Page 58 of Bride Under Contract

But as she went to turn around, he pulled her to lie back against him. Lifted her hair so it lay over his shoulder rather than in the water.

‘The packet says fifteen minutes.’

And he used every one.

Several of them spent with large slippery hands sliding over her breasts, toying with the peaks.

Grace lay there, feeling him so turned on behind her. She ached to turn around, to touch him, too, and yet it was bliss to just lie there.

To feel one hand slide down and part her legs a little, to rest her thighs against his and for his fingers to explore her.

She turned her head and he kissed her mouth. ‘I want...’ She was tense with the need to turn, but too laden with pleasure to move.

She felt guilty, because the focus was so much on her own pleasure, was unable to accept that the pleasure was also his.

‘God, you fight,’ Carter said, and he gripped her thighs closed with his, and then there were no more kisses, just moans as she leant her head forward and beneath the water gave in to the pleasure that rippled through her.

His thighs parted and she folded, clutching her knees, sated.

As he climbed out, he offered his hand. ‘Give me a moment...’ Her legs were shaky, but Carter wasn’t waiting.

‘Come on,’ he instructed. ‘We need to rinse your hair.’

She would have gone to his bed with the masque still in, every thought except for him seemed to have floated out of her head.

He took the gold shower attachment from the bath and she knelt on the towel he had dropped to the floor a little later than the fifteen minutes stated on the pack.

No regret as to her decision to come here.

Still no shame.

None.

‘We could go back in the shower,’ Grace suggested as she leant over the bath.

‘We could,’ he said, his voice with a thick edge, ‘but then you’d have to move and I don’t want you to.’

She felt his finger run down the length of her spine, opened her eyes to her hair dripping into the bath, to the feeling of his deft fingers in her scalp, then the tug as he squeezed the water out.

‘Do you want to go to bed?’ he offered. ‘Or...?’

‘Here,’ she said, her voice a bit of a squeak. She was just not wanting to lose the exquisite feel of his hands low on her back, sliding to her hips and moving her just a fraction. ‘Just here,’ she affirmed.

‘Good,’ he said.

She rested her head on her forearm, almost shaking with trepidation as he leant over her body and turned off the water. The feel of him aroused and erect matched her own swollen pleasure. She could feel his hand moving down, closing around himself, and she felt a desperate, delicious impatience flood her veins.

‘Hold on,’ he said.

And that desperate, delicious feeling flicked into frustration as he remembered to keep both of them safe this time. He stretched to the counter behind them, his other hand on her stomach, and there should have been relief that he’d remembered protection, or a little quip about the thoughtful placement of condoms, but the only thing she could think of was the gap placed between their bodies, the air that did not belong there.

Then he was back, his knees between her calves, his hands on her breasts. ‘Look,’ he said, and she lifted her head. But he corrected her. ‘To the side.’

She could see them in the mirror.

Grace barely recognised herself. Her skin was pink, her eyes dark and wide as they watched his hands on her breasts as they move to her waist.

‘Oh...’ She was shivering—a little from the cool air on her wet skin and a lot from the sight of Carter kneeling up, holding himself, rolling a condom on.

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