Chapter 2 #2
Lord, but she was lovely. The structure of her visage delicate enough to be elfin, pale and sharp, even in the golden firelight.
Her eyes, he was pleasantly surprised to find, were as grey as a winter sky.
On many women, such dramatically precise features appeared to be cold and fathomless.
But not so in this case. She seemed to glow with this sort of…
radiant luminescence that was initiated behind her eyes and spilled over the rest of her like a waterfall.
What was the genesis of such a phenomenon? he wondered. What would he call it?
Life, he realized. An abundance of it.
As someone who hadn’t been alive in—well he couldn’t remember how many years, precisely—he was drawn to the way it veritably burst from her. Like such a diminutive frame could barely contain it all.
Damned if he didn’t find that alluring as hell.
After bending to unlace and remove her boots, she turned her back to him, facing the fire. She shucked her woolen cloak and hung it on a wall peg close to the heat to dry.
Then, she went to work on her blouse.
Bloody hell and holy damnation. This desirable creature was about to strip bare and bathe. Here. In the room that had been his prison for so damnably long.
Her movements were harried and jerky, as if made clumsy by exhaustion and the cold.
John had been bred a gentleman in his day.
Over-educated and imbued with codes and creeds and ratified rules of behavior.
That breeding tore at him now. He should turn away.
He should leave her to wash and dress. This interloper upon his dark, abysmal existence—if one could even call it thus. This tiny creature of light and life.
He might have done the noble thing…
If he hadn’t hesitated long enough to watch her peel her blouse down her arms, uncovering shoulders smooth as corn silk and white as rich cream.
Lord, but he was transfixed. Even though he technically levitated above the ground, his feet were as good as pegged to the floor.
He watched her unlace her own corset that knotted in the front and wondered when that had changed over the years.
Her chin touched one shoulder to glance behind her, as if sensing the intensity of his regard.
She looked straight through him, which was a blessing, because if he’d been visible, she’d immediately notice that he sported a cockstand large and vulgar enough to offend even a courtesan.
His conscience prickled. He shouldn’t watch her…but in this bleak and lonely hell so far from home, she was an oasis of beauty. An English rose among Scottish thistle.
The firelight silhouetted the fullness of her slightly parted lips, the pert upturn of her nose, and the astounding length of her lashes in stark relief.
He was helpless to do anything but appreciate the vision.
Sighing and shaking her head slightly as if to ward off her own silliness, she fiddled with the buckle of a wide belt and pushed her skirt from her hips, drawing down a thin white cotton undergarment at the same time.
Had he knees, they would have buckled. Had he a fist, he would have bitten into it to stave off the hollow groan of longing fighting its way up his chest.
As she assumed she was alone, she was neither self-conscious nor was she self-aware.
This was no slow, practiced uncovering of a mistress, meant to tease and titillate.
And yet, the sight of her heart-shaped bare ass as she bent to step out of her clothing was enough to unravel whatever matter remained of him.
If she’d been facing the light and not away from it, he would have been granted a peek at the intimate cove between her thighs.
The gods were not so kind.
She straightened, peeling a simple white chemise from her body with a shivering stretch, and turned toward the bath in the center of the room.
Toward him.
A watering mouth was the first thing that alerted him to the fact that he would slowly, with infinite, infuriating increments, regain a semblance of corporality.
He would have welcomed the sensation, if he wasn’t so utterly distracted by the sight of her in all her nude glory.
Christ. She was a masterpiece, someone crafted by a loving artisan from some other material than the minerals and mud that forged the rest of man. Every other woman now seemed a clumsy clay attempt at the marble-smooth perfection of her.
Though her form was diminutive, her shoulders were not; they were straight and proud, held so by an erect spine and practiced posture. Said posture displayed her tear-shaped breasts to perfect effect, their nipples, peaked and puckered with cold, the same peach hue as her cupid’s bow mouth.
God but his hands ached to touch her. To explore every creamy inch of her. To find the places that made her gasp and tremble.
To discover where else she might be peach and perfect.
As if she was loath to leave the warmth of the fire, she took up the soap and her underthings, and tiptoed to the edge of the bath.
The crude basin only came up to about past her knees, so she barely had to lift her leg to test the water within. She dipped a toe, then engulfed the delightfully feminine arch of her foot before wading in to her shapely calf.
John had never been jealous of an inanimate object in his life, but as she hissed and sputtered whilst lowering her chilled body into the hot water, he would have changed places with the liquid in an instant.
It’s not as if he was exactly solid.
Though, he was getting hard…
He crouched when she did, his eyes unable to leave her as she drew her legs into her chest and settled into the heat with a sibilant sigh of surrender.
He’d give what was left of his soul to coax a sound like that from her. Especially now that he knew what she looked like with naked pleasure parting her lips, and the dew of steam curling the tendrils of her hair that she had yet to take down from its braided knot.
Abandoning her soap and undergarments to the side, she did little but enjoy the heat of the water for a moment, cupping it in her hand and pouring it over what parts of her chest, breasts, and shoulders, she couldn’t completely submerge.
God, he remembered what that felt like, sinking into a hot bath on a chilly night.
He’d give anything just to feel warmth.
John made himself dizzy trying to follow every bead of water that caught the firelight along the tantalizing peaks and valleys of her body.
Though she was a woman in a crude basin on a packed floor on the edge of the civilized world, she might as well have been a winter goddess bathing in a dark pool.
Would that he could attend her. That he could follow the little bejeweled droplets with his tongue and find the intriguing places they would land.
Would that he could make her wet.
She eventually gathered up her undergarments, which were still rather clean all things considered, and scrubbed at them with the soap.
He remembered that she’d mentioned she had no trunk with her, and would likely need to wear them again tomorrow until her things could be fetched.
That finished, she wrung them out and set them aside before taking up the soap once more.
John had been no saint as a young man. He’d frolicked and fornicated in the presence of his young and noble mates, sharing courtesans and the like. He’d enjoyed watching women. What they did to each other, to other men.
To themselves.
But he could truly never remember gleaning as much intimate enjoyment as he did watching her start at her foot, and lather a bit of coarse soap up her leg to her thigh and in between them before working her way back down the other side.
Had he not been dead, he might have expired from the length of time he held his breath.
Restless, aroused, John drifted in circles around the tub as she washed, humming an unfamiliar tune softly as the firelight danced across her skin.
He found himself behind her as she ran a lathered hand over her shoulders and did her best to reach her back. She was about to get suds on a dark velvet curl that had escaped her coiffure and reflexively, John’s hand made to brush it aside.
Knowing he couldn’t. Understanding that his hand would pass through her before it actually did.
Even so, his body was helpless but to reach for her.
Which was why her muffled shriek startled them both.