Page 20 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

Probably, Felicity reflected begrudgingly as she tipped her head back against the rim of the bathtub, Ian had been correct in his earlier assessment.

She ought to have taken another day to recover before she had returned to work.

She’d spent at most six hours at the school before she had given up the ghost and come home again, but those six hours had been amongst the most exhausting of her life.

Dorothea chafed still against her restriction to the house, and she’d made her discontent with her situation everyone else’s problem.

Her sullen attitude and general surliness had left the staff walking upon eggshells in her vicinity, lest the slightest misstep provoke a flare of her outrageous temper.

Felicity found it rather difficult not to sympathize with the girl, given that she’d never quite managed to marshal her own temper, which tended to rear its ugly head more often than she would have preferred.

But Dorothea’s parents had entrusted their daughter’s education to the school with the expectation that upon her matriculation from it, their headstrong daughter would be a model of ladylike perfection.

She let out an aggrieved sigh and dunked her head beneath the water, scrubbing at her scalp to rinse out the last froth of lavender-scented soap from her hair.

If only Dorothea would take a lesson or two from Annabel.

The two girls were thick as thieves, though Felicity could hardly credit it.

They ought to have got on like oil and water, Dorothea’s stubborn abrasiveness clashing with Annabel’s quiet, gentle demeanor.

But they’d been bosom friends for the last three years, from the very first Christmas they’d both found themselves boarding at the school over the holiday.

At least the Marchant debacle had been resolved.

An ingratiating, nearly-servile reply from the elder Mr.

Marchant—liberally sprinkled with assurances that Elias would have nothing more to do with Dorothea—had been waiting for her upon her return to the house, along with a stack of other letters.

Mostly from her students or their parents, pertaining to their return to the school shortly after Epiphany.

Felicity sunk to her shoulders in the bathing tub, though the hope that the hot water would pull the tension from her muscles on its own was fading.

She’d been wound tight as a spring since dinner, owing to both the strain of the day and Ian’s uncharacteristic quiet.

He’d kept largely silent, up to his elbows in the paperwork he’d neglected over the past week they’d been ill, his pen flying across the pages with hardly more than a bite or two of his dinner between—nor more than a few words spared for her.

It oughtn’t to have troubled her, except that he generally made more judicious use of the hour he’d bargained for than that.

But his unusual silence had been…unsettling.

She’d picked at her own dinner and spent the hour sorting through her own correspondence, and the minute the hour had elapsed, she’d fled straight upstairs.

And still the tension remained.

The stiffness of her shoulders unrelieved, the odd knot in her stomach unabated.

As if every muscle had strung itself too tightly for comfort, near to the point of snapping altogether.

Felicity stretched out her legs, propping her feet up upon the other end of the tub with a sigh as she scraped her wet hair over her shoulder.

There was no help for it—without some sort of relief, she could expect only a miserable night of tossing and turning in bed.

Beside her damned husband.

A fraction of that terrible tension was his fault, besides.

That horrifying spark of arousal that had kindled between her thighs when he’d palmed her breast in his sleep.

The press of his cock against her bottom—damn it all; she was a healthy woman with entirely normal urges.

The fact that such needs had gone unmet for some time did not negate their existence.

Her tiny bed in her cramped room at the school had been acceptable for sleeping, but not much else.

That, coupled with the fact that the walls were rather thin and the vague fear that someone—student or staff—might have heard her had kept her personal ministrations to a minimum.

But in Ian’s grand house there was no such fear.

She doubted a servant would have heard a scream had she issued one, and the walls were bound to be appropriately thick.

The water sluiced down her body as she settled her shoulders against the tub and found a comfortable position.

She slid one hand down her belly, through the wet curls between her thighs.

Ahh.

It had been too damned long.

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as her fingers found the bead of her clitoris, circled lightly.

A tiny fraction of that wretched tension in her shoulders eased, and a swirl of arousal bloomed low in her belly.

