Authors: Sarah McCarty
For a second, she was as stiff as a board, but then she relaxed into him as she had on the horse, waiting for him to show her the next move. He didn’t make her wait long. Just started easing the far sleeve off her shoulder. As it slid an inch down her arm, he leaned her away, just far enough to encourage the other sleeve in the same downward slide.
As the dress dropped, her color rose. He’d never been with a woman who blushed before. It was intriguing, charming and incredibly arousing. He leaned in, catching the heat on his tongue as he found her collarbone, tracing its path with his lips until he could switch easily to her neck, up to the line of her jaw, the softness of her cheek. “Damn.”
“What?”
She didn’t need to sound so scared. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with her. He turned his head, finding the corner of her mouth. “You’re sweet, Gypsy. Just very, very sweet.”
She didn’t move, just sat there absorbing his words, or maybe dreading his kiss. He didn’t like that thought. He turned her face to his. There were a lot of emotions in her eyes, but none of them repugnance. “Don’t you want to know how I kiss?”
Her lips disappeared between her teeth and then slowly, so slowly, reappeared, then pursed. Just a little.
Deep inside his chest, something twisted painfully. He absorbed the sensations—tenderness, caring—before brushing his mouth over hers. Desi’s lips parted immediately in a stiff little move. Beneath his hand, the muscles in her neck contracted.
“No, sweetheart. Don’t tighten up. It’s just a kiss.”
He took her gasp the way she took his words. Completely, letting the sound flow through him, sink into his blood, find his pulse and kick it up. He kissed her gently, ignoring the invite of her parted lips, learning the outer curves, her reactions. It worried her when he covered her mouth with his, but as he backed off and just nibbled on the edges, she relaxed, maybe even responded. It was hard to tell. She was so nervous.
He touched the tip of his tongue to the bow of her upper lip, riding the swell of the high arch, flicking lightly down the middle. This time her gasp was harder. He supported her head on his hand, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “See, nothing to worry about.”
Desi swallowed hard. “Except my bath getting cold.”
Caine smiled, keeping his mouth close to hers. “A husband is no competition for a bath, eh?”
She shook her head. The rub of her soft lips against his harder ones was a sultry temptation. He curled his fingers into her skull with the need to drag her harder against him, but he had three days’ growth of beard on his face. Her tender skin wouldn’t survive that. “Then maybe we’d better get you into that water.”
He pushed the dress the rest of the way off her shoulders. It pooled at her waist, trapping her hands and exposing her torso. The blush he thought so charmingly pink before raged a fiery red.
“No need to be embarrassed, I’ve seen you naked before.”
She tugged at her arms. “But I was too busy to care then.”
The image of her running nude through that meadow was seared into his mind. If he diregarded the cause, it made for a very pleasant memory. He smiled. “That you were.”
He unbuttoned the cuffs of the dress. Then he went for the ties of the camisole. Beyond a twitching of her fingers, she let him. It might be fear or trust or scheming, but for whatever reason she’d decided on the path of least resistance tonight. And for that he was grateful. The camisole followed the path of her dress. The lighter material caught on the tips of her breasts, requiring the merest touch of his fingers to get it on its way. “You’ve got very pretty breasts, Desi.”
And she did. Small, with delicate pink nipples that would nestle his palm. He touched a bruise on the inner curve of the left breast. When Desi turned her face away, he brought it right back. “Don’t you hide your face, Desi girl. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, but the bastard who did this, he’s got a lot to answer for.”
As always, when he mentioned her previous life, she froze up like a cornered fox, weighing her options, debating which way to dart. What lie to present. “You already killed them. They can’t pay twice.”
He shook his head at her. Did she think he’d been born yesterday? “I’ve had enough bruises to recognize new from old, and this bruise is at least a week old, which means you got it before you were kidnapped.”
Color left her skin so fast she swayed. “I—”
She got hung up there, mouth working, eyes closed, no sound coming out.
“Gypsy, you can stop dancing around the fact you had a life before we married. I’ve made my peace with it.” He lifted her off his lap. “Put your weight on your heels for just a second.”
As fast as he could, he unbuttoned, untied and pushed until her dress, camisole, petticoats and pantaloons fell in one tangled pool to the floor. He tucked his arm behind her knees and stood. He never thought he’d be glad to see the fear on a woman’s face, but the start she gave when he lifted her up was a step up from the mortification she’d been struggling with before. He strode over to the tub. “This is going to sting those feet at first, but then it’ll feel good. If you need to, you can sink those pretty teeth into my arm.”
Desi didn’t make a sound as he lowered her into the water, but he thought it would have been easier if she’d screamed. Jesus, he couldn’t stand to see her suffer. He leaned over the tub, pulling her face into his chest as her breath came in hard pants. He wanted to yank her out of the tub, out of reality, just carry her to someplace where he could take all the bad things from her memory, all the pain from her body. Some place she’d be safe and happy.
The scent of lavender rose to surround them, blocking out the scents of the cooking meal, of sweat, of horses and spread with soothing calm over his emotions. Caine kept Desi’s face pressed to his chest until the tension left her body. “You all right now?”
She squirmed in his hold. He realized he was holding her too tightly. “Shit.”
He let her go, staying close in case she felt faint. She huddled there, knees drawn up and arms crossed over her chest, looking so fragile it gouged his heart. The knobs of her vertebrae poked in sharp relief along her spine while she waited on what he would do next. He dipped his fingers in the water by her side. It barely cleared her hips. “Guess Tia underestimated how big you were.”
“This is fine.”
No, it wasn’t. When he imagined this moment, he’d imagined her luxuriating in hot water up to her shoulders the way women did, relishing the luxury of a full bath and scented water. He knew how good it felt when he sat in the huge tub, and he knew how often he’d wished the water could be deeper and just surround him in warmth. For her it could.
