Almost a Gentleman (35 page)

"The storm you predicted?"

"Exactly. Come on, let's go back, the wind will be making our horses skittish."

It was dark after they'd stabled the horses. They ransacked the cellar for more apples, and begged some toasted bread and wedges of Cheshire cheese from a very busy Mrs. Yonge.

"A simple late supper," Phoebe thought she heard David tell the cook, her own attention having been mildly distracted by some suspicious movement under a deal table in the corner.
But perhaps it's nothing. And even if it
is…
something
—
or somebody
—
I won't fuss about it
.

"You're still cold," he said as they entered the green bedchamber. "Shall we sit by the fire?"

"Or," he added quickly, the sudden deep vibrato of his voice leaving no doubt as to his preference, "shall I draw us a hot bath?"

There was a bench, or a sort of shelf, carved all around the sides of the tall marble tub, so that two people might sit next to each other, the water reaching to their chins. Or, if they were tall, long-legged people, they might sit facing each other, their legs intertwined.

"This is paradise," Phoebe murmured, stroking her foot along David's shin. He grunted some contented syllables of agreement, his eyes half closed, mouth curved into a drowsy, satisfied grin. She wondered, if she slid down just a bit, how far her leg would reach—ah, yes, just to the bottom curve of his scrotum. She prodded him suddenly with her big toe, giggling to see his eyes fly wide open, his mouth shape itself into an
0
around a sharp intake of breath. It took him a moment to recover his equanimity.

"If you've got enough energy to make mischief," he growled softly, "I shall have to put you to work."

He paused, as though trying to choose a task onerous enough to constitute suitable punishment.

After some exaggerated deliberation, he announced, "Wash me."

"Must I? It's so delightful simply to soak oneself…"

Rising like Neptune from the tide, he towered over her, sending buckets of water slopping over the rim and splashing onto the marble floor. Gathering up the soap, sponge, and loofah, he waded across the water to where she sat.

"Take these and wash me."

The water came to his waist. She could see his penis floating—no, not just floating now, it was rising, stiffening—just below the surface, not far from her chin. The black hair along the flat line of his abdomen curled against him like coiled baby ferns. Shorter hairs made little black pothooks around his nipples.

"Come on." Miming impatience, he tapped the tip of her nose with the sponge.

"Umm, if you insist. But shall I wash you from the top down, my lord? Or from the… bottom up?"

"Work your way down."

She knelt up on the bench to reach his neck and shoulders, so elegantly interwoven of muscle and sinew. She reached her sponge into the deep pits under his arms, moving outward along his arms, reaching to each of his hands in turn. Hmmm, how lovely: both hands were carefully manicured, each fingernail trimmed extremely short and perfectly filed. This was something new, she thought. And a bit surprising in a man so lacking in vanity.

"I cut them this morning."

"Very pretty." She kissed the tip of each finger.

"Now turn around," she told him. She pressed her breasts against his back for a moment, wrapping her arms around him where he tapered from shoulders to waist. He untangled himself from her embrace—
enough self-indulgent dawdling, Phoebe
—and she ran the sponge down the diagonal ridges of muscle, soaping and rinsing him in circles along the surprising whiteness and roundness of his arse, the deep dents in its sides. But she would tumble off the bench and into the water, she thought, if she reached down any farther in that mysterious direction.

"Is that all?" he asked. "Nothing more in that area?"

"Turn around again," she said.

All right, now to work downward from his chest to his belly. And below his belly, where the tip of his penis had risen like a droll sea lion surfacing for a breath of air. She bent to kiss him there, and then sat back down on the bench to sponge him gently, rinse him lovingly, and to do the same for his balls and inner thighs.

"Not bad, but you missed some spots. I'll have to show you how to do this properly." He tried to frown as he lifted her to her feet and sat down in her place.

His style was to wash her briskly—she felt almost like a child being given a weekly businesslike scrub in an iron tub in the kitchen. Lots of soap, lots of splashing—but, as she sputtered and giggled under his hard, slippery hands, she knew that this was no childish pleasure. And when he used the loofah to wash the tips of her breasts, she thought she might simply dissolve into the suds.

"Kneel up on the bench," he told her now. "No, face the other way. Well, I've already done your front, haven't I?"

"Arch your back. Part your legs. Wider, Phoebe, that's a good girl."

No sponge or loofah: simply his hands. He pushed upon the small of her back; her belly tightened against the marble side of the tub and her legs had no choice but to spread themselves for him. Gently, slowly, he touched and teased her with his beautifully manicured fingers, exploring and caressing until her breath came raggedly.

