Free When She Said I Do by Celeste Bradley Page A

so ridiculous. In fact, her body hummed with a hunger she’d never felt so intensely before. Her feminine parts throbbed with a sweet ache that made her squeeze her thighs together tightly and shudder at the jolt of pleasure that resulted.
    Mr. Porter wanted to do much more to her, she knew. By the way his hands had slid so reluctantly from her breasts, by his heavy, almost angry stride as he’d left her … oh, yes. More was definitely in store.
    Licking her lips, tasting the salt and herbs, Callie rolled the pearl across her open palm and pondered the notion that when she returned to her home in a few months, she might return a very different woman than when she’d left.
    And she pondered the earthshaking realization that she might just be rather comfortable with that outcome.
    Leaning back in the lukewarm water, Callie allowed that astonishing thought to settle and take root in her mind. Closing her eyes, she also allowed her hand to settle between her thighs. What fascinating texts might Mr. Porter have read? Perhaps it was her newly heightened erotic senses, or perhaps she was simply losing her mind, but the thought of doing such a thing outside the privacy of the bedchamber—why, the thought of doing such a thing at all!—sent a hot jolt of excitement through the center of her belly.
    I won’t. How silly. I would never.
    I wager I could be safely done before anyone knew .
    Anyone. You mean him.
    Yes, I mean him.
    He is nowhere near. Unless … unless he’s watching from the hall.
    I won’t.
    Even as she told herself that, her hand began to stroke softly.
    I have become more than wanton. I am decadent. When her fingertips slipped between her labia, she let her head fall back onto the high slope of the copper tub with a liquid moan. She stroked herself and thought of him … of his hard, hot hands and the way his breath caught when he touched her …
    My husband. My mystery lover. A man I have never truly seen.
    She thought of a way he could take her while retaining his mystery—as a stallion takes a mare. The image of that, of her on her hands and knees, naked before him, exposed—of being mounted like a wild creature—of rocking hard and fast into him, of him plunging into her again and again until their wild cries turned to animal howls …

 
    Chapter 7
    Once Callie had dressed and wrangled the heavy copper tub from the kitchen, she was relieved to feel her former exasperation welling up once more. She tracked Mr. Porter down in his study.
    “We … you need servants.”
    He’d turned quickly away when she’d entered and pulled his cowl over his face. “No.”
    If Callie had a sovereign for every time she’d planted her fists on her hips in the last two days, she wouldn’t need Mr. Blasted Porter’s Blasted Pearls. She’d practically worn sore spots on each side!
    Still, there they went, white-knuckled with frustration, digging into her hips again. I could count to ten. Perhaps one hundred.
    I could turn and walk away, stop trying to talk to the blasted man, stop trying to reach him —
    Worthingtons do not quit. Ever.
    “Who had the raising of you?”
    Ren turned from his pretense of gazing out the window at nothing, glad that he’d remembered to keep his hood on while still in the house. “Whatever are you talking about?”
    “I mean, were you raised in a house, by human parents, or perhaps in a cave, by a bear?”
    It sounded so very like something his mother would have said that Ren almost laughed aloud. Startled out of the urge by the urge itself, he turned back to the window. “I had human parents once, though perhaps they would not claim me if they could have lived to see me now.”
    She gave an unsympathetic snort. “Not if they could see how you treat your things. It seems a bear has been loosed in the hall. Perhaps not one bear, but several. There are rooms upon rooms that look as though rather impolite beasts have been making free with them!”
    Impolite beast. An accurate