A whisk of cool air pebbled her nipples above the surface of the water.

She lifted her other hand from its perch upon the side of the tub and cupped her breast in her palm.

A sound of frustration rolled up her throat.

Her hands were too small, her fingers too slender; not like—

Not like Ian’s.

The frustration fled on a sigh of acute resignation.

Who was going to know, in these private moments, which fantasies she had indulged? He had always been an attractive man; a competent lover.

And really, there were some things a woman just missed.

The way his hands enveloped her breasts, the way his thumbs stroked her nipples just perfectly.

The delicate pinch of his fingers, the delicious suction of his lips.

A surge of arousal spiked between her thighs, and she bit her lower lip against a gasp.

It wasn’t quite so satisfying—touching, instead of being touched—but already her shoulders had loosened, the stiff muscles in her legs going lax.

She parted delicate feminine flesh, and her fingers slid easily through the dewy wetness of her own desire.

She tried to imagine they belonged to Ian, instead.

Only a fantasy.

No one would ever know.

Just a few moments of private weakness.

And when it was over, she would be strong again.

As she had always been.

The build of encroaching climax was slow, owing to the clumsiness of her fingers.

They didn’t fill her the way his did, didn’t stretch her like his cock had—she couldn’t quite achieve the depth, the perfect rhythm.

She drew in a deep breath and tried to summon to mind the salty scent of his skin, the pound of his hips between her thighs.

The slip of her hands on the flexing muscles of his back.

A shiver of pleasure slid up her spine, the tingle of approaching bliss in her thighs, her belly.

Her fingers plucked at her nipple and she squeezed her eyes shut harder as she struggled for more memories.

The pant of his breath near her ear as his own climax neared.

The groans he buried in the curve of her shoulder, the desperate kisses strung along her throat, little love bites that left the occasional mark which she had had to hide beneath the high collars of her dresses.

Her thighs tensed and the water splashed around her as her hips surged into the sleek plunges of her fingers.

She cast her head back, a long, low moan slipping free of her throat as the pleasure that had coiled in her belly loosed itself at last.

Blissful and content, she sighed her relief, floating on the waves of the blessed lassitude that followed.

Every muscle now loose and pliant, tension dissolved like seafoam.

Until she shivered.

Felicity blinked her eyes open, baffled to find that the thick layer of steam that had once veiled the room had vanished. Almost as if…almost as if it had been let out.

“Jesus Christ.”

The guttural growl, given from somewhere over her shoulder near the door prickled the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

Felicity bolted upright, wrenching her head around to see—

To see Ian standing in the doorway.

His chest bare, a length of toweling wrapped around his hips, beneath which a noticeable bulge tented the fabric.

He clasped one hand over his mouth as a long swallow rolled down his throat.

That dark gaze followed the bob of her breasts with each breath, and Felicity froze, utterly arrested, as a hot flush spread across her cheeks.

A long, tense moment passed.

He curled one hand into a fist at his side as if to resist the temptation to reach for her, and that hungry, avaricious gaze provoked another shiver.

At last her frozen muscles unlocked, and she jerked her arms over her breasts as her nipples tightened further.

“Christ,”

he said again, a muscle in his jaw twitching spasmodically. With a muffled curse, he swung about and quit the room.

Felicity smothered a groan in the palm of her hand, sinking once more to her shoulders in the water.

For a moment there, she would have sworn he had battled the impulse to join her. And she was grateful he’d restrained himself.

Wasn’t she?

∞∞∞

Those pointed little coral nipples peeking above the water.

Her fingers working between her thighs.

The rosy glow of a passion-flush painting her throat and breasts.

That delectable moan as she had tipped her head back.

The arch of her hips and the flutter of her lashes as she came.

Seated at the edge of the bed, Ian swallowed back a groan as he spent into his palm, shuddering with the force of his climax.

He’d gotten rather familiar with his own hand over the years, but this—this had been the most satisfaction he’d gotten from it in years.

