Chapter 6
Alistair could see Jessica considering his suggestion.
“I cannot fathom how it is,” she said at length, “that I am having this discussion with you, today of all days.”
“Is that why Tarley settled Calypso on you? Because he wanted to preserve you as his? Because he wished to leave you with no excuse to turn to a man to look after you?”
She turned her head and rested her cheek on her bent knees. “He was too dear a man for such selfishness. He told me to be happy. To love again. To make my own choice this time around. But I am certain he was thinking of marriage, not an affair with a man who dallies about promiscuously.”
Alistair’s hand tightened on his glass, but he wisely held his tongue.
“Men have so much more freedom,” she said on a long-suffering sigh.
“If freedom is what you seek, why marry again?”
“I have no intention of doing so. What purpose would it serve? I do not need the support, and since I am barren, I have nothing to offer men of suitable station.”
“Financial considerations are valid ones, of course. But what of your needs as a woman? Will you deny yourself the pleasure of a man’s touch forever?”
“Some men’s hands give nothing but pain.”
He knew she could not be speaking of Tarley. The rapport between them had been evident to one and all. “Of whom do you speak?”
She moved. Gripping the rim of the tub, she rose from the water like Botticelli’s Venus. Dripping wet and unashamedly bare. Her hands ran over her full breasts, then across her abdomen, her gaze following her own touch. When she lifted her head to look at him, his breath seized in his lungs. It was a siren’s look she gave him. One full of heat and longing and hunger.
“By God,” he said gruffly, aching. “You are beautiful.”
He was in a riot of lust, half mad with the need to spread her beneath him and sate the damned spurring longing that had haunted him far too long.
“You make me feel as if I am.” One slender leg lifted over the edge of the tub. The sinuous invitation in her movements wasn’t lost on him. It seemed drink also roused her passions.
“I can make you feel a great deal more.”
Her nipples were a soft rose hue and luxuriously long. Puckered by the chill of air on wet skin, they begged for the attentions of his mouth and hands. He stroked his tongue deliberately along the curve of his bottom lip, teasing her visually with a physical enactment of the thoughts smoldering in his mind. He could please her to madness. Sex had been one of his trades, and he was damned good at it. If she but gave him the chance, he could ruin her for other men. He was determined to do so.
She did not fail to register his intent or to assess his condition; the color of her blush deepened. Looking at her towel and robe, she seemed to consider whether or not she wanted to retrieve them.
If he could, he would help her with that, if only to restore some semblance of his sanity by covering her. But he couldn’t move. His body was not his own. Every muscle was tense and straining, while his cock hung heavily between his thighs.
“You see how much I want you,” he said hoarsely.
“You have no shame.”
“I would be ashamed if I didn’t desire you. I wouldn’t be a man.”
A faint smile curved her lips as she reached for the folded towel. “Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that I should want you as well. Every other woman is susceptible. It would be curious if I was not.”
His smile came with a host of wicked intentions. “Then the only question remaining is: what will you do about it?”