Lydia placed a chair beside the tub and laid her nightdress and towel over the back of it, a washcloth and soap on the seat. She undressed quickly, glad that Nathan had left because she had no idea how to go about undressing in front of him. How could she manage any sort of delicacy and grace when she felt only eagerness and trepidation? Was one supposed to pull the gown over one’s head or let it fall over the hips? Did one remove shoes and stockings before the dress, or after? And then there were all those horrible red stripes left on her flesh by her corset.
Under the water Lydia’s palms smoothed the skin from the underside of her breasts to the tops of her thighs. Would he touch her this way? she wondered. Would her husband be a gentle lover?
She leaned her head back against the rim, closed her eyes, and touched her mouth with the tips of her fingers. His last kiss had been gentle, respectful, yet Lydia sensed he had been holding himself back, or at least she hoped that he had. She wanted him to want her as fiercely as she wanted him. It had been an undercurrent in all her thoughts since he carried her into their cabin.
She heard the rattle of the door handle, then the scrape of the bolt being thrown. She felt, rather than heard, Nathan’s approach.
Lydia was not, as Nathan requested, up to her neck in water, but Nathan wasn’t disappointed. Her breasts gleamed whitely just below the waterline, and the curve of her arched neck glistened with beads of water, a string of yellow diamonds in the lamplight.
He knelt beside the tub, took the face cloth, and wet it, then rubbed the sliver of scented soap over it. “Where should I start?”
Her eyes opened then, darkly anxious. “I thought you would know.”
“Another first,” he admitted softly. “But if you’ll lean forward, I’ll start with your back as promised.”
She did, resting her cheek on her drawn up knees. Nathan began at the back of her neck and very lightly traveled across her shoulder, then lower, beneath the water and down the length of her spine to her buttocks. He lingered, then leaned forward and kissed her shoulder. She hummed her pleasure.
Nathan had never set out to give a woman pleasure before. The whores he knew didn’t expect it, some may not have known it was possible. Occasionally it happened, more by accident than design, but Nathan wanted it to happen this time. He wanted Lydia’s pleasure more than his own. If she never remembered anything else, he wanted her to remember this. And if she regained her memory he wanted her to know she had been dealt with gently by him, that he had cared enough to want to make her happy.
“Lean back now,” he said.
Her limbs were heavy, her mind cloudy with the infusion of pleasure at Nathan’s hands. She unfolded her body slowly, leaning against the tub and languidly raised her arm for Nathan to take. She realized she wanted him to look at her, touch her, and where she had been apprehensive before, she was deliciously anxious now, curious and wanting.
Nathan soaped her arm, running the cloth from her wrist to her shoulder, soaping the soft inside of her elbow, kissing her just above the pulse in her wrist. The other arm received the same treatment and then her legs, from ankle to hip. Each time his hand disappeared under the water his touch became a little more intimate, his washing a caress.
He abandoned the washcloth altogether when he washed her breasts. Palming the soap, Nathan’s hand fell to the hollow between her full breasts and circled lazily in a figure eight.
Lydia wanted to rest her head against the rim again, close her eyes, and pray that he never stopped touching her the way he was now. Her prayer didn’t change, but she watched him, fascinated by the beautiful lean-fingered hand that caressed her with such gentleness and raised such a burning between her thighs. His hand was dark against her skin, and the calluses on the pads of his fingers were deliciously abrasive as they spiraled toward her nipples.
He dropped the soap and made no attempt to recover it.
The pretense of washing her was put aside. It had only been an excuse to touch her and they both knew it. Their eyes met, held. His hand moved against her breast a little harder than it had before. Her eyes darkened as pleasure shot through her.
“You fit my hand,” he said, moving it to her other breast. He caressed and cupped her and she swelled slightly under his attention. “You like that?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded quickly.
Nathan smiled.
“You have dimples,” she said, watching his mouth, fascinated.
“I don’t.”
When the smile disappeared so did the dimples. Lydia raised one hand and touched each corner of his mouth with her forefinger. “Here…and here,” she said. “Only when you smile. And only sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“It depends on the smile, I think,” she said. There were cold smiles, forced ones that were almost aggressive, more a baring of teeth than a welcome. She might have told him about the smiles she didn’t understand, the ones that made her think she didn’t know her husband very well at all, but his hand was drifting across the flat of her abdomen and lower, and she couldn’t think what she wanted to say anymore.
The tips of Nathan’s fingers caressed the inside of her thighs, parting her legs with their gently insistent pressure. His fingers dipped lower and touched the tuft of dark silky curls between her legs. He looked at her and saw that she was watching him. “Close your eyes,” he said. “Just feel, Lydia. I want you to just feel.”
His husky urging closed her heavy-lidded eyes. Her long dark lashes fluttered once then lay still. He kissed her lids and she held her breath, waiting, not knowing quite what to expect, only certain that she wanted to learn.
The sensations that Nathan caused to build inside her were extremes. The hot, white fire at the center of her made her flush and shiver, feverish and cold at the same time. He was stroking her now, touching her with deft purpose, so that she lifted against him as the pressure and intimacy increased, and then his finger was inside her, and even when she gasped he did not release her.
He kissed her on the mouth and whispered against her lips, “Feel, Liddy.”
She felt. Pleasure spiraled through her, a pinwheel of sparks fired each thread of tension that pulled at her limbs. Her breath came in short, shallow bursts, forced out of her by his touch. She held the sides of the tub, her fingers pressed whitely against the rim. There was the soft sound of pleasure rising at the back of her throat. Nathan felt it on her lips and smothered it with his kiss.
