Chapter 20 #2
“What the hell?” he growled before he even registered who had entered his private sanctum.
“Oh! I didn’t know you were—” Elspeth broke off. “Oh,” she repeated more faintly, her eyes locked on his chest and torso, then to his right side where the scarring was thickest and had warped his shape most distinctly.
“Enjoying the view?” he asked, not bothering to hide the tension pulling his muscles taut. He knew the strain came out as anger, but he didn’t make a move to hide himself. She’d sought him out; she couldn’t leave well enough alone. Now she’d learn what she’d married.
“No. I mean…”
“You should leave.”
“But I’ve spent the last hour looking for you.” Then she started walking toward him.
He edged back against the wall of the tub. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Get close to me.”
“Yes, that’s been your plan since you chose me.
” When she reached the edge of the tub, Elspeth’s gaze flicked up to his face, and now there was a challenge there.
“Acquire a suitable wife to fulfill your own duty to get an heir. No thought beyond that, though, was there? God forbid I might actually get to know you.”
Struan was not prepared for that line of attack. “I meant you should stop moving toward me. Physically.”
“I know what you meant.” Her voice sharpened. “I’m not an idiot.”
“I never thought you were.”
“You certainly hoped that I’d be malleable, though. A simple girl you could put on a shelf once I’d done my own duty and got you a son.”
“What? Ellie, no.” Though in fact that had been the original plan, the safe plan, the before-Ellie-smiled-at-him plan.
“Were you going to keep me here at Linneliath after you’d finished with me? Maybe in a nice suite of rooms in the east wing, so you can keep living your own life in the west wing? Would that be more convenient?”
“I wasn’t thinking about convenience.”
“Were you thinking about anything?” she asked, leaning over the tub edge, her hands braced on the rim.
Struan inhaled, wondering if he’d look like a coward if he jumped out of the tub and ran away.
Yes. That’s the definition of coward.
She smelled good, like springtime. God, he was sitting here naked, all his scars and injuries on display, having a fight with his wife, and all he could think was that she smelled good? “Ellie, what do you want?”
“What do you want is the better question! Tell me plainly what you expect, and no more games. You buy me gowns that no one sees me wear. You nearly kill a man for flirting with me, but you don’t touch me for weeks afterward.
And then you finally consummate the marriage, but you don’t—” She broke off, and he realized with a jolt that she was near tears. Oh, hell.
“Don’t what?” he demanded.
“It doesn’t matter.” She looked down again. “You were right before. I’ve intruded and made you reveal what you never intended me to see.”
Himself.
Ellie turned away, but before she could take a step, he leaned forward and seized her hand. “Stay,” he said, not knowing that’s what he’d say until it came out.
Over her shoulder, she cast him a glance filled with doubt.
“Stay,” he said again.
Her body was almost as tense as his, he could tell.
“You can look,” he said. After all, she already had. What was the point of hiding anymore?
She was already looking again, surveying him with an expression he couldn’t read. He was looking for pity, but he couldn’t find that. He found concern, yes, but nothing of the condescending oh-how-tragic-for-you that he remembered from the days and weeks following his injuries.
He searched for the slightest sign of disgust, but was surprised at just how calm she was. Well, why not? She was calm at the wedding, when any normal woman would have fled.
“You’re taking your time,” he said, mostly because Ellie’s silence was becoming uncomfortable for him.
“If you’d let me look before, I wouldn’t have to catch up now. And there’s a lot of you to look at,” she added with the tiniest smile.
Something in her voice hooked into him and tugged, and yes, he was getting hard. How? This should be humiliating. The opposite of erotic.
And yet. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, her gaze skimming up and down him, and he was stiff as a rod.
“I could join you,” she offered, making it his choice.
But what other choice could he make? He said what he wanted to say. “Join me.”
Elspeth stripped off her gown, letting it pool at her feet. She had a moment of difficulty with the stays, but then they too dropped to the floor, and she stood in just her chemise. She began to gather the fabric up, intending to remove it, but Struan said, “No, leave it on.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see what it looks like wet.” And he wanted to take it off her with his own hands.
Elspeth stepped into the hot water. Cautious, careful. The chemise clung to her body as she moved over him, molding to hips and breast, highlighting her curves. She stood with one leg on each side of his hips, and he loved that view.
“This is an extravagant bath,” she said, lowering herself so she sat across his lap.
