A Bit of Rough

by Jackie Barbosa

  Down here in the basement, no one would hear them, not even the servants, for they would not come back to empty the water and tidy the bath chamber until morning. Down here, she and Lucas could be alone together without the threat of a well-intentioned interruption by one of her parents or—worse yet—both of them. And while her mother and father unquestionably wanted the servants to believe Lucas was her husband, she was not convinced they would truly believe it until the actual wedding vows had been exchanged.

  To his credit, her husband—her husband!—did not hesitate for long before shedding his robe to reveal his deeply tanned skin and sinewy frame. A shiver of pleasure spiraled through her limbs at the sight of his cock, which grew and stiffened as though she stroked it with her eyes. A rush of liquid heat pooled between her thighs, slick and insistent.

  With a quick grin as wolfish as it was playful, Lucas stepped into the tub and, with a relieved groan, sat down and stretched out his legs, submerging all but his head and shoulders beneath the steaming water. “Gods, this feels good,” he muttered thickly.

  Honora retrieved the bar of soap from the side table and, after dipping her hands to wet them, rubbed it between her hands to form a lather. Then she rested her hip on the side of tub and began to wash his chest and shoulders. He made another guttural sound of contentment and closed his eyes. She continued her task, coaxing him to lean forward so she could reach his upper back and work her way down his arms. Perhaps she ought to have been cold, since she was naked and the room was not heated, but a languorous warmth spread beneath her skin.

  Finally, she observed, “You always say ‘gods,’ plural. Never ‘God,’ singular. Do you believe in more than one?”

  Cracking one eyelid, he said, “A bit late to worry you’ve married a heathen, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not worried,” she assured him. “Just curious.”

  He opened both eyes now and looked up at her thoughtfully. “Honestly, I’ve never much thought about it. My parents are practicing Catholics, of course, but my mother still very much believes in the gods of her ancestors. She just thinks they’re subservient to—or perhaps aspects of, I’m not entirely sure which—the big ‘G’ god, and equates them to Catholic saints. But while she’s firm enough in her Catholicism that I could never have gotten away with taking the Lord’s name in vain, she had no problem with me swearing by little ‘g’ gods, so I suppose that’s why I do it.”

  Cupping her hands, she sluiced water over his shoulders to rinse away the lather. “I suppose that makes sense. Will your parents mind very much, do you think?”

  “Mind what?”

  “This.” She gestured between the two of them. “Us. After all, I’m Protestant, and you’re Catholic. They might reasonably dislike me, especially given the way Catholics have been treated by the English government over the centuries. And then there’s the fact that you will have to tell them we married in secret. I should think they might be put out about that, if nothing else.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “They will be thrilled. As far as they are concerned, I should have married years ago and provided them with a few grandchildren by now.” His expression sobered. “Speaking of which…you never wanted to marry at all, yet here we are. How do you feel about children?”

  Startled by the sudden turn in the conversation, Honora stilled. How did she feel about children? She liked them or, at least, she had no particular opposition to being in their presence. Several of her older cousins had children, and she enjoyed seeing and spending time with them, but she had never given much thought to whether or not she wanted any. As Lucas’s question implied, there had never been any need.

  Until now.

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose you want them very much, though.”

  Reaching up with a warm, wet hand, he caressed her face. “I want you more than I want hypothetical offspring. If you prefer not to have children, we will take what measures we can to prevent it, although—” and here his voice dropped a half an octave and his eyes turned smoky, “—given how often I hope to engage with you for the rest of our lives in the activity that results in them, I cannot guarantee we won’t have any.”

  The rough timbre of his words rolled over her skin like a caress, turning her nipples hard as pebbles and stoking the achy pulse between her thighs. “I want you just as much. And just as often. I want you now.”

  “Then join me.” He gave her arm a slight tug and eased her into the tub so she lay atop and facing him.

  The water was still warm enough to prickle, and the blatant pressure of his erection against her stomach raised her internal temperature from hot to scorching. Perversely, she shivered.

  “Cold?” he asked gently.

  She shook her head. “Quite the opposite.”

  “Good.” Framing her face with his hands, he adjusted his position against the back of the tub and brought her lips to his.

  They were starved for each other, tongues and teeth colliding in a heady, erotic rush. He tasted of cinnamon and oranges—the result of her tooth powder, she thought distantly—and of pure, profane need. His hands roamed her body with relentless purpose, as though he feared she might evaporate like so much mist and smoke.

  After more than a month of separation, all of it spent in the certainty that they would never be together again, she understood his anxiety, even shared it. How many times in these weeks had she lain in bed, touching herself while she’d imagined her fingers were Lucas’s fingers and the heavy blankets atop her were Lucas’s body, pressing her into the mattress? Too many to count. Now here he was, in the flesh, and not just hers for a few stolen hours but for the rest of their lives. The possibility that this might all be a dream was difficult to dismiss.

  Her fantasies were never this vivid, this solid. She couldn’t deny the reality of his soft, slippery-wet skin and his firm, supple muscles and, most of all, the hard, thick length of his cock, which seemed to pulse with a life of its own, seeking, yearning.

