And he’d accepted.
He began swimming forward.
Toward shore.
Towardher.
She watched, mouth dry. She simply couldn’t retreat from her position. But how could she possibly hold it?
She noted the instant his feet caught purchase on the bottom. Her stomach tightened as he began to emerge from the sea; one slow, relentless step after another, all golden and glistening like the sort of god people once worshipped.
And Delilah could see why.
The muscles of his shoulders, chest, and ridged stomach created channels for water to stream, leading the eye like gravity,down…down…down…
“You wouldn’t dare,” she called out, futilely. It was obvious that he was, indeed, daring.
How was it that his smile became even more arrogant?
The shiver spread and rippled through her.
“Watch me.”
Watch him?
How could she look away?
“Of course,” he continued, “you won’t.”
“Why would I?” she asked in a disinterested show of bravado. Hopefully, he hadn’t detected the slight wobble in her voice.
He shook his head chidingly. “That’s not the question. Would you darenotlook away?”
Delilah’s mouth snapped shut to prevent it gaping open. There were no words as he moved through the water, and she stared, transfixed, at the Adonis emerging from the sea.
Or would that be Poseidon?
Oh, what did it matter?
What did anything else possibly matter?
The water reached his waistline. Heat flushed across her skin. She should lift her gaze and keep it fixed above his neck—simply to prove to him that she could.
And herself.
Really, she should fix her gaze upon any point other than where it insisted on landing.
Another step.A fuzzy mound of golden hair revealed. Her heart beat hard and fast against her ribs, and she had the strangest sensation of floating outside her body.Yet another step…
And there he was in his full morning glory. His thick thighs…his—oh—manhood. So visceral and masculine.
Ravensworth.
Before her was no duke of girlish fantasy, but a flesh and blood man.
She’d spent so many years despising Ravensworth that he’d become like a villain in an uninspired play—flat and possessed of a single dimension. But these last few weeks—here…now—she was able to see him fully, as the man he was.
The sand continued to shift beneath her feet—and not simply of the literal variety.
