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And coming so soon after she’d nonchalantly walked around in front of him in a teeny towel, an image he’d been doing his damned best to scrub from his retinas, had the effect of adding fuel to the fire he’d only just brought down to a moderate simmer.
She fastened the belt. ‘So? It’s only flesh. We all have it.’
Yes, but not everyone’s flesh is as delectable as yours.
‘Did you parade in front of Dominic in a towel?’ he asked tautly, not because he thought she would have done but to make a point.
Plonking herself back on her seat, she inched the chair back and began rolling the jeans up at the ankles. ‘Dominic gave me the heebie-jeebies from the word go. You don’t.’
‘I’m still a man, Clara.’
‘And?’
‘You’re a beautiful woman,’ he told her stiffly. A very beautiful, incredibly sexy woman. A woman who, if she wasn’t a virgin, he would seduce without a second thought.
‘And?’
‘I see you don’t suffer from false modesty either.’
‘I can’t help how I look any more than you can help how you look,’ she said with her usual bluntness.
He took hold of his glass of water and held it tightly as he brought it to his lips. ‘It doesn’t bother you, parading around half-naked in a towel and allowing a glimpse of your backside to a man?’ Surely she must see the danger?
‘I wasn’t parading and I didn’t allow you a glimpse. I turned my back to you so you wouldn’t be embarrassed about seeing my vagina.’
He almost choked on the water he was about to swallow.
She covered her mouth, clearly suppressing a giggle. ‘I would never have pegged you as prudish.’
That annoyed him. ‘I am not prudish.’
‘Then why are you acting prudish? I thought you’d seen plenty of female flesh in your adult life?’
‘There is a time and a place.’
‘We’re in your private quarters. Who else is going to see me?’ she asked with infuriating reasonableness.
‘That is not the point.’
‘But it’s my point.’
‘You’re not worried I might be overtaken by lust?’
‘Why? Are you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what’s your problem?’
The woman could turn a saint to drink. ‘Your lack of self-preservation!’
She swirled her lips, a groove appearing on her forehead. ‘It’s very touching that you care but you don’t need to worry about me. To me, human flesh is just flesh, the wrapping of the human body, but if you’re worried about your own control then don’t—if I thought you were in any way a monster, I wouldn’t be sitting here, and if it makes you feel better, I’ve been taking self-defence classes for years.’
Spotting the contradiction in this, he said, ‘Because of the threat men pose to you?’
But she dismissed his assumption with a, ‘No, because of the threat they pose to my dogs.’
He was incredulous. ‘Your dogs?’
