CHAPTER8
He should get into the bleeding bath. It was likely long cold by now, even with the fire in the grate roaring strong. The fire in the hearth couldn’t compare to the one raging inside him, however.
He wanted Lady Emma Morgan.
Wanted her desperately.
Wanted her in a way he had never wanted anyone else. It was powerful and fierce, this connection they shared. And it was because of that very connection he knew, in the deepest sense, that she felt the same way. That she hungered for him every bit as much.
And when she had been on her knees, those big, sky-blue eyes on his hardening cockstand, he had gripped the back of the chair with so much force he’d feared the damned thing was going to snap in two. It had required every bit of restraint he possessed to keep still, to refrain from taking her hand in his and guiding it to the front placket of his smallclothes.
“I don’t get into a tub until I’m Abram, love,” he told her, enjoying the flush on her cheeks.
Despite what had passed between them, she was still innocent. And he wanted to debauch her. To claim that innocence for his own. To make her his.
Her golden brow furrowed. “Abram?”
“Naked,” he supplied.
Whether it was the gin, the lust coursing through his veins, or a combination of the two, he could not say. All he knew was that the ache in his side was scarcely of note. Nothing but a dull sting. His entire being was, instead, painfully focused on the beauty before him.
Her pink tongue flicked out to wet her lips, and he suppressed a groan. Leave it to Hart Sutton to get stuck by a Bradley blade, suffer through Wolf’s miserable attempt at stitching him back together, and still want to bed Lady Emma more than he wanted to inhale his next breath.
“Oh,” she said, her voice sounding thick with the same desire roiling through him. “Of course. Shall I…shall I help?”
The thought of her hands on him, taking off his smalls, sent a rush of heat straight to his groin. He did not trust himself. And he was in desperate need of a bath after the blood and sweat and filth he had been covered in during the melee on the street with the Bradleys. If he was going to lose control with her, he would rather it be after he had scrubbed the Bradley stink off him.
“I can manage,” he said thickly, his fingers going to the buttons at the waistband of his smalls.
Hart turned away from her, plucking the fastenings free as he went. The garment went down his hips and slid to the floor. He stepped out of it, the cool kiss of the air on his bare arse telling him he was giving Lady Emma an eyeful.
But he stepped into the bath anyway, keeping his back turned toward her so she would not see how hard his prick was, how desperate for her. Neither blood loss, nor pain, nor blue ruin had managed to quell the ceaseless hunger he had for her.
Hart moved into the tub, finding the water lukewarm at best, but it would have to suffice. Lord knew he’d taken an icy bath in his day. He still recalled a time in his life when bathing had been a bleeding luxury, when he hadn’t seen enough fresh water to fill a tub in weeks. Besides, cooling water would be a mercy for his raging cockstand. The more quickly he settled himself in the depths, the better.
As he folded himself into the vessel, his wound pulled at the freshly made stitches. He could not quite contain his grimace and grunt of pain, followed by a hiss as the water covering his wound sent a fresh wave of burning up his side.
Emma was there before he saw her move, her lovely face hovering over him, etched with worry. “You moved into the bath with far too much haste. Have you torn your stitches?”
Tentatively, he glanced down at the water. “Don’t see any blood.”
That seemed a good sign. But whether or not he had done himself damage in his eagerness to soften his stupid prick, he was staying in the damned tub and scrubbing himself clean. And no amount of bleeding or pain was going to be sufficient to entice him to sit through another round of Wolf’s ham-handed attempts at stitching his wound together again.
He reached for a cloth and bar of Winter’s soap lying on a nearby table, but even that movement made him wince as the angle in which he was seated caused the motion to pull at his already strained wound.
“Let me.” Emma’s calm, efficient voice cut through his pain.
She moved between Hart and the soap and cloth, so near that the skirt of her gown brushed against his fingers in a silken whisper. How he wished it were her bare skin, but the warmth of her seared him just the same, a tantalizing suggestion of what he was missing. She was so alive, so lovely and lush and feminine, and being near to her vibrant innocence forced him to realize the magnitude of what had happened in the streets earlier.
A man had been murdered.
And the Bradleys had descended on them, keen to commit more killings. To shed Sutton blood in retaliation. Something far worse than bruises and a lone wound that required stitching could have happened to any one of them. They had already lost one brother to only Christ knew what.
He shuddered.
“Is the water too cold?” Lady Emma asked, her tone solicitous.
Floating hell, but the act of her tending to him was as potent an aphrodisiac as anything he had ever experienced. Was it wrong of Hart to crave her hovering over him like this, to pretend, just for a moment, that she truly cared about what became of him? That the warmth in her eyes was something more than mere desire?
“If it is, are you intending to bucket up some more yourself?” he asked, teasing her.
And Christ, it must be the bleeding gin. What was he doing, saying foolish things in hopes of making her smile? He ought to give himself a damned drubbing. A click in the muns would do fine. Mayhap knock some sense back into the old knowledge box, if indeed he’d ever had any to begin with.