He turned and snatched the armoire behind him open. He squeezed his eyes shut in an agony of desire as faint floral scent filled his nostrils.
Now that she wasn’t touching him, hunger threatened to overpower him. Only the humiliating knowledge that touching her would unman him kept him from leaping on her.
Blindly, he fumbled in the dark cupboard until his hand fell on what he wanted. He turned and flung the yellow pelisse at Charis. “You’re cold.”
And I’m on fire.
She caught the coat and sent him a speculative look. To his frustration, she didn’t cover her body.
Curse her, it was February. Didn’t the woman have an ounce of sense? Through the buzzing in his ears, he tried to concentrate on what she said.
“…and then you’re free.”
He shook his head to clear the fog from his eyes. “Free?”
Her soft pink mouth took on the tiniest of curves. “Are you listening?”
Itchy heat crawled up the back of his neck. He forced himself to stare at the undistinguished landscape on the wall behind her head. But the image of her perched on the bed, disheveled from sleep, was etched into his eyeballs.
“Of course I am.”
She made a doubtful sound deep in her throat. He couldn’t resist looking at her. Then he wished he hadn’t surrendered to temptation. On her knees in front of him, she seemed all too available.
“It’s important,” she said.
“What?”
The hint of a smile faded, and her voice lowered into seriousness. “When you forget yourself, you’re free.”
He frowned. “I never forget myself.”
“Yes, you do. You forget yourself in violence. You forget yourself in sleep. Perhaps if you wanted it enough, you could forget yourself in…”
“A good swiving?” he finished on a sarcastic note. Frustration sparked. “Every damned doctor in London poked and pried at me. None suggested the sex cure. Perhaps they should have. Even if the remedy doesn’t work, their patients won’t care.” His voice roughened into urgency. “Will you bloody well cover yourself?”
She lifted the pelisse, inspected it with an unreadable expression. And deliberately tossed it to the floor.
“No.” With a languor that in a more experienced woman he’d attribute to purposeful enticement, she leaned to one side and uncurled her legs.
He wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t look.
He looked.
The nightdress hiked up, revealing neat ankles and gracefully curved calves. The night before last, he’d slid between those slender legs and he’d…
His mind slammed shut on the memory. He’d hurt
her and disgraced himself. He couldn’t go through that again for all the gold in Guinea.
She slid her feet to the floor and stood. Still with that eye-catching slowness. To his regret, he watched her hem slither down to her bare feet. God help him, just the sight of her toes, rosy and perfect, made him think of bedsport.
Even during his wild early days in India, no woman had stirred him to this pitch of arousal. He swallowed the constriction in his throat and forced himself to say what he must. “Charis, we’ve been through this before. There’s nothing to be done.”
He strove to sound calm, sensible, resigned. Difficult when his heart raced at triple time, and he couldn’t rip his gaze from the girl standing only a few feet away. One step in her direction, and he’d be close enough to grab her.
What a damned disaster that would be.
“So you say,” she said softly.