His cock flexed hopefully, untouched yet so near to her hand. His hips wanted to lift, to move, but he held perfectly still in the clasp of her arms and legs and her whole, lovely body.
He would’ve died before he moved and risked her letting go.
She rewarded him by gliding the cloth over his red, straining erection. Gasping out a groan, Nathaniel gripped the curled edges of the copper tub tightly, bracing himself.
But she didn’t tease. She washed him gently, thoroughly, then dropped the cloth and got her hand on him.
Pumping slowly and firmly, she drew the pleasure up and out of him in a jerky, shaking, teeth-clenching rush.
She twisted her unaccountably strong fingers round the head on the upstroke, her thumb teasing at the sensitive slit, and he grunted and came with a force that curled his toes under the water.
Before he’d even caught his breath, before the pearly white drops of his spend could even disperse in the bathwater, he’d twisted to haul her into his lap.
Water sloshed out of the tub and Bess yelped in surprise before he settled her, legs splayed around his hips.
“This was for you,” she protested with a breathless laugh. “I can wait.”
“I can’t,” he growled, his fingers digging into the softness of her buttocks and dragging her sex against the hard ridge of his pubic bone above his still half-hard prick.
She writhed a bit to feel it more, the way the crisp hair there abraded her most sensitive parts and made her want to grind down on him. With his hands, he encouraged her to move. Bess was vividly aware of the press of his fingers and the way they pulled her buttocks apart, ever so slightly, just enough to let the warm water lap against a secret part of her that sent sensation quaking through all her limbs.
She wriggled hard enough to slip one of her legs between his and suddenly, his thick, muscled thigh was pressed right where she needed it.
All of that, combined with the rapt expression on his masked face as he stared up at her dripping wet breasts and flushed cheeks had Bess stirring her hips in a wanton frenzy of motion that built and built until she shuddered into ecstasy and collapsed against his chest, still twitching.
When Bess’s spine had regained enough structural integrity that she could sit up again, she retrieved the cloth from the bottom of the tub.
They washed each other with languid sweeps of hands and a tiny sliver of soap that smelled of attar of roses.
The water had gone stone cold by the time they dragged themselves from it, shivering and holding onto each other for balance on the slick floor.
“Get into bed,” she told him, already looking for something to wipe up their spilled bathwater with.
“Leave it,” he said, pulling at her hand, his quicksilver eyes on her warming Bess through better than the bath had.
“I can’t do that! Someone might slip.”
“It’s only us here,” he pointed out, cocking his head to study her closely.
Bess shifted her weight, suddenly aware of her nudity in a way she’d hadn’t been even sprawled atop him in the bath.
“It will only take me a moment,” she said stubbornly, and he watched for a heartbeat longer before nodding once, decisively.
Turning to the bed, Nathaniel dragged the quilt up and dropped it onto the wet floorboards, mopping it about with his bare feet. “There. Now come to bed.”
Bess shut her mouth and went.
It wasn’t until much later, after he’d licked his way into her again and sent her flying apart, her breath coming in sobs and her heart thundering in her ears—after he’d surged up and covered her while she was still coming, the deep, thick intrusion of his prick spinning her higher and making it last and last—that he pulled her close and kissed her.
Bess was struggling to stay awake long enough to return the kiss when he said, “You don’t always have to be the one to take care of everything. To smooth things over, do what’s expected, to make things nice and tidy for everyone else. You can be a mess, sometimes.”
Her eyes popped open. The darkness of the room wavered before her, close and intimate. A space where she could say anything. Hear anything. From this man who didn’t know her at all, and yet knew her better than anyone else alive.
Bess’s eyes burned, but he wasn’t done.
“I’d still want you if you were a mess,” he said slowly, devastatingly. “If the entire rest of the world burned down, I’d still want you.”
Bess let out a shaky breath and clung to him, more tightly than she usually allowed herself.
