Page 127 of Their Master

“It’s all—”

“No, it isn’t all right. I was awful to you. And I ordered you around as if you were a servant, claiming I wanted a friend. I’m sorry.”

He’d dropped the key in his pocket and held out a hand. “Come…Moira.A bath will make you feel better.”

That had been the beginning in their changing relationship. It had coincided—rather uncoincidentally—with her mood improvement.

“Come,” he said now, an echo of that morning all those weeks ago.

He helped her to her feet, as he would an invalid. She’d given up on arguing. Between Smith and Doctor Felson, she was securely packed in cotton.

He led her to the bedchamber and unbuttoned the back of the loose gowns she wore almost all the time, now, even when she went out to window shop or spend an afternoon in the reading room at the museum, which she’d grown to love.

Luke, it turned out, knew how to alter her gowns so that Moira could still wear them, even though she’d begun to get thick in the waist. He also knew how to trim hats, bake bread, and any number of wonderful things.

“Living in a brothel—as you know—is like living in a house full of sisters,” he’d reminded her when she’d been amazed at his quick, perfect stitches when he’d mended something.

He also knew how to give the best massages she’d ever received.

Luke lifted the gown over her shoulders and she stepped over to the bed, climbing onto the delightful down mattress and lying on her back in her thin petticoat and chemise.

Luke sat beside her, his huge body tilting the mattress and making her laugh.

“Perhaps we should get you a table—did you have the padded tables at Bernina’s?” he asked as he laid a big hand on her belly and began to rub her with a light touch.

She closed her eyes. “Yes, the ones for a massage. That is a good idea,” she added dreamily, her body shifting and relaxing into his touch.

∞∞∞

Luke stared down at her as he stroked her, ashamed by what he was doing. Oh, not the rubbing, itself—he knew she liked that and it relaxed her.

What shamed him was what it did tohim.

He’d known it was a terrible mistake to give in and call herMoira, to chatter with her like they were friends—equals, to tell her bits about his life and ask bits about hers.

Of course, it led tothis.

Thisbeing the monstrous erection tenting—and likely leaking on—his trousers.

If you had asked him the first time he met her, he would have said he thought his mistress very attractive, but not his usual preference when it came to females, which was for voluptuous, tall women. Luke was a big man and he’d always been attracted to big women.

Katie, the woman he’d loved—and still did, in many ways—was the exact opposite of Moira when it came to body type. Although, of course, he’d never seen Katie naked. He’d never seen more of her than a flash of ankle on a hot summer day and, on several memorable occasions, her forearms when he’d been invited into her mother’s kitchen to watch her make bread.

He knew it was odd to find a woman’s forearms sexually stimulating, but then—by that time, when he’d been meeting men in dark alleys regularly—he’d already known his sexual preferences had crossed well beyondoddand gone deeply into criminal.

He swallowed again, annoyed by how much he drooled like a lecher while performing this innocent task.

His eyes drifted from the low neckline of her chemise, to the twin points of her nipples, down to her hard belly, and lingered on the triangle of her sex.

Luke had become hard the very first time he’d shaved her—grateful that his heavy work apron had concealed his condition.

He still got hard each and every time. He’d been shaving her weekly although Mr. Smith had made no mention of it on the list of his duties. His mistress had simply asked him to continue doing so two weeks after they’d moved into the house.

“Do you mind?” she’d asked. “And could you do my legs as well?”

“Of course, I don’t mind.” Luke had wanted to suggest taking over shaving her legs. She was careless and cut herself at least once each time she attempted the task.

And so, the next time Luke had gone to see his master, he’d passed along a request for the table that was still in her bathing chamber.

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