Chapter 24

… the pleasures of love had been to us what the joy of victory is to an army: repose, refreshment, everything…

—from FANNY HILL

He found her in the bath.

The great square marble tub had been built into the upstairs bathing room by one of his more profligate relations. The benefit, he'd reflected, of his forebear's extravagance was that the tub could not be removed from the premises, and so he'd been able to offer Selina a place to wash rather better than a basin and ewer.

The air in the bath was humid and fragrant. He could see Selina's head tipped back against the wide marble ledge, her hair curled into tiny springs by her ears. Her eyes were closed.

It struck him as mildly alarming. Surely it could not be safe to sleep in the bath.

He approached and then wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. He didn't want to frighten her. She could slip under the water and drown.

That, he supposed, wasn't entirely likely. Still. He cleared his throat decorously from just over her shoulder.

Her eyes flew open, and she squeaked, water sloshing over the ledge of the bath and onto the tile surrounding it.

"Oh," she gasped, sitting up. "Peter!" She glanced down at her naked form, so he, naturally, followed her gaze. "Is everyone well belowstairs? Have you need of me?"

Christ, she was the loveliest thing he'd ever seen. Her pale skin was pink from the warmth, her legs long, her thighs plumply curved.

"I—" he said. "What?"

"Lu and Freddie." He managed to find her face, which had nearly adopted his very favorite glare. "Everyone's fine?"

"Mm-hmm," he said, and then he sat on the square rim of the bath and took off his boots.

"Well, good," she said. "I'll just—finish up here." She gestured vaguely at herself, her lips pursing.

"No need," he said, and he picked up her cake of soap and set to work lathering it into the fine sponge that she'd laid on the tub's wide marble ledge. When it was suitably foamed, he dunked it into the water and swirled it carefully along Selina's shoulders and collarbone. Little streams of bergamot-scented water caressed her breasts, breaking around her rosy nipples.

"Peter," she said, amusement and desire lacing her voice. "Your shirt."

Water had splashed up his forearms, the white linen going transparent and clinging to his skin. He paused to roll up his sleeves, then returned to his task.

Selina licked her lips. He washed her shoulders, her arms, her long tapered fingers. "Sit forward," he said, and when she did, he soaped her back, squeezing the sponge so clear water washed the foam away. He trailed one finger down her ribs, stopping at the flare of her hips.

"I wanted to say something," he said.

"Yes?" She sounded a little breathless, and it pleased him extremely.

"You're stuck with us now. Lu and Freddie. The kitten. Me." He brought the sponge beneath the surface of the water and used it to trace the dip of her waist, the soft curve of her buttocks. "This house. It's yours, all of it. All of us. There's no going back."

"I don't want to go back."

"Good," he said. "We might have to rename the cat."

She laughed, and he slid the sponge over her hip bone, down the crease between her thigh and her sex. "You can—you can be the one to tell Lu," she said. Her voice wobbled.

"I imagined you'd have better ideas about how to bribe her." He trailed the sponge beneath her navel, down one leg and then back up. The sponge slipped from his fingers beneath the water as he caught the slippery curve of her thigh in his palm. Water splashed nearly to his shoulder.

"I—" He looked to her face, saw her throat bob as she swallowed. "I am—sure I could think of something."

"Can you?" he said, coasting his palm up her thigh, laying it flat over her mound. "Perhaps I'm not applying myself."

She made a soft sound and her hips twitched against his hand.

"God," he said. "God, Selina." He'd been trying to tease. To pet and coddle her. But emotion suddenly broke from his chest into his voice at her breathy, wordless sound of need.

Christ, he needed her too. He needed her so goddamned much.

"Stand up." His voice came out low, harsh with demand.

When she stood, water cascaded down her body. He wanted to follow each rivulet with his hands, his mouth, his tongue.

He took her hips between his hands and urged her out of the bath, then pressed her down to sit on the ledge. Water pooled on the floor around their feet. He knelt between her thighs, and the water soaked his trousers, his knees pressing into the slippery marble.

He stroked up and down her thighs, his hands circling closer and closer to her sex. She breathed, a quick shuddering gasp, and he looked up at her.

She was paradise in the afternoon light. Gold, gold all over, her hair, her eyes—soft and heated everywhere he touched. He wanted to wrap himself around her, cover every part of her skin with his. He wanted to claim her, possess her, bury himself inside her wet heat and forget everything that hurt, forget everything except her body.

He kissed his way up her thigh, then let himself bite her, once, not too hard.

She tipped back her head, her hips canting up, her legs falling farther apart on either side of him.

He gripped the softness of her hips as he licked his way up her sex. She was hot and ready for him, pink and wet. He couldn't help the groan that tore from his throat at her taste.

She was leaning back, her hips thrust forward, her hands locked around the marble ledge, and he dug his fingers into her soft smooth flesh. He held her in place as he licked, tasted, sucked on her clitoris. He held her fast, even as she writhed. He would not let her go.

He was all sensation now. Her voice, pleading and urgent. His sodden shirt, rapidly cooling and plastered to his skin. The heat of her beneath his tongue. When she came, hard and trembling, he could feel the vibrations in his cock.

He was mad for her. He couldn't think. He should wait—he should pause to let her breathe—but he couldn't. He stood, unfastening his falls, fisting his cock as he looked at her, flushed and dazed.

"I need you," he said hoarsely, and she smiled, a cat-like curl of her wide, lovely mouth.

"Yes. Please."

He settled himself between her legs, and—Christ!—the asinine tub wasn't quite high enough. He hitched her leg higher up his hip, pressing into her slick entrance, gasping at the tightness of her sheath.

