Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
S amuel had not stayed away quite half an hour, but he’d begun to worry about the window. There were other exits out of the inn. He couldn’t see every door from the dining room. But from the window… anyone boarding a coach or mounting a horse would be within view. Besides, the maids and footmen he’d spoken with had not seen a young girl who looked like Samuel or a man who fit the descriptions given of any of Felicity’s suitors. Hopefully, Trent, Helston, and the others would discover who the gentleman was Felicity ran off with.
Hopefully, Samuel would find her before that.
He climbed the stairs and at the end of the hall put his ear against the door. Quiet. Should he knock? What if she was sleeping? He’d wake her then, and he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to give her what she needed. Trent thought he’d promised to marry Emma, but Samuel couldn’t promise that. He wanted to. God, he wanted to. But she had to know first what risks she’d be taking. As if they hadn’t already taken a risk. Perhaps stepping onto the road with him was proof enough—she’d risk it all to stand by him.
Damn. He felt selfish as hell to ask it of her. She wanted a meandering sort of courtship, after all, to be shown before words were fitted to actions.
He raised his fist but then unfurled it, opening the door instead of knocking so he didn’t wake her if she was sleeping. He paused, the door open only a few inches. The squeaky hinge. That might wake her, too. What in hell was he supposed to do? He needed the window, but he’d also rather fling himself out of it than disturb her rest, and—
A moan shattered the silence. Low and throaty, it caught him up, heated his lungs and twisted his belly. Another moan. And not one of pain or distress. Only one feeling tore a moan like that from a woman’s throat.
To hell with squeaky hinges. He pushed the door open wide— squeak !—and shut it silently behind him. But she didn’t seem to hear, though she’d not yet succumbed to sleep. Across the room, a fire screen had been set up to shield the tub from view, but the flames behind it cast the tub and a woman’s head, neck, shoulders, and knees into a perfect silhouette. Emma’s perfect silhouette, the long line of her neck sloping up to the tip of her chin, her elegant profile angled to the ceiling, hair piled high atop her head, cascading in ringlets on the outside of the tub, lips parted, another moan slipping out. One of her knees lifted higher above the edge of the tub as her shoulders sank below it. Her leg unfolded, toe pointing toward the ceiling, and she gave a husky laugh as she rolled her foot at her ankle. Curvaceous calf, delicate ankle, sloped arch—proportions he ached to admire. With his hands. With his lips.
He should leave.
He couldn’t. Not if the entire army tried to pull him away. He’d fight tooth and nail, send a thousand blades flying into the air, straight at hearts, to remain where he was, watching Emma bathe, watching her enjoy her body.
As he enjoyed it.
No denying it. His cock had leapt to life at her first moan, and now it was rock hard and uncomfortably confined.
Another moan became a grumble, as she said, “Oh, I need. But what the devil is it? Something… something.”
Earlier, she’d known what she needed. A man who shows me in every action what his intentions are.
He could do that. A courtship could be meandering and direct at the same time. He was sure of it.
He sat on the bed, and it squeaked beneath his weight, but still she did not hear. So he said, “Whatever it is you need, Emma, I’m the only man to help you to it.”
The yelp and the splash happened simultaneously, the silhouette of her body disappearing beneath the tub’s edge.
“Emma!” He shot to his feet and was halfway across the room when the top of her head appeared in silhouette once more, a bobbling lump of a shadow on the fire screen.
“No!” she barked. “Do not come closer! What are you doing?”
“Watching you.”
“Well, do not watch me. Leave!” She grumbled something that sounded like indefensible load . Or reprehensible rogue . Surely not that.
“Are you sure you wish me to leave? I’d very much like to help you discover what you need, what you deserve.”
She groaned. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to know you are halfway between heaven and frustration in that tub. Have I been very wicked, Emma? Staying. And listening.”
“Wicked is not strong enough a word.”
“Naughty, then?”
Whatever she said was garbled by the water.
