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“ D amn it all,” Rhys grumbled to himself as he soaked in his bath.

Ordinarily, the tub was a place of relaxation. If he was submerged in hot water, he was a happy man. He could easily spend an hour or more within, contemplating life with a glass of good French wine. Or fucking.

Tubs were made for fucking.

But presently, his wine remained untouched, and the gorgeous woman awaiting him in the adjoining chamber held precious little interest to him. Because he was a man possessed.

Why couldn’t the owner of the bloody Lenox School of Cookery have been a disagreeable, bald old chap with stains on his shirt? Or a crone with a wart-speckled face and a mustache? It would have made Rhys’s life so much easier.

But no.

She had to be exquisite. It was a sin her raven hair had been swept into an unforgiving knot at her nape.

A woman as lushly beautiful as Lady Miranda Lenox—or Miss Lenox, as she oddly preferred to be styled—should always wear her long locks cascading down her back.

Preferably naked. Naturally, she’d been anything but, demurely covered in her unadorned gray gown, buttoned up to her creamy throat.

But Rhys had a discerning eye, and there was no denying the lush, full breasts and curved waist hiding beneath her silk.

The Fallen Countess who’d had an affair with the Marquess of Waring, leading to a scandalous divorce that had been the talk of Town for some time, no longer appeared to be particularly wicked or indecent.

Instead, she was hiding herself away in a cookery school, of all places, creating confections that tasted as if they had been ripped from the heavens themselves. And masquerading as a lowly miss.

Mystery surrounded Miranda Lenox, and Rhys couldn’t deny he found it intriguing.

But he was also drawn to her. Her skin had been soft and smooth and warm.

She smelled of roses and orange blossoms, and he had no doubt that the woman herself was every bit as decadent and delicious as one of her culinary creations.

Now he didn’t just want those blasted coronets of hers. No, he wanted her .

He wanted her naked and beneath him. Moaning and riding him. He wanted her in this tub, bare-breasted, her hard nipples above the water so he could see if they matched her berry-pink lips before he sucked them. He wanted the water sloshing around them as he fucked her.

Rhys groaned and allowed his eyes to close as his head fell back against the rim of the tub, the scene he had been inventing in his mind ever since their morning meeting returning.

His cock, already hard, stirred and lengthened beneath the warm water.

He grasped himself at the base then stroked firmly, pretending it was her dainty hand on his prick instead of his own.

Speaking of scandalous, he was almost ready to come.

He’d scarcely even touched himself, and yet the memory of Miranda Lenox’s fluttering pulse and wide eyes, the heat of her skin burning into him, was enough.

His hand moved faster, his hips undulating in mindless thrusts as he imagined her hot pussy gliding down on his cock, tightening and welcoming him deep.

As he imagined suckling her breasts and licking those pretty nipples and nibbling on her shoulders, threading his fingers through her long, dark hair and filling her with his spend.

If he breathed deeply enough, he could almost discern her scent.

His breaths were faster now, ragged. His need was boiling, an ache deep in his ballocks telling him he was close.

But then the scent grew stronger, and it wasn’t his imagination, but it was all wrong.

It was roses and ambergris instead of orange blossom, and a throaty chuckle cut through the silence as a feminine hand closed over his beneath the water.

Rhys’s eyes shot open, his head jerking up. The naked woman smiling down at him with sensual promise wasn’t Miranda Lenox. She wasn’t a black-haired beauty, but an ethereal blonde whose long curls had been draped artfully over her full breasts so that only her nipples peeked through.

“Beatrice,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice.

The scene in his mind was effectively broken, like a fine piece of Sèvres hurled from the top of a staircase to smash below.

“Why are you in this tub alone, handling your big, delicious cock, when I am here to do it for you?” she asked, pouting as she caressed his hand.

The Marchioness of Levenwood had been his lover for the past few weeks.

She was insatiable and pretty and bored of her elderly husband.

Rhys was also insatiable and pretty and bored of his previous lover.

The arrangement had suited them both. But his cock was wilting by the moment, strangely uninterested in the enthusiastic attentions of the woman at his side.

