Page 13 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

Five

Dearest Nash,

We have discovered the most distressing news.

Máira’s husband is not Ellison Collins, Earl of Dorset.

He signed the church registry as Sir Elias Alistair Drake.

How this slipped by everyone until now is beyond my comprehension, except to say that Elias Drake is a conniving blackguard of the first order.

I’m not even certain that is his true name.

He could be anyone at this point. My fear for Máira’s safety is compounded by how easily Caillen was duped into believing her husband married her for love, not her dowry. Have I failed yet another sister?

Please come home with the utmost haste.

All my love,

Iseabail

—A letter from Iseabail Blair Handcock Harding, Duchess of Ross, to her husband Nashford Xavier Harding, 8th Duke of Ross, regarding her younger sister Máira Blair’s marriage to Ellison Collins, Earl of Dorset, or rather Sir Elias Alistair Drake, July 1812

F ascinating. His wife found his desires fascinating.

That’s what he’d heard…it wasn’t, of course, what she’d meant.

It was an innocuous statement of a naive young woman who’d been sheltered away from men like him.

He shouldn’t indulge her, or more to the point, he shouldn’t indulge himself, but temptation was too great not to give in to just a taste of corrupting her.

“My favorite fantasy as a young man was one where I stumbled upon a virgin taking a bath.” Damn, but he could use the cup of ale sitting on the table at the other side of the room. It taunted him with one more pleasure out of his reach.

“Really? What would you do?” Her voice didn’t sound aroused, but rather amused and somewhat curious.

While he sat on the other side of the room, unable to touch her, see her, with his cock standing tall—demanding attention.

He pulled the scratchy blanket away from his body and allowed himself to tell her exactly what he wanted.

“I would come home from a long ride, dreaming of the most beautiful young woman I’d ever seen, with hair the color of golden wheat blowing in the wind.”

“Wheat?” She choked. “That’s a terrible description of a woman’s hair. It’s coarse and brittle.”

“Close your eyes and imagine the bigger picture. Field after field of it, swaying in the breeze, a sea of silken threads of amber, cream, and honey, the rich sun causing a glow of cascading waves flowing down her back.”

When she said nothing, he continued.

“I open the door to my room, and she gasps, shocked by a man interrupting her most intimate moments. Yet she’s in my room—surely, she had to know I would come in.”

“What if she didn’t? Would you be a gentleman and leave?”

He laughed softly. “This is my dream, Wife. You asked what young men dream about.”

“But if it really happened. Would you behave as a gentleman should?”

He rolled his eyes. She was attempting to derail his fantasy. “Of course, I would back away and beg her pardon. While I savored the memory and prayed the view would be burned onto the inside of my eyelids until my dying day.”

“Scoundrel,” she muttered.

He couldn’t help but laugh again. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t treasure the memory if a handsome man walked in on your bath?”

“No, I would not! I would be mortified.”

“You’re lying, Wife.”

“I do not lie.”

“Everyone lies. It’s human nature to lie. To make oneself more appealing in the eyes of others. Did you not just lie and say you wanted me to leave, when deep down you wanted us to share this intimacy?”

The water splashed in angry waves, yet she said nothing, and he let the silence linger in the air between them.

“Fine. Is that the end of your dream?”

If she had been able to see the smile spread across his face, she would recognize the satisfactory gleam of the cat not only catching the mouse, but devouring it. He had no doubt, however, that his voice conveyed the message clearly with its husky undertones.

“Hardly. Would you like me to continue?” Please, let me continue.

“If you’d like. It matters not to me.”

He let her admission slip away, because he wanted to share this fantasy he would never allow himself to experience with the one woman who’d inspired it.

“Our eyes would meet, and her cheeks would turn a gorgeous color of country rose, just like the flowers blossoming at Caerlaverock. Wild and free, but cultivated into the perfect shade of a desire she could not deny.”

“I didn’t know you were a poet.”

“A woman’s body can turn any man into a lyricist.”

“Hmmmm.”

That noise alone would turn a priest’s cock hard.

