Grisham hesitates a little longer, then bounds toward her—he never just walks; he is either asleep or he is leaping and bouncing—and sniffs her hand with both fascination and approval.
“Provençal soap,” she tells him. “Do you like it?”
Grisham yelps a little at the word “soap.”
“Yes, I know,” she says in a conspiratorial tone. “Just between the two of us, I also hate being washed when I haven’t asked for it.”
My ears burn: She is speaking of me, the instigator of the unwanted washing that she hates.
Grisham bounds a few more times inside the bath; then he stands before the door and barks. I let him out and close the door again.
“That dog is the only thing worth knowing about you,” declares my bride.
I want to say something about the care I’ve lavished on him to turn him from a maimed, frightened pup to the boundlessly enthusiastic hound he is today. But what is the point?
I resume washing her. I want to prove to her—and to myself—that not everything I do for her is for my own sake. Sliding my hands beneath the water, I soap her sides and her belly. Her fingers tighten on the rim of the tub.
“I am surprised you did not bring a book for your soak.” A tremendous lover of books, my bride. Yet she has never been bookish, only sharp, clever, and confident.
She does not answer. Her breath is suspended as my soapy hand moves up her torso, approaching her breasts. But I do not pay particular attention to them, moving over them as if they were no more erotic than a pair of shoulder blades.
Yet even without lingering, I feel the erect state of her nipples. My cock stirs.
I move behind her, let down her hair, lather it, and gently dig my fingers into her scalp. I could do this for hours, this sweet husbandly labor, pretending that the silence is one of comfortable intimacy, rather than a cold shoulder on her part.
“I’d like to comb your hair too. Such beautiful hair—imagine it cocooning me as you ride me astride.”
The cascade of her hair spilling loose, the soft, weightless mass tickling my chest, my shoulders, and my neck, even as her hard nipples graze my chest. At the thought, my cock tightens further.
She shifts. Belatedly I realize that I have spoken my thoughts aloud.
“With my hands tied in front of or behind me?” she asks mockingly, breaking her silence.
She does not understand that I want her willing. Eager. Wild. My head fills with fantasies of her ripping off her clothes so that we can be skin-to-skin, of her bruising my lips by kissing me too hard, of her pushing me into bed, then leaping atop me and riding me as if she means to break me.
I inhale. “In front, of course, so I can see those hands manacled. I enjoy having you at my mercy.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed,” she says, her tone frosty.
Have I just made things worse?
I place an empty bucket beneath under her head, rinse her hair, and wrap her bright auburn tresses in a towel. At the other end of the tub, I take her slender foot, stroke her instep, knead her sole, and massage all the tendons and muscles.
“Pretty feet.”
“Really?” she counters haughtily. “If memory serves, on more than one occasion you have described my feet as being the size of coal scuttles.”
Will my erstwhile stupidity never stop coming back to haunt me? I have no choice but to admit, “I lied.”
“Then or now?” She does not relent.
I am almost tempted to lie again. “Then.”
“To be irritating? How original.”
Indeed, there is nothing original to my methods. Boys have insulted girls they fancy for as long as syllables have existed. I am, however, a bigger fool than most. I have persisted at my boyish methods long after I have reached manhood. And had she not fallen from grace and given me the opening to rescue her with my offer of marriage, today I might still be trying for her attention by maligning the size of her feet or the color of her hair.
I massage her other foot, paying, if possible, even closer attention.
“Is there an end to this, Larkspear?”
I should no longer be startled by such barbs from her. But I am, and each new one hurts more than the one before. Because I am more in love with her than I was yesterday, more than I was last hour.
I put on my most condescending tone. “Shouldn’t my devoted wife suffer through my ministrations with no complaints?”
“In bed, not out of it.”
“Well, then, let’s get you to bed with all due haste, shall we?”
Her legs I wash quickly. Her private parts I do not wash as quickly, but neither do I fondle her. She does, however, tense when my hand slips between the cheeks of her bottom, but I do nothing with the secret knowledge I gained last night.