“I think I have been. But so have you, Emma. Touching yourself when you think no one is looking. Now let me help you.” How long had it been since he’d enjoyed an intimate encounter with a woman? Not long after he’d become a duke, he’d sunk into an unintentional life of celibacy. Had he really been without a woman for thirteen years? Might as well be a virgin again. He couldn’t even remember the names or faces or shapes of the women he’d slept with when young.
He certainly did not remember how to seduce. But he didn’t need to remember. Everything with Emma—teasing, talking, trusting, kissing—had come like breathing, natural and right. All he had to do now was… whatever occurred to him.
And what occurred to him was to strip the gentleman straight out of him, to leave bare the wild need, too long suppressed, that growled within.
To take the only woman he’d kissed in years, the only woman he’d wanted to kiss, and make her scream his name.
Resolve, intention, hardened him, made a promise within him. After over a decade of sacrifice, he would take something for himself.
He would take Emma as his own. In the name of courtship, naturally. Of the meandering sort…
Only a few steps took him to the edge of the fire screen, and he traced the top of it, traced the outline of the tub with his fingertips. He could peer over if he wished.
Not yet.
“You were touching yourself, weren’t you?” he asked, tracing and retracing the shadows of her wild curls poking up above the edge of the tub.
“No.” A bubble of a word.
“Come now, Emma. Tell the truth.”
“No.” He could not see her jaw set stubborn and low beneath the wavering line of water, but he heard it in her voice.
“Hm. I think I will be able to know the truth if I see you. I’ll just come around the screen, and—”
“Stay there, you…. you… you duke !”
He chuckled, peeled off his greatcoat, and threw it on top of a chair near the window. “If it pleases you, I’ll stay here, keep the screen between us. That satisfies me. For now. But you’ve still not answered my original question. Are you… were you… attempting to please yourself?”
“What in heaven’s name has gotten into you?”
“The moon, likely. It’s full tonight. The moon always makes me want you. As if I do not always want you.” Unintentional confession. Couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Now tell me, or I’ll take one quick step around the screen, and—”
“Yes! Yes, if you must know. I was… I was doing that . Attempting to.”
But failing. Tragedy, that. “Have you ever done it before?”
She rose slightly, the long column of her neck a stark outline on the screen, and then the slopes of her shoulders before she leaned against the back of the tub. “No. Never.” Truth there. “Why didn’t it work?” she grumbled.
“What were you thinking of?” He drew a line up the shadow of her curved neck, stopped at the tip of her chin, letting his fingertip linger, kissed that little cliff.
“I will not say.”
“I hope you were thinking of me.”
A gasp, half yelp, all truth.
“You were thinking of me,” he said around a smile. “How serendipitous.”
“I was not!” Silence, not even the splash of a body moving in water. “Why is it serendipitous?”
“Because I’ve begun to think of you. At night before I sleep. In the morning when I wake up, my cock hard and my head filled with Lady Emma Blackwood.”
“No, you haven’t. You… you should not say such things.”
“I have. Barely tried not to, though I know it makes me a rogue. Frankly, I’m too tired to put up a fight. I rather think it’s time I simply… surrender. Will you surrender with me?”
She sank a bit under the edge of the tub. “I do not know what you mean.” Her voice small, low, unsure.
“Let me be clearer, then. I want you to beckon me behind this screen. I want you to watch me strip off my jacket”—he did so, tossing it to the bed—“and roll up my sleeves past my elbows.” He rolled them all the way up. “And sit behind you before slipping my hands into the water and finding the soap and gliding it across every inch of you.”
Her silhouette shivered, and her head fell back more, opening up that smooth curve of throat.
“I’d make you warm. Boiling, like me, rubbing the soap against your neck and behind your ear, washing the sweet, clean scent away, then replacing it with my lips.”
The water splashed, and she moved, though he could not see exactly how by her shadow. She might be… oh, yes, she was, stroking her fingers up and down her neck.
“I’d wash your collarbone next,” he said, and her fingers wandered lower. “And then I’d feel the weight of your breasts in my palms, the silk of your skin.” The splash of water musical, and the press of his cock against his fall painful. “Are you doing it for me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes. Oh, I should not.”
“Drop your worry. Let me care for you.”
“Yes.”
“Can I come behind the screen yet?”
