Page 55 of The Villain
She fell against him, too weak to do anything but ride the raging tide of her rapture while he stroked in her a few more times before following. Taking her waist into his hands, he swiftly lifted her off him just before he spent, the hot spurts of his seed staining them both. The warm, sticky liquid spewed against her belly, staining her gown, a gush of it splashing against her bodice.
Resting on his thighs, she found her limbs too weak to support her. She fell against him, cringing at the feel of her wet clothes clinging to her skin, but unable to do anything about it. Adam sat beneath her for a moment in silence, his ragged breaths harmonizing with her soft pants.
After a while, he shifted beneath her, pushing her to sit up. Her face flushed as she gazed down at the mess staining his shirt and her gown, the reality of her position once again making itself apparent. She must look like a Haymarket strumpet—legs spread over his thighs, gown bunched up around her hips, hair mussed, and her bodice pulled down to expose her breasts.
Yet, the heat in his stare made triumph rise in her chest. He did not need to speak the words aloud for her to know she had won.
Half an hour later, Daphne sat immersed in a large tub in the washroom off Adam’s bedchamber, her mind still reeling from all that had happened since the day before.
After they had gathered their bearings following the explosive encounter in his study, Adam had risen to his feet and taken her hand, swiftly propelling her from the room. She’d hardly had time to think about the mess staining the front of her gown or the weakened state of her limbs as she’d struggled to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?” she’d huffed, out of breath by the time they’d reached the top of a winding staircase.
It had not taken her long to realize they stood in the same corridor where she’d discovered Olivia’s bedchamber. Or rather, what had once been Olivia’s bedchamber. Now, she was hidden away in the forbidden corridor along with her daughter. Daphne’s niece.
“My bedroom,” he’d said, his tone still brusque and clipped despite the fact that she’d just made him spend.
He’d seemed as tense as ever, his shoulders squared, back erect, steps ringing out a swift cadence on the tiles.
“Henceforth, you will go wherever I go,” he’d added, pausing before a closed door and reaching for the nob. “I do not trust you out of my sight.”
Her heart had sunk at his declaration, but she had not protested. He had not thrown her back out on her arse, so she had no reason to complain. Besides, she had less than a fortnight left; she could endure being under his thumb for such a short time.
He had ushered her into a room as dark and masculine as the man who dwelt there, summoning servants to order a fire stoked in the hearth as well as a bath. While they had waited, she’d studied the room with unabashed curiosity, drinking in the black and gold decor. Dark wood panels covered the walls, polished until they gleamed. Black damask curtains had been pulled away from large windows, allowing in the light of the afternoon and framing the Scottish countryside beyond. The heavy furniture was ornate and well made—antique like most of the house’s other rooms. A black and gold counterpane lay flat upon the mattress, several pillows arranged neatly against the headboard.
The scents she had begun to associate with Adam proved even stronger here, flooding her senses with cedar, cigar smoke, and a pure masculine aroma that seemed uniquely his own.
An open door led the way into a washroom equipped with the latest in plumbing technology. Metal pipes descended from the ceiling, pulling cool water in from the cistern to mix with the piping hot water the footmen toted from the kitchen. A contraption Adam referred to as a ‘shower bath’ sat in another corner of the room—appearing like a large basin with wooden rods reaching upward, holding a curtain which enclosed its inside. While undressing and preparing to get into her own bath, she’d watched Adam undress, then open the curtain, revealing that the big basin had what looked like a pump built into its side. The wooden poles held an upper basin, which would hang over Adam’s head once he stepped inside.
Peering over the edge of the massive copper tub, the heat of the water soothing her body, she had watched Adam continue disrobing. Unable to look away, she had drunk in every detail, having realized that he never fully undressed when they were intimate. Her mouth had gone dry at the sight of him, rippling with power and strength—bulky cords of muscle flexing and bunching beneath supple skin. Dark coils of mahogany brown hair covered his chest, then trailed down his abdomen, turning into the coarse nest at his groin. He was chiseled like a statue, deep grooves carved out between the bulges, his legs all taut sinews. His hair hung down his back in soft waves, past his shoulder blades in length. In London, that hair might be considered indecent, the mark of an ill-bred man, not a titled earl. Yet, it suited him, made him seem so much a part of the wild and untamed lands surrounding his castle.
He met her gaze, but said nothing, seeming unruffled by her unguarded perusal of his nude body. Leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor, he approached the shower bath and stepped into the basin, his height forcing him to hunch a bit to keep from hitting his head. Bending down to grasp the pump, he worked it with one hand, the slender pipes attached to the wooden poles rattling a bit.
“How does it work?” she’d asked, wrinkling her brow.
She had been too curious to worry that he might not wish her to speak at the moment.
“The footmen fill it with water, and I use the pump to move it up these pipes and into the upper basin,” he said as he straightened. “Then, I simply pull this cord.”
She watched as he reached up to pull a rope attached to the upper basin. The action produced a shower of water from overhead, which doused him from head to toe. Then, he took up a cake of soap and used it to lather himself, scrubbing his skin, then his hair before working the pump again to refill the upper basin. Pulling the cord once more, he drenched himself with more water, rinsing clean.
It was a marvelous invention, one she had heard very little about. She felt certain these were being installed in the homes of the peerage who were not as financially bankrupt as her family.
He’d left the room then, wrapping a length of linen around his waist, his hair curling and dripping water all over the tiles.
Maids had come into the room to clean up behind him, ignoring her altogether. Not long after they’d left, Adam returned, dressed in breeches and a shirt, his feet bare and his damp hair pulled back from his face. Seeing him this way proved oddly intimate—his shirt hanging open and his feet bare as they sat in his private washroom. He dragged a footstool toward the tub and sank onto it.
Producing a hairbrush, he took hold of her hair, which she’d let hang over the lip of the tub after washing it, so it could dry. Without a word, be began dragging the bristles over her hair, his grip surprisingly light, his ministrations gentle. Closing her eyes, she sighed, surrendering to the warmth of the water and the soothing glide of the brush over her hair.
He did not allow her peace to last for long … though he did continue brushing her hair while he spoke.
“I will tell you the rest now,” he stated. “Everything you need to know about Serena. But, I warn you, Daphne … after this day, you will not ask me about her again. You will not try to interfere in her life, and you will never again attempt to go into her wing of the house.”
She opened her mouth to protest, to remind him that Serena was her niece, and he had no right to separate them. She wanted to insist that her stumbling upon the nursery had been an accident, not a purposeful defiance of his orders.
Instead, she merely nodded her acquiescence.
“As I told you before, your father turned Olivia away when she tried to inform him of Bertram’s indiscretion,” he continued, his voice eerily calm as he wove the rest of his tale. “She tried to contact both of them several times throughout the rest of the Season, insisting Bertram do the right thing. Her greatest fear had become having a man offer for her and eventually needing to explain her lack of virginity. She was ignored … until she realized she had become pregnant. Olivia tried once more to approach Bertram, thinking he would surely do the right thing now that a child had been sired. Your brother insisted the child surely could not be his … he accused her of trying to trap him into marriage and insisted she must have lain with other men after being with him, and he had no way of knowing who had actually fathered the child.”
