To Have and to Hold (28 page)

"I said it wasn't a
thing."

"What is it, then?"

"Come and see."

Preest had done well, he saw at a glance. Candles warmed the room's marble surfaces with a mellow, rose-colored light, repeated in mirrored reflections everywhere. There was a new rug—white bear fur; it felt wickedly soft under his bare toes. Fresh peonies crowded a glass bowl on the edge of the sink, perfuming the air. Next to them, champagne cooled in a silver bucket. A stack of thick, fleecy towels, a basket of scents and soaps, a platter of fresh fruit—verily, the stage was set for the softest seduction he'd ever attempted.

Rachel was looking puzzled, eyeing the sudsy, steaming tub. "Are you going to bathe?"

He smiled at her, enchanted. "No, darling, you are. My gift to you is a bath."

"Oh." Delicate pink color stole into her cheeks. Her lips curved up at the corners. "But I'm . . . already clean." The blush deepened.

He laughed softly. "Cleanliness isn't the only object in bathing."

"It isn't?"

"No, indeed. Now, you have a choice of undressing yourself or letting me do it for you. Either way, we mustn't dawdle or the water will get cold. Which would you like ?"

She couldn't meet his eyes, but she couldn't stop smiling. "I'm a little embarrassed," she confessed.

He drew her close and put his cheek next to hers. "Don't be—that would ruin everything. I want to spoil you tonight, Rachel, pamper you and make you sigh. But I can't if you're ashamed. I've seen you without your clothes before. I love your body. It's perfect." She started to say something, but he stopped her with a lingering kiss. Under his hands, she went soft and pliant, swaying against him. "I've forgotten how this opens," he said after a moment of deeply pleasurable fumbling.

"In the back," she breathed with her eyes closed.

"Turn around, then."

She did, and together they watched in the steamy cheval glass as her clothes fell away and slipped to the floor. He kept her still with his hands on her stomach. "You see? Perfect." She didn't know what he would do next, where he might touch her, and it was exciting to watch her lips part and her nostrils flare a little while she waited, taking quick, silent breaths. Their eyes met in the mirror. "Hop in the tub," he said huskily. "Before it gets cold." He took his hands away, but he couldn't resist a slow kiss on top of her shoulder.

She moved away, and he leaned back against the lavatory to watch her sleek, graceful, fascinating entry into his bathtub. She tested the water with her hand first, then turned her back to him to step over the edge of the tub, first her right leg and then her left. Crouched in half, she lowered her pretty backside into the water, giving little hiccuping gasps with every inch of new flesh she submerged.

"Too hot?" he inquired, and she shook her head and made a low, ecstatic moan he took to mean no. When she was seated in the tub with water up to her rib cage, he brought her the basket of soaps and oils. "Which do you like?" He handed her the soaps, one by one, and uncorked all the little glass vials for her to sniff—oil of roses, oil of orange peels, sweet almond, lavender, lily of the valley.

"How can I choose?" she wondered, but eventually she decided on bayberry soap and oil of bergamot.

"Excellent choice," he approved, like a wine steward, pouring the oil for her and swirling it in the water. "Sweet, feminine, and substantial. Subtle. Like you. Now lie back and relax."

She smiled dreamily and obeyed. "This is a sin, isn't it?"

"If it isn't, we're not doing it right. Here, take this."

She opened her eyes. "Oh, my," she said when she saw the glass in his hand. "I've never drunk champagne before. It is champagne, isn't it?"

"Drink it slowly or it'll go straight to your head."

She took a minuscule sip and wrinkled her nose. "Tickles," was her initial pronouncement. Her second
,
was more favorable: "Ooh, la."

"Like it?"

"Mmm. Sebastian?"

"Here."

"Ami in heaven?"

"Not yet." He took the soap and a rough-textured sponge and moved to the end of the tub, drawing up a stool. "Foot, please." She didn't move; she looked blank.
"Foot,
please. Thank you." He hooked her heel over the rim of the tub and began to rub soap between her toes.

