She stole a little peek from between her fingers. ‘I don’t want to see you.’
‘Then don’t look.’
How could she not look? He looked like he had just stepped down off a plinth in the Louvre, so beautifully carved and sculptured. Everything about him spoke of a man in the prime of his life, strong, virile and staggeringly potent if the proud heft of him beneath the black underwear he was wearing was any indication.
Was he going to take them off?
She opened her fingers a tiny bit wider. The muscles of his left arm bunched as they took his weight as he eased out of the chair but he left his underwear on. She wondered if peeling them off would be too difficult in the chair. Maybe once he was in the water...
Eek! He was in the water!
Lily snatched in a breath as the water his body displaced when he entered the pool moved across her breast like a liquid caress. Her nipples reacted as if he had touched them, tight and aching, so sensitive she could feel them pushing against the lace of her sodden bra.
Her belly quivered as she roved her gaze over his chest. He had the broad and well-defined shoulders and biceps of a regular swimmer. His chest was generously covered with coarse masculine hair that spread from a wide T across his pectoral muscles, narrowing down over the washboard of his flat abdomen to disappear—rather tantalisingly, she thought—beneath his hip-hugging briefs.
OK, my girl, remember that pair of lungs inside your chest? They’re for breathing.
Lily drew in a breath but it fluttered against her windpipe like the wings of a moth trapped inside a straw. Her heart was doing a crazy little pitter-pat pitter-pat behind her ribcage and the desire she thought had been dead and buried long ago reared its head and screamed, I’m alive!
He was holding on to the side of the pool with his left arm while he kept his other raised just above the water. He moved along the wall until he was in the deeper end so the water could support him, but even so his head and shoulders easily cleared the surface. For the first time Lily got a sense of how tall he was. She wouldn’t come up to his chin in her bare feet.
‘How does it feel?’ she asked.
‘Wet.’
Lily couldn’t read his expression, as he was in the shadow cast by the nearby shrubbery, but she got the sense he was not totally at ease being back in the water. She wondered if it was bringing back horrible memories of his accident. A water-based accident always held the terrifying prospect of drowning. How soon had help come to him? How long had he floundered with his arm broken and his spine damaged?
But a challenge was a challenge and he was clearly taking her up on it.
She moved closer to him, her legs treading water to keep her afloat as she got within touching distance. ‘Do you need a hand?’
‘Right now a pair of legs would be quite handy. The ones I’ve got don’t seem to be working all that well.’
‘Can you move them at all? Sometimes the water helps you become more aware of your body.’
‘I’m aware of it, all right.’
This time Lily could see his expression and her belly gave another little swoop and dive at the glitter of male desire shining there. She was aware of his body, too.
Very aware.
One of her legs brushed against one of his underneath the water. It sent a shockwave of fizzing sensations all the way to her core.
His gaze went to her mouth, lingering there for a heart-stopping moment before ensnaring hers once more. ‘So, you’ve got me outside and now you’ve got me in the water. What’s the next step in your plan?’
She gave him an arch look. ‘I get you to apologise.’
‘For what?’
‘For telling me to get out of your sight.’
His eyes measured hers for a pulsing moment. She could see the battle playing out on his features: the tiny twitch of a muscle near the corner of his mouth; the tensing of his jaw; the set of his lips into a tight line; the fissure of a frown between his black eyebrows.
‘I never wanted you here in the first place.’
‘There are much better ways of telling a person their services are no longer required than dismissing them from the table like a misbehaving child,’ she tossed back.
‘You o