New sensations rippled through her—highly improper ones, illicit and irresistible. Bending and stretching beneath his hands, spine arched, nerves thrumming, she imagined herself feasting greedily upon some exotic perfumed fruit whose name she didn't know and whose wholesomeness she doubted. Sinuous, iridescent shapes drifted before her eyes. The heat from his fingertips flickered up from her belly to her breasts, to her throat and armpits and the palms of her hands.

Her mouth opened in a delicious, shuddering sigh as he bent to kiss her nape.

"That's enough for now," he murmured. "Come, I'll dry you."

The towels were soft, thick; the almond oil he rubbed into her skin smelled light and delicate. His skin gleamed beneath the black hair on his chest and legs; she watched greedily as he stretched his spine and briskly toweled himself.

"I think," she said as they walked arm-in-arm to his bedchamber, "that I've left a layer of myself behind me in the bath."

A dead, constricting layer. Of used-up skin and useless, needless proprieties
. She felt light, shameless and almost giddy, buoyed by the currents of warm air rising from the fire in the hearth and lapping at their naked bodies.

"But what's that noise?" she asked. For there was a howling somewhere.

"You've forgotten." He drew back the red velvet curtains from the tall window to reveal the storm raging outside.

She nodded. "I
had
forgotten." Indeed, it felt as if she'd lost touch with everything beyond the confines of the steamy perfumed bathroom. But there it was: the natural world gone mad. Ferocious, heedless of human consequence, the gray-white snow whipping by in violent diagonals against a frozen black sky. Beholding it, she was seized by a wave of pity for the lost and unprotected. Pity—and yet exhilaration as well. Because for all the storm's brutality, she recognized something of herself in it, the force of desire coursing through her flesh.

"A passionate storm," she whispered.

"The
most
passionate of storms."

She could hear, in the slight thickening of his voice, that he recognized it too.

He pressed behind her, the front of his body warm and solid against her back as they gazed together at the havoc raging on the other side of the window pane. Standing firmly, she traced tiny arcs of movement with her pelvis, each movement a caress when she rubbed against him. He wrapped his arms around her, taking hold of her breasts; she parted her legs to allow him to lengthen into the cleft of her bottom.

The window glass—with black sky behind it—was like an old silver mirror. She held her breath as she watched the pale reflection of his hand move slowly down her front, to cup, to cover the dark triangle between her legs. And then to open her, to touch her, there at the triangle's apex.

"Ah." The quick rush of warm air from her mouth clouded the glass and dissipated the images reflected there. It was startling, she thought, suddenly to lose those shimmery mirror doubles. She and David were alone now. Alone together in the eye of the storm, sheltered from its violence and yet as one with its passion.

She gave a low laugh and tuned to him, putting her arms around him and (after hesitating for just a moment) letting one of her hands slide down his back, down below his waist. Softly, delicately (for she needed to be careful, at least until after she had trimmed her own nails), she allowed her fingertips to caress, to fondle and explore him in the cleft of his buttocks, to make him moan and shudder and harden against her belly.

His eyes were black, the pupils distended by sensation. He'd thrown his head back; his mouth was parted, the breath came roughly. She'd taken him further than either of them had expected.

Taken him
: the syllables echoed in her consciousness.

Taken
him: her fingers loosened as she absorbed the meaning of the word.

Taken.

He'd recovered his self-possession now; with some effort, his mouth had reshaped itself into a jaunty grin. Still, she thought, he looked a bit abashed to have found himself so absolutely at her mercy. Abashed, and yet (how she loved him for it) eager, surprised, and wildly aroused.

"We had better get to bed immediately," he whispered.

Immediately. Oh yes, immediately
. She let him lead her across the room and pull her onto the bed.

"Ride me," he told her, lifting her astride him and lying back upon the pillows.

"But
not
side-saddle," she'd intended to reply. Lightly, vivaciously. But she lost the last syllable of her phrase, her voice catching in her throat as she slid down upon him.

For although he might pretend to be lying at his ease below her, he was no docile mount. He lifted her with his hips, bucking beneath her, his muscles demanding that she use her thighs and back to guide, to control, to master him.

They would gallop, she thought, they would race and jump, prance and play and cavort. They would ride as one—centaur in an ancient forest, beast with two backs. The years and miles would disappear below their feet: they would move together (just for tonight she'd allow herself to believe it) through a world they'd build and own, discover and dwell in. Tightening her thighs about his hips, she laughed with joy at the expression on his face beneath her, his gaze a caress, his eyes lit with pride and admiration.

He pulsed within her. One last, high—oh very high—hedge to jump. They took it perfectly, together even as they lost their individual selves in orgasm. And together, still together, for the descent into inevitable sadness, the recognition that (as all things must—as life itself must) it had come to an end. He pulled her down to him and they lay very still, hearts beating so loudly that they could barely hear the blizzard raging and howling outside.