‘You get the bath sheet,’ were her first words, issued as a firm command. ‘Hold it up and look away. I’ll stand up, I can manage that, and I’ll wrap the towel around myself and then you can lift me out.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He had enacted many a bath scene in his life and none of them, he thought wryly, had taken on this format. But he obediently did as he was told, fighting off the urge to look, to savour, to rein in his frantic imagination by actually giving it something real to feed on. It physically hurt, it was so difficult.
‘Okay,’ Tessa said crisply, when the towel was safely around her. ‘You can carry me to my bedroom now.’ There was just no point pursuing the protesting damsel business. He would just ride roughshod over her if he figured he had to, and she was too vulnerable to allow him to do that, to really invade her privacy by seeing her naked, touching her bare skin. Bad enough having him lift her now with nothing but a towel between them.
The only way she knew how to counterbalance her screaming nerves was to pretend to be someone else, someone in control, briskly matter-of-fact about what he was doing. And it had been blissful to get clean, to wash off the scraping of dirt on her legs that had penetrated through her sheer tights when she had fallen.
‘Feel better?’ Curtis asked, sitting her on the edge of the bed and taking a few healthy steps backwards. ‘Refreshed? I’ve brought you up a couple more tablets in case the pain’s beginning to kick back in.’ He nodded to the table by the head of her bed. Now seemed a very good time to retreat downstairs. He had helped her home, done the whole rescuing-of-the-damsel-in-distress lot. He could watch a little telly while he waited for his taxi to return, leave her up here to get changed, maybe lie down and rest her foot.
He remained where he was, hands thrust into his pockets. The towel had ridden up her thighs and there was no denying that she had very nice thighs. Great legs, in fact, pale and smooth like satin, and very slender.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be heading downstairs now,’ he said. ‘Catch up on some award-winning Christmas reruns while I wait for the taxi.’
‘Thanks for everything, Curtis,’ Tessa said. ‘I’d see you to the door but…’ She shrugged and gave him a little smile, which he returned.
‘Take the tablets.’ Nothing left to be said now. He turned, left the room and was about to head downstairs when one more thing occurred to him. In fact, he had meant to ask her while they were in the office, before a series of unexpected events had landed them up here in her house.
He spun round, pushed open the bedroom door and stopped dead in his tracks.
Tessa, on the bed, on all fours, was reaching out for the glass of water and the tablets. The towel, which she had protectively wrapped around her, had slithered to the ground. The moment between them was electric and it seemed to stretch on and on and on.
There was a savage intensity in his blue eyes that made her feel weak because she could read messages there that were firing into her brain and connecting with it in ways she wouldn’t have dreamed possible.
When he took a step towards her, she almost moaned. She knew, in every fibre of her being, that she should cover herself up immediately, that she should want to.
So why wasn’t she yelling at him to leave the room?
Curtis quietly closed the door behind him and that click was like a decision made.
Tessa fell back against the bed, watching, her eyes dark with hunger as he moved towards her.
All these weeks of looking at him from under her lashes, absorbing every little thing about him, and fighting it off because she recognised the dangers, were like nothing now.#p#分页标题#e#
She just wanted him to touch her…
CHAPTER SEVEN
TESSA lay down on the bed, drinking Curtis in with her eyes as he walked slowly towards her, finally to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘I know,’ she said, sitting up so that their faces were only inches apart. ‘This is a bad idea. It’s madness.’
By way of response, he smoothed his hand along her thigh, curving his fingers over the dewy silk of her buttocks.
‘Your foot…’ He had wondered whether he would actually be able to speak, whether his vocal cords might not have dried up altogether, but his voice was low and only shook a little.
‘Is still sprained.’ Tessa tried twisting it and winced. ‘It only hurts when I try to move it.’ It seemed a little silly to be discussing her foot when she was naked next to him.
Even though the room was dark, with only the side light switched on, she could still make out the fine lines around his eyes, laughter lines, giving his face character.