He was saying something—expletives, probably—but he couldn't hear his own words over the blood pounding in his ears. He grasped her thighs in his hands and dragged her toward him. She slid easily across the slippery marble ledge, and he slammed hard into her body.

She cried out, and fisted her fingers into his shirt for purchase. He did it again, and again, working her back and forth over his cock, her body sliding as if oiled over the tub's wide edge.

This was what he'd needed. Selina, wild and breathless and alive, clinging to him as he held her, as he entered her, as he loved her with his body. Pleasure raked across his skin, roaring through him as he thrust into her tight, clenching heat.

He wanted her to come before he did, but the tight clasp of her channel, the sweet pleasure-pain of her fingers dragging against his shirt, the sound of her gasp each time he yanked her hard up onto his length—it was almost too much. He couldn't hold on.

"Touch yourself," he said. "I need you to come."

Her eyes blinked open. Her breath came in shuddering gasps. "I can't."

"You can, damn it."

She looked down to where her fingers held fast to his shirt, and he followed her gaze. Holy God, the sight of his cock in her—her thighs as he worked her over himself—he couldn't breathe.

"I'll fall if I let go."

"You won't."

"I'll fall," she said again, almost desperately.

"I won't let you."

She wrenched one hand away from his chest and shoved it between their bodies, a sob breaking from her. He could feel the urgent unsteady rhythm of her hand, and it drove him half out of his head.

She gasped and stiffened, her head falling back, and he ground her over his erection as she squeezed down hard, a violent wave of sensation that nearly brought him off. He managed, barely, to withdraw, and Selina—beautiful, lovely, perfect Selina—wrapped her hand hard around his cock. He thrust himself into the tight circle of her fingers and was lost, finished, blind with pleasure, his release bursting through him like a hurricane, sweeping everything away except sweetness.

When he could see and think and move once again, he let go of her thighs and balanced himself on the ledge beside her. He caught her against his chest, his hand coasting to the plane of her abdomen. He pressed his chin into the curve of her neck. She was soft and smelled of bergamot spice, warm and clean except for the stickiness of his spend on her belly and breasts.

He tightened his hand across her ribs and tipped both of them backward into the water.

Selina shrieked as they splashed into the bath, and he—

"Bleeding Christ," he said. "Hadn't thought the water'd gone so cold."

She was laughing, pushing against him as she scrambled from the tub. Water cascaded over the sides, down onto the slick marble tile. He stood, his trousers and shirt clinging to him, and watched her fetch linen towels from a bureau.

He loved her. He loved her so much he couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Could do nothing but watch and memorize her face as she laughed.

He kept the sight of her in his heart even as she pulled him from the room, as she made him dry himself and lie beside her in their bed. He kept it safe, a perfect pane of glass, crystalline and fragile.

Peter slept beside her.

"You have heard of beds?" she'd asked him tartly as she'd stripped his sodden garments from his body.

"I've heard of nudity too, and yet keep not quite managing it."

"You're managing well enough."

"Am I?" he'd said, and wrapped his arms around her.

They'd mopped up the water as best they could, then stumbled to their enormous bed and curled up together, despite the fact that it was barely five o'clock and neither of them had eaten supper. He'd fallen asleep almost instantly.

She lay now with her head on his chest. She teased the dark hairs that curled beneath her cheek, slid a finger gently into the hollow at the base of his throat. He was like a great cat, dozing beneath her cautious petting.

She should go downstairs and check on the children. She should ready herself in case Gabe Hope-Wallace arrived early. She should think about supper. She should plan a menu for tomorrow.

White soup. Roasted pheasant. Some sort of sauce. Carrots. Soup?

Blast—she had thought about soup already, and she was trying to distract her mind, which was not working , because Peter had—he had—

I love you , he'd said. Again and again as he'd taken her. I love you, God, Selina, I love you, I love you.

Perhaps gentlemen just said that during bedsport. Perhaps it was some sort of… of animal mating call.

Good God, she was cracked. She racked her brain, trying to recall if she'd read anything about uncontrollable declarations of love in the Venus catalog.

Had he meant it? He had not seemed to notice the words as they spilled from his lips, had not acknowledged them after. Had certainly not said it again, when the haze of passion was gone from his mind.

Had she read anything about unexpected honesty engendered by lovemaking? In coitus veritas?

She felt fairly certain she had invented that phrase.

She'd seen an engraving once of a man, drooped pathetically across the lap of his nude and preposterously proportioned sweetheart. Post coitum omne animal triste est , it had read. After intercourse, all animals are sad.

She did not feel sad, precisely, here in the bed with Peter, her limbs tangled up with his. She thought of Freddie and Lu downstairs. Peter here with her, his skin warm under her cheek. She touched her thumb to the brass circlet around her ring finger.

No, not sad. Afraid, and cold with it, down in her bones.

How could she leave him now?

He had told her of his father, how they'd been abandoned in New Orleans. His brother—as close to him as Will was to her—who had died and for whom he still grieved. She could not leave him too. She couldn't bear it.

But if her secret came out before the hearing—if her connection to Belvoir's was revealed—what else could she do? She had seen his bleak fear at the prospect of losing Freddie. How would he respond if her scandal caused him to lose both of the children? To lose all the family he had left?

He would hate her. Or, if he did not hate her, she would hate herself.

"Please," she whispered against Peter's chest, barely knowing what she asked for. Things she could never say aloud.

Love me. Hold on to me. No matter what.

His arm tightened around her as if he'd heard. Perhaps he had. He'd told her, had he not? He would not let her fall. But it was not falling she feared. She could face that—the fall from grace, the utter destruction of her reputation and her life.

No. What she feared was that in the moment of crisis, she would not be strong enough or selfless enough to let Peter go.