To her right the door was thrown open with a crash, and Rogan entered like a sudden storm on a peaceful day. “You have gone too far, woman,” he bellowed at her. “You have not my permission to dismiss my women.”
Liana turned her head to look at him. He wore only his big white shirt, which hung to the top of his thighs, a wide leather belt about his waist, and his braies. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing thickly muscled, scarred forearms.
Liana could feel perspiration breaking out on her forehead. He was still yelling at her, but she didn’t know what he was saying. She stood in the tub, her slim, firm, full-breasted body rosy and warm from the hot water. “Would you please hand me that drying cloth?” she asked softly in the silence, for Rogan had ceased speaking.
Rogan could only gape at her. For all the many women he’d had, he’d never had the leisure to look, really look, at a woman, and now he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything as beautiful as this rosy-skinned beauty with the curtain of blonde hair hanging almost to her knees.
I won’t let her use her body to make me forget what she has done today, he thought, but his feet took a step toward her and one hand reached out to touch the curve of her breast.
Liana told herself to not lose her head. She wanted this man, oh yes, she so much wanted him, but she wanted more than a few minutes of rutting. She put her hand out and untied the strings of his shirt at his throat, then touched his skin with her fingertips. “The water is still hot,” she said softly. “Perhaps you’d allow me to wash you.”
A bath was a great waste of time to Rogan’s mind, but the idea of being washed by a nude woman…
He was out of his clothes in seconds, and when he stood nude before her—all of him standing upright—he made a grab for her. But Liana, laughing, sidestepped him.
“Your bath, sir,” she said, and Rogan found himself stepping into the tub.
The hot water felt good to his dirty skin and the herbs floating on the
water smelled good, but best of all was the woman, his wife, this beautiful…“Leah?” he asked, looking at her as she knelt over the foot of the tub, her breasts, pink-tipped and luscious, just grazing the wooden rim.
“Liana,” she answered, and smiled at him.
She began to wash him, running soapy hands over his arms, his chest, his back, his face. He leaned against the tub and closed his eyes. “Liana,” he said softly. Vaguely, he seemed to remember that this woman had done something unpleasant today, but he couldn’t at the moment remember what it was. She was so small and angelic, so pink and white, that he couldn’t imagine her doing anything he disapproved of.
He lifted his legs so she could wash them, then obeyed her when she told him to stand and her small, warm soapy hands washed between his legs. The pleasure he felt at her action was so overpowering that he spilled his seed on those small hands. His eyes flew open in alarm and, to hide his embarrassment, he roughly shoved her shoulder and sent her flying hard against the wall.
“You have hurt me,” she cried out.
Rogan had killed many people and never felt a thing, but this girl’s cry struck some chord in him. He had not meant to hurt her; he had only been unmanned in front of her. To his consternation, he found himself stepping from the tub and kneeling down to her. “Let me see,” he said, and bent her forward. Where she had hit the stones, her skin was bruised but not cut.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Your skin is too fragile, is all.” He ran his big, scarred, callused hand down her small, slim back. “It’s skin like the underbelly of a newborn colt,” he said.
Liana rolled her eyes at him and almost giggled, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned in his arms and put her head on his shoulder. “You enjoyed your bath, didn’t you?”
Rogan could feel the blood rushing to his face in embarrassed memory, then as he looked at her, her eyes twinkling, he realized she was teasing him. He had seen his brothers laugh with women, but Rogan had found very little that was humorous about women. But this woman made him feel different. “I enjoyed the bath too much,” he heard himself say, and was astonished.
Liana giggled against his shoulder. “Can it be enjoyed again?” she asked slyly. “Or is that your last ‘enjoyment’?”
For a moment Rogan considered beating her for her insolence, but then his hand slid down her bare rump. “I believe I can manage a bit more.” He then did something he’d never done before: He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed and gently laid her on it.
As he stood over her and looked down at her, he didn’t want to jump on her, thrust inside her, then go to sleep as he usually did. Perhaps it was because of his earlier “enjoyment,” as she called it, or perhaps he wanted to touch her as she had touched him, but he lay on the bed beside her, propped on one elbow, and reached out his hand to feel the skin of her belly.
Liana had no idea how new all this was to Rogan, but this was what she had imagined being in bed with a man to be like. He explored her body with his hand as if he’d never seen a woman before. Liana closed her eyes as his hand caressed her legs, running between her thighs, his fingers curling over the smooth, firm roundness of them, then his fingertips entwined in her short woman’s hair. His hand moved up to her belly, his thumb running along the side of her navel, then slowly, ever so very, very slowly, his hand moved up to the underside of her breast. He cupped first one then the other, his thumb just grazing the sensitive, hard little point.
She opened her eyes to look at him and saw the softness in his eyes and suddenly she knew why she had agreed to marry him. She had sensed that under his toughness, under his hard outer shell, was a softness he had never let anyone see. A shudder passed through her body as she thought of the pain this man must have experienced in his life to make him into the cold, unfeeling man he showed to the world. But somehow she sensed that the Rogan the world saw was not the inner man.
I love him, she thought. I love him with all my soul and all my being, and so help me God, I am going to make him love me too.
She put her hand to his jaw, felt the whiskers there, soft now from days without shaving as he seemed to shave only once a week. I’m going to make you need me, she said to herself. And I’m going to make you feel safe enough that I can see the softness in your eyes even when I have clothes on.
The last made her smile and she rolled her body toward his. He held her to him and she could feel his rising passion as his hands stroked her back, then his mouth took hers and he kissed her deeply. His lips ran down her throat and at last to her breast. Liana arched backward and let out a little cry of pleasure.
Rogan was aware of her reactions, and because of the episode in the tub, he was able to control his own need for her. The women he’d had had either been frightened virgins or very willing, experienced women, and always they had wanted to please him. Of course none of them had offered to bathe him, nor had any of them left paper and pens in his room. Perhaps it was merely a wish to repay a debt, but he was enjoying feeling this woman squirm beneath his searching hands. Her pleasure was giving him pleasure.
His lips followed his hands down her body and he found the smell of her and the taste of her sweet and fresh, so unlike the Days, who sometimes smelled so bad he kicked them out of bed. This girl smelled like wood smoke and herbs.
When his head came back up to her lips, he was amazed at how much he wanted her. Her hands clutched at his shoulders and when he entered her, she rose to meet him with a force and power to match his.