Marry Me (35 page)

Cole didn’t try to resist the tub’s siren call. He closed the door and began stripping off his clothes.

Rhyne woke with a powerful thirst. The sound of running water only made it worse. Driven by her need, she wrestled with the covers until she was free of them, and then she slid out of bed. The room tilted as soon as she stood. She grabbed for the night table and held it until she got her bearings.

Getting the floor to stay level was only the first part of her problem. Several long, disorienting moments passed before Rhyne could identify her surroundings. Once she did, she remembered everything that explained why she was here.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, aware that she was wearing a chemise, drawers, and stockings and that every other article of clothing was decorating an armchair. “I swear, Rose Beatty …” She let the thought trail off because it was incoherently formed at best. Revenge needed to be carefully planned, and she was in no condition to do that now.

Sawdust tasted better than what she had in her mouth. She tried to lick her parched lips and discovered her tongue was as dry and gritty as sandpaper. Running water drew her attention again. She tested her steadiness by releasing the table and taking a step back. When she was confident that the initial wave of dizziness had passed, Rhyne went to find the source of the water.

It didn’t occur to her to knock. She remembered quite clearly that Rose had gone, or rather that Will had taken her away. Rhyne felt heat in her cheeks just thinking about it. She pushed the door open, went straight to the sink, and thrust her cupped hands under the cold-water tap. She stood frozen in that posture–her head bent heavily forward, her eyes closed–for some time before she realized her palms were not overflowing with clear, cool water. In fact, they remained dry as a dust bowl.

Raising her head slowly, Rhyne opened her eyes. There was a moment where she caught her reflection in the gilt mirror above the sink, but what captured and held her attention was what she saw over her left shoulder.

Whipping around so quickly that the room tilted again, Rhyne braced herself against the sink. She stared, her mouth slightly agape, as Coleridge Monroe calmly sat up in the tub and turned off both faucets. He smiled, gave her a casual salute to acknowledge her presence, and then lay comfortably back against the curved end of the tub and slid down until water lapped at his shoulders.

Rhyne felt her knees sag. Lamplight infused the water so that it lay like gold leaf across his shoulders and throat. If it weren’t for the fact that his breathing was steadier than hers, Rhyne could easily have been convinced that he’d known the touch of King Midas.

“Hell and damnation, Cole,” she whispered.

One of his eyebrows kicked up, not because she’d sworn, but because she’d called him Cole. “It’s about time,” he said, reaching for a bar of soap.

Rhyne didn’t immediately understand what he was referring to. When realization came, she threw up her hands. “That’s what you have say?” She didn’t give him an opportunity to answer what was essentially a rhetorical question. “What are you doing here?”

He flicked the water with one hand and held up the soap in the other. “Isn’t it evident? In fact, it’s more obvious than what you’re doing here.” He pointed to the footstool beside the tub where he’d placed several towels. “Put the towels over there and sit down. You’re listing like a ship in a storm.”

Rhyne looked down at herself. It was true. “I need water.” She gave him her back while she searched for a glass. Finding one, she filled and drank from it three times before her thirst was satisfied. After filling it a fourth time, she approached the tub but did not go so close that she could see under the water. She used one foot to drag the stool closer and set the towels where Cole could reach them. When she sat down, she did not quite reach Cole’s eye level.

She offered a trifle lopsided smile. “Mrs. Beatty ladled whiskey in my tea.”

“So she told me. Medicinal, I believe, was the explanation for it.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Were you feeling poorly?”

Rhyne mocked herself with a short, ironic chuckle. “Not as poorly as I feel now.” When she fell quiet she saw that Cole was still waiting for something that passed as an explanation. “I suppose you’d say that I had thoughts that needed sorting,” she said finally. “I was on my way home from Maggie Porter’s and just kind of wandered into the Commodore. I had enough money for a cup of tea and a scone, but I only ordered the tea. I don’t know how long I sat there before Rose came in. Until she arrived, I’d mostly been sitting, not thinking or sorting. It was better after she sat down. I didn’t know I wanted company, and then she was there, and I realized that I did.”

She watched Cole turn over the bar of soap in his hands. She didn’t think he realized he was doing it. All of his attention was for her. She basked in it the way he basked in the warm yellow lamplight, and she knew without a doubt that she was the more golden for it.

