Chapter 15
R hys stilled. “You don’t?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly, then rested it against his chest, relaxing into him even further. “I want to be your lover.”
“Silly.” He kissed the shell of her ear, still holding her gaze. “You can be both.”
“Not whilst maintaining my self-respect,” she protested firmly. “I don’t want ten thousand pounds. I don’t want to be your kept woman. All I want is to be your lover. For the next month and no more.”
There. She had said it. Now that the words had left her, the last of her trepidation slid away as well, replaced by desire as he swirled his touch over her breast, somehow finding the space within her loosened corset to further torment her.
“You will be mine for the next month?” He nuzzled her throat, withdrawing his hand from her corset and leaving her bereft.
But she didn’t hesitate in her response. “Yes.”
Both of his hands were clamped on her waist now in a possessive hold as his eyes seared hers in the mirror. “I don’t share, kitten.”
“Nor do I.”
“Good.” He spun her about with such speed that she flattened her palms on his chest, clinging to him. “Say it again.”
“I’ll be your lover for the next month.”
He shook his head slowly, his stormy stare fixated upon her lips. “Tell me that you’ll be mine.”
“I’ll be yours.”
Saying the words came naturally. Because they felt right. And the act of giving herself to this man, of embracing the pleasures she had so long been denied in her unhappy marriage, felt better than right.
“I’ve been waiting an eternity to hear you say that,” he told her.
She couldn’t resist gliding her hands up his chest, over silk warmed from his body, to cup his handsome face.
The prickle of his golden whiskers enthralled her, as did the freedom to touch him thus.
To long for him without self-loathing. To simply accept that she could have this man for herself, even if it was finite.
“You haven’t known me for an eternity,” she pointed out softly, thinking every facet of his countenance a marvel.
His cheekbones were blades, his mouth sensual and full, his jaw determined and masculine.
Even his brows, a shade darker than his golden hair, were elegant and defined, somehow making his brilliant eyes stand out in stark relief against his sun-dappled skin.
Everything about him was different. Unique.
Familiar and yet new, almost as if she had not allowed herself the freedom to truly take all of him in until now, this moment.
“It feels as if I have,” he said, his voice for once lacking its customary flippant teasing. “It feels as if I’ve always known you. As if there is no one I want to know more.”
His words struck a place inside her that she’d previously believed buried and hidden away. He stole her breath with those confessions, and not just because she felt the same way, but because she had already surrendered. There was no reason to ply her with rakish charm. She was his.
“I feel it too,” she murmured, a rush of tenderness careening through her, raw and dangerous and just a little bit wild.
All for this man, who was vexing and beautiful, complicated and enigmatic, who was passionate and bold.
His mouth was on hers, ravenous and hot. It was a kiss that didn’t so much claim as it plundered, leaving her stripped of all defenses and artifice. She opened her mouth for his questing tongue and didn’t care. Everything that wasn’t Rhys ceased to exist.
She sucked on his tongue and reveled in the growl that emanated from his chest, in the way his fingers found the knot on her corset and frantically worked it apart, loosening her laces until satin and boning gave way.
Hooks and eyes came open, and then her corset was falling.
Hairpins were next, a waterfall of them raining to the floor as he pulled them free of her chignon.
Hair tumbled down her back in a heavy coil that fell apart like her resistance.
She caught a handful of his hair and held him to her, feeding him voracious kisses in return.
There seemed to be an undercurrent of fire between them, more intense than those that had come before, not just of desire, but of understanding.
Acknowledgment. There was something deeply powerful about embracing this part of herself, a part she had restrained for so long and which had been longing for release.
A tearing sound filled the air, and then the kiss of cool night air whispered over her bare breasts. She broke the kiss to see that Rhys had rent her chemise the rest of the way.
“It was already beyond mending,” he murmured and then cupped her breasts in his big hands, his thumbs unerringly finding her hard nipples and stroking until she was on her toes, making kittenish sounds that didn’t belong to her.
If she didn’t soon step into the bath, she would never make it.
And she very much wanted to be free of kitchen drudgery tonight.
