A whisk of cool air pebbled her nipples above the surface of the water.She lifted her other hand from its perch upon the side of the tub and cupped her breast in her palm. A sound of frustration rolled up her throat. Her hands were too small, her fingers too slender; not like—
Not like Ian’s. The frustration fled on a sigh of acute resignation. Who was going to know, in these private moments, which fantasies she had indulged? He had always been an attractive man; a competent lover.
And really, there were some things a woman justmissed. The way his hands enveloped her breasts, the way his thumbs stroked her nipples just perfectly. The delicate pinch of his fingers, the delicious suction of his lips.
A surge of arousal spiked between her thighs, and she bit her lower lip against a gasp. It wasn’t quite so satisfying—touching, instead of being touched—but already her shoulders had loosened, the stiff muscles in her legs going lax. She parted delicate feminine flesh, and her fingers slid easily through the dewy wetness of her own desire. She tried to imagine they belonged to Ian, instead.
Only a fantasy. No one would ever know. Just a few moments of private weakness. And when it was over, she would be strong again. As she had always been.
The build of encroaching climax was slow, owing to the clumsiness of her fingers. They didn’t fill her the way his did, didn’t stretch her like his cock had—she couldn’t quite achieve the depth, the perfect rhythm. She drew in a deep breath and tried to summon to mind the salty scent of his skin, the pound of his hips between her thighs. The slip of her hands on the flexing muscles of his back. A shiver of pleasure slid up her spine, the tingle of approaching bliss in her thighs, her belly.
Her fingers plucked at her nipple and she squeezed her eyes shut harder as she struggled for more memories. The pant of his breath near her ear as his own climax neared. The groans he buried in the curve of her shoulder, the desperate kisses strung along her throat, little love bites that left the occasional mark which she had had to hide beneath the high collars of her dresses.
Her thighs tensed and the water splashed around her as her hips surged into the sleek plunges of her fingers. She cast her head back, a long, low moan slipping free of her throat as the pleasure that had coiled in her belly loosed itself at last. Blissful and content, she sighed her relief, floating on the waves of the blessed lassitude that followed. Every muscle now loose and pliant, tension dissolved like seafoam.
Until she shivered.
Felicity blinked her eyes open, baffled to find that the thick layer ofsteam that had once veiled the room had vanished. Almost as if…almost as if it had been let out.
“Jesus Christ.” The guttural growl, given from somewhere over her shoulder near the door prickled the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. Felicity bolted upright, wrenching her head around to see—
To seeIanstanding in the doorway. His chest bare, a length of toweling wrapped around his hips, beneath which a noticeable bulge tented the fabric. He clasped one hand over his mouth as a long swallow rolled down his throat. That dark gaze followed the bob of her breasts with each breath, and Felicity froze, utterly arrested, as a hot flush spread across her cheeks.
A long, tense moment passed. He curled one hand into a fist at his side as if to resist the temptation to reach for her, and that hungry, avaricious gaze provoked another shiver. At last her frozen muscles unlocked, and she jerked her arms over her breasts as her nipples tightened further.
“Christ,” he said again, a muscle in his jaw twitching spasmodically. With a muffled curse, he swung about and quit the room.
Felicity smothered a groan in the palm of her hand, sinking once more to her shoulders in the water. For a moment there, she would have sworn he had battled the impulse to join her. And she was grateful he’d restrained himself.
Wasn’t she?
∞∞∞
Those pointed little coral nipples peeking above the water. Her fingers working between her thighs. The rosy glow of a passion-flush painting her throat and breasts. That delectable moan as she had tipped her head back. The arch of her hips and the flutter of her lashes as she came.
Seated at the edge of the bed, Ian swallowed back a groan as he spent into his palm, shuddering with the force of his climax. He’d gotten rather familiar with his own hand over the years, but this—this had been the most satisfaction he’d gotten from it inyears.
He hadn’t meant to walk in on her pleasuring herself. She never took baths so late; he hadn’t even known she’d been occupying the bathing room. But once he had walked in, once he had realized what, exactly, he’d walked in on…
He’d been helpless not to watch. A decade since he’d last seen her unclothed, and she was still so damned beautiful it made his heart ache. Those sweet sounds she had made would echo in his ears for days, weeks—years, if he was lucky. Christ, it had been so long that his fingers only half-remembered the texture of her skin. The sleek, velvety warmth of her, the way she had always hitched her leg over his hip in the drowsy aftermath, the tickle of her hair against his jaw when she notched her head beneath his chin. The slow, lazy strokes of her delicate fingers over his shoulder, smoothing down his arm, the tiny kisses she’d once pressed into the hollow of his throat. His chest ached as severely as his cock had only moments ago, with a sort of longing that went so far beyond the physical.
When his knees were once more capable of supporting him, he stalked to the dressing room and retrieved a handkerchief to wipe his hands clean. A flash of white shot across his peripheral vision; Felicity garbed once more in the voluminous folds of her nightgown as she darted from the bathing room to the bed.
Avoiding him, no doubt. That cherry-red flush that had gilded her cheeks at the last had suggested no small amount of embarrassment over what he’d witnessed. Probably it would do no good to tell her he’d have given his right arm to witness it again.
His own bath would wait until morning. There were more pressing concerns at the moment. Namely the fact that his wife was presently curled up at the very edge of her side of their bed, in what was no doubt an agony of humiliation. But she wouldn’t stay there. She’d be in his arms again by morning, as she always was.
And he didn’t want to lose that. The only tiny, fragmented piece of her to which he could presently lay claim, even if it was unconsciously given. He didn’t want her ashamed or embarrassed or humbled.
He paused at the hearth to lay down a fresh layer of coal. It would still burn out by morning, but he’d gotten into the habit of it, of performing this small task to keep her in comfort. Felicity was half-obscured in shadows as he approached the bed at last, her hair draped across her pillow. Still damp, probably.
Ian slid into bed, folded his arms behind his head. “Felicity—”
“You should have knocked.” The words were mostly muffled into her pillow.
“I had no idea you were in there. That is to say, I’ve lived in this house three years now, and this room has always just been my own. I’ve never hadto knock before now.” Ian let a tense moment of silence pass and cleared his throat. “I’m not sorry I saw you pleasuring yourself.”
“Please.” A raw, strangled little sound forced itself through the hitch of her breath. “I’m humiliated enough already.”
