The Duke's Wife (The Three Mrs #3) - Jess Michaels Page 0,66
him as he stared at the place in his bed that still smelled of her skin, was…did he want them to be?
Abigail sat in the tub, water steaming around her and she should have felt relaxed by the soothing heat. Only she didn’t because her errant mind took her to places it shouldn’t go. Places it had been going far too often as of late, she could admit that to herself.
She kept thinking of Nathan. Of the passion that had flared between them only an hour before. Only if it had just been passion, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Passion was what they had agreed to not that many days ago when negotiating the terms of their marriage.
The problem was that more than just passion had lifted its head that day. She had felt a connection to Nathan when he touched her, when he shattered her…and when he lay beside her, his dark brown gaze locked with hers. She had melted a fraction, felt herself sliding toward him in spirit, as well as body.
Only one other time in her life had she done that. Erasmus Montgomery had made her heart flutter too. She couldn’t trust that feeling. It was the way to heartache. She knew it in her head.
But her heart was the problem. Even now she felt the swell of it as she pictured Nathan. Her mind spun up a dozen beautiful scenarios where they didn’t merely share passion, but shared their lives and their souls and their futures in every way.
“Foolish, overly romantic—” she muttered, then drew in a huge breath of air and slid beneath the water. She lay in the silence, her eyes closed, and tried to get herself together.
The Duke of Gilmore was her husband, thanks to a set of foolish mistakes that had set them on this path. She could accept that because there was no other choice. She could even accept that she might like him a little. That he might not be the ogre she had once made him out to be.
But she would not…she shuddered to even think the word…love him. She didn’t love him. She couldn’t. She had no faith in the emotion, nor the foolish decisions it almost always led to. At least for her.
Her lungs burned, and she slowly surfaced for a gulp of air. When she did, she found Nathan standing in the doorway, clad only in a dressing gown, his pupils dilated as he watched her. She swallowed and fought the urge to cover herself. It was a little late for that now. And her body wasn’t the problem, at any rate.
“I didn’t see you there.”
He smiled. “No, you were busy playing mermaid at the bottom of the tub.”
The words were playful, the tone was too, but there was tension around his mouth. Her getting out of their bed and practically running into her chamber had clearly left him with…questions. Ones she had no answers to.
“It’s a big tub.”
He took a long step into the room. “Abigail, did I do something to upset you?”
“Not at all. I had fun.” She tried to make her tone light, as if what had happened earlier had no meaning. “I’m looking forward to having fun again.”
He swallowed. There it was, the way she could maintain power and break connection. If she made the sex between them pleasurable but meaningless, it kept his mind on something she could control.
“Come here,” she said softly, crooking her finger.
He hesitated but only for a fraction of a second before he moved toward her. He sank down on his knees next to the tub. She pulled her hand out from in the waves and traced a wet fingertip along his jaw. His eyes fluttered shut, and she smiled.
When she felt a flutter in her stomach, it was just because she wanted him. Because having even a small amount of power over him was intoxicating. She was reading too much into it when she thought it was something deeper.
He lifted a hand into her hair slowly, then wrapped the length of her wet locks around and around his hand. The tug against her scalp made her sex tingle, and she let out a low sigh.
“Mine,” he murmured before he kissed her, hard and unyielding.
She nodded against his mouth, pushing those fluttering feelings away when they resurfaced. “Whatever you want,” she murmured back, and gently caught his lower lip between her teeth.
He drew back, his eyes wide, and released her hair. “Stand up.”