She wanted to be clean and soft and-sweet smelling for him.
So she found the buttons on her drawers and plucked them free, sending them to the floor.
“So beautiful,” he rasped.
She had never felt particularly beautiful—and less so since she had begun her new path in life.
But he made her remember that old part of herself she had long since buried beneath mountains of duty and obligations.
The young woman who had been blithely hopeful, who had dressed with care before balls and danced with suitors and who had naively believed she would marry a man who loved her, have a bevy of children, and live happily until her last day.
He made her want to be herself, but wiser.
He made her feel beautiful and unencumbered, free and bold and wanton. She reveled in it. In him.
“You should get into your bath before it grows cold,” he said. “Let me help you with your stockings.”
She nodded, not wanting to lose his touch, and yet knowing he was right.
The water would soon cool, and she needed to wash the toiling of the day away.
He rolled down her garters and stockings with great care, then helped her into the tub.
With a sigh of pure bliss, she sank down into the water, all the way up to her chin.
“This is heavenly,” she said, enjoying herself immensely, for the tub in her modest accommodations was a mere hip bath.
She had forgotten the luxury of a large, deep tub, the water covering her entirely. Here was her reminder of what she had been missing, and she would enjoy it whilst she could.
“I see your lady’s maid was at least efficient in setting out the soap and shampoo,” he commented, selecting a small, round bar of soap and a cloth before pushing a mahogany stool nearer to the tub with his bare foot.
She knew a moment of guilt at her deliberate fib. “I may have dismissed her in the hope that someone else might wash my hair for me instead.”
“Oh? Have I a competitor for this role?” He settled the soap and cloth in his lap and then began rolling up the sleeves of his dressing gown, one by one. “Perhaps I need to challenge someone to pistols at dawn.”
She lifted a hand from the bath, water dripping from her fingertips, and flicked a hint of spray in his direction playfully. “No duels over me, if you please. There is only one man I want to wash my hair.”
The second sleeve was rolled to his elbow, putting his comely forearms on display.
It was a part of a man that was so oft hidden from view, and Miranda had never been particularly bothered by it either way.
But one look at Rhys’s forearms made her understand why men were meant to wear sleeves for the sake of propriety.
His forearms were, like the rest of him, disturbingly attractive.
“The man in question had better be me,” Rhys said with mock warning before taking up the soap and cloth and dunking both into the water. “Now, where shall I begin, my queen?”
She giggled at his silliness. “I didn’t know that pages are tasked with bathing their queens.”
“This one is. I take my duties very seriously.” He shifted, scooting his stool to the foot of the tub. “I believe I’ll work from bottom to the top.” Rhys held out one hand, palm up. “Your foot, oh queen.”
She bit her lip to keep another giggle from falling from her lips at his ridiculous insistence upon pretending she was a queen and he her loyal vassal and lifted her right foot. He took it and began soaping up the sole, the abrasion of the cloth on her sensitive skin making her jump.
“Ah,” he drawled, as if he had just made an immense discovery, casting a glance in her direction. “My queen is ticklish.”
“Only with light touches,” she said as he made another pass of the soapy cloth along her arch, and she flinched again, her reaction instinctive.
“This is information that could prove most useful to me. A word of warning, kitten, you must never allow me to have the upper hand. I’ll be shameless at exploiting it.”
He finished washing her foot, then worked his way up her ankle and along her calf, taking his time, his fingers gently exploring along with the soap and cloth.
She had no doubt his warning was complete truth.
The Duke of Whitby was a man who unrepentantly seized whatever he wanted, using any means necessary.
He had certainly done so with her. And yet, as she soaked in the bliss of the hot bath and he tended to her, Miranda couldn’t summon even a modicum of outrage.
“I also kick when tickled to excess,” she cautioned him as he finished with one leg, having washed her thigh whilst avoiding moving too high. “My younger sisters dearly loved to tickle my feet whilst I was sleeping. You can imagine what happened when they stood too near one morning.”
He chuckled as he soaped her left foot. “Never say you kicked the poor girls.”