Caught in His Gilded World

‘Stop that,’ she croaked, nipping at her lower lip.

He drew back his hand into a tight fist and exhaled roughly.

She was right.

He exhaled. ‘So what about these feet?’

Her mouth dropped open slightly but he had already slid his hands under her soles and brought them up onto the bench.

She didn’t fight him this time, but drew up her knees, eyes squeezed shut, like a woman about to endure a root canal at the dentist. It would have been funny had he not been so deeply, unambiguously aroused. So hard it hurt.

He deftly and carefully eased off her socks and tossed them into the wastepaper basket, never to be heard from again. It was a hard shove to his unambiguous impulse to bury himself in her soft, agile beauty to discover how torn up her feet were. He thoughtfully stroked his thumb along the welts criss-crossing the top of her feet. This damage seemed to be from long ago, the scars faded to white.

She had narrow, knobby-toed feet, shaped by the years she’d used them to sculpt the exquisitely formed female body sitting before him. The raised white welts, however, didn’t make a lot of sense.

When he was a boy, living in the mountains, he’d learned to fix the wings of birds and splint broken legs for all kinds of small mammals. His stepfather had patiently taught him, along with lessons in how to track and perform a clean kill. Before everything had gone wrong. Before he’d understood that with every year he grew more and more like his father in both feature and reputation.

And being bullied from the age of eight had nothing to do with him being good with his fists and quick to take offence.

He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her calluses and she made a sound of despair.

He understood shame. He understood what it could do to you if you didn’t fight it.

‘Relax,’ he said, looking up, but her eyes were squeezed shut again, as if that way she could hide.

Her very real dismay loosened the loop of memory that had momentarily tethered him to the past and the tightness in him lifted. Something softer fought for room. He knew how to make her forget her shame, her fear.

He took one of her long, narrow feet in his hands and pressed his thumbs into the sensitive cord of muscle where her foot arched. Avoiding her broken blisters, he dragged his thumbs along the soles of her feet.

She moaned, and her blue eyes shot wide to meet his in honest bewilderment.

A deep satisfaction stirred within him.

He knew how to handle her. Because under her shock, like a promise, was a sensuality as natural and unadorned as she was.

She was a beautiful wild thing he had caught, and he could see a pulse hammering at the base of her throat. But he knew how to handle a frightened wild creature...

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘GOOD?’

‘Don’t...’ she groaned. When clearly she meant more.

He pushed again.

She gave a helpless moan and gave herself up to the relief. He kept working until the tension lifted off her and her head rolled back and she moaned again—a deep, utterly unselfconscious sound. Incredibly sexy. He felt it deep in his groin.

‘Good?’

She made another approving sound.

Too good. He was dangerously close to losing control himself.

‘This might hurt.’

Gigi hissed like a kettle as he slid her feet into the water.

Tender, exposed new skin didn’t mix with water—even Plaza Athénée water.

Gigi cracked open one eye and then the other.

She hadn’t been able to look at him while he worked on her ugly feet, and now she scanned his face anxiously for signs of disgust. Only she could find none.

He made quick work of the caked blood with the dexterous use of a flannel, before letting out the water and wrapping her feet in the sleek hand towel folded beside the basin.

His practicality saved her from real embarrassment.

‘Thank you,’ she said, a little at a loss as to what else to say.

She wasn’t used to being looked after, she realised, and that it should be by this tough, intimidating man confused her.

He had handled her feet with a care and generosity that had once again made her mind wander to what else he could do with those large hands... She eyed him almost shyly.

‘You’re a funny girl’ was all he said.

Gigi’s warm feelings faded.

She’d heard that before. ‘Gigi the Clown’. Her papa’s failsafe response to her falls, tumbles and general efforts to get him to pay attention to her.