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He was coming to her room for sex. Normal Duty sex. In an hour he’d be gone and everything would be as it should be.
The door closed.
She couldn’t hear the silence through the blood drumming loudly in her head.
Now they were well and truly alone. Her maids wouldn’t enter the room with Amadeo in it. They wouldn’t even knock on the door to see if she needed them for anything.
They were well and truly alone and she didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do. The clock had turned back a month to their wedding night, when all she could do was wait for Amadeo to make his move.
His smooth voice broke through the whooshing in her head.
‘Would you mind if I used your shower?’
Surprised, she shook her head and forced herself to meet his stare. ‘Go ahead.’
His eyes glimmered and then, to her complete and utter shock, he brushed his lips against hers and murmured, ‘I won’t be long.’
Her mouth had barely registered the fleeting pressure and warmth before he nonchalantly strode away.
Feet rooted to the floor, lips tingling, heart pounding, Elsbeth watched him disappear into her bathroom. She pressed her trembling fingers to her mouth.
She was still standing there, feet rooted, fingers on lips, when the shower started up. That snapped her out of her trance, and she hurried to her wardrobe and grabbed the first nightdress on the pile. In seconds she’d yanked the maxi-dress and her knickers to the floor and shrugged the nightdress over her head. As her laundry basket was in the bathroom, she chucked her discarded clothes in the wardrobe, closed the door, then threw herself onto her dressing table seat.
Her naked face reflected back at her. Lord help her, her eyes look fevered, her skin flushed.
Elsbeth took ten deep breaths then reached for her cleanser.
She must stop reading too much into things. So what if Amadeo was using her shower? It was more convenient than using her guest room like he’d done on their wedding night, which she was certain he’d only done so she could get ready in privacy. In that respect, hehadbeen a gentleman. It was on her that she’d taken his consideration for her virgin nerves as a sign of romance.
The handle turned on the bathroom door.
The butterflies in her belly expanded their wings and became electrified.
Amadeo appeared with only a small towel around his waist.
One glance and inhalation was enough for her senses to be engulfed.
If the good Lord really had created Man in his own perfect image then that image would be Amadeo standing in the bathroom doorway in a cloud of steam, black hair damp, broad, tanned chest gleaming, as solid an example of the beauty of rampant masculinity as she’d ever witnessed.
How many times could a woman come close to spontaneously combusting in one evening?
Glimmering gaze on her, he padded to the bed. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I used the spare toothbrush in your vanity unit.’
She shook her head and rose to her feet. ‘I don’t mind at all. Excuse me a moment.’
Somehow she managed to force her feet to walk, not run, to the bathroom.
Amadeo watched Elsbeth slip gracefully into the bathroom with narrowed eyes. Did he detect signs of fluster in her speech and movements? Or was he back in the realm of wishful thinking?
Sliding under the bedsheets, he propped himself against the velvet headboard.
There was a weight to his heartbeats he’d never felt before. He could only assume anticipation was the cause. It had been many years since excitement had reached its tentacles all the way to his core. His long-ago teenage years to be precise.
His decision to take a shower had been impulsively made when the bedroom door had closed behind them. Elsbeth wasn’t used to preparing for bed with him around and, much as he’d fantasised about stripping her naked, he needed to keep his ardour in check if he wasn’t going to frighten her.
He thought back to their first night together and how clinically satisfying it had been. Satisfying was no longer enough for him. He wanted fulfilling, and he wanted Elsbeth to be fulfilled and not merely satisfied too.
If he knew his wife, she’d go along with whatever he wanted. Yes, she’d go along with it but whether she’d take any enjoyment from it was unknown. He knew her, knew she had it in her head that her role in their marriage was to please him—probably the basest of all male fantasies but the most stomach-turning when applied to real life—but he couldn’t read her.
