by Dee Brice
Her feet tangled in her damp hem. Losing her balance, she tumbled forward, trying to brace her hands on the tub rim to prevent falling. But the tub edges were slippery and wet. She fell, somehow landing face-to-face, pelvis-to-pelvis with the object of her lust under her, his shaft pressed firmly to her mons.
“This isn’t precisely what I had in mind, but since we’re both here…”
Instead of shrieking, she kissed him senseless.
Chapter Fifteen
Time stopped while he stripped off her sodden gown—no easy feat since the water had shrunk her sash’s bow into a knot and the sash wouldn’t slide up over her breasts or down over her hips. Moreover, he couldn’t decide if she intended her wiggles to aid in his efforts to undress her or to seat his shaft in her cunt. Suspecting the latter, he managed to wrestle them both out of the tub, her out of her gown then both of them back into the tub, naked.
“I like it better when we’re both in the tub together,” she told him.
“I’m certain you do. However,” he hastened to say before she got out another word, “the purpose of the bath is to relax you. Make you—”
“Then why were you in the tub while I wasn’t?”
“An object lesson. I relax while you bathe me. Later, you relax while I bathe you.”
“We could as easily bathe each other,” she said with a coy smile that had his shaft pulsing like a dog begging for a treat.
“The primary objective being relaxation. Now, not another word. Lean back. Inhale through your nose and enjoy the scent.” Trying not to drool over her luscious breasts, he leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. With his hands tucked into his armpits, the craving to touch her lessened. Somewhat, he amended, knowing any move on her part would destroy his restraint.
“Lavender works better than jasmine. For me, anyway. To help me relax, I mean.”
“Next time,” he grated out from between clenched teeth. “Inhale. Relax as you exhale through your mouth. Again.”
Moments later her eyelashes drifted down and she gave a soft sigh. “Nice.”
Opening a tap, hot water splashed into the tub. He wrung out the sponge over her neck, shoulders and breasts. He did the same over her legs and feet, her hands and arms, creating a symphony from sound and scent and flickering candlelight.
He left her long enough to spread warm toweling over the chaise longue in her bedroom. Returning to the bathroom, he could tell by her even breathing that she’d fallen asleep. Were it not for the cooling water, he’d let her nap. But the next step in teaching her to open her senses to all sorts of ways to enhance pleasure was equally as important as the one just learned. Her trust enabled him to continue teaching her.
Bending over her, laying his hand on her shoulder, he gave her a gentle shake. “Wake up, dearling. Just enough for me to help you stand.”
Her eyes drifted halfway open. A soft half-smile made him wish to see her awaken every morning. Holding up her arms, she wreathed them around his neck. Together, they stood then he carried her to the chaise and wrapped the toweling around her. Gentle pats and rubs had her making pleasure noises that made his shaft stand at attention.
Not now! As if that appendage had ever obeyed an order from his mind.
“Walker? I think…that is, I want to…bed you.”
“Believe me, Diane, I want that too. But in good conscience, I must give Adrian and Jason the opportunity to woo you. If we proceed now, they will claim I cheated.”
“Woo?” she echoed. “Is that what fornication is called in this time?” She wanted to rant about cheating and the blasted British sense of honor but still hoped to seduce him to her way of thinking. Sex, here and now, captured her mind and body.
Ignoring her sarcasm, he pulled her to her feet and held her facing the cheval mirror. “In a moment I am going to remove your towel. I want you to describe your body without using any negative terms. Understand?”
She glared as she gave him a curt nod. “This…ritual is vaguely familiar. I think I used it in one of my novels.”
“Then you should have no difficulty following the rules.” Unwrapping her reminded him of birthdays and Christmases. He already knew what the packages contained—he peeked—but his parents always managed to slip in something new. A shiny railroad car that wasn’t part of the original set and he hadn’t seen before. A top that spun so fast the colors blurred. A kaleidoscope in addition to a microscope.
