This Duchess of Mine(68)

“Then I suppose I could wear my breeches.”

He unbuttoned the top button of his waistband, watched her eyes. There were some wonderful things about having been married so long. One was that neither of them was a virgin.

“You’ve changed!” she blurted out.

He unbuttoned another button, lazily. “How so?”

She sketched a shape in the air. “I know the shape of your body. I know you, Elijah. I could—for years I could feel the shape of your shoulder, and your hip, in my fingertips.

His desire cooled for a moment, iced by regret. “God, I’m—”

But she overrode him. “But now you’re so much—so much larger. Your shoulders…your height. You must be—”

The stab of guilt in his heart was gone and he was laughing, laughing at the surprise in her voice, at the potent thread of desire in her eyes, at the way she was staring at him.

He undid the fourth and last button. “Aren’t you curious about the rest of me?”

“You may undress,” she said regally. A wave of steam rose from the pool and turned her into a nymph, glimmering in her white chemise.

He waited until the air was clear, until she could see every movement of his hands. Then he pulled off his stockings and turned his back.

She made a little muffled sound, and he turned around again, hands still on his breeches. “Did you say something?”

“No…” She was laughing too, but the laughter rode on a wrenching wave of desire. He turned his back again. “Yes! Don’t do that!”

This time he turned with his pantaloons wrenched down just a bit. He knew the front was tented. And he knew that when it came to male equipment, his was larger than most.

“How long were we together, all those years ago?” he asked her.

She dragged her gaze from his front. “Two weeks? Three?” One shoulder rose.

“I think it was more. A month, perhaps.”

“I’m sure there’s one part of your body that hasn’t changed,” she said, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a wicked smile.

But he felt as if he had. As if the very sight of her turned him mad with lust. And he’d never been mad with lust. Not for his young wife whom he hardly knew. Not for Sarah Cobbett, his unimaginative, if reliable, mistress.

“Don’t stop now,” Jemma called, and there was something in that throaty call that shook loose a different Elijah than the man he knew.

He let his eyes range over her, linger on her breasts. Then he hitched down his pantaloons again, pulling his smalls with them. He knew she was watching, so he put his hand down his front and gave himself a slow caress.

He heard a gasp of laughter from the other side of the pool and met the eyes of his wife, felt that roaring, purring rage of lust through his body again. He had waited a long time to feel that, and perhaps its strength was ten times greater for the wait. He kicked off his pantaloons and stood there, letting her see what his side of the marriage brought her. Wondering, if the truth be told, about those famed affaires she had had while living in Paris. Two, he had heard, or perhaps three.

He thought, at the time, that it was her revenge, and her right. He had destroyed her dignity and her faith. She had the right to do the same. But she’d chosen puny fellows to have affaires with, men who would never challenge her on any front.

Jemma pulled her gaze away without saying anything and began testing the water with her foot, one slender toe poking into the warm water.

“Not in your chemise, I would hope?”

She didn’t listen, of course. Jemma was unlikely ever to listen if the advice went against what she wanted to do. He waited while she walked down the steps into the bath, enjoying the curve of her hips, the pink glow of her skin, the way he could dimly see cloth clinging to her legs as she went deeper.

To his disappointment, she sat down on a middle step, the water swirling around her waist. The tips of her hair, thrown back over her shoulders, trailed in the water.

He moved down his flight of stairs. The water was as warm as a baby’s bath. It was unfortunate that in his state of lust even the gentle lap of the water drove him into more of a fever.

“Jemma,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes?” She was leaning back against the steps now. Her white shift was turning transparent as the wavelets touched it. He could see her long slender legs sprawled on the steps, slightly askew. It was enough to make his blood pound in his chest.

Now the water was lapping at her breasts.

“So I stay on my side of the pool, and you stay on yours,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But I came here to know you better.”

She opened her eyes, and the look in them should have been outlawed, just for the better good of all mankind. “We can talk,” she suggested.