Page 30 of Lord of Temptation
“Of course I’m looking. I’m a man, aren’t I?”
She laughed, then groaned as her stomach protested the movement. “You’re so refreshingly honest. I think I may have done some damage here.”
“It’s always harder on your body when your stomach is trying to empty itself and there’s nothing to bring up.”
“Hardly polite conversation.”
“But the truth. You’ll be sore for a couple of days.”
If she survived. At that moment she couldn’t quite believe that was a possibility. Her corset loosened, he removed it with an efficiency that she would have protested if it didn’t feel so lovely not to be confined. He dragged the gown and petticoats down her legs and whipped a blanket over her before she could complain about the precarious immodesty of her position. Through half-lowered lids she watched him making his way around the room, but couldn’t quite find the strength to ask him what he was doing. The ship was still bucking. How did he maintain his balance so easily?
She imagined him moving about a dance floor with the same grace. He would be poetry in motion, and the woman held within his arms would be swept away. How could she not? He returned to the bed, sat on its edge.
“Face the wall,” he ordered.
“Why?”
He held up a brush. “So I can do something with your hair before it becomes a tangled rat’s nest.”
“I can sit up.” She was halfway to her goal when the room swirled around her and her stomach roiled. She fell back and rolled to her side, wishing the world would stop spinning.
“Ah, Princess, I bruised you when you came up on deck.”
She felt his callused fingers skimming over her upper arm so lightly, as though he was afraid of hurting her again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have treated you so roughly. Forgive me.” He brushed his lips over her discoloring flesh, and in spite of her misery, she felt pleasurable tingles all the way down to her toes.
And disappointment. A kiss. The time of his choosing. She opened her mouth—
“That does not qualify as a kiss,” he said in a low purr.
She released a small laugh. “I could argue that, but I won’t.”
She felt a tug here, a gentle pull there as he began removing the few pins that remained in her hair. It tumbled down and he gathered it up. She thought she heard him mumble, “Glorious.” But how could anyone consider anything about her glorious at that moment? She was a miserable, tired, aching wretch.
Then the brush was gliding through her hair and nothing had ever felt so marvelous.
“You’ve done this before,” she murmured.
“Never, actually.” He slid a hand between her head and the pillow, carefully lifted, dragging the brush through the strands, pulling them taut, before lowering her.
“You’re very good.”
“I’m a quick study.”
She was being lured into sensations she wasn’t quite comfortable feeling. They seemed naughty. She should send him away now. Instead, she didn’t want him to ever stop his tender ministrations. She had never expected such care from him. She thought he would be like a tempest: powerful, uncontrollable.
Nothing about this man ever seemed to be as she anticipated.
“Peterson said you were going to go around the storm,” she chided, not quite pleased with herself for making the words seem accusatory.
“We didn’t have enough room to maneuver. We could have possibly outsailed it but I thought it better to continue forward, skirt it as much as possible. It didn’t look too threatening.”
“But it was.”
“Not really.”
She glanced back. “You’ve been in worse?”
