Page 143 of The Enchanted Land

He rubbed the stubble of his whiskers on her stomach, and she laughed against her will.

“Do I perceive a softening? I’ll remove the gag if you won’t scream—not that anyone would hear you, but because it grates on my ears.” He removed the cloth binding her mouth.

“Seth Colter! You are the most horrible—”

He closed her lips with a kiss, a sweet kiss.

“You can’t escape, so just relax.” He kissed her again, this time with more passion. His lips touched hers as he talked. “Morgan, sweet, did anyone … ever tell you … that … you … stink?”

“You!” She bit his shoulder hard.

He stared in puzzlement at the bright drop of blood gathering there and then laughed. “I guess that repays me for your shoulder. I wouldn’t have cut you except you jumped like a jackrabbit.”

“Seth, Adam needs me.”

“That, love, is where you’re wrong. Adam does not need you. At least for a while he doesn’t. The way you were acting, I could imagine Adam thirty-two years old and still being diapered by his little old mother, who hadn’t had a bath since he was two years old.”

Morgan started to protest, but then a giggle escaped her. It was such a silly picture. “Was I that bad?”

“Another week and he’d have forgotten how to walk. He’d already forgotten how to talk.”

“But why all this?” Her glance included the cabin and her still-tied hands.

“What would you have said if I’d said, ‘Morgan, let’s go spend a couple of weeks alone in a mountain cabin’?”

“Well, I would have—”

“You’d have found two hundred excuses why we couldn’t go.”

“But why the gag and tying my hands, and the tearing off of my clothes?”

“You had to be gagged or you would have screamed all the way here, and I didn’t feel like fighting you all the way.” He grinned at her, showing deep dimples. “Removing your clothes was my lustful idea. I guess I’m a pirate at heart, a kidnapper and ravisher of young girls.” He tickled her with his beard.

“Seth”—she was laughing—“will you untie my hands now?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not until you’ve had a bath. You smell worse than the men in the bunkhouse.”

“Seth!”

“I mean it. If a bear came in here right now, he’d think you were his mate.”

“You!” She tried to raise a tied hand to strike him. “Why can’t I have a romantic lover, like the ones in novels?”

“Which one of those characters do you want? The one who throws you to the ground and has his will of you, or the on-his-knees, hand-kissing type?”

“I don’t…”

“Just tell me, my Guinevere. I am your Lancelot.”

She giggled.

“Well, sir, the rules of chivalry definitely state that knights do not tell their ladies that they—stink.”

“My sweet—ah, maybe sweet isn’t the right word… My love—believe it or not, I do still love you—royal ladies do not stink. They take baths.”

---