“No.”
“Then you must do the work for me, I’m afraid. And where I’m going next, you may fear to tread.”
“W-where?”
“Low, Emma. Down the length of your torso, circling your navel. I’d drop a kiss there, flick my tongue into it.” Her breath hitched. “Like that, do you? You’ll like this better. Because after I’ve gained a gasp, dragging my hands down the lovely length of your waist, the perfect flare of your hips, I’m going to learn the texture of your inner thighs, the crispness of the curls at your very center, learn how wet you are.”
“V-very. I’m in a tub.”
He rested his forehead against the screen, flattening his palm over her profile. “Hell, Emma, let me teach you. Please, let me show you.”
“No,” she squeaked, a bit like the door hinge. “Not yet.”
Not yet. He could live with that. “Then if I am to stand here while you luxuriate there, we might as well continue.” He licked his lips. “Slip your hand between your legs.”
“Now what?”
“Stroke the length of your cunny, love.”
She made a strangled sound, but her shoulder bobbed above the rim of the tub in a rhythmic motion.
“Clever, clever lady. Keep at it, moon maiden. If I were there with you, I’d have one hand between your legs, the other on your breast, and my mouth devouring yours. I’d learn the taste of you and the feel of you with every stroke of my tongue and of my fingers.”
She moaned as her silhouette undulated.
“I’ve kissed you twice, but I’ve not kissed you properly. I would if I were back there. Hell, as soon as I rip this screen away, I’ll kiss you properly. Tonight. Kiss you all over until every one of your worries melts away.”
Worries. He had them, too, should be focused on them. But who the hell could focus with an erection like a tuning fork leading him to this woman. There would be time for worries after.
“I want to feel your teeth scrape across my skin,” he said. “I want to brand every part of you, so when you enter a ballroom, every single person there knows you’re mine.”
“I’m not yours.” But the breathiness of her voice said otherwise. She growled. “I’m so close to something. But I cannot… I cannot…” She arched her back, and for a lovely, fire-limned moment, her breasts were silhouettes arcing toward his hand before disappearing beneath the water once more.
Enough. Enough .
He pushed the screen aside, and there she was, red-cheeked and gasping, one arm thrown across her breasts, the other sank beneath the water between her legs.
“Stand,” he demanded.
She sank lower, holding her breath, only her eyes visible beneath the water line.
He whipped the linen towel off the nearby chair. “Stand, Emma, and let me dry you.” He bent and flicked his fingers into the water, so very close to her body. “It’s cold. Let me warm you.”
She stood, shivering, the fire outlining her body, and he allowed himself to look his fill. She glowed. He’d thought he loved her in moonlight best. Not true. The red-gold flames loved flickering across her smooth skin, illuminating large swathes of it, casting tantalizing corners of her into shadows. Her breasts, small and pert and perfect, were hidden behind her arms, and her soft belly gave way to lovingly rounded hips, thighs perfect for sinking between. Legs as long as a sinful life and made for pleasure.
“Christ, Emma. You’re so beautiful.”
She bit her bottom lip, looked toward the fire.
“Can I touch you?”
“You seem to be set on it.”
“Do you want me to touch you?”
She nibbled still, torturing that lip and refusing to look at him. She studied the floor beneath his feet. Something there must have given her resolve, for she raised her chin steadily until she met his gaze. “Yes, I do want that. And I… I want you to show me what I’m missing.”
All he needed.
He whipped the towel out and draped it around her back, over her shoulders, holding it tight in front of her chest and sinking his other hand into the curls at the nape of her neck. Her eyes closed on a trembling breath, and she let go, let him hold her up, let him take charge. He helped her step over the edge of the tub, and then he worked the linen up her neck and into her hair where the curls dripped onto her skin. Then down her arms where he discovered freckles on the inside of her elbow, her wrist. He dried off her ribs and belly and back, then paid particular attention to her breasts, the rosy nipples, the soft, creamy handfuls.
Then he knelt before her on a knee and dried the rest of her. Every inch of skin he touched, the linen an enticing barrier between his skin and hers, enflamed him. He could burn the water off her skin and carry her to the bed and show her quickly what she sought.
