by Leda Swann
She pulled off her boots and tossed them in the corner. “Shut your eyes,” she said, as she pulled her shirt over her head and threw it on top of her boots. Not even the knowledge that he was in the room with her could stop her from soaking herself in that steaming water until her skin was wrinkled and water-laden and the water had cooled. “I’m going to take a bath.”
He grunted.
She took his grunt for consent and continued undressing, her back turned towards him.
Ah, how deliciously warm the water was as she stepped into it, lowering herself inch by inch into Heaven. She lay back, her eyes closed, and sighed with pleasure.
“Move over, wife of mine.”
At the sound of Lamotte’s voice by her ear she opened her eyes with a start and instinctively drew up her knees to cover her chest.
What she saw made her gasp in earnest. Her husband stood before her, not a stitch of clothing on him from his head to his toe. She spluttered, shock making her nearly incoherent. “You…you’re naked.”
Chapter 8
She watched in dismay as he put one leg into the tub, gasping at the heat of the water. “You can’t get in here,” she said, balling her washcloth in her fist and throwing it at him. “You’ve got no clothes on.”
The washcloth bounced off his chest and fell into the water with a splash. Without a word, he put his other leg in and sat down gingerly on the far side of the tub. The tub was plenty large enough for one, but not so generous for two. However tightly Sophie curled up on her end of the tub, he still took all the remaining room without even trying. Their knees were so close that they bumped together.
When he was settled nicely in the water, he leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “How perspicacious of you to notice, though I cannot see why this would surprise you. Did you expect me to bathe with my clothes on?”
She glared at him in disbelief. Things had gone from bad to worse before she had known what was happening. He was invading her privacy in a most shameful and shocking way and she would not allow it. “You’re in my bath.”
He grinned at her discomfiture as he grabbed the soap and started to lather his chest. “Don’t be selfish. Did your mother never teach you that you must share?”
She stood up, the cold air making her overheated skin break out into goosebumps. She could not take so much naked man this close to her. In truth, she had never seen a naked man at all before. She supposed she should avert her eyes from his bare chest, from the triangle of hair on his chest that led down so inviting to his male member, stirring slightly under her gaze, but she couldn’t bear to. He was quite glorious in his nakedness and it was all too much for her. “I can’t share my bath with you.”
He pulled her down in to the water again. “Don’t be a goose. You could always wait until I’ve done, but by then the water will be cooling, and not nearly so efficacious for easing your sore muscles.”
She stood up again, though it hurt her to do so. She wanted that bath more than anything else she could think of right now. “I will ask for more hot water.”
He lay back at his ease in the tub. “We can hardly expect the landlady to heat us up two such enormous tubs of water. She must have used a day’s worth of firewood already.”
No more hot water? She sat down again in the tub in such a hurry that at least a gallon of water slopped over the edge and glared at him with burgeoning determination. She was not going to be cheated out of her bath by any man under the sun. It was hers. She had a right to it and she would uphold that right with her last breath. “You are not stealing my bath from me. I will close my eyes and pretend you are not here.”
“I had no intention of stealing your bath. I will even save your modesty so you do not need to shut your eyes.” He put his soapy hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that her back was turned to him. “Let me wash your back for you.”
His fingers were slippery with soap as he kneaded the stiff muscles of her shoulders and back, probing every tight, sore spot with relentless fingers until every part of her loosened under his hands. He held pure Heaven in his fingertips. She felt as though every ache and pain were being washed away under the touch of his hands. She never wanted him to stop.
“My arms?” she suggested, when he finished her back and washed the soap off with a sluicing of hot water. She held out one arm and looked at him over her shoulder with the most shamefully beseeching look she could muster. She wanted him to go on touching her forever, all over her body. “Please?”
He gave a small sigh as he took her arm in his hands and began to knead it with the same delicious torment, from the muscles in her shoulder blades down to the very tips of each finger. “Ah, the things I do for you, wife of mine.”
When her first arm had been attended to, he took her other arm without a word and worked his magic on that one, too, pummeling it until every part of it felt as soft as butter.
Sophie wriggled her shoulders with a newfound sense of ease when he had finished. Her back and shoulders felt looser and freer than they had in a long while and her arms felt like new.
She shifted uncomfortably on her bottom in the bath, feeling anew the muscles that hurt most from riding. Much as she would like her legs and backside to be pummeled and stroked into such delicious relaxation as her upper body, she did not dare to ask him to touch her there. Besides, he could not easily touch her legs, hidden as they were in the bath water. She would make do with thanking him, keeping care to hold her tongue before she begged him never to take his hands off her body.
She turned her head around to smile at him. “Thank you.” He had made her feel so wonderful that she could even forgive him for stealing half her bath.
He lathered up his hands again. “Save your thanks for later. I have not yet finished.” With lather dripping from his hands, he reached around from behind and began to wash her breasts and stomach.