Good God, this was torture. “I should probably stop. I do not wish to corrupt you.” It was the biggest lie told to date.

He wanted to corrupt, debauch, ravage. Bury himself deep into her body over and over until the lust between them had run its course.

He could not.

“Do not do so on my account. I have been well-versed on the happenings between a man and a woman.”

Something like jealousy sprung to life in his chest. What man had dared to educate his wife? It wasn’t as if he believed she should be virginal—experience would make their first time together less worrisome for both, but still…jealousy burned.

“She would not hide her beauty as that blush traveled down the feline curve of her neck and collarbone, only to disappear into the water of her bath.

I would not follow that blush despite it being my every desire.

Instead, I would gaze at her face. Shy, yet eager.

Apprehension in her eyes, as she watched me close the door and turn the key.

The snick of the lock securing us together. Alone.

“I would walk over to her and take the soap from her hand. Of course, she would attempt to hide her luscious curves and gasp in shock and perhaps a bit of fear. I would soothe her nerves as I enticed her body. Running the creamy bar of soap over her shoulders as she covered her breasts from my view.”

“What if she didn’t want your attention? What if she wanted you to leave?”

He paused for a long moment. “I would leave, guard over her while she finished, and never see her again.” Was that what she wanted? To never see him again?

“And if she wanted you to continue?”

A slow smile spread across his face as her voice became breathy.

She wanted him as much as he wanted her.

He had known she wanted him while they were in Scotland.

Once they boarded the Maribelle , however, it had been a completely different chapter in the story of their relationship.

He’d been uncertain, until now. “I would dip the bar of soap in the water, brushing the tips of her breasts, now budding with need. The water would caress her, encircle her sweet tips the way I wanted to tease her with my tongue, but I wouldn’t because she wasn’t ready. ”

The slosh of the water in her bath was driving the fantasy, pulling him in so deep, he had to encircle his cock with his fist. He had no choice but to embrace the need coursing through his veins.

He stroked up and down as he listened to her wash.

Imagined her taut nipples peeking above the water line, begging to be touched.

His jaw clenched at the image he painted in his mind, his cock hard with a drop of his pleasure seeping from the tip.

“Her skin is as soft as a rose petal, and I can’t resist kissing the nape of her neck exposed for me to devour.

” He could hear her breathing, her effect on him almost too much to bear.

“I would put the soap in her palm and cover her hand with my own, guiding her to rub the smooth bar in circles around her breasts.

Moving closer toward the center with each turn, making her wait for the soap to trail over her where she wanted it most and when it finally touched her pebbled nipples, she gasps in pleasure.

Her back arching, pushing against the soap as she yearns for my touch just as much as I crave to caress her.

“Are you touching your nipples, mo ghaol ?”

The water stopped licking the edge of the tub as if she’d frozen.

He cursed his use of the Gaelic term of endearment, praying it didn’t freeze her as well.

When he’d first used the translation for my love , he had done it to woo her, and it had worked.

Since that day, however, it was always on the tip of his tongue when he thought of her.

Not that he loved her, he couldn’t do that, but if he’d had the freedom to choose a woman to spend the rest of his life with…

he would let his heart travel where it wished.

There was no doubt it would lead to Máira.

He continued, hoping she would as well. “Feel how they reach for my touch. Distending, demanding to be pleasured. Do it for me, Máira. Touch yourself. Pleasure yourself. Give in to the ecstasy your body needs. As you stroke one breast with the soap, roll the nipple on other between your thumb and index finger. Swirl around the tip, pinch it, learn what makes you lose yourself to the bliss of sensation.”

His cock ached. Burned to be buried deep inside her, especially when he heard the feminine moan on the other side of the screen. Bloody hell this was torture.

“What would you do next?” With her question, he knew she was in as much misery as he.

“Let me show you.” He was going to hell. He swore he wouldn’t do this, but Máira, she needed this as much as he did.

“Promise me you won’t look.”

“I promise.” He spoke almost as fast as a child being told he could have cherries if he ate all his carrots. He wanted her cherry with everything he was made of.

“Alright but leave the candle over there.”