“Rose Beatty is probably the last person I’d have thought to go to with the troubles in my head, so it’s good that she came to me. Turns out, she knows a powerful lot about the kinds of things I was thinking. And that was before we got liberal with the whiskey. After that, she plucked thoughts from my mind like they were weeds and she was clearing space for a garden.”

Cole tempered his smile. “Is that right?”

Rhyne nodded. She took a sip of water to wet her lips and then raised the glass to her left temple and held it there. “Rose might have cleared too much ground for a first planting.”

Cole took pity on her. “I brought some headache powders. They’re in my bag in the bedroom.”

She didn’t have the wherewithal to do more than murmur her thanks. She used the lip of the tub to help her slowly lever herself to her feet, and then she shuffled into the bedroom to find his satchel, keeping the glass of cool water pressed against her temple the entire time.

When she returned, the glass was drained and granules of bitter salicylate dotted her upper lip. She rinsed her mouth at the sink, scrubbed her face, and pushed damp fingers through her hair to tame the dark, unruly curls. Behind her, she watched Cole dip below the surface of the water to remove soap from his hair. When he came up, he threw off water like a puppy before he reached for a towel.

Rhyne sat down again and held out her hand for the damp towel when Cole was finished with it. He eliminated spiky tufts of copper hair by smoothing them with his palms. Rhyne’s own fingers itched to plow the same field, but she squeezed water out of the towel instead.

“It will take some time for the medicine to work,” Cole told her.

“I know.”

“Perhaps you should lie down.”

She looked longingly at the tub. “I’d like to bathe.”

“You can join me. It’s as big as a pond.”

“I think I’ll wait.” If he was disappointed, Rhyne had no hint of it. For herself, she was a little disappointed that he didn’t insist. She watched Cole stretch. The tub was not quite of a size to accommodate his length. His kneecaps broke the surface when the soles of his feet rested against the far side. “Aren’t you getting cold?” she asked hopefully.

In answer, Cole sat up and leaned forward, reaching simultaneously for the plug and the hot-water faucet. There was a gurgle when he pulled the plug, but that sound soon disappeared as hot water rushed out of the tap. He reset the plug, let the water run a little longer, and then turned it off. Afterward, he settled back and closed his eyes. He wasn’t terribly surprised when Rhyne threw the damp towel at his head.

“Folks around here tend to think you’ve got pretty, city manners,” said Rhyne. “You sure have them fooled.”

Cole removed the towel and dropped it over the side of the tub. His arm remained extended toward Rhyne. He turned his hand, palm up, and curled his fingers ever so slightly. His mouth curled ever so slightly as well. His hand invited her. His mouth invited trouble.

Rhyne put her hand in his and was drawn off the stool more by his smile than the infinitesimal tug of his fingers. She rose to her feet, took a step forward, and then climbed into the tub. Heedless of the fact that she was still wearing stockings, drawers, and a chemise, Rhyne lowered herself into the water so that she was facing him. Reaching behind her, she pulled the plug to drain just enough water to keep it from spilling over the sides.

Rhyne rested her forearms on the lip of the tub and allowed Cole to draw her feet toward him until her calves rested on his thighs. Beneath the water, his fingers were busy removing her stockings. She blushed when he carelessly tossed them away and one of them clung to the flock paper.

Cole glanced at it. “I wonder what will become of your drawers.”

Rhyne slapped at his hands when he began tugging on the lacy hem of her drawers, but only succeeded in stinging her eyes with soapy water. He used the distraction to his advantage. Her drawers did not cling wetly to the wall, but they did drape rather coyly over the side of the sink.

“Tell me about your headache,” he said. His hands caressed her from ankle to knee and back again. He did it several more times before she finally answered him.

“It’s gone.”

Cole nodded, satisfied by her surprise. The steamy bath, the heat rising in her blood, and the novelty of this particular distraction probably had more of a palliative effect than the headache powders.

“Good,” he said. With just a touch here and there, a nudge, a tug, a caress, Cole managed to turn Rhyne so that she was cradled against him, her back flush to his chest, her hips resting between his open thighs. There was tension at first; he felt it along the length of her spine and in the awkwardness of her hands on his knees. Gradually it eased as she grew more comfortable with the position and the gentle lapping of water against her skin each time they stirred.