“I think we can do better.” He stood. “I’ll get more water.”
“No!” He spun around. At the prompt of his ached brow she explained, “Tia doesn’t have to bring more water.”
She thought…
He chuckled. “There isn’t a man on Hell’s Eight who would let any woman lug water, let alone Tia.” Just the thought made him chuckle harder. “And you don’t want to hear what Tia would have to say about it if any man tried.”
“Oh.”
If possible she hunched tighter into a ball. The impression of fragility increased. There just wasn’t that much of her and in the soft glow from the oil lamp, what there was appeared more feminine than ever. More dainty. More in need of a man’s protection. He sighed. “How about we make a deal?”
“What?”
“You start working on accepting that you’re mine, and I’ll keep my back turned while you soak in that tub.”
She was a wary thing, but obviously smart enough to know to take what she could when she could. “All right.”
He headed for the back door. When his hand touched the knob, she started so badly he could hear the water slosh. It was easy to guess why. He didn’t turn as he asked, “Desi?”
“What?”
“Do you think I’m a possessive man?”
There was no hesitation in her answer. “Yes.”
“Do you think I’m a man who knows how to protect his own?”
Again no hesitation. “Yes.”
“And do you know you’re mine?”
This time a small hesitation and a flicker of something he couldn’t define before, “Yes.”
“Then I think you can trust that I can fetch water for your bath without another man so much as getting a hint of a peek at the room my wife’s bathing in, let alone my wife.”
Water sloshed again and then there came the softest of whispers. So soft it took him a moment to realize it was a “Sorry.” He turned the knob.
“Apology accepted.”
T
wenty minutes soaking in a full-to-the-brim tub of hot water could do a lot for a woman. It could steal the tension from her bones, the cold from her soul. It could even make her forget that her husband was in the same room. Make her forget everything except that one brief taste of heaven, one Desi was determined to savor. Lord knew when it would come back again. Floorboards creaked. Caine was on the move. Her haven was about to be invaded.
She felt him before he even touched her. Lassitude from the bath delayed her reaction. Two thunks punctuated his kneeling behind the high-back tub. Low and deep, his drawl slid into the calm of her bath.
“Time to get that hair washed, Gypsy.”
Tension in her skull let her know he’d lifted the heavy mass up. She took a breath and sank beneath the scented water. Around her waves marked the swishing of his hands in the water while tugs on her scalp marked his progress. A tap on her shoulder directed her to rise up on her knees. A dry cloth immediately wiped her face. The man thought of everything.
She took it from him, pressing it to her eyes. A sweet aroma blended with the scent of lavender and then his strong fingers were on her scalp, massaging gently, working a different soap through her hair. She reached up.
“No. Just lean back and let me do this.”
She didn’t focus on the edge to his drawl, didn’t focus on what he could see poised above her. She just settled back against the tub again and clung to her languor. Time enough to worry about everything later.
No one had washed her hair since she was a child. She’d always been too impatient to wait on a maid, and quite frankly, had considered another’s hands on her an intrusion, but Caine’s touch was different. Firm and gentle, it seemed more like a caress than a functional act, and the places his fingers lingered seemed to find the last corded bits of tension within her and unraveled them one slow circle at a time. He pressed gently at her temples and she groaned. How could such a big man be so gentle?
“Lean forward and close your eyes.” She did, knowing what was coming and resenting it because it would mean the end to the moment. The thought was strange enough to break the spell. Since when did she have moments with a man?
Warm water poured over her head, sluicing down her shoulders and into the water around her, the waterfall another soothing break in a hellish day. Again a towel was placed in her hands. As she wiped her face, Caine gathered up the weight of her hair. “Your hair is beautiful.”
“It’s a chore.”
“No way in hell are you cutting it,” he informed her as he squeezed out the moisture.
“I don’t see where there’s much choice. It’s matted.”
“I’ll take care of the knots.”
A glance up showed the stubborn set of his jaw and the broad stretch of his shoulders. She blinked. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. She took a breath and wrestled with that reality as Caine reached for another bucket. Shirtless didn’t mean naked. It didn’t even mean lustful. If she thought about it, it actually meant practical, as there was no way he could wash her hair without getting a shirt soaked. She put the cloth over her eyes. Definitely practical.
The floorboard creaked a warning. There was the sound of the metal hinge being released and then more of that honeyed scent. Stronger this time. And then Caine’s hands were back on her hair, rubbing something into the mats, working beneath to massage her scalp, finding again all those spots that just melted her bones. She decided to ignore his shirtless state. The pleasure was too unique to throw away in order to worry about something that couldn’t be helped or prevented.
Caine’s hand on her shoulder brought her back against the tub. She lifted the edge of the cloth. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the wide expanse of his shoulders and the puckered slash of a scar on the left one. He must be kneeling. His lips brushed her hair. “Relax. This is going to take awhile.”
His fingers drifted to the hollow just below her ears and behind her jaw. Subtle pressure there sent bliss shuddering through her entire body. She dropped her hands to her sides and gave up fighting him, just letting them float in the water. Her legs couldn’t float bent as they were, but her thighs relaxed, falling to the sides as it just became too hard to keep them upright. And best yet, her feet didn’t hurt anymore. The water numbed them.
Caine’s thumbs brushed her earlobes before withdrawing. Another shiver skipped along her pleasure center and settled, along with the rest in her core.
“That’s my girl.”
She’d be anything he wanted as long as he didn’t disturb this moment, this contentment. From the tugs on her hair she knew he was working on the snarls, but no hard yanks indicated impatience. After what she guessed was five minutes, she suggested again, “It really would be easier to cut off the worst.”