Page 53 of Frankly, My Dear

A short time later, Iris left the room, smiling widely. Selene had promised to demonstrate tush crunches and other aerobic exercises that might help the slave correct her physical problem.

James was going to kill her.

Selene awakened late the following morning, feeling deliciously rested, even though every muscle in her body ached. She stretched hugely, sitting up in the netting-swathed four-poster bed of exquisitely carved rosewood. James had told her that she could wait a day before starting her duties, but still Selene felt guilty for oversleeping.

She tried to rake her fingers through her hair, but they got caught in an ungodly number of snarls. With a moan, Selene remembered that she’d fallen asleep without drying her hair. A big mistake. It would probably take her hours to comb the tangles out of her hair now.

Well, today was the first day of her new life, Selene decided, choosing to be optimistic. She pushed the mosquito netting aside and walked behind a screen where she relieved herself in a chamber pot—not an experience to be cherished. She decided she would take a bath, then look for Etienne to start their lessons. On the way to the armoire, she passed an oval free-standing mirror on serpentine legs, giving it a passing glance. She jolted back in a double take.

Then she shrieked the roof off.

James was in the back of the house talking to Rufus about some chores he wanted done when he heard Selene’s first scream, followed by a horrific, mournful wailing.

With lightning speed, he shot into the house and up the back stairs, rushing into her room without knocking. “What? What happened?” he shouted. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt,” Selene blubbered out between sobs, intermingled with hiccups. She stood in front of a mirror, crying loudly, wearing only a lacy chemise that showed off the tops of her magnificent breasts and brief drawers that exposed a huge expanse of legs—exceedingly long and nicely formed, he had to admit.

Unable to sleep last night, James had spent hours thinking of this strange woman from the future. With noble intentions, he had vowed to avoid her at all costs. It was one thing to have a short sexual encounter with a woman like Maureen, but he just knew that making love to Selene would involve commitments he could not make at this time, perhaps never. Besides, Selene was living in his home. He couldn’t very well leave, or send her away, when the affair ended, as it surely would.

As tantalizing as their kisses had been the night before, he had decided he would not touch her or kiss her again, and certainly he would not make love to her. But, sacrebleu, as she stood before him now in delectable dishabille, his determination faltered. And he acknowledged just how hard it would be to carry out those intentions.

He could picture those slender legs wrapped around his hips. He could taste the nipples that jutted out from their lacy confines, begging for his suckling. He could rub his coarse chest and leg hairs against her smooth skin with sweet abrasiveness. He could…

With a mental curse, he cut himself off. Girding himself with resolve, he hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand to clear it of the sensual images. Dangerous images. Images that led down a path of self-destruction for them both. Quicksand.

“Is it a snake again?” he choked out, looking over the bare skin of her arms and legs and feet for fang marks.

She shook her head and let out a small sob, muttering something about buckwheat.

“Buckwheat?” he asked incredulously. “You were attacked by buckwheat?”

“No, you fool. I wasn’t attacked by buckwheat. I look like Buckwheat. From the Little Rascals,” she wailed, flicking out the ends of her monstrously big hair.

He looked more closely at Selene then, noticing her hair for the first time. He didn’t know who Buckwheat was, but Selene looked like a cypress tree with dark brown moss exploding haphazardly in all directions from her skull. “What happened, chérie?” he asked, trying hard not to smile. “Is this a hairstyle from your time?”

She shot him a look of absolute disgust. “You are an idiot. Only an idiot would think that any woman would choose to look like this.”

He shrugged. “You are not any woman,” he reminded her. “You are a woman who pops eyeballs and wears fake spiders on her eyelids. You diet to look like a skeleton. You—”

“What’s your point?” she snapped.

“—you tell a slave that you know how to reduce her ass,” he continued.

Her face grew pink at being caught in this latest outrage. “I didn’t intend to tell Iris about tush crunches. It just slipped out.”

“Oh? Would that be like the words that just slipped out when you informed Reba of the most ideal sexual position in the world—the Perfect Fit?”

Selene’s pink face gradually turned beet red. A ghastly contrast to the dark bush on her head.

James should have been repelled. Instead, he was thinking seriously about continuing where they had left off the night before with that bone-melting kiss. Perhaps on the bed. Or on the floor. Against the wall wouldn’t be so bad. Or in front of that mirror…oh, yes, definitely the mirror. A flame of searing desire shot through his vitals.

He shook his head like a wet dog to bring his roiling senses under control, especially when he realized that Selene had been talking and he hadn’t been paying attention.

“—and it’s not really my fault if Reba feels so insecure and was asking for my advice.” She slanted him a sly, speculative look from under her thick lashes, which really did not need the aid of fake spiders, he decided.

He leaned lazily against a bed post. “Well, darlin’, Fergus keeps asking me to describe this ‘Perfect Fit,’ and I’ll be damned if I know what he means. Would you care to explain it to me?”

“No.”