Savage Impulses by Danielle Dubois Page A

enormous copper tub dragged out to the middle of
the floor. As if that wasn't enough, it was also filled with gently
steaming water. Her jaw dropped.
    “You did this?” she asked, touched. In
Bristol, save for the rare occasion when she and her sister could
scrape together the money for the public baths, she had largely
kept herself clean with a rag and a kettle of water heated on the
cook stove. Sometimes, when fuel was scarce, the water might be as
chilly as the sea. The bath in front of her seemed a terrible
luxury, and it almost made her nervous.
    “As I said, it seems to have been a little
while since you bathed.”
    When she might have flown at him again, he
tugged the lead hard, lifting her wrists above her head and holding
them there.
    Trapped like that, she could only writhe
angrily.
    “That's not very nice,” he admonished her.
“Do you really want to make me angry?”
    A mutinous part of her wanted to shout yes,
but another part, the part that craved this man's touch and his
strength, yielded graciously.
    “No,” she said softly. She was rewarded with
the barest brush of Jake's lips against hers.
    “That's a good girl,” he murmured.
    In a heartbeat, he had scooped her up in his
arms.
    While she was still shrieking from the
surprise of that, he was lowering her into the warm water. She
gasped at the heat, but soon she grew accustomed to it. The heat
sunk into her bones as she sat down in the tub, and she felt a part
of her uncurl and relax. She tried to reach into the water with her
hands, but she quickly realized that she was still bound and that
Jake was still holding the lead.
    “What am I meant to do now?” she asked,
jerking her head at the ropes. “I thought you said I stank.”
    “You do,” he said cheerfully. “I'm not sure
if I can trust you to do a good job, you see.”
    Instead of freeing her, he looped the free
end of the rope to the hook at the front of the tub. It bent her
forward slightly, but if she propped her elbows up on the rounded
copper edges, it was comfortable enough.
    “Relax,” he said, picking up a wash cloth. “I
just want to make sure that my woman is perfectly clean for bed
tonight...” He dipped the cloth in the water, and then he ran it
gently over her face and her neck.
    She could feel him wiping away the sweat and
the grime that she had been living with for days, and, though
perhaps she should have been embarrassed, it only made her feel
like something treasured and loved. She wanted him to take time
with her, to open her up, and then the washcloth dropped to her
breasts and the bath became significantly less innocent.
    Marigold moaned softly as the washcloth
massaged first one breast and then the other. When she glanced
down, she could see that her nipples were already standing up
proudly.
    “Jake,” she said softly.
    He growled with pleasure, cupping a clean
breast in his bare hand. “You're gorgeous,” he said, “now be quiet
while I work.”
    She subsided obediently as the washcloth
traveled down her belly and over her thighs. When it ghosted over
her sex, she pressed her legs together.
    With a chuckle, he moved on to her knees.
    She was both relieved and oddly disappointed.
She instinctively felt the need to shield that part of herself from
him, but she also wanted his touch there. He cleaned her legs
tenderly, but then she realized why he was fine with letting her
keep her legs closed.
    “Go on, now. Up on your knees.”
    Assuming that he wanted more access to her
back, she knelt up, but then he was pushing her forward. She was
supporting her weight on the elbows that were planted on the edge
of the tub, and while it did give him access to her back, it also
gave him access to her rear. The tub was slippery and wide enough
that she simply could not keep her knees together. She had to
spread them, and that must have been what he wanted, because he ran
the wash cloth over the curve of her buttocks before sliding it
around her inner thigh.
    “You