“Is it late?” she asked. “It was dark when I woke. I never thought to look at the time.”

“It can’t be eight yet.”

She nodded, relieved. “Where’s Whitley?”

“Will and Rose whisked her away. It remains to be seen if that was a mistake.”

Rhyne turned her head to try to look at him, but he put his hands lightly on either side of her and straightened her out. That didn’t stop her from asking, “What were you thinking?”

“Of you,” he said quietly. “I was thinking of you.”

She closed her eyes. It was as if his voice had slipped between the water and her skin. She was enveloped by it, safely cradled and cherished. The feelings were unfamiliar to her, but where she would have sought to escape them this morning, she fought now to keep them close to her heart.

“I deserve you,” she whispered. A tear leaked from under her lashes. “It’s one of the things I didn’t understand.” Her voice was as thin and fragile as a thread of glass. “But here’s the other, and it was harder to reckon. I’m worth deserving, too.”

Cole started to say something, but she raised a hand over her shoulder and lightly placed her fingertips against his lips.

“If you don’t know it yet, I’m hopeful it’ll come to you by and by. That no-account Beatty figured it out about Rose when she was still whoring, so I’m fairly confident that you’ll–”

Rhyne was crying in earnest now, although she wasn’t entirely certain why, and then Cole was turning her in his arms and kissing her face, kissing all of her face, so that no matter how the room tilted, the singular touch of his mouth set everything straight again.

“You’re deserving,” Cole said against the mouth. He said it again at her ear and ruffled the fine hair at her temples. He whispered it against her cheek, tickling her skin with his breath and lips, then punctuated it with a flick of his tongue. “Did you really think I didn’t know?”

He wouldn’t let her speak. He needed her mouth under his, and he kissed her long and slow and deep. She made tiny whimpering sounds at the back of her throat that were nothing at all like her sobs. He could feel their vibration against his palm when he touched her neck.

Water rippled around them; some of it slipped over the side. Rhyne’s skin glowed with dewy wetness and the transparent color of the lamplight. Cole sipped from the curve of her neck. He pushed damp, dark tendrils of her hair aside and kissed her behind the ear. She moaned softly, caught him by the back of his neck and held him there, her nails making crescent impressions on his flesh. She would have slipped under his skin if she could have found a way in.

He stripped away her wet chemise and flung it away. Neither of them looked to see where it fell. They were aware of what was different this time. Always before there had been something between them: her nightgown, his union suit, the blankets they shared. Mostly, too, there had been darkness. Now they were naked in a pool of liquid light, their bodies sleek and slippery and glowing.

She crawled over him, straddled his thighs. Rising, she cupped her breasts and offered them. Her fingers stroked his damp hair as he sucked. Fire ignited along filaments that connected muscle and tendon and sinew. She felt heat in her fingertips, at the back of her throat, and as deep as her womb. With each tug of his mouth she understood better that her body was exquisitely fashioned to give and receive pleasure. She was aware of the thickness of her blood, the heaviness in her limbs, and contrarily, a perfect lightness of feeling. She was glad of his hands on her hips. He held her down as nothing else could have.

The broad planes of his body intrigued her. His shoulders were smooth and taut. She traced the rigid line of his collarbones with her fingertips and then flattened her hands against his chest. She stroked his arms and felt his corded muscles shift beneath her palms. When her thumbs tripped lightly over his shoulder blades, she heard him draw a ragged breath.

The sound of it stirred her.

Rhyne closed her eyes. He drew back and she knew he was watching her. She let him, unembarrassed by anything that he might see in her face. Whatever it was that held his interest, he’d put it there. She smiled as Cole caught her by the waist and lowered her enough to bring her mouth within a hairsbreadth of his.

He nudged her lips. They parted for him, and when the tip of her tongue peeped out, he closed the gap and drew it into his mouth. It was a deliciously sensual kiss, swirling heat and sweet fire. She moaned softly, and he took the sound and kept it for himself. He was hard against her belly. She tilted her hips forward, rubbed, wanting more now. Wanting him.