He released his softening shaft and gently drew her hand above water, bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “I was washing,” he lied. “Why don’t you wait for me? I’ll be finished with my bath soon.”

What he truly meant was that he would be finished taking himself in hand to thoughts of the sharp-tongued beauty he had clashed with earlier that day. The notion of bedding Beatrice when all he wanted was Miranda left him feeling cold. He couldn’t do it.

And that was a problem in itself. When had the Duke of Whitby ever turned down a beautiful woman who wanted him? Never.

“Let me bathe you,” Beatrice invited, undeterred as she dangled her bountiful bubbies in his face.

Rhys adored breasts. The bigger, the better. He loved women with rounded rumps and curved waists and soft bellies. He could write odes to sweetly seductive feminine forms. Beatrice would put any Venus to shame. And yet, as he stared at the creamy flesh offered to him, he felt…

Nothing.

Not even a stirring of desire.

His raging cockstand had gone utterly soft.

“Perhaps another evening, my dear,” he denied smoothly. “The day has been a long one.”

But Beatrice was determined.

She licked her lips. “Do you want my mouth?”

He thoroughly enjoyed a woman sucking his cock. And yet, again, his stubborn prick refused to so much as twitch. This was damned out of the ordinary.

“Not tonight, sweeting.”

She plumped up her breasts, cupping them in her hands, and shook her head so that her hair fell enticingly down her back, baring herself to him entirely. “Do you want to fuck my bubbies?”

He glanced at her ripe breasts, pressed together just as he liked.

But all he could think about was the enigmatic former countess in her tepid gown, those dainty hands capable of crafting such divine delights.

That pretty pink mouth firmed into a disapproving line.

What he wouldn’t give to kiss the condemnation from her lips.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Miranda Lenox offering herself to him just now, however. It was Beatrice, awaiting his response, her sultry gaze assured that his answer would be yes.

“I’m afraid that I’m quite tiresome and poor company tonight. As tempting as your offer is, all I want is a bath and some sleep,” he told her gently, the same feeling of finality settling in his chest that he inevitably reached when he had tired of his lover of the moment.

As beautiful as Beatrice was, as enjoyable as he found her company, and as talented as she was in the bedchamber, she had become a shadow in the face of a blazing, burning sun.

She frowned, her expression stunned. “You don’t want to bed me?”

He couldn’t blame her. Their time together had been enthusiastically passionate. But he did not keep two lovers at the same time. Rhys was a rake, but he did have compunction, and whilst he was with one woman, he was loyal to her.

“It isn’t that,” he reassured her gently. “Of course I want to bed you. You’re unutterably lovely.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s someone else, isn’t it? Who is she?”

He wasn’t going to answer those questions. A pang of guilt sliced through him. It wasn’t his intention to hurt Beatrice’s feelings. But every association ran its course. This one was done. He felt it in his bones.

“Tomorrow, pay a call to Edwards not all his lovers had been so composed. He bore a scar on his collarbone from where an opera singer had hurled a glass at him in a fit of rage.

“That is it, then?” Beatrice demanded, her voice vibrating with outrage. “Why did you not tell me so when I arrived? I could have spared myself some humiliation.”

“Because I didn’t know when you arrived,” he answered honestly. “But I do now.”

“Bastard,” she hissed. “I should have known better.”

With that parting verbal parry, Beatrice spun about and flounced from the chamber in his St John’s Wood house. The door slammed in her wake.

Rhys waited a few moments for the cloud of Beatrice’s scent to disperse before allowing his head to fall against the lip of the tub again.

With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes and saw emerald eyes fringed with long, sooty lashes, a mouth he couldn’t wait to possess, and the promise of full, heavy breasts hidden beneath her modest bodice.

His cock stirred, as if on cue.

He wrapped his fingers around his stiffening prick and stroked beneath the cooling waters of his bath.

Faster and faster, gripping hard as he thought about opening that maddening line of buttons on her gown and tugging down her corset.

About his hand gliding up her inner thigh until he found the slick, plump, hot lips of her sex.

He would part her folds and seek her pearl, play with her until she cried out his name.

Lift her skirts and sink deep inside her pussy while he sucked her sweet nipples.