Chapter 11
Christian leaned against the closed door and tried to will away his violent erection.
Calm down,he told himself.You have about sixty seconds to calm the bloody hell down.
Oh Jesus. He did not even need to close his eyes to see her on the floor in the rose-scented room: the torn shift clinging to her curves, the lush swells and dips of her body visible. Her lips had been parted, her legs spilling open like she wanted him there between her thighs, stroking inside the sweet tight channel of her body, desperate, needy—
He made himself focus on the memory of the two long scratches at her throat. He made himself move, gathering soap, a folded towel, a pitcher of water. He had salve in his traveling bag with his shaving implements. He got it out and laid it on the washstand.
He would clean and dress the marks that the blasted cat had put on her skin. He would make sure she was safe and dry before sending her back to bed.
Her bed—oh for God’s sake, her bed was soaked and dirty and half-destroyed by the cursed feline. He would put her inhisbed, then. He would—
The door between them cracked open, and Matilda put her head in. “May I come in?”
No,he wanted to say.Run away. It’s not safe here.
But even as he thought it, he wasn’t sure what he meant.
It was not safe for her? Or for him? Which of them was in more danger, there in the candlelit room with one dry bed between them?
When he had heard her scream, he had lost time. He did not know what had happened between the sound of her shriek and when he found himself carefully peeling the cat off her pale freckled face. He had wondered briefly, crazily, if he had broken down the door in his panic.
He had not. She must not have locked it. He could not think about the fragile barrier of one unlocked door between them.
“Come in,” he said. “Let me have a look at the damage.”
She came into his chamber and shut the adjoining door behind her. Her hair was down about her shoulders—he had never seen her hair down before. It was drying already, curling up in red-gold tangles that fairly called out to be wrapped round his hands.
She was covered now, her dressing gown pulled around her neck, nearly up to her chin. He couldn’t see a single inch of her body, only layers of white pleats.
It did not matter. The sight of her breasts and hips and legs—God, the perfect shapely turn of her knees, her calves, her bare freckled feet—seemed to have been burned into his brain. He could see it before him like the afterimage of the sun.
Christian’s mouth felt dry. He seemed to have forgotten how to swallow.
Matilda nodded to the door she had closed. “So the cat stays out. I don’t know why she has such a powerful effect on your sinuses, but I imagine having her invade your chamber would not help matters.”
The cat. Her neck. Yes.
“Sit on the bed,” he told her. His voice was not quite how he’d meant it to come out. It sounded dark. A command, instead of a suggestion. Matilda’s auburn lashes flew up as she looked to his face, but then she nodded, wordlessly, and sat.
Christ, there was no hope for his sanity, was there? The way she looked at him—a faint challenge in her eyes, an inclination to resist—and then that trusting submission…
His erection was back in full force, and he had not even come close enough to touch her.
He turned away from her and went to the washstand, wetting the towel and lathering it with soap. He lifted the pitcher, towel, and salve and crossed back to her, laying the items down on the little rosewood table beside the bed. He started to sit beside her, then swore and stood up.
She peered up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I need my spectacles.”
He did not look at her as he stalked over to his traveling bag, but he couldhearthe smile in her voice, damn it. “Take your time. I don’t think I’m in any immediate danger.”
He hooked his spectacles behind his ears, brought a candle over to the table for good measure, and then settled himself beside her.
Obediently, she tilted her chin up for his inspection, exposing the long, pale line of her throat.
It was difficult to think clearly when she did that. He wanted to put his hand there. He wanted his thumb at the notch of her collarbone. He wanted her skin under his hands, under his mouth. He wanted so much he couldn’t remember his own name.
