Chapter 13
Later
Lord Rhys Osborne might’ve been down on his luck and a former wastrel and rake, but lest Tilly forget, he was still a lord and lived like one.
All it took was the little tinkle of a bell, and servants were pouring a hot, scrumptious, bubbly, lavender-scented bath at two in the morning.
He was the son of an earl, all right.
For someone like her, someone born with nothing, she supposed it could be something that set her against him. How she could dismiss him as another entitled, wastrel lord—even the third son of an earl was a lord, after all—and take a cool, dismissive view of him.
Except that wasn’t Rhys, the person.
She reckoned he’d been all those things, once, but entitled…wastrel…that wasn’t the man she saw.
Likely, she would never tell him this, but losing his pa’s ring to that rotter Sir Felix might’ve been the making of him.
She almost regretted what she’d decided to do tonight—which was to return the ring to him.
She didn’t feel right keeping it any longer, so she’d brought it with her.
By holding on to it, she was preventing him from making amends with his pa, and she wanted that for him.
After all, it was nearly Christmas. What better gift between father and son than reconciliation?
There was just one thing…
It would mean she wouldn’t be seeing Rhys anymore.
No longer would they have anything that bound them.
Except she did feel bound to him.
When had that happened?
Well, there was last night—the kiss.
And tonight…
Oh, that had been so much more than a kiss.
Her body was still alive with it, as if a lightning bolt had fizzed the champagne bubbles in her veins with electrical current.
But there were other ways she felt bound to him, too, beyond the physical.
Which had to be an illusion brought on by them electric champagne bubbles.
Lawks, what was she, a former strumpet and present lady’s maid, to him, a lord?
A tap-tap sounded on the door, followed by a low, “All right in there?”
She had a choice.
She could say yes, that she would be out in a few minutes.
Though she would encounter no small amount of protest from her luxuriating muscles in the event she attempted to remove them from this delicious heat and these lavender-scented bubbles.
How did a lord have lavender-scented bubbles for the bath, anyway?
It would’ve been that rakish past of his, wouldn’t it?
Better a question left unasked.
Which left her with that other option sitting in her palm.
She could say yes and… “Would you like to come in?”
A slow beat of time ticked past. He was thinking about it. Then… “I would.”
The door opened on silent hinges, and there he was. His coat, cravat, scarf, gloves, and all the rest were gone, and he was down to his bare feet, trousers, and white linen shirt, splayed open in a V down his chest, revealing a dark fuzz of hair and…muscles.
Lawks.
What a sight this man made.
He padded across the marble floor, grabbing a short, three-legged stool along the way, which he placed beside the foot of the bathtub, and lowered, his large body surely testing the stool’s mettle. “Are you enjoying your bath?”
“Aye,” she said, swiping a palmful of bubbles and blowing them in his direction. “And Whitty? Is he all right?”
Rhys snorted. “He’ll be snoozing until noon.”
Tilly’s laugh echoed through the bathroom, bouncing off black-and-white checkered marble, then she said, “I have an impertinent question for you.”
Mischief sparked in his eyes. “My favorite sort.”
“Where does all your blunt come from, anyway?”
“Ah.” His smile turned sheepish. “Well, as a boy, I charmed a great-aunt no end.” He spread his hands wide. “She left me everything.”
All right, now she had another question—one equally impertinent. “Then why did you gamble your pa’s ring?”
“You’re not a gambler, Tilly. I’m not sure you would understand.”
“Tell me.”
The moment stretched long as he considered his response.
“There’s a feeling that lights a match in the blood the instant the wager is made.
And the more precious the wager, the more intense the feeling.
It’s hard to understand it with my logical mind.
That night, I was short ready funds, so I took the ring.
I’d done it before with no harm. I thought history would repeat itself. ” A beat. “It didn’t.”
It was just that simple, his eyes said, and just that devastating.
“May I make an impertinent request of my own?”
She nodded her permission.
“A sentence you began in the park, after…” He didn’t need to say after what. They both knew. “I’d like you to finish that sentence.”
“Remind me?”
“You said that was a first for you. Then you said you said you’d never…”
Oh, that sentence.
A sentence begun when she was yet mindless with the pleasure he’d wrought upon her.
But his silver-gray eyes shone with openness and honesty and she felt like she could tell this man—though he was the son of an earl—anything.
