A ragged murmur convulsed from his throat. “No.” He returned her hand to the rim.
Her breasts grew heavy, weighted with need and so much more. Oh, how he used this wicked compulsion to gratify his experimentation.
Measure, formulate, test.
Her traitorous nipples glistened from the soap, hardened into tight coral points. She gasped, sensation ripping through her, coursing through her limbs before settling between clenched thighs. Her hips rose. To have him move the soap over her most intimate flesh. Her mouth dropped open. She caught a moan before it escaped, lowered her hips.
Their gazes collided, the fires in his eyes darkened as his pupils dilated.
He knew.He knew the direction of her thoughts. The rogue. Knew she wanted him to touch her and not stop and that knowledge made her hands ball into fists.
To her disappointment, he dropped the soap, dried his hands on a towel, watching her. He took a ragged breath and adjusted his clothing.
“Turn around,” she demanded, and when he pivoted, she rose, water sluicing onto the floor. She wrapped a towel around her and hurried to the door.
“I am fine, Aunt Margaret. Just a few finishing touches.” No one was there. Rachel pivoted, far from being fine. “Your aunt is gone. Leave now, and don’t look.”
She tightened her grip on the towel. He stepped into the hall, gave her one final glance. “You make me feel like a large scraggly dog just unchained, scouring the landscape of the world and baying at the moon.”
She slammed the door in his face.
Chapter Fourteen
Rachel tossed and turned in bed, finally rose, went to the windows and pulled back the drapes. The light of a full moon spilled across the floor. Burdensome clouds, clambered over each other in their haste to pass the mountain, herded by the wind and jarred like disordered concentric circles.
She fiddled with the edge of the hangings, drawing the silky fringe through her fingers. Part of her wanted to fetch Anthony to her side. But a bigger part of her was terrified and rooted her to the spot. She paced, walking in the quadrangle of moonlight. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture herself with Anthony. Hidden away in his laboratory, laying on his cot, propped up on a pillow, watching him take notes. And then he would turn and smile, gazing at her with that same smoldering sensuality that caused her insides to melt.
Oh, to have Anthony…but the fault in their destiny was the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy. She shook her head. No longer would she succumb to mythical notions.
She looked at her solitary bed. Since sleep had abandoned her, she might as well do something. A good book, perhaps. She threw on her robe and lit a candle, only the soft pad of her feet on the carpeted stairs echoed in the friendless quiet. In the library, she lifted her candle, illuminating row upon row of volumes marching across the shelves. She ran her fingers down numerous spines, awed of her noiseless companions and the learning to be had between the leathery jackets. At random, she selected a tome, set her candle on a table and sat on a settee, pulling her feet up beneath the folds of her robe.
Kama Sutra.Of all the books available, she had chosen the ancient Indian book of love. Authored by Vatsyayana in eighth century India and first printed on palm blocks, the book had later been illustrated and printed in Sanskrit.
Her brother and cousin had laughed and drank over the book one night when they thought she was asleep. When they were snoring in their cups, she had tip-toed into their room to sneak a peek. Jacob had awakened, slammed the book shut before her widening eyes. She’d received a strong chastisement. Yet, she possessed a curious fascination for the book that disappeared and had searched every square inch of the house.
The corners of her lips turned up. She looked over her shoulder.Good.The doors were shut. Everyone asleep. Unimpeded, she commenced to thumb through the forbidden pages. With certainty, she didn’t understand Sanskrit. Oh my, how was it possible to achieve the suggestive physical acts between a man and a woman? She angled her head, studying the various poses. The bed in Anthony’s laboratory evoked the most sinful and debauched renderings her thoughts could devise. She let out a small gasp and clutched her bosom, her hand brushing against nipples that peaked through the silk of her gown. Her breath came out in short bursts. Belly-low, her muscles tightened and her legs clamped together. Two scorching blue eyes taunted her as she relived the sweet agony of what Anthony had done to her in the bathing chamber…his lips, hot and hungry against her mouth, his desire raw and consuming, bringing forth some kind of hidden awareness interred in her from birth. All she could thinkall she could think of at allwas that it could not happen.
Yet she was mesmerized with the possibilities, her mind consumed with the erotic positions the couples in the book were doing. How would it feel to lay with Anthony? To taste the hot salt of his skin, her fingers twining in the soft silk of his hair, to sample all the sensual things between a man and a woman.
She rubbed the corner of the book, flipping the pages. Logic and feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
If there was one thing she wanted, it was to lay with him before she returned home in a couple of weeks. Before she returned to the hurt and disappointment of men, rejecting her because of something out of her control. Conjuring images, the scent of sandalwood wafted over her, warm breath purred on her neck, too real. She turned. Anthony. She gasped out a small “Oh… Heat rose from the bottom of her toes to the roots of her hair.
He angled his head to the provocative pose in the Kama Sutra. How wicked was his smile? “Interesting reading.”
She clapped the book shut. “I-I could not sleep.”
“The text would give me insomnia.”
What was she to say?
He circled the couch and sat next to her. The room fell silent, their gazes locked and the tension in the air palpable. “I had a very restless day and night, thinkingonlyof you.”
“Of me?”
“I want to be with you in every way a man is with a woman.” He gazed at her upturned face with sensual regard, and let out a breath. “It is the time for secrets.”
“Secrets?”
