Captivated

hair?'

'It gets tangled.'

Robert recognized a lie when he heard one.

Another secret to unravel, another obstacle to overcome.

'I'll brush it for you tomorrow. Spread your legs wider.'

Clumsily she acceded; her body dipped lower to the mattress, forcing their fingers further up inside her.

The muscles inside her vagina rippled. 'Robert.'

'What?'

'Did you really peep through the window?'

'You didn't open the door when I knocked.'

She clenched her body, forcibly trapping their fingers inside her. 'I was reading.'

He wondered what sex act she had been reading about to put the sublime expression on her face that he had witnessed when looking through the window. 'So I saw.'

'What did you think I was reading?'

'Devotional literature.'

He waited for her next question, could feel it trembling on the air.

When it didn't come, he answered her anyway. 'I did not take you because I thought you were wanton, Abigail. I took you because I needed you. And you were right. What we shared tonight is not dirty.'

The huskiness in her voice deepened. 'Robert.'

'What?'

'Lean forward.'

'Why?'

'Because I want to kiss you.'

Heart lurching inside his chesthe who killed without blinking an eyehe leaned forward, made her lean forward, too, for the pleasure of feeling her body adjust around their fingers.

Her lips missed his at first. She raised a cool hand and found his jaw, aligned her lips accordingly.

It was a virgin kiss.

A first kiss.

He let her learn his lips while inside her he could feel the myriad little convulsions the two of their fingers were 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.