She allows me to lift buckets of water and rinse her, but declines further help and quickly dries herself before concealing her nakedness beneath a dressing robe. Then she sets out for her bedroom, with me two steps behind.
At the edge of her bed, she turns around and drops her robe. “And how would you like me to perform my marital duties today, my lord?”
“On your back, my dear, as every good woman ought to be.”
She shoots me a look full of daggers, but lies down gracefully, her ankles crossed, and rolls her eyes as I tie one of her wrists to the bedpost with a bright red sash—I don’t want her to associate one color with our love play, but every color. Her other wrist I leave free.
The position of her arm pulls her breasts high and taut. My breath catches as I straighten.
“Where is my blindfold?” she demands.
“No blindfold this morning. You will simply have to suffer the sight of me doing unspeakable things to you.”
I go to my room via the connecting door and return with a sketchpad and a stick of charcoal. I pull a chair next to the bed, open my sketchpad, and survey her willowy form. I have always wanted to draw her. But rather than her breasts and thighs, perfect as they are, I yearn to capture the vibrancy of her eyes and the subtle sensuality of her lips. To capture the essence of her, all that fearlessness—the lioness within.
Not that it is a hardship to sketch her nakedness. I settle into a comfortable rhythm, outlining her silhouette, then filling in the details, smearing the charcoal to define light and shadows. But I forget myself for a moment when it comes to her face. She has her eyes on the cherubs on the ceiling, and I gaze at her. And gaze at her. And gaze at her.
Suddenly she turns her head and our eyes meet. Alarm rings in my ears—she could not possibly have failed to see the longing on my face.
She studies me intently, then smiles a little. The lioness has scented blood in the air. She might not move in for the kill yet, but she is now on the hunt.
Almost without thinking, I strike first. “I see your nipples are hard again. Are they always hard for me?”
Time slows as our gazes continue to hold. I can almost count her lashes, each several shades darker than the color of her bright red hair. Her irises are not just green, but streaked with grey and black. And as I watch, her pupils dilate.
In an almost theatrical gesture, she lifts her free hand and settles it on her breast; her nipple peeks out from between her index and middle fingers. My already tumescent cock hardens completely.
“That is what you would like to think, wouldn’t you?” she murmurs, as she squeezes her nipple with the sides of her fingers. “Is that why you didn’t put a blindfold on me? So that it will be more difficult for me to imagine you as someone else? I do not think that is working at all.”
It stings. But the way she plays with herself, her motion fluid and deliberate, makes it obvious she doesn’t just want to anger me; she wants to arouse me.
I know why she wants to anger me—she is still furious that we live in a world where she has no choice but to marry me to save herself from the consequences of a sexual indiscretion. But why does she want to
arouse
me?
I remain on the offensive to hide my puzzlement. “I have an idea to whom I should send that particular sketch. Do you think the man who ruined you will be overjoyed to see you so well settled in marriage?”
Her voice tightens. “You are willing to let another man see that you must tie down your bride?”
“He will see no such thing. All he will infer is that my bride is willing to be trussed for my pleasure. It might even excite him. Do you think he will stroke himself to the sight of you, naked and bound?”
She inhales—and regroups. “I am a devoted wife; of course I will not wonder what some other man chooses to do with depictions of my naked person. I am far more concerned that you, my dear husband, might endanger your immortal soul by succumbing to such acts of depravity. Will you stroke yourself to the drawings you make of me?”
She
is
trying to arouse me.
And then what?
The answer arrives in a flash of blinding clarity: Then she will try to control me with my own lust.
I sit back in my chair. My lioness thinks fast on her feet—or on her back, as it may be. Until now her plan has been one of passive resistance, to navigate my carnal demands without having any part of her inner self touched—or sullied, from her point of view. But now she has a strategy of engagement. Now she is actively trying to shape this new reality of our lives. To her favor.
On the one hand, I cannot be more proud of her—the woman I love is ever one to take the bull by the horns. On the other hand, this could spell disaster for me.
