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Would he be angry with her for spying on him? Or would he laugh at her, the way he did, with unsubtle jibes, mocking words and that unmistakable upturn of his lips?
Either way, she hated him all the more for it. And she hated her own stupid lack of judgement for not leaving the moment she had realised he was here. Hated that he made her feel so off-balance and uncertain. Hated that he so badly affected her judgement.
She dragged in the scented air as she turned, praying for strength, steeling herself for the confrontation.
But nothing could have prepared her for the full impact of that near-naked body approaching. Her mouth went dry, her heart rate doubled and kept right on going, and her eyes didn’t know where to look. He was so big, his glistening golden-olive skin beaded with moisture, his chest sprinkled with black hair circling dark nipples before arrowing south, over a taut, hard-packed torso …
She dared not look too far south. Instead she focused on the white towel he had picked up and which he now used to pat his face dry as droplets continued to rain from the slicked-back tendrils of his hair. But the snowy whiteness of the towel only served to highlight the rich glow of his skin, to contrast against the darkness of his features, and would have been of much more help to her right now if he lashed it firmly around his waist.
‘You should have brought your swimsuit if you wanted a swim,’ he said, dismissing the vizier with a brief nod over her shoulder, before taking in the cool shell-top and her bare arms.
She realised he was not angry, as she had feared he might be, but was laughing at her again. Right now she would have preferred the anger.
‘Unless of course,’ he added, his dark eyes raking over her heated face, ‘you prefer swimming au naturel?’
‘No!’ Her prissy-sounding outburst escaped before she could stop it, just as she could no more prevent her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. The thought of being any more exposed to his scrutiny than she already was made her skin tingle and goose bump. But the thought of being naked in the same pool with him triggered an entirely new and more potent kind of reaction. She could already imagine the feel of the water cool against her tight nipples, the pull of the water tugging at her curls as it slipped between her aching, heated thighs.
She squeezed her legs together, wishing to God she’d bothered to find her jacket so that he might not witness any more of her body’s reaction to his presence, crossing her arms over her breasts so that they could not betray her. ‘I was just going for a walk,’ she said, her nails pressing into her arms, harder and deeper, while she wished fervently that he would use that damned towel and cover himself, if only so she was not so tempted to look there. ‘To clear my head.’
‘A good plan,’ he conceded, dashing her hopes when he balled the towel in one fist and flung it to one side. Yet another reason to hate him, she told herself, for any reasonable man would surely cover himself up in front of a lady—a princess. But this was clearly no reasonable man. He was a barbarian who had treated her, and continued to treat her, appallingly. Definitely a barbarian, arrogant, self-assured and clearly used to parading near-naked around women. So what if he managed to look almost human when he smiled and when he laughed? He did not smile for her, he did not laugh with her.
This man laughed at her.
And she hated him for it.
She might have told him that too, but just then he reached down before her and picked up the flowers she had dropped and long forgotten. ‘It is a good time to walk in the garden. All the evening flowers send out their perfume to sweeten our sleep and make us forget the heat of the day and let us dream of cooler seasons.’ Then he held the floral sprigs to his nose, breathing in their heady scent, closing his eyes for a second, giving her the chance to study him more closely—his sooty lashes and brows, the strong blade of his nose and the three long, red marks left so unashamedly by her own raking nails. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, surprising her again. And then he looked across. ‘Did you drop them?’
When she nodded, because her throat was suddenly too tight to speak, he gently tugged one of the flowers and slipped it into the tumble of her hair behind her ear, presenting her with the rest of the scented bouquet.
‘I should go,’ she said, taking them and already backing away, disturbed beyond measure by even just the brush of his fingers in her hair, the touch of his fingers against hers. She was unsettled by his proximity and how it put all of her senses on high alert. Confused by a man who suddenly seemed once more like her rescuer of last night, the man whose warm body she had huddled against, rather than the barbarian who had attacked her today and so mercilessly dismantled her defences.