He hadn’t meant to walk in on her pleasuring herself.

She never took baths so late; he hadn’t even known she’d been occupying the bathing room.

But once he had walked in, once he had realized what, exactly, he’d walked in on…

He’d been helpless not to watch.

A decade since he’d last seen her unclothed, and she was still so damned beautiful it made his heart ache.

Those sweet sounds she had made would echo in his ears for days, weeks—years, if he was lucky.

Christ, it had been so long that his fingers only half-remembered the texture of her skin.

The sleek, velvety warmth of her, the way she had always hitched her leg over his hip in the drowsy aftermath, the tickle of her hair against his jaw when she notched her head beneath his chin.

The slow, lazy strokes of her delicate fingers over his shoulder, smoothing down his arm, the tiny kisses she’d once pressed into the hollow of his throat.

His chest ached as severely as his cock had only moments ago, with a sort of longing that went so far beyond the physical.

When his knees were once more capable of supporting him, he stalked to the dressing room and retrieved a handkerchief to wipe his hands clean.

A flash of white shot across his peripheral vision; Felicity garbed once more in the voluminous folds of her nightgown as she darted from the bathing room to the bed.

Avoiding him, no doubt.

That cherry-red flush that had gilded her cheeks at the last had suggested no small amount of embarrassment over what he’d witnessed.

Probably it would do no good to tell her he’d have given his right arm to witness it again.

His own bath would wait until morning.

There were more pressing concerns at the moment.

Namely the fact that his wife was presently curled up at the very edge of her side of their bed, in what was no doubt an agony of humiliation.

But she wouldn’t stay there.

She’d be in his arms again by morning, as she always was.

And he didn’t want to lose that.

The only tiny, fragmented piece of her to which he could presently lay claim, even if it was unconsciously given.

He didn’t want her ashamed or embarrassed or humbled.

He paused at the hearth to lay down a fresh layer of coal.

It would still burn out by morning, but he’d gotten into the habit of it, of performing this small task to keep her in comfort.

Felicity was half-obscured in shadows as he approached the bed at last, her hair draped across her pillow.

Still damp, probably.

Ian slid into bed, folded his arms behind his head.

“Felicity—”

“You should have knocked.”

The words were mostly muffled into her pillow.

“I had no idea you were in there. That is to say, I’ve lived in this house three years now, and this room has always just been my own. I’ve never had to knock before now.”

Ian let a tense moment of silence pass and cleared his throat.

“I’m not sorry I saw you pleasuring yourself.”

“Please.”

A raw, strangled little sound forced itself through the hitch of her breath.

“I’m humiliated enough already.”

“You shouldn’t be. Do you think I’ve never taken myself in hand?”

A rough chuckle tripped over his tongue.

“I’ve done it more times than I can count. What do you think I was doing after I left you in the bathing room? I’m not made of stone.”

An odd little wriggle from her side of the bed.

“You’re joking.”

“Not remotely. It’s been ten damned years and my memories have gone a bit hazy at the edges.”

He closed his eyes, summoning forth that brand new, crystal-clear memory.

“You have the most perfect breasts. If I’m lucky, I’ll dream about them.”

His fingers twitched beneath his head as the picture formed in his mind, imagining the soft, supple weight of them cupped in his palms.

“Nothing short of an explosion could have moved me. You could have shot me, and I’d have gladly bled out on that spot provided that it meant that the last thing I saw before I died was your fingers stroking yourself to climax.”

Her fingernails scraped across the surface of her pillow, the scratch of them shearing through the quiet room. She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Ian,”

she said, and he was certain she had meant it to be chiding, recriminatory—but there was an ache in it, a quavering note of need half-hidden beneath the stridence.

She didn’t want him in any meaningful way.

But she wanted nonetheless.

And that was something, wasn’t it? Better by far than the indifference in which she had held him these last ten years.

There was room in her for both fury and desire, however much she might wish otherwise.

“I would give my right arm to watch you again,”

he said.

