Tied With a Bow

you courting Julia, Mr. Hartfell?
    The question bobbed around his brain, slippery and hard to handle as the soap in his bath.
    He wasn’t ready to grapple with the answer yet, so he pictured Aimée instead. Her bright face vivid with laughter or anger. The subtle arch of her spine, made for his hand. The sweet shape of her breasts under the wet pelisse. Blue eyes a man could drown in.
    Under the water, his body stirred. She stirred him. Aimée.
    Sinking lower, he reached his uninjured hand into the water.
    A tap on the door roused him.
    Irritated, he opened his eyes. “Come in.”
    She was there, wavering on the threshold, stepping out of his dreams, a mirage fashioned of lust and steam, summoned by the force of his longing.
    Aimée, small-breasted and slender, her eyes dark and startled in her pink face.
    He narrowed his gaze.
    Instead of vanishing, she stepped into his room and closed the door.
     
     
    Aimée moistened her lips. He was so very large. And naked. A big, golden, naked male, lapped in water and firelight.
    She didn’t know where to look, at his broad, bare, muscled chest or his narrowed, heavy-lidded eyes.
    Her heart thumped.
    “Forgive me if I don’t get up,” he drawled.
    Wild heat stormed her cheeks and flooded her insides. Resolutely, she focused her gaze on the top of his head. His damp hair had the sheen and color of honeycomb, carelessly blended strands of amber and gold.
    “I beg your pardon. I thought . . . While the other guests are downstairs . . .” She sounded like a stammering imbecile. She drew a deep breath and tried again. “I needed to see you.”
    “Well.” A corner of his mouth turned up. “You can certainly see me now.”
    She bit her lip on an inappropriate spurt of laughter. “Indeed. I did not realize you would be . . .” She waved her hand, as if a single gesture could encompass all those muscles, that bare expanse of flesh. There was gold hair on his chest, too, she noted, fascinated. Fine, crisp hair glinting in the firelight. His large, square knees rose like mountains from the surface of the water.
    “Bathing,” she finished weakly.
    “You should not be here,” he said softly.
    Her gaze collided with his. The air crackled with the warmth of the fire and the tension building between them. Flames licked along her veins and the insides of her thighs.
    She took a deep gulp of warm, soap-scented air. “You would never hurt me.”
    She spoke with absolute conviction borne in her heart, in her soul, in a place deeper than memory. This man was not Howard. He was nothing like Howard.
    Lucien shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, sweet. If you’re caught in my room, we’ll both be compromised.”
    Even to be seen alone with him was risky. That’s why she had sought him out here. But to be discovered alone with him naked in his bedchamber would be disaster. She would be hopelessly ruined.
    For the first time, it occurred to her that Lucien would be . . . Not ruined, precisely. Society forgave a man’s transgressions more readily than a woman’s. But even if Lucien did not feel honor bound to offer for Aimée, the scandal would destroy his chances with Julia.
    The thought of her cousin sent a trickle of cold down Aimée’s spine. She glanced around the empty room. “Where is your servant?”
    His brows rose. “He went to fetch a bandage. From the housekeeper, I imagine.”
    They did not have much time, then.
    She clasped her hands together. “You said you knew a woman in London who could help me find a position.”
    “Yes.” Lucien gripped the sides of the tub. “Turn around.”
    Distracted, she watched his muscles flex and bunch under his smooth, wet skin. “Why?”
    Foolish question.
    He pulled himself up, bath water streaming down the hard planes and ridges of his chest, his abdomen, his . . .
    Aimée whisked herself around, her face on fire, heat pooling low in her belly. Water sloshed and dripped.
    “Tell me what happened,” he said. “To make you change your mind. Did Basing bother you again?”
    “No, I . . . He . . .” She could hear him moving behind her with a rustle like bedclothes.
    Like clothes, she informed her imagination sternly. Obviously, he must dress.
    She had not known a man would look so, not like a statue at all, but large, dark, eager. She might never have known. She felt like a starving beggar standing at the kitchen door, glimpsing the meal inside. She was hungry for more than scraps. She would have liked to feast her eyes