It made her squeal, then suck in her breath through her teeth. But she didn't try to escape; she slid farther down, keeping her elbows on the edges of the tub to stay afloat, and balanced the wineglass on her chest.
"Now
I'm in heaven," she declared on a long, satisfied sigh.

"You're not even halfway there." Ah, but what a sight she was with her long leg cocked up at that wanton angle, her breasts bobbing in the warm water, just the nipples breaking the surface. Her dark hair curled on the ends in the humid air, and her eyes were closed, her face relaxed, almost slack from pure pleasure.

She opened her eyes when she heard him chuckle. "Why are you laughing?"

"I'm thinking there should be a medal for the kind of willpower it's taking for me to keep my hands off you. Except for your feet."

"The Order of the Bath?"

He looked at her in surprise. "That's funny."

"What?"

"What you just said. You made a joke."

"Did you think I was incapable of it?"

"You never have before."

She thought that over. "Maybe someone has to be washing my feet to bring it out of me."

He chuckled again. That was joke number two. He remembered that one-half of his goal was to make her laugh, but it had never occurred to him that her making
him
laugh might be just as good. "You're wonderful," he told her, reaching for her other foot. She only smiled, and shifted her long body to accommodate him. Progress was being made before his eyes. If his patience held out, part two of the goal would be, as William Holyoake would say, a lead pipe cinch.

When he finished washing her feet, he added more hot water to the tub from one of the copper ewers Preest had thoughtfully left. "Sit up," he instructed Rachel, moving his stool to the head of the tub. She sat up, and he set about the pleasurable task of washing her back and shoulders.

"Oh, I can do it," she protested halfheartedly.

"I'm sure. But isn't this better?"

She agreed on another soft, drawn out moan.

"Your skin feels like wet silk." He soaped her breasts, leaning over her from behind, holding their soft weight in his palms and slicking his thumbs across the perky nipples. Her head came back, and he stole a kiss from her parted lips while he slid his soapy hands down to her abdomen, and finally, under water, to the soft hair between her legs. Stroking her there, just for a moment, he listened to her gasp, and felt the springy tendons in her inner thighs begin to quiver. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his neck. He took his hands away with deep reluctance. "Time for a shampoo," he decided, and this time she acquiesced without a murmur.

He liked the small,' neat feel of her skull under the lather. Her long neck looked fragile, vulnerable, almost too slender to support the weight of her soapy head. She had her eyes closed, forearms dangling limply over her bent knees. She looked half asleep, but she said in a soft, clear voice, "I know why you're doing this. All of it, the bath, the soaps. The delicacies you tell Judelet to make for me. Dandy. I understand why you give me these gifts."

After a moment he said slowly, "If you understand, then there's no need for us to talk about it. Do you agree?"

She thought for a second, then said, "No. I need to thank you."

"Ah, now there you're wrong. Thanks is the last thing I want from you."

"What do you want from me?"

"Nothing."

She gave a small shake of her head. She disagreed.

"What I want is for you to be happy. As happy with me as you were unhappy in prison. If that's possible. I want. . ."
I
want to heal you,
he almost said, but it would have sounded too arrogant, even for him. How could he explain the compulsion he felt to purge all her memories of loneliness and cruelty? His methods were crude: he gave her scents and perfumes to eradicate the stench of prison, sweets and trifles and breads made from white flour, pretty, soft-textured clothes, a silly yellow dog for a boon companion. The elaborate scene he'd set tonight in this voluptuous bathroom wasn't even a seduction, not in the usual sense. He wanted to introduce her body to the ultimate pleasure—yes, of course, but even more, he wanted to ravish her mind, erase the past from it so that nothing existed but here and now. He wanted her to start over. He wanted her reborn.

But, of course, he couldn't say any of that to her.

"Put your head back and close your eyes." She obeyed, pliant as a child, and he poured the last of the warm water over her hair to rinse it. "I'm finished. Pretty mermaid, do you want to get out now?"

