled his hips against her. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the tub.
“I can’t believe this alone is enough…” he breathed, almost grunting the words. “How are you doing this to me?”
She stared into his face as though she could memorize it. But all she could say was his name. “Alexander.”
“Are you close?”
“Close?”
“Climax.”
She dragged in a breath as he slid against the very point she needed. Her entire body was tight, hovering on the very brink. She felt as though her insides were all converging on that one spot inside her—that spot which felt as though it was made of heat and light and everything wonderful.
“Yes…” she whispered.
“Good. I want you to come.”
The crassness of the phrase should have been horrifying for a gently bred lady, but underneath her breeding, she was but a woman, and the phrase did something to her, turning her into a creature of earthly flesh, bringing her so much closer.
“Alexander,” she gasped.
“Now,” he commanded, and to her surprise—almost her horror—her body obeyed him.
She climaxed hard, squeezing around him, her world turning white as pleasure rampaged through her body. This was not the same as the lakehouse, where she had been forced to keep her feet, and although he had touched her in exactly the right way, the pleasure had not been as explosive.
There were two Lydias. The Lydia from before, and the Lydia of after.
He groaned, stiffening under her, and she watched him as he found his own pleasure in the space between their bodies. The water turned cloudy white with his seed, and she looked at it with interest.
So this was what it looked like.
He raised his head, staring at her, his breathing just as ragged as hers, looking as though the experience had shaken him to his very core. Then he looked down and pushed her back, the movement so abrupt it startled her. He stood, water dripping off him.
“Get out of the bath,” he said.