Captivated

causing. And then, suddenly, the wet heat that inundated his fingers covered his lips.

Abigail learned quickly. She rimmed the seam of his mouth with her tongue. Immediately he opened for her, allowed her to enter him as he entered her.

But he wanted more.

More of the storm.

More of Abigail.

He sucked her tongue more deeply inside him, then he suckled it as he had her clitoris and her nipple, suckled until the tiny ripples around their fingers became one large contraction, and with a little gasp she came into his mouth.

Gently he released her tongue and her hand. And found the remaining hairpins in her hair. They fell to the plank floor like a rain of firing pins. Carefully searching for more, but finding none, he plunged both hands into her hair and worked it loose until it hung wild and free down her back, a curtain of living silk.

He felt his penis grow another inch.

'Lie down.'

'Why?'

'So I can crawl over your body.'

'Not into it?'

'Later.' Robert's lips twitchedhis prim and proper lady was game to the end. 'First we need to get you cleaned up.'

'I am quite capable of washing myself, Robert.'

'That's not the bargain, Abigail. You agreed toeverything.'

He ended the conflict by the simple expediency of scooping her up and lying her down. And ruefully wished that skirmishes were as easily won on the battlefield.

'If you wash me, I will wash you.' Abigail's dignified threat was meant as a warning.

Robert grinned. In the next second it felt as if the wind had been knocked out of his lungs.

He had not been washed since he was a childa lifetime ago, before the killing had started and overnight he had grown into a man. 'I'll hold you to that, Abigail.'

The bucket was underneath the sinkhe primed the pump. Icy water splashed into the worn metal. He pumped twice more before grabbing the washcloth on the rack beside the sink.

Setting the bucket onto the floor by the bed, he dipped the washcloth into the water and wrung it dry before easing down onto the edge of the bed. He warmed the cloth inside his hands. 'Doesn't your fantasy man ever do this for you, Abigail?'

'There is no need to wash after a fantasy man,' she replied tartly.

Robert found himself smiling in the darkness.

He had smiled and laughed more with Abigail in the last few hours than he had in the last twenty-two years.

The two should not go togetherlaughter and passion. Then again, a man like him and a lady like her should not fit together, either.

But they did.

He was not going to let a belated sense of modesty interfere with their union.

She held perfectly still for his ministrations, as if she derived as much enjoyment from being touched by him as he did in touching her. He memorized her face through the rough, damp cloth, discovered a high, smooth forehead, a slender nose, a rounded jawand regretted only that he had not thought to light the candle so that he could see her as well as feel her.

She had brown eyes, he suddenly remembered. They had widened in outrage when he had opened the trunk and revealed her erotica. Then they had flamed with amber when she had glimpsed his unchecked passion.

Abigail arched her neck. She had a fragile neck, long and slender like those of the Egyptian busts he had seen when stationed in Egypt. Her right breast filled the palm of his handher nipple was hard. Slowly, so slowly, he eased the cloth over her stomach, a soft little mound that had rippled beneath his hand when he had suckled her, and then there was slick wetness that owed nothing to water.

With single-minded intensity he explored the changes he had wrought in her body. With heart-stopping trust, she allowed him.

Her flesh was swollen where he had entered her, the opening stretched, so that now he could easily penetrate her with one finger, two, not as easily with three, hampered by the cloth. Gently he swirled away the evidence of their passion.

Working down to her thighs, he cleansed away the stickiness there, unerringly returned to the mystery between her legs.

He washed Abigail slowly, thoroughly, lost in her heat and softness, here the skin crinkly with hair, there plump and smooth. Reaching further back, he found the top of the soft crevice and swirled the washcloth round and round, down and down, in tight little circular motions.

The washcloth was plucked out of his hand.

Robert's muscles coiled. 'I saideverything, Abigail.'

'You saidmy fantasies, Robert.' The mattress dipped, then the bed was empty. 'Lie down.'

Robert found himself smilingagain. She knew him for what he was, yet she dared give him orders as if he was a normal man who had never experienced the horrors of war. He lay down.

Abigail rinsed and rinsed the cloth out.

He wondered what thoughts were going through her head. If she thought about what he had done to her. If she thought about what she was going to do to him. Or if she thought about what she had been reading before he had barged into the cottage.

Erotic acts she wanted to engage in but didn't dare.

Sexual acts her fantasy lover dared.

Sexual acts perhaps Robert was unaware of, steeped in war and death instead of erotica.

Sexual acts he would dare… before the storm was over.

Suddenly the cloth was on his face, cold, with the heat of her fingers penetrating underneath. Robert could feel the anger and despair of his past draining out of him, as if underneath his skin there still existed the innocent youth he had once been.

'Kiss me.' His voice grated in the dark.

'Only if you tell me what you do to your fantasy woman.'

He stared up at the dark silhouette hovering over him. And closed his eyes to the truth.

Abigailwas his fantasy woman.

'I kiss her.'

'Like this, you mean?' Her lips teased him, more confident now, more taunting. She gently rubbed them against his. Until he felt like his lips would burst into flame. Then she tasted them, delicately, her tongue swirling into the corners of his lips, along the seam, before her mouth opened and covered his, gradually learning the art, sucking slightly to adhere their flesh, her tongue touching his, then mapping out his mouth, the roof of his mouth he exhaled sharply at the stab of desire that shot through his groinunderneath his tongue. Her breath fanned his cheek in little warm puffs while she smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

Robert had never realized how deeply a woman's tongue could penetrate a man's defenses. He fisted his hand in the warm curtain of her hair and took control of the kiss.

Only to find that when he dueled her tongue back into her mouth, she sucked on his like he had earlier sucked on hers until she wrung from him a groan.

'What else, Robert?' Her breath was a whisper of heat on his lips. 'What else do you fantasize about?'

Bloodied faces flashed before his eyes. Men he had killed. Men he had sent out on missions to be killed. Innocent women and children caught in the crossfire of war.

And with the images came the need that had kept him alive.

But Abigail wanted fantasies, not a battle-scarred soldier's needs.

Before he could think of a lie, the cold, damp cloth trailed down his neck, his chest.

He groaned, knowing what was in store for him. And found that it was a fantasy of his. A fantasy that he had