"Yes, please," she answered, smiling beatifically. "Otherwise I might slide down the drain with the bathwater."

He helped her out of the tub, folded her into a gigantic bath towel, and blotted her dry. He found a smaller towel and wrapped it around her head for a turban.

Unexpectedly, she lifted her arms and embraced him. He held her close, a warm bundle of damp terry. "Thank you," she said. "That was a perfect gift. I would like to give it to you someday."

"What a stimulating thought. But your gift isn't over yet." When he began to peel the towel away, her eyes lost the dreamy look and sharpened attentively. He smiled, because what she thought would happen now wasn't going to happen for a little while longer.

But it was hard to wait. In the glow of the candles, her skin looked warm and inviting, flushed pink from her bath. And she was smiling at him in a way she never had before—knowingly, eagerly, wanting exactly what he wanted. Her slender, fine-boned body was perfect, just as he'd said, and she was infinitely more desirable than any woman he'd ever known.

He unfurled a dry towel and spread it over the rug, knelt on it and pulled her down beside him. "I want you to lie down," he said gently. "No—on your stomach." Something flickered in her eyes before she could look away. He touched her cheek with his fingers. "It'D be all right. I promise." She hesitated another second, then stretched out beside him, facedown on the soft towel.

Trailing his fingertips down the long, graceful line of her backbone, it came to him that he'd been wrong all along about what he really wanted from Rachel. Power, he'd thought; the ability to control her. But that wasn't it at all. What he wanted was trust, and the thing she'd just done told him he finally had it.

He pressed his lips to her shoulder blade. "Thank you," he whispered, conscious of the inadequacy of the words. "You are lovely. So very beautiful." Her lips curved in an indulgent smile. She didn't believe him. But she would.

He chose a small glass bottle from the basket, uncorked it, and poured a few drops into the shallow, enticing hollow at the base of her spine. She made a low, indescribable sound, squirming her hips, then lay still. "This is a special oil, Rachel. It has unique properties:"

"What does it do?"

"It eradicates all of one's inhibitions."

She pillowed her cheek on her folded arms. Her smile was slow, sly, self-conscious, and it went straight to his heart. "I think you've washed all mine away already."

"There may be a few left." He began to fan the oil out from her spine with his thumbs, pressing gently at each vertebra, smoothing the balm into her skin. She went softer, limper by the minute, her body like warm wax he could shape and mold in his hands. She loved having her shoulders rubbed, and she told him so with low, heartfelt groans that only increased his arousal. He used the heels of his hands on her long, strong thighs, gliding them up and over the slope of her buttocks. There he lingered, beguiled, lavishing all his care and creativity, and his reward was another squeal of pleasure and the stimulating feel of her muscles bunching and relaxing under his palms.

If he could, he'd have ignored the small white ridge of scar tissue at the top of her left thigh. Each time he saw it or touched it, helpless anger came boiling up, and deep, hot sympathy. A nightmare picture would flash in his mind before he could censor it, and he would see it happening, the unspeakable violation of the pretty, sweet-faced girl in the family photograph.
Eighteen years old.

"Sebastian?"

She'd risen on one elbow and twisted around to look at him, wondering why he'd stopped the massage. He made himself smile. "Sorry. I was distracted," he told her, pretending nothing was wrong. This was no time for ugly memories.

"By what?"

"Hmm? By this very fetching behind." He smoothed his hands over her bottom, and soon she was purring again like a warm kitten.

"Turn over now."

She rolled onto her back, slowly, languidly, keeping her arms over her head. Her face was fascinating. She watched him, speechless, lax, all eyes and slack muscles, waiting. He slipped a white satin pillow under her head and fed her a grape from the fruit basket. "More?" he asked innocently, and when she nodded he held the bunch of grapes an inch from her mouth. She captured one with her lips and pulled it off with a succulent
pop,
then chewed and swallowed it with slow relish. She was smiling, but he doubted she had any idea what she was doing to him.