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“I cannot feel them at all.” Despite her furs, Jenova shook and shivered.
“Here, then.” He reached to take her boots in his hand, swiftly removing them and arranging them by the fire to dry. Her stockinged feet were very cold, and his hands were so warm…. They felt wonderful. He set about rubbing each of them to warmth, toes, heel and instep. Next he set to work on her hands, pink with cold beneath her gloves.
His face was creased with concentration as he performed his task, and his touch was impersonal and thorough, yet gentle. He was doing what needed to be done, but Jenova did not feel like an object, far from it. She felt cherished; there was something very agreeable in his touch, something very comforting, almost sensuous…. Jenova was aware of her whole body relaxing, growing languid with the pleasure of Henry ministering to her.
“Thank you, Henry,” she said softly. “You are very good to me.”
Henry looked up at her, the firelight dancing in his blue eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he mocked. “We are old friends, are we not?”
He looked very appealing. And very handsome. Why, thought Jenova in surprise, he is like a stranger! If she had not remembered this was the man she had known forever, her childhood companion, she would have been as foolishly attracted to him as any other woman. Jesu, she was attracted to him….
A warm trickle of an unfamiliar sensation ran through her cold body, a stirring she had not felt for a long time. Jenova shivered.
“Are you still cold?” Henry demanded, a crease of worry between his brows. He reached again to clasp her hands, his fingers strong and sure. There was a crooked white scar on the back of one of them, and suddenly she thought; I do not know how he came by that scar. And at the same time she realized that there were many things she did not know about Henry. In her arrogance she had believed she knew everything there was to know about him. The truth was, she didn’t. She couldn’t. And mayhap it was not safe to do so.
“Jenova?” He was watching her, waiting for the answer to his question, and puzzled by her silence.
She turned her thoughts away from this new, dangerous direction, and managed a pale smile. “I am still cold…that is, a little.”
His frown deepened. Was his annoyance with her or the weather? Before she could ask the question, he lifted her cloak so that it enfolded them both, his arm sliding under the furred lining. He drew her in, close, to his side, and pressed her head gently down onto his shoulder. Surprise kept her from protesting, and then, when he tightened his hold about her, pleasure stopped her from moving away. Aye, she was enjoying it, enjoying being completely enclosed. By Henry.
“You will soon be warm,” he murmured, and his breath stirred her hair, brushed against her skin. Her heart quickened within her breast, and her blood seemed to melt, turning her insides into a river of heat.
Jenova heard her inner voice sound a warning. Run for your life! it said. She ignored it, just as she had ignored the danger of the storm clouds. Henry was her friend, her oldest friend, but as she listened to his voice rumble deep in his chest, and the easy beat of his heart, her usual equilibrium tottered into a quivering mess. The truth was, she liked his body, so hard and warm against hers, and the strong band of his arm about her waist.
Jenova shivered again, but it was no longer from the cold. Nay, she was getting warm, far, far too warm, and all from touching Henry. Indeed she was ready for marriage; until now she had not realized how her woman’s body had missed the contact of a man….
“Jenova?” Henry sounded concerned. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked up. He was watching her, staring down into her face. Their gazes tangled, played games. Jenova slid the tip of her tongue along her upper lip, meaning to moisten its dryness, but instead the movement made him catch his breath. In an instant he was alert, his body tense. She knew he could see something of her feelings in her face. She was sure her need was writ plain in her eyes.
Oh, Jesu, what was happening to her?
Her heart began to beat hard in her chest, and the inner voice said, This is wrong. This is wrong, stop it now. And yet she could not seem to pull away from him, she could not seem to stop it. Not even to save her life could she pull away from the grip of whatever had her as its prisoner. Deep inside she knew she did not even want to.
And then Henry made a sound very like a groan of pain, and dipped his head and kissed her.
Henry’s mouth was hot, while his lips were cold. The combination was astonishingly delicious. Jenova, at first too surprised to move, found her own mouth responding, found herself kissing him back. He was so familiar, and yet so different. He was Henry and yet he was not the Henry she knew, had thought she knew. Someone she had imagined to be very familiar seemed to have altered beyond all recognition.
But he was still Henry.
Jenova pulled back with a shaken laugh, putting her fingers to her lips. He was staring down at her, breathing fast, and behind the confusion she saw in his eyes, mirroring her own, was desire. Hot, burning desire.
It shook her to the core of her being. It jolted her back to the here and now, and out of whatever fantasy she had just strayed into.
“I don’t know what is happening, Henry,” she said in a trembling voice, and it was no more than the truth.
“I kissed you,” Henry said and turned away, moving to throw more wood upon their fire.
Jenova felt chill with the lack of him. Her body still trembled, but was that cold or something more? She no longer trusted herself to know the difference. Her senses had betrayed her.
“I cannot believe you have never been kissed before, sweeting,” Henry added, and his familiar mockery stung.
Jenova forced a husky laugh. “Is that all it was? A kiss between old friends? It felt like more.” That sounded like a question, and she immediately wished it back.
But Henry was busy with the fire, and there was nothing in his manner that confirmed what she believed she had seen in his eyes. Desire? For me? No! She had been mistaken. Henry did not desire her, why would he? They were friends, nothing more, and he had plenty of women to sate his needs. The simple truth was that she had probably looked so cold and miserable that Henry, being the kind man he was, had kissed her to warm her up!
Henry arranged another cut of wood on the fire, concentrating on it as if his life depended upon it. Behind him, he could feel her puzzlement and her uncertainty, and he cursed himself. Why had he kissed her? The fact that she had looked so kissable, so delectable, should not have had any effect on him. He had never desired Jenova. She was the one woman he had always felt safe with, the one woman with whom he had never felt a need to prove himself.
Why in God’s name had that suddenly changed?
