Page 64 of Storm over the Caribbean
Or at least that’s what I thought. Before my fingers could even reach the food, a hand clamped around my wrist.
“Don’t.” A pair of deep, dark, fathomless eyes met mine.
“But—”
“Sit,” he ordered, pushing me down against a moss-covered tree. Without really meaning to, I sagged against it, only now realizing how exhausted I’d really been. “Rest.”
“But—”
“That is anorder, Mrs Ambrose.”
One corner of my mouth quirked up. “Order as in the orders that, if given to me, you promised I would never have to obey?”
One muscle in his cheek twitched. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Ah.” Nodding happily, I leaned back against the tree. “Just checking.”
Soon, the meat was sizzling over the campfire, making me salivate. An impressive feat, considering we were on water rationing, and I’d hardly drunk anything all day.
“There you go.”
He handed me one of the skewers. Greedily, I started chomping down on the deliciousness that was crab meat. It hardly took two minutes before all of it was gone, and I sank back against the tree with a satisfied sigh. Judging by the bulge of my belly, I had suddenly jumped from around twenty weeks pregnant to thirty weeks. Wasn’t I an amazingly efficient mother?
“Come here.”
An arm came around my shoulder and I felt myself being pulled against a familiar, solid chest, sheltered under the overhanging branches of an old tree. My eyes started to drift shut—that is, until I felt Mr Rikkard Ambrose’s hand sliding up my leg.
Holy…! Is he going to—?
Then his fingers started to move.
A Drop in the Bucket
Mr Rikkard Ambrose’s hands moved up my leg, sending a tingle through me. His fingers began to caress my skin and, before I could stop it, a moan escaped my mouth as his long, dextrous digits slipped under my petticoat and started to…massage me?
What the heck?! Here I was, hot and sweaty in my underwear, right smack in the middle of a steamy jungle, practically unable to move, and his big idea was tomassage me?Platonically?
I opened my mouth to give that son of a bachelor a piece of my mind, and—
“Ooooh!”
Dammit, that felt good! What was I going to say again?
“Lie back.” I heard a low, distant rumble of a voice, like the murmur of the deep, arctic see. “Relax.”
“Dts easy for you t’ say,” I slurred. “You—oooooh…!”
“I what?” came his voice again. Cool, calculating and composed, as if he weren’t affected in the least. Bastard! “Did you say something, Mrs Ambrose?”
“I said—ooooh! Aaaah!”
Those massaging skills should be illegal! Where on earth did he learn that?
More importantly: on whom did he practice?
I opened my mouth. “Dicky darling…be a good husband and tell me w—bloody frigging hell!”
The moan that escaped me as he hit the knot in my muscles just right was probably audible three miles away. If a gorilla came in search of the female that had sounded the mating call, Mr Rikkard Ambrose would only have himself to blame.12
