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He nodded appraisingly. “Aye, no swelling. Here’s yer chance to wash.” He pointed to a small creek she hadn’t noticed last night.
She looked at it without moving. There was absolutely no way she was going to undress in front of him.
“Now, lass. We leave as soon as we’re done.” He pointed again.
“I do believe a good rest was all I required,” she said brightly. “Sleep,” she added when he looked confused. “Not a bath.”
His face cleared. One dark eyebrow slanted up. “I will not watch ye, Senna.” Was he amused? It certainly appeared to be a smile threatening to break free on his face.
“I simply do not think ’tis wise to dampen my hand,” she said coldly. “All your leech craft would have been for naught.”
A small smile did curve up a corner of his mouth at this, but he didn’t say any more. He finished with the fire and started unbuckling his hauberk. Its flap fell down over the soft undertunic and he dragged the armor over his head.
“I don’t want to hear any regrets later,” he said, his voice muffled.
She didn’t reply. She was too busy staring in amazement: the Irishman was going to undress right in front of her! The armor came off, and he pulled up the bottom of his tunic. He was going to remove it. She couldn’t rip her eyes away. Excitement flew around her belly like birds coming out of a nest, swirling and fluttering. He tugged up, revealing his flat stomach. Senna lurched back into speech.
“You shall hear no regrets,” she said sharply. “Although it seems quite likely that you knew of this stream last night when I wished to bathe, an
d did not mention it…”
Her words trailed off. There was simply nothing more to say on the subject, and the tunic had gone up and over Finian’s head, dropping onto the ground beside him.
Tangled black hair fell down around his smooth, muscular shoulders as he rotated each one in turn, stretching his head the opposite way and groaning in appreciation, apparently unconcerned that she was watching him undress. Staring. She wrenched her gaze away.
He stepped over to the far side of the creek that ran in the gully, an easier access point than the side Senna stood on, and ducked his head under the water. He came out wet, and shook his head, sending water droplets spraying into the air. He pushed his hair off his forehead with a swift push of his palm, then looked at her.
“So tell me, lass, why are ye the one managing the books for yer father’s business?”
She watched as he splashed more water over his face, then took one of the cakes of soap and clumped its misshapen lump in his palm. He spread it over his cheeks and jaws. Reaching into the belt lashed to his waist, he pulled out a blade.
“You shave!” she exclaimed in surprise.
“Aye.”
She watched in utter silence. When he was done, he plunged his head into the water a second time, threw his drenched hair back, and revealed his unbearded face for the first time.
Long dark hair slicked back, revealing the sharp, fine lines of his jaw and cheekbones. His mouth still held the grin that so beguiled, the one that made her heart thump, but now the full sensuousness of his lips was fully revealed, and it set her heart hammering as she recalled what he’d done to her with them.
Thick fingers entwined in his hair as he shoved the hair off his face, and before Senna’s eyes flashed an image of them tugging through her own. The sculpted definition in his arms, bent above his head, exposed curves and lines that her eyes followed with greedy intensity. A dusting of dark hair covered his flat, ridged belly, which narrowed to trim waist and hips, then widened again to thick, corded thighs.
Her gaze devoured his body as if it were a meal, mindless of the fact that he was watching her watch him. Finishing, she lifted her gaze and encountered his wolfish grin.
“A woman who looks at a man like that, Senna, is a very tempting thing.”
God save her, the Irishman knew every turning in her wicked thoughts, every depraved notion and erotic wanting that had flickered through her mind. She blushed. He cocked an eyebrow. Her flush met her hairline. She ripped her gaze away.
Apparently satisfied, he knelt back by the stream. “The accounts,” he said, prompting her to recall his question.
She half turned her head, trying to ignore the sight of the bunched muscles of his thighs as he crouched beside the stream, splashing water over the cake of soap in his large hand, then rubbing it over his wet arms and chest.
“I manage the accounts because I am quite good at it.”
“I didn’t so much mean how ye came to it, Senna, as how yer father came to not.”
“Oh. Indeed. As I said, Sir Gerald gambled. Come a time, he would wager on anything. Horses, tourneys, raindrops, anything. Once he bet my mother’s brother whether King Edward would choose Balliol or The Bruce to rule Scotland.”
Finian picked up his tunic and rubbed it over his damp hair. “And which did yer father choose?”
