It was best that he left immediately. He was already staring too hard at her throat, her arm, and those knees that hovered just beneath the water. What action he would take in light of her offense, he could decide later—after his mental faculties had a chance to recover from their current stunned ineptitude.
He reached behind him for the door handle. She emitted a small sigh and it was a lick to his groin. He stilled abruptly. What was it? The sound came again and it was another hot, hungry lick.
He looked back at her. The right arm that was submerged, to which he’d given no thought other than that it blocked what could have been a delightful view of her breasts…there was the barest motion at the top of her right arm. She whimpered again. And he was as hard as a bobby’s nightstick.
At last his mind registered what his body had in stinctively known: Her whimpers were whimpers of pleasure. And she was—she was—
Perhaps Bertie had been right about him being a prude. He could scarcely bring himself to even think of that word in connection with a woman, though he understood perfectly well now what she was doing, with out a stitch, without a shred of shame.
What was he about to do? Leave? He couldn’t move a single muscle.
Well, he could, but in the wrong direction—toward her, his footfalls muffled by the thick rug that had been laid down for winter.
The water hid little beneath its clear ripples, not her skin, not her pink nipples, not her hand, placed directly over her pudenda. He couldn’t see exactly what she was doing—damn the shadows cast by the edge of the tub and her raised knee. Why, oh, why had he never installed a chandelier directly over the tub?
She raised one foot out of the water, and then another, and braced the balls of her feet against the edge of the tub. And suddenly he saw much better, so well that he was light-headed with incredulity and lust.
Long fingers stroked pretty pink parts—stroked, rubbed, petted. Her toes flexed. Beneath the handkerchief, her lips parted in another sigh. Her motion quickened. There was now a new tension to her arm and her wrist. Her fingers pressed hard. He was afraid she would hurt herself, but her pleasure only seemed to heighten: her hips gyrated, the fingers of her other hand splayed open, the moans that emerged from her throat became louder, more blatant.
He wanted to rip off the handkerchief and feast on the sensuality of her face. He wanted to use his hand for a small measure of relief—he hurt, intensely, with the force of his desire. He wanted to launch himself into the tub and replace her hand with some part of himself—any part of himself. But he dared not move. He dared not even breathe.
Don’t stop. For God’s sake, don’t stop.
She didn’t. She pushed herself farther and farther up that steep slope of pleasure. Her feet slid back into the tub to brace against where the tub curved up. Her left hand gripped the edge of the tub. Her pelvis lifted—her entire torso lifted. Water lapped at her pointed nipples.
His heart hammered. The rest of him was on fire—perhaps he’d already burned to cinders, he wouldn’t know. And didn’t care.
Her breath caught. And caught again. She expelled air in fits and gasps, her torso stretched taut. A bit of the handkerchief caught between her clenched teeth. He grasped on to the chest of drawers, his knees weak, all the blood in his body now pooled in one place and one place only.
He wanted her. He had to have her. Now. Now!
He tasted blood on his lip. His hands shook. His will broke piece by piece as she writhed and panted in the final throes of her self-induced passion.
Then she cried out—and he very nearly lost control. Her ardor, her flushed skin, her peaked nipples lifting high with the arch of her back. God, what had he done to deserve such temptation?
God.
In her fantasy, Verity was in Mr. Somerset’s bed, her legs splayed wide, her person thoroughly impaled.
It had started in the tub, of course. Imagining him coming through the lockless door of the bath had been a fearsome thrill, so much so she almost lifted the handkerchief from her face to make sure that he hadn’t really come.
But she’d resisted, because that would have been a silly thing to do—and because the sight of an empty bath would have drained her fantasy of much of its startling power. Instead, she shut her eyes tighter.
Yes, he was there in the bath. His gaze, hot and shocked, swept her body, lingering in all the most inappropriate places, feeding the hopeless, rampant desires in her.
Because this was her fantasy, he would never do anything improper with his cook—he was not that kind of man. He would leave her to her privacy. But then her handkerchief would slide off and he would see her face.
In reality she could not begin to conceive of his reaction. Would he be glad? Would he be angry? Would he perhaps not recognize her at all? But no, this was not reality, so they could skip over the thorny, complicated parts and proceed straight to a wild, crazed coupling.