“I may or may not stroke myself,” I answer. “But I do plan to create an entire portfolio of your nudes.”
“For what purpose?” She taps on her silken impediment. “Do you anticipate that at some point
this
will no longer be enough to hold me in my place? And you will have only the pictures to remember me by?”
My heart palpitates with an unspoken fear. Within reason, marriages of the upper crust are flexible and tolerant. After a few years and a pair of heirs, as long as she is discreet, no one will bat an eye should she take a lover. Or take up with the very same man who ruined her.
I rise and show her my sketch. “What do you think?”
She scans the drawing. Then her gaze travels along the length of her lanky person to her foot. At some point, perhaps for her own comfort, she has raised her left knee. And I have drawn her with the toes of her feet digging into the sheets.
This apparently displeases her. Does she see those tense toes as an outward sign of her nerves? She wants me to be openly panting for her, but refuses to display anything on her part except an arctic, frigid chill.
Or at least that is what she would try for.
And that is precisely what I cannot allow.
I finish the sketch and place it on her nightstand. “Keep this one. A honeymoon present.”
“Thank you. I’m sure it will make the evening fire extra toasty.”
The thought of my sketch going up in flame—no, that is not what makes my heart burn. It is that she has seen how I look at her when my guard is down and she will exploit that knowledge to the fullest, both to manipulate and to punish.
I shrug out of my jacket with more force than is necessary. She scrutinizes me, her eyes alive with interest. No, not interest—interest on her part would have my heart doing somersaults. Her eyes spark with speculation.
“So it begins again,” she murmurs as I toss aside my waistcoat.
I unbutton my shirt. “I am your devoted bridegroom. Of course I must please you whenever I can.”
“I’d be better pleased if you forgot I existed.”
“Perhaps you might have been, before we married,” I admit. “But now that we have made love, do you truly wish that I would so quickly lose interest in you?”
Something restless and troubled shadows her face, but she answers, “Yes.”
I wrap my hand around her ankle and massage her heel.
A strange light glitters in her eyes. “Please don’t be so polite.
This
is what you want, isn’t it?”
She slides her other foot across the bed—quite some distance away—and scoots that foot up, thoroughly opening herself to me. “Enjoy what you see?”
I cannot speak. Those long, long legs, those opulent pink folds, but most of all that ruthless brazenness—she knocks the breath from me.
“Don’t be so speechless,” she says, triumphant.
“I can be as speechless as I want to be when my bride bares herself to me.”
And if only she would do it without ulterior motives, I would be the happiest man in the world.
I lift the foot closer to me and kiss her just above her ankle. Without taking my eyes from hers, I kiss the length of her leg. And when I reach the end of it, I entangle my fingers in her curls; then I lower my head and lick her along her seam.
Her entire person draws taut. I lick her again, hungry for the taste of her, hungrier for the reactions I hope to provoke.
“That is enough,” she says hotly.
“That is never enough.”
It would be enough only when she grabs my hair, forces my head between her legs, and commands me to stay there until she decides otherwise.
“You are so pretty here, like an iris just short of full bloom. I want to open all your petals and”—I dip my tongue inside her—“drink your nectar.”
I push her legs farther apart, open her plump nether lips, and suck on where she is most sensitive. She lets out a short cry. I vary the pressure of my tongue, caress and probe with my fingers, and once in a while let her feel the sharpness of my teeth.
All of a sudden, my hair is tugged hard. Startled, I stop what I am doing. But it is not her trying to yank me off, only her hand involuntarily gripping my hair.
My heart hurts, both with the expansion of hope and with the certainty that this hope too will decay into despair the next time she takes aim at me. But I begin to pleasure her again. Perhaps she thinks that I am manipulating her just as she hopes to manipulate me, and perhaps I am, but it is not the same. I
need
to pleasure her. I
need
to bowl her over. I
need
to push her under and drown her in sensations.
Because I do not know of any other ways to tell her that I love her. That I have always loved her.