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His bedroom door was ajar. She knocked lightly on it. When there was no response she stepped tentatively inside. His room was empty, the bathroom door wide open.
‘I have your water,’ she called. ‘Shall I leave it on the table for you?’
His reply was muffled by the thick walls. ‘I’ll have it in here.’
Hoping she’d misheard him, she confirmed, ‘What, in the bathroom?’
‘Seeing as that’s where I am, yes.’
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Carrie trod slowly to the open door, praying he hadn’t removed all his clothes yet.
It was a futile hope.
Andreas was in the huge bath, leaning back, the top of his chest right in her eyeline, facing the door. Facing her.
Knowing her face had gone the colour of sun-ripened tomatoes, she looked everywhere but him, searching for a decent spot to put the glass on.
‘Bring it to me,’ he commanded casually.
She couldn’t get her feet to work.
Water sloshed as he sat up and extended an arm. ‘Don’t be shy, matia mou. I only bite if invited to.’
Flames engulfing her, resisting the urge to throw the water right in his face, she finally put one foot in front of the other, her eyes darting everywhere but at him.
She couldn’t look at him, not directly. As long as she looked at the beautiful cream tiling around his head she would be fine.
When she reached his side she extended her own arm to put the glass in his waiting hand, careful not to allow their fingers to brush, then quickly stepped back.
‘I’ll leave you to enjoy your bath,’ she said.
‘You’re not going to stay and keep me company?’
Without her meaning them to, her eyes found his and her heart leapt then twisted.
A breathless, suspended moment passed between them, the only movement the growing ache in her most feminine place and the colour she could feel creeping up her neck.
And no wonder she couldn’t breathe. The look in his eyes… The gleam…
This beautiful, ruggedly handsome man was staring at her as if she were a delicacy he wanted to feast on.
Heat rose in her that she was quite sure had nothing to do with the steamy vapours coming from the bath.
Suddenly her imagination ran riot, a feast of its own, racing into places she had never been before of naked limbs and soft sighs…
She’d spent the whole day with this man’s semi-naked body within touching distance and had successfully kept him fully clothed in her mind, just as if she’d been a subject in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Blocking out his near-nakedness had been as hard as keeping that stupid smile on her face but she had done it. Now the veil she’d put over her eyes had been ripped away and she saw him, darkly tanned, a homage to rugged masculinity, and the base feminine part of herself responded to it.
And then she saw something else in his eyes, something darker even than the desire that swirled and pulsed, and it was this something, this dark danger, that pulled her out of the hypnotic spell he’d cast over her and snapped her back to herself.
She forced herself to breathe and dragged her lips into a smile.
‘You’re a big boy,’ she said in as light a tone as she could muster. ‘I’m sure you can cope with your own company for a while.’
There was a moment of utter stillness before his firm lips curved into an all too knowing smile. ‘I didn’t think you’d looked.’
Looked…?
Suddenly his meaning became clear and her eyes, with a will of their own, gazed down at the water, at the long, muscular legs laid out, covered in foam but not covered enough that she couldn’t see the dark hair between his thighs or his…
Shocked rigid, she quickly blinked and turned away.
But she couldn’t blink enough to rid herself of what she’d seen.
She’d never seen a fully naked man before, not in the flesh, and, even with the bath water and foam distorting the image, she didn’t need to be experienced in matters of the flesh to know that he was in proportion everywhere.
‘I’ll be in my room if you need me,’ she mumbled, hurrying to escape from this seductive atmosphere and all the danger lacing it.
She closed the bathroom door with the sound of his low laughter ringing in her ears.
Alone in her bedroom she sat on her bed and clutched her still-flaming cheeks, breathing heavily.
She despised Andreas, had hated him from that moment outside the headmistress’s office when he had stared at her as if she were something dirty he had trodden in.
He had destroyed her sister! How could she feel such attraction to him? How was it possible that her first real flush of desire should be for her enemy?
And how was it possible that he could be so aware of it? She’d seen it in those seductive eyes…