His breath was in her ear, hot and sweet. At her back she could feel his manhood begin to rise and swell, pressing into her buttocks with an insistent touch. He wanted her – that much was quite clear. He wanted her as a man wanted his woman. She could feel his need for her, his desire for her, in every pore of her body. How she gloried in the feeling of being desired. How she gloried in the knowledge that she, and only she, could bring him to a state of quivering excitement and make his heart pound and his breath quicken from wanting her.
He was not kneading her sore muscles now – he was touching her as a man touched a woman – in gentleness and desire. After the first shock of his touch had worn off, Sophie arched her back, thrusting her breasts into his hands. She forgot his excitement and need in her own desire that was building relentlessly up inside her. Her desire was a torrent of raging river water about to burst through the puny dam of her self-control that had hitherto kept it contained and gentle. It was raging and violent, ready to be unleashed to destroy everything in its path with the unstoppable force built up behind it.
She knew she was behaving shamelessly, like a true wanton, but she could not help it. Every fiber of her being was screaming at her, crying out for Lamotte’s touch. Oh, how she had wanted this. How close she had come last night under the pine tree to begging for it. She could not say him nay – she could only luxuriate in the sensation of his hands rubbing the harsh washcloth over her body.
He soon abandoned the washcloth in favor of his bare hands. The touch of his fingers on her skin left trails of fire wherever he went. She felt her nipples harden and pucker into tight buds of desire as he kneaded her breasts in his hands, teasing the tips with gentle, flickering touches that left her weeping for more.
She moaned with desire for him, guiding his hands with her own to touch her body all over, wherever he desired to touch her. She had never guessed at the heaven that a man’s touch could bring to her body. His heat chased away the last lingering shreds of loneliness that lay buried deep in her heart.
His breathing quickened at her unspoken invitation and his soapy hands crept lower
, over her belly, to the thatch of curls at the top of her thighs. She thrust her mound out to meet his questing hand, crying aloud at the pleasure of it, at the pleasure of opening her body and her soul for the very first time to the man she loved.
His fingers brushed a secret spot that left her quivering and aching for more. Again he brushed it, tantalizing her with a desperate desire.
The tip of his finger entered her secret passage, dipping in and out in a rhythm that made her gasp. She leaned back into his hard chest and grabbed hold of his knees with desperate fingers to steady herself as she held herself open to his explorations.
Relentlessly he teased her with his finger, now dipping it in and out of her, now flicking her sensitive spot so that she screamed aloud at the pleasure of it, until she was completely under his spell, helpless in the throes of her desire.
Higher and higher he built up the tension in her body until she thought she would never survive it. Just as she was sure she was going to die of wanting, she reached the peak she hadn’t known she needed. She screamed aloud as the tension broke and waves of throbbing pleasure flooded her body, washing over and over her until she could take no more.
Limp and helpless as a newborn kitten she lay back in the tub against his chest as little aftershocks of pleasure skittered through her body. “Mmmmm,” she murmured, when she had regained enough of her breath to allow her to speak. “That was nice.”
He snorted as he hugged her to him. “Nice? How insulting. Is that all?”
She felt as though she had been swept to faraway places that she had only ever imagined in her dreams. “More than nice. I felt as though I had gone to Heaven.” She nuzzled her head into his chest, enjoying the tickling of his soft chest hairs against her heated cheek. “Does that mean we are married properly now?”
He wiggled his backside rather ruefully. “Not yet.”
Sophie could feel that his erection had not faded, but was as huge and swollen as ever it had been. He had not been fulfilled, but was still full and aching with need. He must only have given her pleasure and not taken any for himself. She had not known that such a thing was possible.
She suddenly felt ill at ease and embarrassed. What should she do now? What was he expecting of her? She did not know how to give him pleasure as he had given to her. She thought that men took pleasure for themselves as they found it – not relying on the woman to help them in any way.
She ducked her head under the water, gave herself a final rinse and clambered out of the tub. Her face burned as she thought of asking him how she could pleasure him. She could not ask him what he desired her to do. She could only hope that sooner or later the mystery would become clear without her saying a word.
What more could there be to marriage than that anyway? Sophie thought as she rubbed herself dry on a coarse towel, the bare floorboards sending shivers of cold into the soles of her feet. She was sure she could not feel more intensely without dying of it.
She tossed the damp towel at Lamotte and crept under the covers. She had no nightclothes, nor any clean linen for the morrow, but she would worry about that when the time came. Right now, all she wanted to do was sleep.
By the time Lamotte had dried himself and crept in beside her, she was three-quarters asleep. She snuggled up to his warm body and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.
She awoke to the sound of the dawn chorus, her husband’s warm torso next to her. Her husband was abed with her, and as naked as the day he was born. She shivered. Come to that, so was she.
His body burned against hers wherever it touched her. She turned over to escape the touch of his body against hers and lay still for a while, pretending to be dozing. The memory of the previous night made her feel sick to her stomach. How could she have forgotten herself so far as to behave like a perfect wanton in his arms?