“Ready?” Not that it mattered. He’d stay in control until she quit fighting and did as bidden. Not that she was fighting now, but she would. At some point. Most likely sooner than later.
A careless shrug her sole response, she looked down at her bare feet—oblivious to him and her nakedness. “Sorry to break the rules so early in the game, but there’s no other word for my toes. They are ug-ly!”
“Find something nice to say about them.” She looked up at his reflection, her expression saying, Are you nuts? “Imagine them immediately after a pedicure.”
“Ah. When my toenails are polished, I—still wear closed-toe shoes and avoid toe rings. I think my feet are so…unattractive I won’t even wear an ankle bracelet. Despite having rather shapely ankles and very shapely calves.”
Her grin invited him to laugh with her and he did. “Since you have started at the bottom—”
“I am not describing my ass.”
“Let us continue in a northerly direction. Your thighs…”
She shifted, yet said nothing until he cleared his throat. “Funny. They look thinner. Firmer. Especially the inner part. Must be due to all that stretching wider I’ve been doing lately. Along with all that clamping around your hips and thighs.”
Responding to her sultry voice and darkening eyes, his shaft throbbed. He shifted his hips, bringing his erection between her ass cheeks.
“Belly?”
“Still flat.” Mischief fading from her expression, she turned her head to say, “Are you sorry about that? My belly being flat, I mean? Do you want a baby, Walker?”
Sensing that a deeper meaning, a greater need, underlay her question, he weighed his words. “At present, making—er, having—an heir does not seem so pressing an issue.”
“Is that all a child means to you? An heir?”
Seeming to have a will of their own, his fingers splayed between her hipbones as if calculating the space between, the room for a child to grow in her womb. “In this time and place…one marries to produce an heir. Because disease is not as rampant as it was in our pasts—” His nod told her he meant their pasts, not anyone else’s. “It seems one needn’t rush to produce a passel of poppets.” His attempts at alliteration made her frown and pull away. “We have not finished.”
“I have. If one wants to continue this Tantric sex exercise, one has only to stare at one’s own genitalia for the next twenty or thirty minutes. I’m certain one will find one’s manly equipment admirably suitable to one’s needs for an heir. Or two,” she added, stalking into her bathroom and gently closing the door. He’d have preferred she slam it. At least then he’d have an idea about her feelings. He had no idea what she was angry about or even if she was angry.
He used her absence as an opportunity to don his robe. A few moments later the door opened again. Diane strolled across the room like a runway model wearing what looked like gossamer and lace. That same damn provocative walk had captivated him all those centuries ago. All right, there weren’t any clothing models in medieval or 1820s England, but if there were…
Since when had his medieval and more modern personas started merging and emerging where they had no business being?
“I’m glad you stayed,” she said, lighting a candle then putting out the match between her moistened thumb and forefinger. A Wiccan practice he would have to ask her about. Later.
“Are you? Why?” Suspicion threaded through his voice, but he refused to apologize. Not yet. Before Tuesday morning arrived he would, no doubt, rack up more transgressions. He’d apologize for them all in one
fell swoop.
“Because I’ve taken out my frustrations on you and Adrian.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Perhaps more on you. Because I may owe you both an apology.”
“Care to elucidate?” Her blank expression prompted him to add, “About your frustrations?”
“In truth, I consider them our frustrations. Perhaps not Jason’s, although I can’t imagine why he’s here if he’s not involved in some way. Do you know?”
“No,” he said with some asperity. “I intend to talk with him while you and Adrian are together on Wednesday.”
“Won’t Adrian have already done that?”
“Not if he values his life.” He ground his teeth, but forced a smile to his lips.
“Ah. There’s the liege lord who behaved as if he could have me whenever and wherever he wished. I confess, Walker, I did not care much for him.” Her tone implied she now didn’t care for him at all.
“You cared for his—my—lovemaking well enough.” Knowing how well he had satisfied her in their Tudor lives, he excused his smug tone as his due.
“Is that how you think of it? Lovemaking?”
