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“Garret Shaw, you don’t have a shirt on,” she whispered, taking in his tall, muscular physique. There were scars on his back. Four of them on one side, and a huge scar with no shape on his side. It was dark red and angry looking, but obviously long since healed.
“I was sleeping,” he murmured, resting his hands on his hips. “You need help pouring the water in?”
“Ummm.” She leaned over the tub and tried to lift the bucket, but her angle was bad. She would have to stand up completely and use her legs. “I don’t think I can lift it.”
“I’m going to pour it. I ain’t tryin’ to look.” He turned quickly, and she yelped and sank back into the water, covering her chest with her arms as best she could.
She drew her knees up and was mostly covered as he poured the hot water in.
The heat felt so good as it unfurled into her bath that she rolled her eyes closed and groaned. “I have dreamed about this,” she whispered.
A chuckle took him, and she glanced up in time to see the smile on his lips. Handsome, especially here in the dim lantern light. The flicker of the light highlighted his unbelievably-fit physique. “I didn’t know men could look like that,” she whispered, staring at his stomach flexing with every breath. He even had strips of muscles at his hips, delving into the low-slung waist of his sleep pants.
Garret looked down at himself and then back at her, his chin tucked and his eyes hooded. “It’s part of the curse.”
“The curse? You mean the animal?”
“Same thing.”
“We’re friends now, right?” she asked.
His glowing eyes narrowed. “Sometimes. Sometimes you piss me off so bad I want to set fire to your whole suitcase.”
She giggled and leaned back, arms still protectively over her chest. “I feel the same, but I want to set fire to you. Since we are sometimes friends, I will allow you to stay in here with me if you turn away and don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you.”
“You mean an eyeful of your tits?”
“Garret Shaw!” she yelled, scandalized. “Don’t say that word!”
“You got nice ones,” he murmured, giving her his back. He meandered to the stool in the corner and pulled it back enough to sit on it, facing the other room.
“Wait, what?”
“You got nice tits.”
She glanced down, but she was still mostly covered. “How would you know?”
“I can tell by the way they push against your dresses. I could damn near see them clear as day in that nightdress you were wearing the other night. And I can tell by the way they’re pouring over your arms.”
“You were supposed to not look.”
“Well, I can try my best at all things, but the cold hard fact is sometimes I fail.”
“You’re a brute.”
“No, a brute would’ve kissed you at our wedding and taken you right inside and done all the things my animal wants me to do to you.” He cast his face to the side so she could see his profile when he said, “I’m about as close to a gentleman as exists out here. Your virginity is intact because I choose to keep it that way.”
“You just…” Her blood was boiling hotter than the water. “You just think you know everything, don’t you? You think I would just fall into your bed if you asked me, but you’re wrong.”
He huffed a laugh, and she didn’t like it. She splashed water at him and he flinched, then cast her a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder. His eyes dipped to her collarbones, then back to her eyes. “If I wanted you, you’d already be under me.”
“If you wanted me,” she repeated, letting the sting of his careless words drift over her heart.
“Yeah. If I wanted you.”
“Hot and cold, and hot and cold,” she murmured, sinking back into the water. She inhaled deeply and sank below the surface, closed her eyes tightly, and held her breath as long as she could under the safety of that waterline.
He would probably hurt her feelings every day for the rest of their lives. He couldn’t help himself. Garret Shaw really was an animal.
