“Continue?” She hesitated, her white-knuckled grip still holding fast to herarisaidas her deep blue gaze slid over the hard-slabbed muscles of his shoulders and chest. Then she met his gaze, appeared to consider. “I don’t know…”
“I would be much indebted. And there is still a good portion of unguent.”
“Aye,” she agreed. Then she let go of her wrap, pleasing him immensely by scooping up a fat dollop of the ointment. “It would be a shame to waste the salve.”
“Indeed.”
Pleasing him even more, her attention dropped to his stomach and lingered almost expectantly near the waistband of his hose as if she wished he’d strip off that covering as swiftly as he’d whipped off his tunic.
The thought sent a fresh surge of blood pumping through his loins, filling him in a way the thin wool of his hose couldn’t begin to disguise.
Yet she looked on, seemingly fascinated by the taut muscles of his abdomen, her fingers spreading the cold salve in ever-wider circles over his abraded flesh.
And all the while, his manhood swelled and lengthened beneath the ever-more-uncomfortable confinement of his hose.
At last she lowered her gaze, no longer peering at his midsection but athim, the essence of his masculinity.
A roguish beast no longer his own.
Her fingers stilled. “Merciful heaven.”
’Tis heaven indeed when properly tended,his demons roared with mirth.
Her eyes widening, she gasped again, an earthier, blood-firing gasp this time. The kind he’d not expected to hear from Caterine Keith’s sweet lips for it was more the sensual sort of heavy-lidded moan man-eager light-skirts make at the sight of a ready-to-pleasure-them piece of well-aroused manhood.
For sure, it wasn’t the gasp of a well-born lady raised on monkish preachings against the joys of the flesh.
But then, Caterine Keith wasn’t just any lady.
She was a plain-speaking one.
“Your men spoke true,” she said, proving it. “You are over-large.”
“I am…er-” Marmaduke almost choked, unable to finish.
“Aye, you are.” She looked up at last. “Exceedingly so.”
“Ah, well…” he managed. “You are good at judging such endowments?”
He regretted the words at once for he’d meant to jest, yet she said nothing, only looked at him.
Blessedly, at his face.
And she didn’t need to tell him how she’d come by such knowledge.
That sad truth stood in her eyes, making clear her experience hadn’t come from bathing visiting knights and tending the wounded.
His ardor deflated, Marmaduke resisted the urge to scowl as darkly as the frowning crags on which her castle stood.
Saints forbid, she’d think his displeasure targeted her and not a past that hadn’t been kind.
Steeling himself against his own ghosts, he drew a deep demon-banishing breath.
“Lady, you asked about Arabella,” he said, the calm of his tone at stark contrast to the knot in his gut. “I shall tell you of her, and how I came to renounce my own blood.”
“I want to learn of her,” she said, her frank gaze revealing her willingness to listen, her resumption of her sweet ministrations, sealing his fate. “I would know everything.”
“Then you shall.”
