Willa bit her lip. “Would you like to give me a demonstration?” Willa challenged.
Through the screen she saw him fold his arms. “Don’t tempt me.”
She sat up.Hewas tempted? He had no idea how much she wanted to be on the other side of that screen. She covered her face. His silhouette taunted her. She’d had enough for one night. Willa scooted off the bed and came around the corner, not close enough to see him in all his male glory.
“Do you need help washing your back?”
He draped the towel across the top of the tub before he nodded.
Willa drew closer, picking up the rag and soap. “Lean forward.”
Willa took a great deal of pleasure lathering his back. She shouldn't be feeling any of these wild emotions, but there they were, demanding they not be ignored.
What was she supposed to do with them? She would have to decide by the time she reached London. Her family would demand the absolute truth, and the truth was, he was right. They'd spent so much time alone. Heavens, she was now bathing him. They would have to marry, and the idea did not frighten her as much as it should.
She liked him. She truly admired him, greater than any man she'd ever met, and she didn't even know him. No, she would stop thinking that way. Shedidknow him. She knew the real him. What might take weeks or months to learn about a person, she’d learned in two days. This twist of fate had brought them together, and once he was healed, they could address the matter of their marriage.
As long as there wasn't anything else in the way, like a wife or betrothed—Lord, she hoped there wasn't—she couldn’t imagine a single reason not to marry him.
But if there was, she didn’t know what she would do, knowing that the first man to ever slip under her guard was never meant to be hers. Willa wasn't fanciful. She wasn't a romantic by nature, but right now her pulse doubled in time at the possibility of a future with him, and all the lovely emotions of attraction and desire that fluttered within her.
Willa refocused on his back, realizing that she had dropped the rag, and now she was lazily swirling her bare hand across his back.
A lover’s caress.
She drew her hand away. “I dropped the cloth,” she confessed. He reached behind and lifted it out of the water.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's fine, they’re slippery things,” he said.
It wasn't fine. Was she taking advantage? Was it wrong to fall for a man who had no identity, no ability to declare himself free to be fallen for? But it was too late.
Willa admired everything about him. Even when he was cross, his words angry and grumbled, he had a reserved nature. Reasonable, practical, exactly like hers. She could never tolerate someone who flew off the handle and made a scene. But he was hardly boring. How can a man who ran off to her rescue be boring?
Willa recalled the image of him with the helmet and sword, fighting her captors. He was a hero, as valiant as a true knight. She hoped she would be the one woman lucky enough to love him and keep him.
I’m in love with him.
Her heart danced a merry jig while her lungs froze. She forced herself to breathe, her head growing light. She stood, her knees shaky.
Willa handed him the cloth and soap. “I’ve finished.”
Her eyes stung, she needed to distance herself. She set her hand on the edge of the tub to push yourself up to her feet. He grabbed her hand and pulled her close.
“Wait.”
Willa came around the side of the tub. “What is it? Are you feeling all right?”
He tipped his head back, his hand going into her hair, and her vision blurred as he drew her head close to his. She held her breath. The angle was awkward, but she was incapable of pulling away, even if it was wrong, even if he could never belong to her. She couldn’t have chosen a better man for her first kiss.
Their lips touched. She never knew a man's lips could be soft. Softness was always attributed to women. His mouth molded to hers, and they stayed like that for countless seconds, her heart pounding out the rhythm of time until his hand cupping the back of her head eased and she drew away, drawing in her first full breath.
Her first breath as a new woman.
She would never be the same again.
“Please don't apologize,” she said.