He mumbled a sleepy good morning to her and reached out to take her back into his embrace. She could not face his touch again. Not so soon as this. She sat up, threw off the covers, and swung her legs over the side of the bed, almost falling out in her hurry to escape him. She could not deal with him just yet – her sense of shame was too great still. She would simply pretend to be in such a hurry to be moving again that she had no time to exchange early morning pleasantries with him.
She felt so vulnerable in the chill of the morning air with no clothes to cover her nakedness – as if she were laying not only her body but also her spirit bare to his searching gaze. She knew he was watching her every move. She could feel his eyes on her naked backside as she bent over to retrieve her clothes.
How she hated to put her travel-stained clothes on to her clean body. She held up her soiled linen with distaste, examining it critically in the dim light from the casement window. It looked worse this morning than it had the previous eve, but she had no choice other than to wear it or go without. She was tempted for a moment to go without, but she knew the leather of her breeches on her bare skin would chafe her unbearably. She shut her eyes to the sad state of her linen and struggled into it. Still damp from yesterday’s rain, it stuck to her body with a cold, clammy feel.
Lamotte called at her to come back to bed, but she ignored him. With a grouch and a grumble, he got out of bed and started to dress himself in clean linen taken from his saddlebags.
She averted his eyes from his naked body as he rose from their bed. She would not watch the play of his muscles under his skin as he wandered around the chamber, taking an inordinately long time to find his clothes. She would not watch him dress. He was a distraction at a time when she could not afford to be distracted.
She would not look at him at all, or talk to him either, unless she had to, she decided, for the rest of the journey to England. She may be married to him, but she did not have to have aught to do with him, if she did not choose to.
This morning she wanted to forget the very fact of his existence.
They were on the road in short order. She refused to sit down for breakfast, but grabbed a hunk of cold meat wrapped in bread to eat on her way. Lamotte cast a look of longing at the bowls of steaming hot rabbit stew that the maid offered to them to break their fast, but he followed her suit without a word.
“Are you going to ignore me all day?” Lamotte inquired after some minutes of riding, when she had replied to his inconsequential chatter with a mere nod or shake of her head. She was too intent on schooling herself into not answering him to concentrate properly on what he was saying. “Are you upset at something, or are you just sulking?”
She could not open her mouth to talk to him without blushing for her behavior the previous evening. Still, he was not going get away with accusing her of sulking. “I was not ignoring you. I was thinking.”
“You should leave thinking to the King’s ministers. They can think up enough crackpot ideas for all the rest of France together.”
“I was not thinking up crackpot schemes. I was merely…” Her voice trailed off into silence. She could not tell him what she was thinking about.
“Thinking?” he added helpfully.
“Exactly.”
“Can I ask what you are thinking so hard about that you haven’t heard a word I have said all morning?”
She was thinking about how she could possibly survive for the rest of the journey to England, being in her husband’s company and sharing a chamber with him at night. How could she remain true to herself? How could she deny him, when her own body tried to make a traitor out of her? How could she tell him she was thinking the touch of his hands on her body, and the gorgeous heaven of coming apart in his arms? “Nothing in particular.”
“You think about nothing very hard.”
She shrugged her shoulders and was silent.
After looking at her expectantly for an answer but receiving none, he rode on a few paces ahead and left her alone with her thoughts.
They were not comfortable ones.
She would have to exercise a far greater degree of self-control, Sophie decided. She would not think a
bout the touch of Lamotte’s hands on her body, or the feeling of his lips brushing hers. She would not think about that glorious moment when it seemed that she was flying and would never come down to Earth again. She would especially not think about how she could make Lamotte catch the same glimpse of Heaven that she had experienced. She would concentrate on her goal – to get to England – and distance herself from anything that would interfere with her plans.
Lamotte was the temptation she had to resist. The Devil had put him in her way to distract her from her purpose. She would be strong and true, and not allow herself to be distracted.
She looked sideways at him from under her lashes. He had been framed for distractions. His sight of his large, capable hands on the reins of his mare made her spine tingle with anticipation. She knew what the planes of his back look like without their covering of linen and leather. She knew how the hairs grew in tight, golden curls on this chest and thighs. She knew how good he could make her feel.
She knew, and she must forget.
She forced herself to think of Henrietta, doomed to a cold dungeon and moldy bread. Henrietta must be saved – and by her alone. Philippe of Orleans had put all his trust in her and she must not fail him. Despite all the temptations thrown in her path, she was determined not to forget the purpose of her mission.
The ride dragged on interminably. Torn between desire and duty, Sophie wrestled all day in her mind, determined to get the better of her desire. Long before nightfall, the effort had exhausted her.
She was thankful to stop at last at a humble tavern that boasted only one chamber for guests.
She washed briefly in a jug of cold water, and climbed into the narrow bed with her soiled shirt and stockings still on. She dared not divest all her clothing again, as she had the previous night. She would not be so foolhardy as to run headlong into temptation, but would rather seek rather to avoid it.