“What would you call it? Rape, I suppose.” He canted his head back and glared at her over the end of his nose.
A bitter laugh came first. “I’m more honest than you credit me, Your Grace. No, I think of it as more like…an enforced discovery.”
“About?” Rising, he strode to a nearby table, then filled two snifters with brandy.
She took one snifter on her way to the chaise, her light yet mysterious fragrance wrapping around his senses, her nightgown—if that scrap of lace and sensuality could be called that—billowing around her legs. Revealing. Concealing. Raising lust in his blood, a craving her resistance fed.
“A question I shall answer later…on Sunday when we are all together. All of us confessing our roles in this strange journey.” She raised her glass in a silent toast.
“Roles? Do you know yours?”
A wry smile curved her lips and lit her eyes—their dark-green depths like occlusions in the rarest emeralds. “To teach all you men a lesson. Or so the Gypsy fortuneteller said. The problem being, the fortuneteller sent me here before I learned what that lesson might be.” Sitting, she crossed her legs and sipped her brandy. Her gaze focused on his face, a challenge for him to ignore her parted gown and not stare at her naked legs.
“Where do we go from here, Diane?” Mirroring her, he sat in a wingback chair and crossed his left ankle over his right knee.
She laughed. He scowled.
“Jason struck the same pose a few days ago when he visited me here. In my sitting room.” As if she’d apologize for having a male visitor in her rooms, she rushed on. “When I go home…” He heard if. “I really need to get out more. See if men in the twenty-first century display themselves as they do here.” She glanced at the snifter before setting it aside. “Those tailored breeches must get uncomfortable when you…”
“Arouse? Have a boner? Get a hard-on, as I have now?”
She smiled at her hands folded in her lap. “How did you intend for us to spend the day? Not,” she held up a cautionary finger, “that folderol of reading or—” She gulped a quick breath.
“Staring at each other’s genitals?” he suggested, his tone wry. She still surprised him when she turned shy miss. Not that he thought she faked modesty. Perhaps that modesty was why they’d landed in this time, when maidenly reticence was valued and seeing to one’s womanly needs was considered whorish.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I saw Jason? Or what transpired between us?”
“If you wish to tell me.”
She emitted an inelegant snort. “Odd. In our medieval life—when I was married to Adrian—you seemed jealous of him. What is different that you aren’t jealous of Jason?”
“Perhaps I have mellowed.”
Both her eyebrows shot up. “Perhaps you simply have learned how to disguise it better.”
He’d played the gentleman far too long. Standing, he strode to the chaise then scooped her into his arms. She yelped, clearly startled, but wreathed her arms around his neck as he sat with her on his lap.
“Have I told you how grateful I am you donned this particular piece of feminine frippery?”
“Now I know what you truly think of me, Your Grace.” He quirked a brow, encouraging her to explain. “Frippery. Like an overly adorned building. I admit I’m taller than many women and am proportionately wider, but—”
He kissed her, sighing into her mouth as she parted her lips and kissed him back. “Where has your clever seamstress hidden your initials this time?” he asked, his lips still on hers, his fingers exploring the delicate yet plentiful lace that formed the collar of her gown, then flowed into lapels and continued down to her hem.
“You’ll need to find more than my initials, Your Grace. This time you must locate all the letters in my entire name.”
“And when I do find them?”
“When next we meet alone, you must spell out my title, as well.”
His laugh matched the feral blaze in his dark eyes. Her breath caught and her heart stalled. Everything slowed as he raised his hands to cup her face His fingers stroked her eyebrows and temples, the pads more suited to the warrior lord of his past than the pampered duke of this time. Perhaps that was due to him being the same man now as he’d been then. But she didn’t like that man nearly as much as she liked this one.
“You think too much,” he murmured, his hands drifting down her neck.
“Do…I?”
He made a humming sound against her ear, his breath hot and moist even before his tongue traced the whorls and made her gasp for air. Gooseflesh dotted her skin, a contradiction to the warmth flowing through her body.
