Rebel's Bargain

‘You want to get changed?’ She tucked in the last corner and walked towards him.

‘I want to get naked.’

Did the colour washing her cheeks darken?

‘You know that’s how I always sleep.’ He let his voice drop low, watching her reaction. ‘If you’ll just help me with the sling …’

Poppy surveyed Orsino’s easy smile, suspicion rippling across her skin like a rising tide. What was he up to? His scathing comment downstairs had ripped open past wounds and now he played the charm card. Did he think she was some susceptible fool?

But he needed help. That’s why she’d gone to him on the stairs. She couldn’t leave him swaying there in danger of falling.

‘What do you need?’

‘Just a hand with these clothes.’ He stood and suddenly she was conscious of how quiet it was here, the two of them alone in the luxurious tower bedroom.

Jerkily she nodded. She didn’t want to touch Orsino but nor did she want him realising how uncomfortable she was. Ever since seeing him again her reactions had been intense and unpredictable.

‘Of course.’ She schooled her face into an expressionless mask. Years of work in front of a camera came to her aid.

Scooping off his jacket, she laid it over the arm of the chair. He was already fumbling at his shirt button.

‘Here. I’ll do that.’ She’d be faster, which meant she’d be out of here sooner.

His hand dropped and she reached out, cautious of his sling, and flicked open a button then another. She breathed in then wished she hadn’t as her nostrils filled with the cedar wood and spice scent that was uniquely Orsino. No other man had ever smelled as good as he.

Poppy moved lower, trying to ignore his intense heat, once so familiar to her, and the hard-packed muscle just beneath the pristine shirt.

He moved his damaged arm out to give her better access and she sidled around it so her arms were between the sling and his body. Heat trickled between her breasts and they seemed to swell with her quickened breathing. Stupid to feel enclosed by Orsino. He stood passive.

Poppy darted a look at his face but it was impossible to read his expression.

‘Do you need the glasses on inside?’

‘My eyes are sensitive to light.’

Tentatively she pulled his shirt up and free of his trousers. She hated that her hands trembled. She blinked and shoved aside dim memories of hauling Orsino’s shirt free as they made frantic, passionate love.

‘There.’ She stepped back, surveying him. Then her heart sank as she realised she wasn’t done yet. He couldn’t get the shirt off without her.

Touching Orsino shouldn’t be so difficult. She’d been in enough faux embraces with enough handsome male models to know that a touch between a man and a woman could be completely devoid of intimacy, no matter what the camera said. But there was no camera trained on them as she pushed Orsino’s collar back off his shoulder, feeling the hot silky smoothness of his skin on her fingertips.

‘You’ll need to undo the cuff,’ he murmured, almost in her ear, and she started, looking down at his wrist.

‘Of course.’ Poppy fumbled at his cuff and wrenched it undone. With anyone else she’d make a joke of being out of practice undressing men. Not with Orsino.

Swiftly she stripped the shirt off his arm. All she had to do now was see how to get it off his other side. But as her gaze skidded towards his sling she finally took in what the shirt had concealed.

Her throat closed over scratchy sandpaper as she saw the multicoloured bruising that covered every inch of visible skin above the strapping around his ribs. Yellow, green, blue and dull brown, his flesh was a sickening pattern of pain. Poppy blinked, aware of a squeezing in her chest and a dull sensation of nausea in her hollow stomach.

‘It looks worse than it is.’ Orsino flexed his bare shoulder as if to work out a kink and abruptly Poppy realised she was staring.

‘If you say so.’ Her voice was brisk as she made herself step around him to undo the knot at his neck that held up his sling.

Inside she felt like crying. Why? She’d seen him in hospital. She knew he was injured. But that wasn’t the same as seeing his body so battered.

Her gaze dropped to the wide sweep of his shoulders and back, her belly clenching anew.

Poppy told herself she’d feel the same sympathy for anyone who’d been injured. But this was more profound than sympathy. She tried to reason it wasn’t possible, but the truth was too blatant to be ignored. She felt shivery with shock and horror, because it was Orsino who was injured.

Despite that snide crack about her sleeping around, despite her pain and anger, when it came to Orsino she still couldn’t find a way not to feel.