LITMIR.BIZ

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worth six shillings, eight in any condition. Just hold them until I can pay you in coin.”

      “Very well. I’ll hold the boots—and the lady’s washing. She can have her laundered and pressed frock once you’ve paid.”

      Fair enough.

      They took the largest suite of rooms the inn had on offer. A bedchamber for Her Ladyship to bathe and have a lie-down, a sitting room where he could eat and dash off a letter, and—most importantly—an antechamber between the two.

      At the door to the suite, they parted ways. The serving girls brought hot water to her room; trays of food to his. All was as it should be. Completely separate.

      Once alone, Gabe tugged his shirt over his head and draped it over a chair near the fireplace to dry. Once he’d finished a much-needed wash at the basin, he sat down to his dinner.

      A proper dinner. Real, actual food, rather than falsehoods on a plate. No shmidney pie or braised crabbit or whatever fool name she would invent. He picked up a knife and speared a bit of stewed beef with a satisfying jab.

      He was on his second plate of steaming-hot kidney pie by the time his chewing slowed. And that’s when he heard it. The faintest sounds escaping her room, sweeping across the antechamber, and sliding under the door to him.

      The sounds of bathing.

      A splash.

      A trickle.

      A faint series of drips.

      It all added up to torture. Pure, liquid torture.

      He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands with a groan. Even plugging his ears didn’t help.

      When he closed his eyes, he could picture her. Naked in a shallow tub. Her feet dangling over the lip at one end, and her head reclined against the other. And all that water embracing her with heat, lapping at her nakedness, pouring over her most secret curves and furrows.

      He was immediately, startlingly hard.

      Gabe drummed the table with his fingers. This would be the perfect time for a rainstorm. A riot, an explosion, a choir of tuneless schoolchildren. Something, anything loud.

      Nothing.

      Nothing but soft, devastating, erotic sounds.

      Perhaps he could trick his mind. He might convince himself the sounds weren’t from bathing. Instead, he’d imagine her to be … making soup. Unappetizing soup. Workhouse soup. Watery broth with a few scattered lumps of—

      She sighed a long, languid sigh.

      Curse it. Strategy ruined. No one sighed languid sighs while making soup.

      Christ alive, women took ridiculously long baths. Was it possible to die of priapism? Perhaps she’d volunteered him as some doctor’s investigatory case.

      Make haste, he silently willed her. Be done with it.

      In his mind’s eye, he saw her dipping a sponge beneath a blanket of soap bubbles, and then pressing it against the back of her neck—just beneath the frizzled golden curls at her nape. She gave the sponge a long, firm squeeze, sending a warm cascade down her back. One mischievous rivulet strayed, trickling over her collarbone, burrowing between her breasts, and sliding down to her navel before it disappeared into a tuft of honey-colored curls.

       Enough.

      He pushed back in his chair and unbuttoned his trousers. He took his cock in hand, spreading the moisture welling at the tip all the way down his shaft.

      Closing his eyes, he pictured her naked. She was still in the bath, but now he was the water. Warming her. Caressing her. Licking her all over. He needn’t content himself with a single rosy-pink nipple. Not this time. He pushed her breasts together and feasted on both, nibbling and sucking. She moaned and bucked beneath him, gripping his hair and guiding him downward, where he ran his tongue along the seam of her sweet, wet—

      He tightened his grip, stroking faster.

      Now she was holding him in her arms. Wrapping her legs around him until her locked ankles dug into the small of his back, urging him forward. Inside. Deeper.

      And as he thrust into her, again and again, she held him close to her. So close and so tight. She whispered his name.

       Gabriel.

       Gabriel.

      “Gabriel?”

      Gabe’s eyes snapped open. He nearly fell over in his chair. Grabbing the writing paper the inn had provided him, he launched to his feet, holding the paper strategically in front of his groin and praying like hell his loosened trousers didn’t slip to his ankles.

      She’d opened the door just wide enough to angle her head around the edge and peek in.

      “Nothing,” he declared.

      She frowned in confusion. “Nothing what?”

      “Nothing nothing.”

      He was a fool, and his pounding heartbeat reminded him so, multiple times a second. You fool, you fool, you fool, you fool.

      She looked at the paper. “Are you writing your letter?”

      “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I am writing my letter.” Writing it with the tip of his cock, apparently.

      “It’s growing dark,” she said.

      “I’d noticed that.”

      “The carriage … Even if the driver and smith were to arrive soon, the horses will need to rest.”

      “Yes, I know.” Gabe inwardly cursed. He had no money to pay the innkeeper, let alone hire another coach. Thanks to his lack of foresight, they would be confined in this suite until first light. “So long as we’re stuck here, you may as well sleep.”

      “I can’t sleep.”

      “Surely you’re fatigued.”

      “Yes, but—” She bit her lip. “I need an animal in my bed.”

      He could only stare at her.

      “At home, I always have at least one in bed with me. Usually more. Bixby, of course, and a kitten or two. I can’t sleep alone.”

      “What about the bird? Surely it can keep you company.”

      “Delilah? She’s asleep in her cage. And even if she weren’t, one can’t exactly snuggle with a parrot.” Her eyes swept the sitting room. “I was hoping there might be a newspaper or book here, so I could pass the time.”

      “Well, there isn’t.”

      She pushed the door open further, revealing herself to be clad in nothing but a Grecian-inspired arrangement of draped bed linens. The graceful angles of her bared shoulders and arms stood bright against the darkness. Her knot of steam-dampened hair could be so easily undone. A flick of his wrist would send it spilling free, flowing like molten gold between his fingers.

      And those bed linens … a single tug, and they’d be a puddle on the floor.

      She was trying to kill him. He was sure of it.

      “What on earth are you wearing?”

      “You told them to take all my clothes for laundering.”

      “I didn’t think you’d give them your shift, as well.”

      “It was all mud at the hem. I couldn’t wear it in that state.”

      He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve no garments at all?”

       Don’t tell me that.

       Please tell me that.

      She stepped forward,

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