“It’s insane. Some ancestor’s whim. The hot water helps me relax.” Not that he was relaxed now.
Ellie regarded him from this much closer angle, her eyes moving over the scarred and unbroken skin alike.
“I wanted to spare you the sight,” he said.
“The sight doesn’t trouble me. You look like you, and I want to know everything about you. So of course I must see your whole body. You’ve seen my whole body.”
“But you’re beautiful,” he said. “Everything about you is beautiful. I can’t believe I get to touch you.”
“I love it when you touch me,” she said, taking his hands and raising them to her breasts.
He rubbed his thumbs across them, feeling the slip of wet fabric over her skin.
She gave a little gasp, her mouth opening into an O that sparked dirty ideas in his mind.
She said, “In bed you never let me touch you back. It’s cruel of you. ”
“I didn’t mean it to be.”
“Can I touch you here? In the bath?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “But you must stop if I tell you. That’s a rule.”
“I’m good at following rules,” she said, which was a sentence he longed to test in all sorts of ways.
But then she was touching him, carefully and gently. “Would you tell me to stop because I might hurt you? I always worry that you’re in pain,” she said softly, splaying her hand over the largest area of scarring.
“I’m not in much pain, mostly. Unless you consider being aroused like this and not doing anything about it pain.”
“Is it? Painful to…get stiff like you do?”
“Is it painful for you when you get warm and wet for me?”
“There’s an ache,” she told him. “And it aches until you make it end. And then it feels so good.”
His breath caught as she leaned over him.
“I had wondered about this part of you,” she confessed.
She slid one finger along his shaft, and just that touch made him want to grab her and spread those pretty legs and sink into her. He said, his voice taut, “What do you wonder?”
“Well, what it looks like, obviously.” She was still running her finger up and down its length, until she traced the ridge along the underside and he groaned.
“Oh? You like that?” she asked, looking up at him with an expression that was part shy, part sly…a woman learning about a man after a lifetime of being forbidden from doing so.
“I’m very sensitive there.”
“Hmmm.” She wrapped her hand around him, and he closed his eyes as he felt her strokes, slow and maddening. He kept teasing her breasts, completely saturated from the fabric. He longed to peel off the sopping-wet chemise and lick off the water with his tongue.
When she reached his stones and started playing with them, he thought he might pass out from the sheer unexpected pleasure.
“We need to leave this tub,” he got out between groans.
“Oh? Is the water getting cold?”
“No, but if we continue what we’re doing, I’ll never be able to take a simple bath again. I’ll always be remembering the one time I took you in here.”
She laughed a little, actually turning her head in a shy gesture. “Maybe someday. But for now, if you like, we can go to…your bed? It’s closest.”
It was about fifty feet closer than hers, but Struan didn’t want to waste a moment, so he nodded.
Ellie released his cock, damn it, and put her hands on the rim of the tub to balance as she stood up and finally peeled off the soaking chemise.
“I wanted to do that for you,” he said.
“Oh, sorry.”
“I’ll survive.” Struan slid his hands along her legs until he reached the apex, and then slipped one thumb into the folds of her sex, just for a second. The sound she made would keep him up nights for a long time.
Somehow, they both got out of the bath.
There was only one towel, so he wrapped it around her, drying her off.
Ellie responded by stepping next to him and running her hands over his still-damp flesh.
He shivered, more from the sensation of her delicate touch than from cold.
She took her time, keeping a leisurely pace as she inched downward, enjoying making him impatient.
Then she stepped back to regard his cock again, arrowing out eagerly, tip already beading with moisture.
“Does it have a taste?” she asked. Before he could say anything, she knelt and licked the tip of his cock, her tongue curling to catch the bead of liquid.
He was going to die if she didn’t do it again.
“Ellie.” It was meant to be a warning, but it sounded like a plea.
“Salty,” she said, looking delighted with herself for finding out. “A little salty.”
“Bedroom,” he ordered, his voice gone hoarse.
Ellie tossed him the towel and strolled away, casting a glance over her shoulder as she went. “Coming?” she asked.
Very soon.
Struan toweled himself off as he followed her, catching up just as she reached the bed, where she turned and put her hand on his chest, stopping him short.
She climbed onto the bed and then beckoned him to join her, which he’d do even if he were dead. But she held up a hand when he moved to lay her on her back.
“Can I lick you again?” she asked, hope in her eyes.
Yes.