“My towel, if you please,” he called over his shoulder as if she were a servant awaiting his bidding.
“Fetch it yourself,” she snapped.
“I thought that your continued presence, where you are neither welcome nor wanted, meant that you wished to take up your wifely duties and towel me dry,” he said.
“How can I have wifely duties when I am not treated as a wife?”
This argument grew more wearying by the second.
Everett cast an exasperated glance over his shoulder at her as water dripped down his back, arse, and legs. “If you want to be treated as a wife, then perhaps you should act like one.”
“I don’t want to be treated like one. The time for that is decidedly past, Riverdale. You have lost your chance.”
He smirked. “And yet here you are, my wife, nonetheless.”
It wasn’t kind of him to rub her nose in the fact that she was inextricably bound to him. But he wasn’t feeling particularly kind where she was concerned. He hadn’t been since he had seen her in another man’s arms.
He didn’t miss the way her jaw tightened at his taunt. And he couldn’t lie; he enjoyed it.
“As I said, I am desirous of rectifying that particular problem,” she said coolly, perfectly composed, as if he weren’t standing before her bare-arsed naked.
He didn’t like that bloody sangfroid of hers, now that he thought about it.
Everett spun about to face her, more than aware that the cool water’s effect on his prick had diminished. He walked toward her with slow deliberation and an utter disregard for his dishabille that was entirely feigned. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his body; rather, he was quite proud of it. He knew he was in excellent form, thanks to his love of rowing, riding, and cricket.Merely, he didn’t prefer to flaunt himself before lying jades who had tricked him into marriage.
“And I told you, madam, there is only one way for that problem to be rectified.” He stopped before her and reached for his towel, which was neatly folded across a gilded bar installed in the shell-bedecked walls of the grotto for just such a purpose. “Give me what I need, and I’ll return the favor by divorcing you or by setting you up at the dower house. Christ, I’ll even give you a town house if you wish it.”
He toweled his hair off first, taking his time and deliberately making no effort to cover himself. He was gratified by the way her gaze traveled over him, devouring him with the ardent longing of any lover. She may have a beau, but she was not immune to Everett.
“Forgive me if I don’t trust you to uphold your end of the bargain,” she said, tipping up her chin.
Blast it. The action called attention to her creamy throat. Everett admired a great many places on a woman’s body, but for some reason, a graceful neck could bring him to his knees. And no denying it, Sybil possessed one of the loveliest throats he had ever beheld, flawless, save for a tiny mole shaped like half a heart just below her right ear. It irked him to realize that the tiny beauty mark still called to him, that he wanted to lay his lips on her there despite everything she had done.
Anger spurred him on. His cock was growing hard for her. Why did Sybil, of all women, have this irritatingly potent effect upon him?
“Ah, but you are tempted, are you not, my dear?” he asked snidely as he continued to towel off his hair. “Don’t think I didn’t see your eyes traveling over me.”
“You are as tempting as stepping in a pile of horse dung,” she said, ice in her voice and gray eyes, which glimmered in the grotto’s lamplight.
But he didn’t miss the slight tremor in her voice, the flaring of her pupils.
She was attracted to him, like it or not, just the same way that his body physically desired her. Base lust had no compunction, and no one should know that better than Everett.
“We could begin now,” he pointed out, being deliberately crude. “Is that why you’re lingering?”
“Of course it isn’t.”
But her gaze dipped down his body, her eyes widening when she spied his prick, ever rising to do his duty.
Feeling particularly wicked, he moved closer, until he had crowded her against the rock wall of the grotto’s cavern. Everett gave in to temptation and reached for her, cupping her nape, gently rubbing the pad of his thumb over that half heart. God, her skin was soft. Softer than silk and warm and scented sweetly. This was the Sybil he had thought he was marrying, lovely and pliable, staring up at him with liquid silver eyes that revealed none of her innermost secrets and thoughts. He’d thought her unfailingly lovely, and he’d wanted her with a ferocity that should have been a warning to him. Instead, he’d ignored it.
Now she was a mystery he didn’t want to solve. Everett didn’t like complications. He preferred simplicity, a lack of emotion. But Sybil had swiftly proven the biggest complication of his life.
“You may as well surrender to the inevitable,” he told her, stroking that bewitching beauty mark.
He didn’t miss her quick inhalation, and neither did he mistake the rapid beat of her pulse.
“I want your promise,” she blurted.