“Must I find the letters in order?” His tongue caressed the underside of her chin, yet another new erogenous zone.
“H-how else can I keep track?” she managed to say before she lost her breath once again.
“Two Ds, two Es. All the others only one.” He fingered the lace on her lapels, grazing her nipples as well. “One D over each sweet peak.” He stroked until each rose higher still, then sucked each in turn through sheer gossamer lawn and delicate yet rougher lace.
Her moans turned to helpless, mindless mews. Like a kitten kneading yarn, her fingers tangled in his silky hair, dug lightly into his scalp. He groaned and sucked harder, his tongue abrading one taut nub as he pinched the other. Her soft cry combined pain and pleasure. She arched into his hand and mouth, welcoming the little ache, the building heat in her pussy.
“An O over your bellybutton,” he told her, his voice as unsteady as her gasps. Shifting her off his lap, he stretched out along her side, then propped his head on his fist. His other hand continued to explore both her body and her gown’s frothy lace.
“I believe,” he went on, his gaze following his hand up and down her trembling limbs, “I have discovered a clue as to where I might find other letters.”
“H-have you?”
“Um-hum. Rounded letters near rounded parts of you.” His hands drifted up her body, his fingers rubbing layers of lace until he found an E. Sitting up, he grinned when he found the other, both hidden near her ears. Which, to her increasing delight, he proceeded to lave and nibble her lobes. With his haunches resting on his heels, his covered but swollen shaft and balls presented a feast for her eyes and made her mouth water. Male musk filled her nostrils. Unable to resist, yearning to see and taste him, she fumbled with the buttons on his breeches.
His hand closed over hers. “I did not grant you leave to touch me.”
“Neither did you forbid me.”
“I forbid you now.”
A desperate sounding moan escaped her thinned lips. How could he deny her—and himself—the pleasure of touching and being touched? Of tasting and being tasted?
“Once I have found all the letters in your name,” he muttered, then tightened his lips and narrowed his eyes.
Wa
rning her to obey? Or searching for his own control?
His expression lightening, he tsked. “You cheated. There is an I on each lapel.” Tracing that letter, his fingers caressed her from her breasts to hipbones.
Squirming only made him do it again until she laughed and shoved away his hands.
“Ticklish, eh?”
“A little.” Her reply only made him grin like an imp. An odd comparison with his manhood literally in her face, showing her how very manly his assets were. Testing her ability to speak, she said, “All the letters are on each side. Symmetry, Your Grace. But perhaps not in the same places on each side.”
“I’ve patience enough to find them once, but no more than that.”
Which suited her very well. She wanted him done with other games and focused solely on pleasure. An idea she kept to herself lest he draw out this sweet torture even longer.
Taking lace in one hand, he explored. “Ah. An N and a U.” Resettling the fabric, he nodded. “A perfect fit at your knees.” A moment later he sighed as if disappointed. “G, R and H with no discernible tie to any part of your lush body.”
Sometimes creativity failed. Neither she nor the seamstress could think of strategic locations for those particular letters. Yet he discovered that tracing those initials with his fingertips, pressing lace and embroidery thread along her thighs excited her. Knowing he was unlikely to find the remaining letters without her assistance, she let her legs fall open.
Wretched man! All he did was untie her belt and spread the robe wide. Then he went on stroking and pressing the letters over her thighs, coming nearer and nearer to where she wanted his fingers and tongue, yet still only tormenting her.
“Y-your G-grace,” she stammered, a plea in her trembling voice.
“Walker,” he corrected.
“Walk—ohmigod! Walker!” He obviously had found both loops in the B. His clever fingers pressed one loop around her clit, the other into her channel. She spread her legs still wider, welcoming him between them as she welcomed her spasming channel and the blessed tension winding tighter and tighter until she shattered. Writhing. Quaking like fall leaves in a wild wind. Crying his name. Shouting with the rapture tumbling through her body.
