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“That’s no reason to freeze a man’s bollocks off.” He leapt out of bed.
Mina retreated a few steps.
He ripped off his sodden robe and flung it over a chair.
Bare chest, glistening with water. Beads of water like diamonds glittering on the dusting of hair that trailed down the center of his chest and bisected his abdomen.
She noticed all of the details she’d missed before because she’d been too far away in the shrubbery under his window.
Grabbing a towel from the shelf near the washbasin, he rubbed it over his head, leaving his black hair standing on end like a farm cat’s fur after being groomed by its paws. He lifted his arm and swiped the towel over his armpit. He had black hair there as well.
The wet fabric of his undergarments clung to narrow hips, emphasizing muscular thighs, long legs, the shape of his... cock. Her mind couldn’t think of any less objectionable word to use.
Her eyes couldn’t look away.
There it was, not jutting out proudly but hanging down between his thighs.
The duke followed her gaze. “He’s very cold,” he said testily. “Which causes him to shrink.Temporarily. If you don’t mind... a little privacy?”
This was without a doubt the most exciting and unexpected night of her life. Her thirst for knowledge and adventure was being satisfied. She was learning so many things.
She turned her back on the duke and stared at his rumpled bed instead.
Mistake. His bed made her think about what had happened there, after he’d moved away from the window and away from her awestruck gaze. Thefinishing.
She decided to stare at a squat, solid mahogany chair. Nothing too provocative about a chair. Except that it was so very sturdily built that it would no doubt support the weight of two people at once. Say, a duke and a...
“I dumped the icy water over you because you were fondling my bosom, Your Grace,” she blurted. “Without my consent, I might add.”
“Oh.” The sound of a towel rubbing over taut, naked flesh. “I apologize. I don’t recall that part. It was wrong of me.”
“Very wrong.” But it had felt right. Especially when he’d rolled her nipple between his fingers. That part had felt beyond right. The poor un-fondled nipple on the left was begging to be awakened into a tingling awareness.
“I think I thought I was dreaming,” he said. “But we did... didn’t we kiss? In real life?”
“I have to go now.” She really should leave before he remembered everything.
“Wait.” Sound of heavy footsteps. “Damn. I’ve the very devil of a headache. It hurts to walk. It hurts to think.” That low, gravelly voice of his coming closer. “You can turn around now.”
She turned around. His chest was safely hidden in a gray flannel wrapper. A pity his eyes weren’t covered. His amber gaze penetrated straight through to her pounding heart and seemed to read her licentious thoughts.
“I must go,” she repeated.
“One moment, MissPenny. It’s all coming back to me now. My idiot of a brother climbing through the window. The cowardly blow to the back of my head.” He stared down at her. The ice had traveled from the basin to his eyes.
Thorndon was back.
She shivered. “You’ll have a prize-winning bump on your head tomorrow to be sure.”
“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t run after my brother. There’s obviously something between you two, yet you stayed here with me. Why?”
Emotions played across her expressive face like a strong breeze over a field of grain. She wasn’t a person who hid her thoughts or feelings well. Drew read obstinacy in the set of her jaw. A tremor of fear in her lips.
Intelligence and evasiveness in her eyes.
“You might have been seriously injured,” she said at last. “I stayed to make sure you were all right.”
“It would take more than a candlestick to break my thick skull. If you haven’t noticed, I’m solidly built.”
