And then she licked her suddenly dry lips, allowing her gaze to roam over the bare expanse of Lord Ashley’s back as he tended the fire. The flames burned higher and hotter. So, too her cheeks and the answering burst of need she could never quite quell.
Her ire was fast fading. Perhaps it was the effect of the cold leaching from her body. She was cozy and comfortable tucked into the fur. And try as she might to hold on to her vexation with him, she could not help but to recall the way he had rushed to her rescue. The way he had carried her in his arms, back into the ruins. The feeling of his large hands on her feet, the manner in which he had completely ignored his own chill in favor of warming her first.
None of these were the acts of a scoundrel.
Rather, they were the acts of a gentleman. Which was truly confusing, because she had already decided upon precisely who and what Lord Ashley Rawdon was before she had run from his proposal and his passionate kisses both.
He frightened her, it was true. Not because he was half a head taller than she, with a broad, strong body that towered over hers. Not because he was strong, as evidenced by his carrying her through the snow and the muscles rippling in his back even now. Not because he was a rake.
But because of her reaction to him, because of the way he made her feel on the inside. It was the first time she had ever been beset by such marrow-deep longing, such desperate, aching need. And she did not know what to do with those feelings or how to ignore them, unless she was as far from him as she could possibly get.
Here and now, in the fire-bathed warmth of the false ruins, he was alarmingly near. And he was about to get nearer still.
Her cheeks were flaming as he glanced over his shoulder at her and sent her a smile. A true smile, slow and steady, revealing one dimple in his cheek. He looked so different for that heart-stopping moment, so painfully beautiful. She could not control the stab of pure desire that smile sent to her core. Nor could she keep herself from smiling back at him.
With the fire glowing and crackling behind him, he seemed almost golden. Like some mythical god descended from the heavens to tempt mortals to sin. To tempt her.
It was working.
“I thought you said you would not look,” he teased softly.
Her flush heightened, and she swore it reached the tips of her ears. “I was looking at the fire, my lord,” she lied.
“And do you approve?” he asked her, setting aside the poker before he stood and turned to face her. “Of the fire, that is?”
The fire.
The only fire she was aware of in that instant was the one raging through her blood.
She swallowed with great difficulty, trying not to notice the chiseled ridges of his abdomen or the well-defined muscles of his chest. His torso was long and lean, just like the rest of him. Without his coat and waistcoat, his legs were on loving display, clad in nothing more than his breeches and boots.
“The fire seems adequate,” she told him.
“Just adequate?”
There was an edge to his voice. She was goading him, and she knew it. But she could not seem to stop. She was not speaking about the fire. She could not even bring herself to tear her gaze from Lord Ashley’s masculine form long enough to give the flames he had just stoked any notice.
“Satisfactory,” she amended, although she knew she ought not. But teasing him was enjoyable, even if he still had her at sixes and sevens over his actions.
“I am not sure I like satisfactory any more than I liked adequate,” he said, and then bent to remove his own boots.
How intimate it was, how strange to watch him undress.
How wicked.
How wonderful.
Still burrowed beneath the fur, she could not seem to wrest her gaze from him. Until his long, elegant fingers reached the fall of his breeches, and he began plucking the buttons from their moorings.
“What are you doing, my lord?” she demanded. “You cannot remove your breeches!”
“They are wet,” he told her firmly, as calmly as if they were engaging in a casual drawing room conversation. “They need to dry along with the rest of our garments.”
He had neatly laid out their boots and clothing before the fire, though she had somehow failed to take note before now, ogling him as she had been. What a dreadful weakness she had for this man.
But she still had the presence of mind to recall the ramifications of being in dishabille together. Even if nothing untoward should occur, there was nothing more damning than an unwed lady and an unwed gentleman stripped down to their undergarments.
“If we are caught together thus, I will be compromised,” she managed to say past her foolishly thudding heart.
