“The moon, likely. It’s full tonight. The moon always makes me want you. As if I do not always want you.” Unintentional confession. Couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Now tell me, or I’ll take one quick step around the screen, and—”
“Yes! Yes, if you must know. I was… I was doingthat.Attemptingto.”
But failing. Tragedy, that. “Have you ever done it before?”
She rose slightly, the long column of her neck a stark outline on the screen, and then the slopes of her shoulders before she leaned against the back of the tub. “No. Never.” Truth there. “Why didn’t it work?” she grumbled.
“What were you thinking of?” He drew a line up the shadow of her curved neck, stopped at the tip of her chin, letting his fingertip linger, kissed that little cliff.
“I willnotsay.”
“I hope you were thinking of me.”
A gasp, half yelp, all truth.
“Youwerethinking of me,” he said around a smile. “How serendipitous.”
“I was not!” Silence, not even the splash of a body moving in water. “Why is it serendipitous?”
“Because I’ve begun to think of you. At night before I sleep. In the morning when I wake up, my cock hard and my head filled with Lady Emma Blackwood.”
“No, you haven’t. You… you should not say such things.”
“I have. Barely tried not to, though I know it makes me a rogue. Frankly, I’m too tired to put up a fight. I rather think it’s time I simply… surrender. Will you surrender with me?”
She sank a bit under the edge of the tub. “I do not know what you mean.” Her voice small, low, unsure.
“Let me be clearer, then. I want you to beckon me behind this screen. I want you to watch me strip off my jacket”—he did so, tossing it to the bed—“and roll up my sleeves past my elbows.” He rolled them all the way up. “And sit behind you before slipping my hands into the water and finding the soap and gliding it across every inch of you.”
Her silhouette shivered, and her head fell back more, opening up that smooth curve of throat.
“I’d make you warm. Boiling, like me, rubbing the soap against your neck and behind your ear, washing the sweet, clean scent away, then replacing it with my lips.”
The water splashed, and she moved, though he could not see exactly how by her shadow. She might be… oh, yes, she was, stroking her fingers up and down her neck.
“I’d wash your collarbone next,” he said, and her fingers wandered lower. “And then I’d feel the weight of your breasts in my palms, the silk of your skin.” The splash of water musical, and the press of his cock against his fall painful. “Are you doing it for me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes. Oh, I should not.”
“Drop your worry. Let me care for you.”
“Yes.”
“Can I come behind the screen yet?”
“No.”
“Then you must do the work for me, I’m afraid. And where I’m going next, you may fear to tread.”
“W-where?”
“Low, Emma. Down the length of your torso, circling your navel. I’d drop a kiss there, flick my tongue into it.” Her breath hitched. “Like that, do you? You’ll like this better. Because after I’ve gained a gasp, dragging my hands down the lovely length of your waist, the perfect flare of your hips, I’m going to learn the texture of your inner thighs, the crispness of the curls at your very center, learn how wet you are.”
“V-very. I’m in a tub.”
He rested his forehead against the screen, flattening his palm over her profile. “Hell, Emma, let me teach you. Please, let meshowyou.”
“No,” she squeaked, a bit like the door hinge. “Not yet.”