  “I want to be inside you,” he murmured against her mouth, not quite breaking the kiss.

  Lust swelled in her belly, throbbed between her legs. “Yes, please.”

  His hands cupped the backs of her thighs and urged them apart until she straddled him, her knees resting on the smooth iron bottom of the tub. Grasping her hips, he lifted her, positioning her so the head of his cock rested at her entrance. “As slow or as fast as you wish, querida.”

  He was giving her complete control of this union, and a fresh burst of feverish desire coursed through her veins. Her first impulse was for fast, but as she lowered herself onto his shaft, she realized the fit was snugger than she had anticipated. Eager and ready as she was, her quim was too tight for her to slide down on him in one easy motion. Her frustration was soon tempered, however, by the glorious sensation of filling herself with him, inch by gradual, delicious inch. As she took him, she studied his face and reveled in the clench of his jaw, the flutter of his eyelids, and the sheen of perspiration that dampened his forehead.

  He smiled up at her, the expression part joy, part agony. “I thought never being with you like this again would kill me. Now, I wonder if the opposite is true.”

  She couldn’t keep from laughing, and he grimaced before joining her. Their laughter faded, however, when he settled his hands on her hips and thrust upward, completing their union. The aching tension of an impending climax coiled tighter as their bodies bumped, and she grabbed onto his biceps to steady herself.

  Movement. What she needed was movement. When they’d done this before, Lucas had been the one driving into her, but now their positions were reversed. It was challenging at first, in the limited confines of the tub, but soon she had the hang of it, raising and lowering herself onto him. Fucking him instead of the other way around. The thought was wicked and exciting.

  Her release remained just out of reach, however, until he said through gritted teeth, “Use your fingers the way you would if you were alone.”
>
  Oh. Flushing—not so much with shyness as with arousal—she slid two digits over the spot and rubbed just there. Oh!

  Pleasure rocketed through her, and she made a low, hungry sound in her throat. Lucas slipped his hands beneath her bottom and held her in place, thrusting up into her, deep and steady. She closed her eyes, riding the wave higher and higher, dimly aware of the water sloshing over the rim of the tub and not caring.

  Suddenly, she knew what she wanted. What she needed. “Come with me,” she whispered. “Come inside me.”

  His rhythm faltered. “But—”

  Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his to stop his protest. She knew what he was going to say: if he spilled without withdrawing, she might conceive; they had not settled the issue of whether that was a risk she wished to take. “It’s all right,” she said. “I want your child.”

  “Our child,” he corrected, his voice thick.

  “Yes. Ours.”

  They moved together now with a single purpose, and when she tipped over the precipice into rapture, Lucas’s rough groan and shuddering frame joined hers.

  Ours, indeed.

  Lucas held her for a long time afterward, unwilling to shatter the bubble of contentment that surrounded them. There were still so many questions to be asked, so many issues to be discussed, but it was easy to believe, in the aftermath of their lovemaking, that none of those things mattered.

  At long last, however, the cooling water forced him to stir. “We should get out,” he said. “Before we catch our death of cold.”

  Honora sighed reluctantly but nodded.

  By virtue of being on top, she had to clamber out of the tub first. Although the top of her head remained dry, her hair was wet from the neck down and clung in ringlets to her back and shoulders. Droplets of water beaded onto her skin and glided over her plump breasts and along her torso before plopping back into the water like fat summer raindrops. She was so beautiful, and he had been so certain he would never her again—let alone hold her in his arms—that he wanted to drag her back onto his lap and verify that she was real and not a figment of his imagination.

  What stopped him was not any exercise of willpower, but the fact that once their bodies were no longer touching, he realized the water was not merely tepid, but downright cold. Thus motivated, he sprang to his feet as soon as she cleared the tub while she crossed to the sideboard and grabbed two towels from the stack. They were sparkling white and made from fluffy, looped Turkish cotton. Lucas knew exactly how expensive such items were, because he had bought a pair for his mother, who had oohed and aahed over the quality and texture of the fabric whenever she’d encountered the luxurious linens in a draper’s shop but had dismissed them as an extravagance. His mother had been simultaneously delighted and horrified by the gift, and he’d had to pretend he’d got them at a significant discount to assuage her concerns over the cost of two.

  The Ormondys had three stacks of them, each piled four or five high. And there were probably more in the laundry.

  The unease that had been building in him since the earl’s arrival at Newgate reached a new crest as Lucas took the towel from Honora’s outstretched hand and began to dry himself off. No, not unease; the feeling was guilt. And he needed to confess. Repent. Atone.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said.

  Honora, who was in the process of squeezing water from her hair with her towel, looked at him with wide, surprised eyes. “Whatever for?”

  “For…” Grimacing, he shook his head, irritated by his inability to distill the source of his shame into words. “For everything I did that led to this marriage.”

  “Everything you did?” she repeated, clearly dumbfounded. “I practically bullied you into becoming my lover, and you think you are the one whose actions brought us here?”

