How long had he been in this sick bed? His rescue was such a haze, he wasn’t sure when he started to truly believe his torture was over.
The cloth left his body, and he wanted to scream with the loss of it; demand satisfaction from whatever deity had taken it away.Then he heard the unmistakable sound of water sloshing in the basin as she rinsed the cloth. Her touch returned—to his brow.
Damnation. That was not where he wanted her attention.
She worked her way down the cords of his neck once more, but this time was different. This time she was not cataloguing his injuries, this time…was it curiosity that drove her? Her fingers went to where his long hair no longer lay in a snarled mass. He recalled her apology when she’d lopped off his once sleek locks.
I hope you don’t value your hair as if it holds your strength, like Sampson. You are so much more than your black silken strands.If he had been able to, he would have taken her in his arms and proved how little he valued his hair, but like Sampson, he’d been powerless to react.
Her cloth worked across his Adam’s apple and down across the wide breadth of his chest, and suddenly it was so much more than soothing his aches and pains and fever. Because she was causing a fever of another sort altogether.
Her melodic humming of Beethoven’sFür Elisewas doing something to him as she circled his flat disc-like nipples and then ran her fingers through the light sprinkling of hair on his chest. Her fingers were caressing his skin in a manner that was not nurturing but arousing. She didn’t mean it to be so, but dear God in Heaven, it was bliss.
If he did die, it would be in the most rapturous fashion a man in his condition could ask for, and he had to witness it. He wanted to see the expression on her face as she teased and tormented him. He opened his eyes, the light blinding him momentarily, as he rapidly blinked in effort to watch her hands glide across his body as if they were lovers.
He knew he’d lost a tremendous amount of weight, yet he hoped she could still see the strength of his muscles across his torso as she worked her way down his stomach and hips. It was almost as if she were marveling at the trail of hair to his—she froze, and her humming ceased. He closed his eyes as he focused on his breathing. In and out. Slow and methodical. He felt, rather than saw, her gaze upon his face and tried to act as if he were sleeping peacefully.
The bedclothing shuffled, snagged on his erect cock, as if to torture him further as she lowered it and exposed him completely. He peeked from a tiny slit of his eyelids and watched as she gazed upon his manhood in open fascination.
Touch it. Stroke it. Holy hell, lick it, my Sweet.
The shock on her face told him this was the first time he’d become aroused at her touch since she’d begun taking care of him. He wanted to roar at the unfairness of not having enjoyed this woman’s touch to its fullest. How many times had she bathed him? How many times had she gazed upon his body with wonder and fascination, as she was now?
He knew his cock was above average proportions. The ladies enjoyed his markedly different manhood. In his entirety, he wasa masculine form women craved, and despite the bruises, cuts and broken bones he hoped he still resembled the man he was prior to becoming Napoleon’s guest.
A knock at the door made her throw the bedclothes up to his chin, only to see a large tenting in the middle from his aroused manhood. He wanted to laugh but held his mirth at bay.
“Blast. Do you always have to bring attention to yourself?” She cursed.
Apparently, he did.
“Caillen, may I come in?” her sister asked.
“Just a moment!” He heard her scurry across the room and stole a glance to see her grab another blanket before turning to toss it over his midsection. “Control that damned thing, Astley,” she whispered.
He could think of several ways he wanted to control it, but that only made matters worse.
She stood back and looked at her handiwork. It wasn’t nearly good enough to disguise the rise in the blanket his cock was creating, but she was helpless to do more. He certainly couldn’t hope that she took him in hand and took care of the problem in a natural fashion.
“Impressive cock, impressive cock!” Charlotte deigned to add.
“Shhhh! Charlotte!”
She grabbed the wet cloth and began patting his brow. A memory seeped into his thoughts, as if her repeated dabbing on his forehead beat another image back into full view in his mind. Filthy dark stones covered in blood and gore in what should have been a place of worship but had been turned into a political prison during the age of French Enlightenment. The fresh scent of copper mixing with decay and human waste as tortured screams rang through the cavernous corridors like clockwork;the human bells of agony tolling away the hours of torment from within.
His cockstand disappeared before Caillen opened the door, but his heartbeat raced as if he were scaling the walls of Mont Saint Michel at breakneck speed. Damn French bastards.
“You may come in now.”
Her younger sister, Robina, entered the room with a bowl of what he could only guess to be more broth. God save him from someone’s idea of a healthy diet for a man who had nearly been starved to death.
“I thought you’d never let me in. How is the earl today?”
“The same.”
He should tell her he was better, if remembering the nightmare of his time in hell was any gauge of his improvement.
“Do you think he’s going to live?”
