She was staring back at him, and glancing down he realized that her feet were bare, the toenails painted pink. He felt as if the ground rocked beneath him. Somehow he kept himself on the sofa, kept his hands off her…
“Aphrodite says that you can touch me, but only from the waist up,” she said, and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t.
“Not your feet then?” he made a joke of it, but now he was really in trouble. Why in God’s name had she told him that? Didn’t she know, didn’t she understand? But then he looked into Marietta’s dazzling blue eyes and knew that that was the thing. She didn’t.
Max had a very odd look on his face, Marietta decided. As if he shouldn’t be out of his bed yet. Perhaps his wound was bad again, perhaps he had a headache? And then she remembered. This was where he had been attacked—how could she have been so silly as to bring him back to the scene of his pain and suffering? Of course he was upset!
“I’m so sorry, Max,” she breathed, coming forward to stand before him. She reached to take his hand in hers, holding it tightly, and rested her other hand against his brow.
His eyes were a little glazed. “Sorry?” he managed. Clearly he was in the throes of remembering the suffering he had undergone.
“I forgot, how could I have forgotten! It was here that you were attacked. I should never have let you come back so soon.”
Max blinked, and seemed to regain his senses a little. “Not here. In the laneway,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but it’s close by. Do you want to go home? Perhaps we should call it off.”
/> “No.” He swallowed. He couldn’t go through this again. Get it over with, he thought. And then his eyes dropped down and he realized that he could see her breasts, clearly outlined, and the darker rosy circles at their tips, and he closed his eyes and lay back on the sofa.
“Max!” she was fluttering around him like a moth, but he didn’t move or make a sound. He couldn’t. He kept thinking one thought, and there wasn’t room enough for another one in his head. He had permission to touch her from the waist up. He had permission…
“Max!” She was frantic. In a moment she’d be calling for the servants, for Dobson, and the whole nightmare would begin again.
Max pulled himself together. “I’m all right,” he said. “I…perhaps I need some of that succulent repast now, Marietta.”
She eyed him uneasily, but he straightened his cuffs and crossed his legs, and even managed a little smile. He didn’t look normal, though—he knew his eyes were wild.
“Very well then,” she said. “If you’re sure. Don’t get up, just stay right there. I’ll…I’ll feed you.”
He whimpered, and she glanced at him anxiously over her shoulder as she went to ring the bell—as if she expected him to fall over.
“Are you certain you are well enough…?”
He sighed. The truth wasn’t always a good thing, but perhaps in this case she deserved to hear it. “Marietta, I am alone in a room with a beautiful girl, and she has hardly any clothes on. No, I am not well. I am trying to stop myself from being extremely ungentlemanlike. Now do you understand?”
Marietta opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she said, “Oh.”
“Yes,” Max replied grimly. “Oh.”
Marietta hurried to ring the bell, but her heart was pounding. Max had been staring at her, his eyes running over her in a way that she found quite disturbing. Of course he wasn’t used to seeing her like this, but his gaze was like a touch, and in fact she had begun to imagine how his hands would feel, curling about her waist and then sliding up, to cup the weight of her breasts.
Her heart thumped harder.
She had picked up the glass of sherry, and now she lifted it to her lips and drank the lot. The sweet, strong taste with the burn of the underlying alcohol momentarily took her breath away, and then she choked, pressing her hand to her throat.
He was on his feet and with her in a moment, one hand on her back ready to thump out whatever was choking her. She turned to peer up at him with streaming eyes.
“Marietta? What is it? What—” But then he must have caught the smell of the sherry on her breath, because his expression changed from concern to amazement.
“Marietta?”
She gulped, managed to catch her breath. “Well, you didn’t want it, did you?”
He shook his head at her. “Marietta,” he said quite gently, “if you need to drink sherry for courage then you should not be doing this. You should not be here. We can stop, right now. Do you hear me?”
She drew back from him, although he did not remove his palm from her back. “You don’t understand. I have made up my mind and you can’t change it.”
“No,” he said angrily, “I don’t understand. Do you really want strange men doing this to you?” he demanded, pulling her suddenly into his arms.