* * *
She awoke to the heavenly smells of chocolate and sandalwood. Gillian stretched like a sated kitten and looked up to find Colin leaning over her. He wore his shirt, trousers, and boots, and he smelled of the sandalwood shaving soap he used. The chocolate aroma came from the cup and saucer he held out to her.
Gillian pushed herself into sitting position.
“The chocolate is hot,” he said. “Your bathwater is hot, and your lady’s maid is waiting to help you with your bath.”
“Is she?” Gillian was all wide-eyed innocence.
“You know better than that, Lady Grantham,” Colin told her, handing her the cup of chocolate. “I believe you’ve engaged me to act as your lady’s maid for the duration of this honeymoon. Now, be a good little viscountess and drink your chocolate. When you’re done, we’ll satisfy a bit more of your insatiable curiosity.”
Gillian pretended to pout. “I’ll be all clean, and you’ll get me all sweaty again.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Colin told her with a grin. “Because, my lady, the bath I’ve arranged for you in my bedchamber is big enough for two.”
Gillian was speechless. Her mouth formed a perfect O, and Colin covered it with his own for a chocolate-flavored kiss. He straightened to his full height and tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger. “Finish your chocolate.” Gillian drained the cup, set it on its saucer, and handed them to him. “All done,” she announced.
“Have I told you how much I appreciate your insatiable sense of curiosity?” He set the cup and saucer on the bedside table, then bent once again and scooped her off the bed and into his arms.
“No,” she answered as he carried her from her bedchamber, through the dressing room, to the big copper bathtub waiting in his bedchamber. “But you will.”
She was, Colin discovered, a woman of insatiable curiosity and of many talents, but her true talent lay in her ability to make him forget everything except her. As strange as it seemed, Gillian offered him peace in a world gone mad with war. She offered him warmth and laughter and companionship and a promise of a life beyond his immediate future. Colin listened to her soft sigh as he separated her womanly folds with his nimble fingers and guided himself inside her and found refuge in her welcoming warmth.
As fanciful as it seemed, Colin believed she had beckoned him from her window, like a lost princess calling for her prince, and he had somehow heard her. He had found her and answered her call.
Perhaps he had sensed it when he’d seen her standing in the window at the Blue Bottle Inn. Or maybe it had come later when he’d slipped inside her room, held her in his arms, and slept beside her. She offered him a sense of order and serenity he hadn’t felt since childhood. And she had given him far more than he would ever be able to repay. It didn’t seem possible, but in the space of a few hours, Gillian had become his home.
Gillian laughed softly as Colin shifted his weight and sent waves of water rippling across her body and over the rim of the tub. A few hours ago, she wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Gillian found herself sharing a bathtub with a man. In a few short hours, her husband, Colin McElreath, had persuaded her to forget the rules of a lifetime. And she had a great deal of information to add to her increasing store of sexual knowledge. Fortunately, her husband appeared to be an unending source of information and pleasure. How else to explain the fact that she was learning to revel in the passion he taught her?
She picked up a sea sponge he’d placed in the tub and squeezed water over Colin’s chest. The water flattened the hair on his chest, revealing a long, jagged scar along his left side that she’d missed in her earlier explorations. The color told her the scar was recent, and its location told her that Colin was lucky to be alive.
Gillian traced the slightly raised pink contours with the pads of her fingers. “You’ve been wounded,” she whispered.
“It’s nothing,” he answered.
“You could have been killed,” she said. “How did it happen?”
Colin brushed his lips against her forehead. “I was set upon by a footpad.” He told her as much of the truth as he could. “His blade glanced off my ribs.”
“What happened to the footpad?” she asked.
“He won’t be pulling his blade on anyone else,” Colin told her. “Ever again.”
“Good,” Gillian pronounced, bracing her arms against the side of the bathtub, using it for balance and leverage, as she slid onto his lap and began to tease him. Colin placed his hands on her slim hips and anchored her firmly against him as he licked droplets of water from her breasts. He groaned his pleasure in her ear, and his warm breath made her squirm harder.
“Practicing earlier lessons, my lady?” he asked as she raised herself up as far as she could before sliding slowly down his shaft and wiggling her bottom against him.
“Practice makes perfect, my lord.”
He groaned his pleasure. “Is perfection your goal?”
“A worthy goal, is it not?” She leaned forward, splashing water over the rim of the tub as she did so.
“A most worthy goal,” he murmured. “I only hope I live long enough for you to attain it.”
Gillian widened her eyes, lifted her hips, and slid down his shaft once again. “Is your health in question, my lord?”
“It is indeed, my lady,” he told her. “Because you’re slowly killing me.” Colin looked up at her and then placed his hands on either side of her waist. Before she knew quite how he managed it, Colin lifted her off him, turned her so that she faced the opposite direction, and knelt behind her.