But he slowed every movement, every stroke, and when a drop of water slid down her ribs and waist and onto the curve of her hip, he licked it away, leaving the indentation of his greedy fingertips in her skin and discovering the taste of her on his tongue. Clean, golden moonlight, heat and silvered darkness. Impossible spices, but hers just the same. He kissed that place to suck up any remaining water.
And his hands bracketed her hips to keep her right there. With him.
And she touched him . She surrendered, hands smoothing across his temples to sink into his hair and grip at the back of his head. “Samuel,” she whispered, her back arching, and if he did not finish this task, he’d leave ten little half-moons on her hips, marking her with his need where his hands gripped her.
The towel completed one quick journey up and down each leg, and then he pressed it against her core.
“Oh.” Her hands in his hair gripping hard, her back arching to press her sweet cunny into the towel, into his hand.
He dropped the towel, picked up the woman, and in three strides laid her across the bed. She propped herself up on elbows and shivered. The fire’s heat could not reach over here quite so well. But when she fumbled at the head of the bed to pull the quilt back and crawl under, he stopped her, setting one knee on the bed and pinning one wrist to the mattress beside her head.
“I’ll warm you.” He cupped her cheek and kissed her softly and lingered there at her lips because this was the first time he’d kissed her knowing it would not be the last. It would be the first of many. He wanted to remember it, to paint it across his memory.
When he pulled away, he smoothed his hand down her neck. Her shy smile was like a knife right to the center of his heart. She knew how to hit the bullseye in one throw, and he’d gladly perish to the blade of such a weapon.
He stroked his hand farther down, stopping at her breast to rub his thumb over her peaked nipple. Her inhale was deep and a pleasure to his ears, and he kissed her collarbone, then her breast, and then gently pulled that rosy nipple between his teeth.
Her hands, which had been lifeless on the bed, jumped up, and she flattened her palms on his back, bunching the fabric of his waistcoat and shirt sleeves in tight fists.
“Do not be scared, Emma,” he said.
“I'm not.”
“Brave and beautiful.” And mine. Did he dare tell her that yet?
She should not have kissed him in the garden, should not have shown him her desire.
He nuzzled the warm, clean space between her breasts, then kissed his way down the center of her body, stopping as he'd promised at her navel, circling it with his tongue, kissing it before dragging his tongue lower to those crisp curls between her legs. And to what they hid.
He wrapped one hand around her upper thigh just below the creamy curve of her arse. His other hand he dipped between her legs teasing her cunny with long, slow strokes. As he slid down her body, her hands slid up his, and now they tangled in his hair, their pressure telling him if she liked or feared what he did. They were tight now, pulling him a little away.
He tilted his head up and set his chin on her hip, his thumb rubbing soft circles on her inner thigh. “Objections?”
She tucked her lips between her teeth and shook her head. “It is only… could you tell me what you are doing? So I know? It's a little embarrassing to be a spinster of one and thirty whose last kiss was so long ago she barely remembers it.”
“We have something in common, then. It has been so very long since I've touched a woman's body that I barely remember what one looks like.”
“Really?” Confidence sprouting in her voice like an early spring bloom.
He nodded, his chin digging into her flesh. “Are you surprised?”
She brushed his cheek with the very tips of her fingers, then dropped her hand to the bed as if it were too heavy to hold up any longer, as if all her energy and attention had focused elsewhere. “Who has time for… this sort of thing?”
They did not even have time now, but he would make it. For her.
“Perhaps,” he mumbled through kisses placed meticulously along her hip bone, “our obligations were saving us for one another.”
Her cheeks went pink first and then the rest of her body as she looked away. She seemed to have a habit of looking away when she felt most intensely, and the most intense feeling he’d ever had gripped him, and he pushed his fingers through her curls to find the little hidden pearl.
She hissed, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. “That… is that what I have heard of?”
“Were you touching here in the tub?” He circled the little place on her body, making her arch and hiss.
“No. No. I did not know.”
