He glanced up at her. “Would you like?—?”
“I didn’t come up here for a little light refreshment.” She smiled at the way that made him press his lips together in a bid for self-control.
To help him out, Bess adopted a brisk, business-like manner. “Now, the quicker you let me see to you, the quicker we can get back to…other things.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he turned aside and lifted the voluminous shirt out of the way.
Bess’s mouth went dry. I could wish you were always this biddable, she thought giddily, taking in the lean lines of his tapered waist with its slabs of hard-cut muscle.
The arrow of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his black breeches was just a shadow in the darkness, but she remembered how it had felt against the inside of her wrist when she wrapped the bandage around him last night.
Well. She didn’t have to rely on memory alone. She could touch him. He’d all but invited her to.
Heart rising in her throat like a Yorkshire pudding expanding in a hot oven, Bess went to him. Last night had been all urgency and uncertainty, and fear for him.
Bess allowed herself to slide one hand over the softly furred hardness of his stomach. To hold him steady as she bent to inspect the gash in his side.
He shifted his weight once when she first touched him, but thereafter remained as still and stoic as a statue while Bess checked that the bleeding had already stopped, and a new bandage wasn’t needed. He didn’t move or make a sound when she wet a length of linen in the water and used it to clean the streaks of blood from his side.
When she was done, when she’d straightened up and brushed back the hair that had come loose from her braid to straggle over her masked face, he took the damp cloth from her and dipped it in the water once more.
Silent and efficient, in the manner of someone well used to taking care of himself with no help, he stripped off his shirt entirely and began to wash away the dried sweat and dirt of the ring from his neck and chest.
Bess watched with unabashed interest the way the moonlight played over the bunch and flex of his muscles, the way a droplet of water gathered in the hollow of his collarbone before traveling slowly down the center line of his chest and abdomen.
She followed its progress with her eyes and wondered what it would be like to do the same with her tongue.
He thought her a bold, wanton stranger already, she mused. Would that bold stranger hesitate to do whatever came into her head?
No.
So Bess stepped close enough to touch her tongue to the dip at the base of his strong throat. He froze. She put her hands on his hips and dragged her tongue along the path of that water droplet until she could bury her nose in the coarse silk of the hair on his lower belly.
He made a sound like he was dying, and Bess pressed her smile to his warm, salty skin.
She had missed this, she realized. Oh, she’d known she was starved for the touch of another—but she hadn’t known how deeply she missed the closeness, the intimacy, the joy of touching someone else. Bringing pleasure to someone else.
It was more intoxicating than the strongest wine, and Bess wanted more.
Standing up, she took the damp cloth from his unresisting fingers. He blinked down at her, jaw clenched tight. Sparing a moment of regret that she couldn’t see his whole face and the way passion would draw it taut, Bess circled around behind him.
His body was an undiscovered country, and Bess intended to enjoy her explorations. She drew the cloth slowly across the wide plane of his shoulders, then down the valley of his spine to the sensitive dip in the small of his back.
“You don’t have to do that,” he rasped.
“I want to.” She’d never meant anything more.
All the places he couldn’t reach on his own, Bess cared for. With soft, sure swipes of the cloth that soon she couldn’t help but follow with the press of her lips, the flick of her tongue, the soft test of her teeth against the smooth, supple muscles.
He heaved in a breath, his rib cage flaring beneath her hands. At his sides, those big hands flexed and curled into fists as though to keep himself from touching her. Bess admired the restraint, she truly did.
But she couldn’t help wondering—what would it take to break that iron control?
Bess was no virgin; she and Davy had given themselves to each other with shy, eager innocence, intending to spend the rest of their lives together. But Bess had never been a fool, either, so they’d spent most of their illicit time discovering the ways they could make each other happy with hands and mouths rather than in the way that might produce a baby before they were ready.
When she thought of taking Nathaniel between her lips, swallowing him down, her breath came short and her mouth watered. Her hands shook as she folded the cloth and set it back on the table.
Before she could lose her nerve, Bess circled around him once more, fingertips trailing the miles and miles of skin just beginning to bloom here and there with bruises from the fight. She touched a particularly livid mark and made a displeased huff that was drowned out by his grunt.