  “I could have refused. Should have.” Before she could start the objection he knew hovered on her lips, he continued, “But it’s not just that. Or even primarily that. We could have been lovers and remained so, quite safely, if I’d just been willing to give up publishing The Weekly Disciple. Instead, I put my bloody newspaper ahead of you.” He snorted in self-derision. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just leave me to rot.”

  His gut twisted as he waited for her response. For her justifiable anger. For the recriminations he so richly deserved.

  “I see,” she said slowly.

  Her voice was so neutral, so devoid of emotion that he felt a spike of dread. Fury he could accept. Deserved, in fact. But indifference? That he did not know how to handle. Ice filled his veins.

  “I wonder,” she continued in that same, measured tone, “what you would have done for income if you’d given up publishing The Weekly Disciple.”

  Why did that matter? But he thought, despite her seeming indifference, that the answer was important to her. “I could have gone back to practicing law.”

  “Which you told me you hated.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. But he would have done it for her. Should have.

  “So you’re telling me you think I would be happier if you had gone back to doing a job that made you despise your life? That I would just merrily go about my life while you made yourself miserable on my behalf?”

  He blinked, a different tendril of shame curling in his chest. “When you put it that way…”

  Dropping her towel into a wicker basket next to the sideboard, she crossed the short distance between them and cupped his face between her hands. Her palms were slightly damp but surprisingly warm and very soft. “Lucas, I love you. And one of the reasons I do is because you are so determined to make the world a kinder, fairer place. I would never ask you to abandon that pursuit, especially if you felt that what you had to do instead would actually cause harm.” Her piercing gray eyes searched his face, and she must have seen something in his expression that warned her. She slid her hands down to his shoulders and frowned. “Of course, my father made you promise to stop publishing The Weekly Disciple, didn’t he?”

  A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Not exactly. He asked me not to publish without paying the stamp duties, but given the math, it’s essentially the same thing. I can’t raise the price without losing most of my readers, and I can’t even cover the production costs without raising the price.”

  “And you think I should be angry with you?” Her nostrils flared with indignation. “You’ve had to give up your life’s work on my behalf. Well, I won’t stand for it. We’ll find a way to pay the duties. We’ll use my savings if w—”

  He stopped her tirade with a kiss. It was the only sensible thing to do. She squirmed briefly, a halfhearted attempt to escape, but the effort only brought their bodies in closer, more delicious contact and with a soft sigh of surrender, she melted into him. When he finally managed to drag his mouth away from hers again, they were both breathing fast and his cock was standing at attention. But he needed to explain things, not simply succumb to the desire to have her.

  Taking her hand, he sat on the sturdy wooden chair behind him and, after making a minor adjustment to his anatomy, pulled her onto his lap. “Querida, your father also offered me gainful employment.”

  She drew back, eying him dubiously. The expression was probably intended more for her father than for Lucas, however. “Doing what?”

  He hesitated before responding, because he was certain what he had to tell her would wound her. “Your father wants me to write papers to help advance reformist legislation and policies. He also suggested I might write speeches for him and possibly for Lord Grey.”

  As he spoke, Honora’s back stiffened. The barb, however unintentional, had hit home. “He asked you?” Instead of me.

  The pang in Lucas’s chest at the pain in her voice made his breath catch. And he didn’t know how to explain away the slight. The Earl of Ormondy had a daughter who was every bit as capable and competent as Lucas was, but he had not offered her the position. And he’d had plenty of opportunity to do so over the years. “I suspect,” Luca
s said after a beat, “that he knows he is hiring both of us. He can hardly imagine I won’t ask for your advice and assistance, after all. Not when he knows we both contributed to your voter’s guide and that we’ve been collaborating on Persephone White for the past month.”

  She huffed, then sniffled and gave him a tremulous smile. “And he could hardly hire his own daughter to a paid position in government. Especially now that everyone is going to find out I am Polly Dicax, enemy of the Crown.”

  “Another outcome I could have prevented if I’d been less selfish,” Lucas pointed out regretfully. “I’ve cost you your life’s work every bit as much as you’ve cost me mine."

  Before he finished speaking, however, Honora clapped her palms over her ears and sang, “La-la-la, I’m not listening.”

  The intentional silliness of the gesture made him choke out a laugh. “Very well. I’ll stop flagellating myself.”

  Lowering her hands, she leaned her head into the crook of his neck. “It is all rather ironic, though, isn’t it? We wound up causing the very things we were trying to avoid.”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. “If the compensation is a lifetime with you, it is more than worth the cost to me. But I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t agree.”

  With a snort of amusement, she glared up at him in mock reproach and gestured at the tub. “After that, you think I have anything to complain about?”

  “That does not require marriage,” he pointed out archly. “Moreover, your reasons for not wanting to marry were reasonable. I hope you don’t come to resent that you were forced into it.”

  “No one could have forced me to do anything I didn’t want to. Besides, I chose to marry you,” she said, poking her index finger into the center of his chest, “not some hypothetical suitor who might turn out to be cruel or dishonest. And you,” she said and poked him again, “were willing to risk prison and deportation for my sake. I love you. I trust you, which is all that matters.”