He would soon teach her. What a damn perfect pleasure, a privilege he did not deserve, to be the first, the only, to make her shatter and scream and call his name. His name the only one to pass her lips with such ecstasy. Her hands fisting in the quilt, her hips rocking against his lips and tongue.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Pleasure. Don’t chase it. Let it come to you.”
“Impossible. Impossible, Sam—oh! Do that again.”
He chuckled. She liked it when he squeezed her breast, rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger. He did again, and she arched off the bed. He raked his fingers down her body and pressed his mouth to her, kissed her, chased her pleasure higher, his own body taut as a drawn bow, aching for release but needing her release first, needing it more. Her body tight, too, and her breathing erratic, and the air around them hot but the points where their skin met (too few) even hotter.
A sound stuck in her throat, and she stopped breathing, her hips rolling upward. He looked up, needing to see her. Lip between teeth, eyes closed, hair like a blazing fire around her pale face. She shook, gasping for an inhale, and he moved up her body, stealing a kiss, letting her inhale him. Her arms wound round him, held tight as she buried her face in his cravat.
“Samuel,” she whispered.
And he lost control, rolling his hips against her, loving the cry she sent into the air, holding her tight as she shattered, and damn it all, he shattered, too, the fire in her expression shooting through his veins, the painful pleasure of her innocent touch breaking him. He kissed her as they rose, and he kissed her as they fell, and when she gave a little worn-out sigh, a hint of wonder at the edges, it fed him because he kissed her then, too.
Thundering hearts and sweaty skin and gentle fingers hesitant now.
He gathered her close, and she let him, curling into his chest like she’d been born to do so and pressing her palm against his muscle.
When she spoke, it was in her practical Emma voice, not the fated tones of a goddess, though he’d half expected her to arrive on the other side of pleasure as such. “It is terribly unfair that I am spread naked before you, and you still possess many layers to keep you warm.” She fiddled with the buttons on his waistcoat.
“Are you cold?” He dragged her to the top of the mattress—while she laughed—and tugged the quilt down, pulled it on top of her. Laughing, she let him tuck her in, and still she laughed when he settled back down beside her on the outside of the blankets. “There. Better? Why are you laughing? You are naked as the day you were born. The air is cold!”
She only laughed harder, curling in on herself and pulling the quilt over her mouth to silence her glee. He kissed her, needing to share her happiness, and that calmed her. She cupped his face and sank into his embrace, and when she was soft and silent in his arms, he asked again, “Are you cold?”
“Not a bit.” She ducked her head, then tilted it back to peer up at him. “Thank you for showing me. And thank you for keeping all your clothes on. I may know little, but I know enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you had undressed… that would be more dangerous than this. This we can still turn away from.”
No, they could not. Didn’t she feel it? Didn’t she understand?
She kissed the round of his shoulder and settled into the mattress at his side. “Thank you for protecting me. And for teaching me. Now sleep. We have much to do tomorrow.”
Yes, they did have much to do tomorrow.
But Samuel did not sleep. He undressed and slipped into the cold tub, washing away the evidence of their lust in the frigid water, taming the new bout of lust slowly creeping over him.
His tall Emma seemed so small curled up on her side, her cheek glowing in the shadows, her tangled hair spread like streams of sunlight over the pillow.
He would have to tell her. About the books, about his sisters, about the risks. And he’d have to pray she thought him worth it all.
He rose from the tub, stepped over the side, and right onto something that was not the floor. He scooted his foot a few inches to the side and grabbed the object as he grabbed the linen he’d used to dry her and dried himself.
A book. The School of Venus. Oh, hell. Not one of those . He dressed in clean smalls, trousers, and shirtsleeves and sat at the window, peering out. They weren’t here, Felicity and her rogue. But he’d keep a watchful eye, anyway.
Despite that heavy disappointment, something bright like a candle lit within him. The book was a sign. Those books had nearly ruined his family. Those books controlled who he wed. Those books had brought his parents together. And without the book he’d just discovered discarded on the floor by the tub, he’d never have watched Emma attempting to pleasure herself, and if he’d never done that, he might never have had the chance to take up the job himself.
He opened the book, and as the moon glowed high and bright, he read.
And he hoped.