“Last night,” she began, trying to arrange her thoughts in a straight line, “was the first first.”
“You’re going to have to explain.”
“The kiss,” she said. “I’d been kissed before.”
He cocked his head. He was listening.
“But I’d never chosen a kiss. All my kisses—the ones from that other life—they’d been bought and paid for.
Some were better than others, but in my whole life, I’d never kissed a man because I expressly wanted to by my free choice.
” An unaccountable surge of emotion charged through her.
“Until I kissed you, I’d never done anything with a man because I truly wanted to. ”
Still, he listened.
“My own desire and the choice to act on it was a first. Then tonight…” A nervous little laugh escaped her.
“You took my choice and desire and transformed it into something else—pleasure.” She swallowed all that emotion provoked.
“In my experience of the world, desire and pleasure were the domain of men. I had just been a pretty vessel for their snatching of it.”
Rhys swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked suddenly wretched, but said nothing.
“But you, Rhys, you’re not like those men, are you?
” She sat forward, her breasts bobbing heavily beneath the bubbles.
“No man had ever put my pleasure above his own.” She was speaking as earnestly as she ever had in her life.
“Until you.” She was now close enough to touch him.
But she wouldn’t. Not yet, at least. She had even more she wanted to say to this man.
“You wrought a transformation inside me, Rhys. I’m not a vessel.
I’m a woman who can have a desire and act on it. I’m allowed choice and pleasure.”
Her words echoed through the room, but didn’t fall away silently.
Instead, they expanded into the air between them.
“And me, Tilly?” The question emerged as a velvet scrape across his throat, his gaze refusing to release hers. “Do you desire me?”
“Aye.”
“Then, Tilly, I’m yours to have.”
And here was Tilly, presented with another choice by this man.
To have him or not.
The thing was, if she was going to lose him by morning, then where was the harm in having him first?
Her hand, warm and wet, reached out and caressed the side of his face. In a way, she didn’t know how to do this—how to seduce a man—for the outcome of every sexual encounter she’d ever experienced had been a foregone conclusion. There’d been no mystery or intrigue to it.
But this, like everything with Rhys, was novel.
Her hand slid across his rough, unshaven cheek and around to the back of his head, her fingers weaving through those loose curls.
She followed the movement with her body, coming half out of the bathtub to press her mouth to his.
His lips were firm, but soft as they gave over and returned her kiss, his hand reaching up and cupping her face, gently, as if she were precious to him, his other hand sliding down and cupping a breast. He groaned into her mouth, and she swayed forward, giving him more access.
“Tilly, you’ll fall out of the tub,” he said, his chuckle whispering across her lips.
She found a laugh of her own joining his, at the situation, at herself, her eagerness, as she released him and shifted backwards in the tub, slightly weightless. She could feel the saucy smile on her mouth. “How can you join me in here if you don’t take your clothes off first?”
He didn’t hesitate. He slipped his shirt over his head in a swift, elegant sequence of movement that might’ve been showing off.
Then he stood.
The breath caught in her lungs.
Lawks, the sight of this man.
How did a woman ever get over it?
Those broad shoulders and chest fuzzed with black hair, leading the eye down the ridged muscles of his stomach…down to where those long, capable fingers of his were working the falls of his trousers.
Her mouth went dry.
Which was the only dry thing about her.
One button undone, then another…and another…then…
He was free.
She gasped.
Rhys chuckled, and her eyes startled up to meet his. “My cock tends to elicit that response.”
“It’s so…”
“Big?” he finished for her.
She swallowed and nodded. As he stepped out of his trousers, she shifted to one end of the tub to allow him inside with her. He planted his hands on each side and began to lower.
On instinct, she stopped him. She wanted to feel him. That muscled stomach…those thick thighs…that taut arse… his shaft.
Tentatively, her fingers feathered up its long, thick length. On instinct, she angled forward and touched her tongue to him.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Tilly, you don’t have to—”
Up the length of his hard, muscled body, she met his gaze. “Isn’t this about what I want?”
“Aye.” His voice had gone to velvet gravel.
“I want to feel you this way, Rhys.”
She dragged her tongue up his shaft. How hot and smooth he was against her. Hard as iron, but so very human—strong and vulnerable.