The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘You’re purring.’ His chuckle was close to her ear. ‘Keep your eyes closed, I’m going to rinse it.’ The warm torrent drowned her protest that of course she was doing no such thing, then she found her head swathed in a towel and realised he was rubbing it dry. It was so easy to let go and allow him to do it. Eva’s eyes stayed closed, even when the towel was lifted away and she heard Jack moving across the room. He came back almost at once, lifted some of the damp weight of her hair and began to comb it.

‘Jack, don’t bother with that, you’ll get chilled, I must get out.’ Eva opened her eyes and found he was very close, his fingers working carefully through the tangles.

‘No, I’m warm, here in the steam, I promise. Relax while I comb this.’ The grey eyes that could be so hard and cold were gentle as he watched her, the lines of his face relaxed out of their habitual vigilance as she had never seen them before, even in laughter.

Her eyes drifted shut again. The memory of being cold, of being afraid, seeped away under the strokes of his hands. ‘Lean forward.’ She found herself resting against his chest, her forehead on his shoulder as he reached round her, plaiting her hair into a thick tail. Then he coiled it on her head, fastening it with a pin he must have found with her comb.

The heavy weight of it made it difficult to lift her head up off his shoulder, or so she told herself. Against the skin of her forehead she could feel the hard line of his collarbone, smell the scent of him through the soap-scented steam. River water, chilled flesh, man. Jack. Her lips moved, touching lightly on the flat plane of his chest and he shifted, his hands slipping down from her hair to hold her against his body as he knelt there beside the tub.

‘You are cold,’ she murmured against his skin.

‘Warm me, then.’

Awkward, her wet petticoats tangled round her legs, Eva shifted in the tub until she was kneeling up, breast to breast with Jack. Her hands slid, palms flat, up his back, holding him close to her, pressing herself to the length of his torso so her heat soaked into him. Her nipples peaked, hard under the soaked petticoat, rubbing against the subtle friction of wet linen as she buried her face in the angle of his neck, feeling the thud of his pulse close to her ear.

Jack’s breath was hot on the side of her face, feathering her ear so that she caught her own breath, the almost-forgotten heavy heat of arousal settling low in her belly. She expected him to touch her ear, perhaps run the tip of his tongue around the curl of its moulding; instead his hands moved down to cup her buttocks.

The sensation of the two palms, cooler than her own hot flesh, the gentle grasp of the long, clever fingers, had her pressing closer so that when, without warning, Jack stood up, she was lifted with him in one smooth motion. He shifted, taking her off balance so that she clutched at him, then he was standing in the hot water with her.

They were so close that she could feel the hem of the towel he wore around his waist pressing against her knees, the roughness of wet hair where one of his legs pressed between hers. The sodden fabric she was wearing might as well not have been there as her body melted into his, the touch of hard nipples against her breast, the unmistakable heat and pressure of his arousal against her stomach.

Eva lifted her face from the shelter of his neck, his hair spiky with wet as it brushed her cheek. ‘Go,’ he said huskily.

‘What?’ she whispered. His eyes were closed, the lashes as wet on his cheeks as though he had wept, but the skin below was dry.

‘Go. Get into bed.’ Still blind, his mouth curved into a smile that had her longing to touch her lips to the corner of his. ‘I think you have warmed me as much as a friend might be expected to.’

Jack stood motionless, following Eva’s retreat behind the screen by sound. When he heard the flap of a towel from the direction of the screen he opened his eyes, poured in the remaining ewers of hot water and, discarding the towel, took her place in the tub.

The heat took him into its embrace like a lover and he leaned back against the high back of the tub, his knees hooked over the other side and his feet dangling. It was possible, he thought hazily, that he would just lie there all night, luxuriating.

If only he did not have to think. To plan. To try to get some sort of perspective on what had happened just now. The warmth was doing absolutely nothing to subdue the evidence of just how much the sensation of holding Eva in his arms had aroused him.

What had gone wrong? Cold, battered, exhausted, all he had intended was to get her tucked up in bed, warm and safe. If he had been asked, he would have laughed at the thought that he could have summoned either the strength or the inclination to think about sex. It seemed he did not know his own body as well as he thought.

There was a discreet cough and he closed his eyes as Eva’s footsteps padded past, wondering if she was looking at him, wondering, for the first time, what she thought of the man she saw.

Arrogant devil, he chided himself, as he fished blindly over the edge of the tub for the soap. What she saw was an adventurer, a man she could rely on for violence, low cunning and an insolent disregard of her status and position. She saw a man who promised to be her friend and who had damn nearly taken her there and then, dripping wet, on the floor beside this tub.

But he hadn’t. Why not? Jack began to scrub the smell of the river water and mud off his skin, grimacing as he realised he’d picked up Eva’s soap and not his own. He would reek fragrantly of gardenias as a result, but he felt too relaxed to get out and find something else. He hadn’t even kissed her, hadn’t bent his head to sweep his tongue over those taut nipples he had felt fretting against his own chest, hadn’t let his hands take the sweet weight of her breasts in their palms.

Because I want to make love to her, not just have sex with her. And make love when she is fully awake and aware of what she is doing, he thought grimly, not clinging to me because she is exhausted, frightened and I have saved her life—just.

And what the hell am I thinking? Jack demanded of himself savagely as he slid down so his head went under the water. He emerged, streaming, and scrubbed his hands through his hair with intentional force.

That was a grand duchess in that bed, not some game pullet, not even a sprightly matron who was interested in showing her gratitude for a well-executed commission in ways that went beyond paying his bill. That happened now and again. He never sought it, sometimes took steps to evade it and sometimes found it a mutually satisfying, if short-lived, encounter.

This was different. The Grand Duchess Evaline was different. There was an innocence about her that was at odds with her marriage to one of the most hardened roués in Europe, a softness under that imperious manner that she could adopt at the blink of her long-lashed eyes. The memory of those lashes against his skin sent a stab of lust lancing into his already aching groin.

It was going to be a long night. He might want to make love to her, she might, in her vulnerability and disorientation, turn to him, but Jack knew full well that he could not let it happen. She was chaste, he could tell that almost at a glance, and she would have had countless opportunities discreetly to be otherwise. The fact that she had not meant that this was something that was important to her, to what she was as a woman, and he could not destroy that.

He opened his eyes, saw nothing but a mound under the white covers to show where Eva was, and began to scrub at the soles of his feet which seemed irrevocably black. Had she spurned de Presteigne at some point? His instinct told him that she had. The man would take that as an insult, would nurse it in his breast as a slight to be repaid. It made him even more dangerous—if he still lived.

Jack climbed out of the tub, registering dispassionately the muscles that ached, the ones that felt least responsive. Weaknesses he could not afford, gaps in his training to be worked on. Tomorrow h

e wanted to ride, if Eva was up to it. Two of their pursuers were dead, he had made sure of that. But there remained de Presteigne—wounded certainly, and if alive no doubt as furious as a scalded cat—and the soldier who had fallen in the river who might have been able to swim.

Pursuit was either still on their heels, or as far away as Prince Antoine, waiting impatiently in the brooding castle of Maubourg for news of the hunt. Ahead was safety. He rested one foot on the edge of the tub as he scrubbed the leg dry and reconsidered that thought. Safety unless Antoine had had the sense to send agents on ahead of de Presteigne in the hope that the colonel would act as the ferret down the rabbit hole and drive them headlong into his hands.