Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones #2)(30)

If suppressing the need to touch her had been difficult before, it now proved impossible. He had to know what those smooth, sensuously curved limbs felt like.

Still holding her foot pressed against his thigh, Robert ran one hand up her calf, caressing his way to the back of her knee, around and down the front. So soft and tempting.

His heart thudded against his ribs. “What reasons might those be?” he asked hoarsely, repeating his slow foray up and down her leg, wishing he dared venture higher.



Goose flesh appeared in the wake of his touch. And he felt a shiver rock her.

Was it spawned by cold or by desire?

“B-because, like most women in our society,” she began, voice quieter, “I’ve been conditioned by men and the media to believe that—on a woman—hairy legs are ugly.”

The faint huskiness that entered her voice made his blood sing. But ere he could inch his hand up farther, eager to reach that shiny black triangle and really make her breath catch, his damnable honor resurfaced.

Was he not the one who had elicited her trust by assuring her he would not look and had no intentions of touching?

Swearing silently, he dropped her foot, collected her wadded-up garments and rose. He would have turned and, without another word, walked straight into the icy water to cool his raging ardor had she not stopped him.

“Wait!”

His pulse skipped, thrumming through his veins as he halted.

Would she call him back? Invite more caresses? Tell him it had been his touch, rather than the cold air or her wet hair that had made her shiver? “Aye?”

“On second thought,” she said, “you better not wash my clothes. The police might need them for DNA evidence.”

He sighed.

It must have been the cold.

Dropping the shirts without asking what police or DNA meant, he strode into the frigid water without removing his braies and hose.

“You forgot the soap,” she called after him.

“You may toss it to me when you are finished with it.” Under his breath, he muttered, “I have a feeling I will be here awhile.”

Thankfully Bethany finished her bath in short order.

Keeping his back turned, Robert pushed aside thoughts of her enticing body and what every splash and gasp that sounded behind him signified. He forced himself, instead, to think of other things. Like whether or not the men who had attacked Bethany and her brother were part of the marauders who had been wreaking havoc upon his lands.

For months now he had traveled from one estate to another, attempting to capture them, always arriving a day or a sennight too late. There had been no deaths thus far. But crops and huts had been burned. Cattle had been stolen or slain.

Who were the bastards responsible? Why did they target him and his people?

Robert and his men had just returned from parleying with his nearest neighbors. None had suffered the slaughtered cattle, burned huts or terrorized serfs that he had. All were on good terms with him and had offered to aid him by sending out patrols to ensure the malefactors did not access his lands by crossing their own.

’Twas not enough, though. He wanted to capture the blackguards and have done with it.

Robert’s anger and the glacial temperature of the water that buffeted his body at last succeeded in dampening his ardor.

Until Bethany spoke behind him.

“Here’s the soap.”

Staring at the opposite bank as though it held the answers to all of life’s mysteries, he reached behind him and felt the block of soap drop into his hand.

Hard like a stone with streaks of varying hues of green crisscrossing it like veins in marble, it too puzzled him.

Vigorous splashing heralded her exit.

“Would you mind if I used your tunic to dry off?” she asked.



He looked without thinking and nearly lost his hold on the soap. All of his heedful concentration had been for naught. His overly chilled body defied the laws of nature and instantly turned hot and hard.

If he had thought Bethany pretty before, she was no less than stunningly beautiful now. Moonlight bathed her pale clean skin, so much more exposed now that the blood and dirt had been washed away, bestowing silvery highlights upon it and accentuating shadows and hollows that begged to be explored. Standing there, shivering, her knees clenched together to preserve warmth, her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts, plumping them up for his ravenous inspection, her hair straggling down over one shoulder…

She looked utterly irresistible.

“The tunic?” she prodded, her teeth chattering audibly.

He blinked. “Of course. You are welcome to it. There is another in my pouch that you may don for warmth.”

“Thank you. Now turn back around and don’t look until I tell you to. I don’t want you to see me naked.”

Doing as she bid him, he bit back a groan.

Mayhap he should send her back to camp alone after all. That might be the only way he could walk out of the water without embarrassing them both.





Chapter Six



Robert took so long to bathe that Beth began to wonder if he weren’t part seal. Seated on a cold stone, she didn’t know how he could stand the icy temperatures. Even covered in his dark tunic—which fell to the knees on him but reached her feet—she still shook like a leaf in high winds.

“You’re going to get hypothermia if you don’t come out of there soon,” she cautioned, squeezing water out of the braies and hose he had tossed onto the bank.