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“Your skin is dry,” he said roughly, and he felt Pea let out a breath then sit back, the muscles in her legs relaxing as she abandoned herself to—agreed to—whatever this was.
Leo didn’t know. He didn’t let himself think, or look up, or speak, or do anything that might break him from this madness. He squeezed some lotion into his hand and began to rub it into her foot, into the heel and the ball of it. Into the spaces between her toes, his fingers slick, sliding easily into the little gaps. He rested her heel on his knee, heedless of the oily stain it would leave on his suit trousers, and began to rub lotion into her ankle. Into her calf, avoiding the broken skin along her shin, focusing only on the muscle at the back, kneading it gently. Then up, to the back of her knee.
Pea let out a breath. Her knees fell further apart.
Leo squeezed some more lotion into his hands and started over with her other foot. Again he worked his way slowly up her leg. The hem of her skirt had shifted up her thighs. Leo looked along the V-shaped valley to the dark strip of cloth hidden at the top. He saw the darker patch upon it. Was she… wet?
Fuck.
He had to stop this. Whatever madness had possessed him. He had to stop it now.
This was Edward’s sister.
Edward’s little sister.
And Leo had sworn to himself over a decade ago that he would never, ever touch her.
He was a man of his word. Even if it killed him.
He stood up abruptly, a little dizzy, and wiped his lotion-covered hands on the towel. He took the tube of antihistamine cream from the first aid kit and dropped it onto Pea’s lap, not meeting her eyes.
“That should help with the sting.”
Then he fled.
Chapter seven
Pea
Peasleptpoorlyandwoke early, tangled and sweaty in the feather-filled duvet.
It was only half six in the morning, but the day was already hot. It felt like there must be a thunderstorm on the way, but she could see the sky from where she lay and it was a clear and perfect blue.
How on earth was she going to face the Count today? Oranyday. She had, quite literally, flashed her knickers at him. And he had, quite rightly, run away.
But what had that all been about? The tender washing of feet and the fondling with the lotion and the hands travelling up her legs until she was two seconds away from grabbing his face and pushing it between her thighs?
She flushed. Because he was the Count. He was Leopold Orton-Grey, the Duke of Cumbria. He was her brother’s friend andherfriend, and she absolutely did not like him like that.
Well. He was obviously attractive. Any idiot could see that. And she may, from the ages of twelve to eighteen, have had ateeny tinycrush on him, but then she had left for university, and, after she dropped out in her first year, had left for New Zealand, and then Australia, China, India, Canada, and France. And on the occasions she had seen him at home in England, he had always been implacably rude. So her crush had died. Or rather, had curled in on itself and hidden its face. And she had taken to teasing him and mocking him like Edward did, because then at least it felt like they were friends.
That’s what they were. Friends. Sort of. Wildly incompatible friends. One who teased and the other who merely tolerated. And friends absolutely did not fall asleep touching themselves imagining what else those long, strong fingers might have done if they’d just travelled a little higher.
But then, friends didn’t usually give each other sexually charged foot rubs either. Because she was sure the arousal hadn’t been one-sided. Pea might have a reputation for being silly, but she wasn’t stupid. She could tell when a man was turned on. And besides, she had seen the way he turned away and rearranged the front of his trousers before he strode out of the cottage. Finely cut Italian tailoring didn’t leave much to the imagination.
Pea irritably pushed her way free of the bedcovers. It was too damn hot in this room.
A swim. That’s what she needed. She had fallen in love with swimming while in Africa. It was how she had met André. The cool bite of the water would take away this unbearable heat. The water would wash away her shame.
It wasn’t yet seven in the morning. Surely even the Count would still be asleep. He would never know.
Pea dug out her bikini and got changed.
Leo
Since leaving the cottage the day before, Leo had spent his time alternating between feeling sick with self-reproach and burning with unspent lust. To be fair, it was only a more extreme version of how he had spent the last fifteen years.
Now, in the brilliant blue early morning, he pounded back toward the estate, running as he did nearly every day before breakfast. He had pushed himself harder this morning, running high up into the hills behind the wood that clothed the east shore of Lake Ravensmere. His lungs burned and his muscles were nearly spent, but the tight knot in his chest hadn’t eased at all.
