Matilda couldn’t make out what was happening. She couldn’t see—why couldn’t she see? Had she struck her head when she’d fallen?
Slowly, slowly, she made sense of her surroundings.
She was flat on her back on the floor. The cat—the damned ungrateful cat—was stretched across her face, front paws tangled in her hair, back paws in the neckline of her chemise. The animal was panting, her heavy body shuddering in terror or cold, and they—Matilda and the cat both—could not seem to move.
But Christian could. Matilda felt his hands on her hair, her neck, touching her skin. He had located one of the linen towels she’d acquired for the aftermath of the bath and was slowly wrapping the cat up in it, disentangling the animal’s claws from Matilda’s hair and shift. He made soft noises as he freed her from the wet, rose-scented tangle of feline body and skin-shredding claws.
And then the cat was off her, and she could see him, and—
She was grateful she was lying down. He’d been readying himself for bed, apparently. His feet were bare, as was everything above his waist.
No jacket. No cravat or waistcoat or shirt. Only a flat abdomen, taut above the buttoned fall of his trousers. A hard, lean chest, knit with musculature and sprinkled with curling black hair. His shoulders were elegant, somehow, like his graceful fingers. Like his mouth.
His mouth which was, just now, pressed into the tightest, flattest line she had ever seen on his face.
He turned away from her.
Ah, his shoulder blades flexed as he moved, rippling beneath his skin—Matilda had never known shoulder blades could be so erotic—she wanted to touch him so badly—
He deposited the cat on the floor.
The poor, tormented thing seized her freedom, fighting against the towel he’d used to pick her up. She hurled herself toward the bed and—instead of going under it as Matilda would have expected—leaped up atop it, dragging the sopping towel with her. Droplets of water arced behind the cat as she jumped. Once on the bed, she scrambled through the counterpane and linens, across two down pillows, and up to the carved headboard.
The towel finally came free. The cat sprang atop the headboard, tried to find purchase, and then slithered back down to the pillows with a yowl. One of the pillows bloomed up around her as she landed, and she fought back mightily, hissing and spitting.
The pillow burst open in a spray of down. Tiny white feathers shot into the air, a great explosion of fluffy disaster.
The cat seemed satisfied by her triumph. She settled down into the other pillow as goose feathers slowly settled around her like fat snowflakes. She gazed out at Christian and Matilda and then lifted one paw and gave it a delicate lick with her small pink tongue.
Christian turned back to Matilda, his gray eyes storm-cloud dark. “What,” he snapped, “inhellis going on?”
She gazed up at him from the floor and tried to gather her wits, which were as scattered as the feathers on the bed.
He looked back. His eyes were locked at first on hers, and then—oh, then he lost control of his gaze. He looked down, down her body, and Matilda’s eyes followed the trail his made.
Her chemise was torn from the cat’s back claws, bunched around her hips where she had fallen. The garment was wet and cold in wide patches, clinging to her skin.
Where the animal had launched herself at Matilda’s chest, the white fabric was soaked through and completely transparent. Her breasts were outlined in thin lawn, curves as visible as if she were naked—more so, perhaps, for the way the fabric drew the eye. Her nipples were tight from the cool damp, and as she raised her gaze back to Christian’s face, they tightened further.
She could see the quick breaths he drew, his bare chest rising and falling unsteadily. His eyes were heavy on her nipples, dipping down to her hips, the vertex of her pelvis, her bare legs. She could feel the weight of his gaze; she was hot, suddenly, her skin burning, the wet shift so cold she shivered.
He came closer. She was still on the ground and, heaven help her, the way he stood over her was painfully, wildly arousing. She felt her lower belly turn over. Desire, unfurled and aching, bloomed between her thighs.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Stand up.”
Matilda couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember how to move.
He bent, then, his face shifting closer to hers. Everything about him was hard and tight: his jaw, his chest, his forearms. He caught her by the shoulders and dragged her up to sitting.
Her body was the opposite of his—loose and pliant. Her head tipped back a little, and she felt her wet hair touch her back, cold against the thin barrier of her chemise. She shivered again, her skin pebbling under Christian’s hands.
He made a sound, a faint, bitten-off sound and looked at her mouth.
She licked her lips.
“Come on,” he said grimly, and then he maneuvered her to sit on the bed. “Change out of your bloody wet shift and then I’ll fix up the scratch on your neck.”
Once she was seated—once she seemed able to hold herself up on her own—he let her go, stalked across to the adjoining room, and shut the door.