“Only to watch, mind you. I’ll bargain with you for it—”

“No!”

She’d stretched the word across three syllables, plaintive and warbling.

Tempted, he thought, just a little, even if she forced herself to refuse it.

Embarrassment warring with helpless desire. A dozen conflicted emotions tumbling about inside her head. Perhaps even inside her heart.

And that—that was enough.

So long as the thought had been planted in her mind.

So long as there was the slightest chance that her own frustrated desires would torture her as his had tortured him. He said.

“I’ll have my kiss now.”

The bed shook as she twisted about and said incredulously, “What?”

“I’ll be gracious and require only one tonight.”

Just one brush of her soft lips, and maybe he’d be lucky enough to catch the scent of her soap as well. Something sweet and floral, warmed by the heat of her skin.

Her voice took on a suspicious tenor.

“What do you mean, only one?”

“You owe me seven,”

he said.

“One for every day missed over the last week.”

“I was ill!”

she shrilled.

“As was I. Be glad I’m not requiring seven extra hours from you.”

An infuriated sound eked across her lips.

“We were confined together for days!”

“Yes, and most of it was spent sleeping, so it hardly seems fair to count it.

Really, I should be lauded for my generosity, given that I’m not in the habit of forgiving debts.

Be glad I’ve elected to forego interest accrued on the kisses.

I confess I’m not certain what the going rate is, but I’ll admit to being tempted to usury.”

There—that had done it.

He’d piqued her straight out of whatever embarrassment might have lingered.

With a wrathful sound, she flounced across the bed, and he caught just the faintest whiff of lavender as she planted her lips altogether too briefly upon the very edge of his jaw.

And then her damp hair smacked him straight in the face as she whirled once again, giving him her back.

“I’m saving all the rest for a special occasion,”

he told her, though she had not asked.

“Perhaps I’ll call them due the next time I’m fortunate enough to find you pleasuring yourself.”

“You should be so lucky,”

she snapped, but he felt the tremble that swept through her, violent enough to vibrate across the mattress, as if even that small suggestion had titillated her.

“I should,”

he agreed.

“I really, truly should. If you might have seen yourself—”

“Ian.”

It was drawn out, issued in a warning tone.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are in the throes of ecstasy. Your breasts flush, your nipples tighten to ripe little berries. Your every muscle quivers with tension as you strive to reach your peak. You make the softest, sweetest sounds, and your hips arch. Your face—”

“Ian,”

she hissed, her small fist planting itself in the pillow.

“I am trying to sleep!”

Rather unsuccessfully, he thought, given that she was wriggling about as if trying to find a comfortable position.

As if every sensation was a bit too sharp, her skin too sensitive.

The tension between them was a palpable thing, like a thread stretched taut.

Every word he uttered was another pluck to it, and it thrummed out a chord that united them in a shared agony of longing.

Which would go unsatisfied at present.

But he allowed himself the smallest sliver of hope that that arousal she was helpless to conceal from him would win out eventually.

He would seize any tiny opportunity she offered only to be close to her, to give her the tenderness and affection she’d gone without these last ten years.

Even if she had convinced herself she didn’t want it from him any longer.

“Good night, Felicity,”

he said on a sigh, and as he stared up at the ceiling, he listened to the harried pant of her breaths slowly ease to the even cadence of sleep.

A dozen questions drifted through his mind, mostly pertaining to how he might twist this newest revelation to his advantage.

Whether she might find herself tempted past the point of good sense.

Whether his heart could endure the battering it would no doubt receive if all he could win of her was further rejection.

But the most prominent question had settled there hours before he’d found her pleasuring herself in her bath.

It had been stuck in his head since earlier in the day, with the letter he’d filched from the stack of them Butler had delivered to him.

The letter he’d removed, read, and tucked into his nightstand drawer until he could determine what was to be done about it.

He’d known, loved, and married Felicity Cabot.

So who the hell was Felicity Nightingale?