Honor Bound(4)

She sucked in a sharp breath as though he had pricked her belly button with the tip of the blade. "That's more like it," he said, gauging her fear. "Now, sit down." He hitched his chin toward the commode. Aislinn, keeping her eyes trained on the knife, backed up until she bumped into the bathroom fixture and then collapsed onto its lid.

Greywolf laid the knife on the edge of the bathtub, well out of her reach. He pulled off his boots and socks, then began tugging the tail of his tattered shirt from the waistband of his jeans. Aislinn, sitting as motionless as a statue, said nothing as he peeled it off his shoulders and shrugged out of it.

The center of his chest was smattered with dark hair. The brown skin was stretched tightly over curved muscles that looked incredibly hard. His nipples were small and dark. The skin of his belly was stretched as taut as a trampoline, and the shallow part of it around his navel was dusted with black hair. The crinkly fan narrowed into a sleek stripe that disappeared into his jeans.

He began unbuckling the silver belt at his waist. "What are you doing?" Aislinn asked in alarm.

"I'm going to take a shower." He undid the belt, letting it hang open as he bent toward the taps in the bathtub. He turned them until water was gushing from the faucet full blast. Even over that roaring sound, Aislinn heard the rasp of his jeans' zipper as he lowered it.

"Where I can see you?" she cried.

"Where I can see you." He calmly pushed the jeans down past his hips and buttocks and stepped out of them.

Aislinn's eyes closed. She was overcome by a wave of vertigo and gripped the lid of the commode beneath her to keep from swaying. Never in her life had she been so outraged, so insulted, so assaulted.

Because to look at his nakedness was to be assaulted by masculinity incarnate. He was perfectly proportioned. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep. His limbs were long and leanly muscled, testimonies to agility and strength. Where his skin was smooth, it looked like polished bronze, yet alive and supple. Where it was hair-dusted, it looked warm and touch-inviting.

He raised the lever of the shower and stepped beneath its powerful spray. He didn't draw the curtain. Keeping her head averted, Aislinn drew in several restorative breaths.

"What's wrong, Miss Andrews? Haven't you ever seen a naked man before? Or is it seeing a naked Indian that has you so visibly upset?"

She whipped her head around, stung by his mocking tone. She wouldn't have him thinking she was either a prudish old maid or a racial bigot. But her verbal barb died unspoken on her tongue. She was unable to utter a sound, paralyzed by the sight of his lathered hands as they slid over his sleek nakedness. The water must have been hot, for the mirrors were fogging up and the atmosphere was as steamy as an Erskine Caldwell novel. The mist settled on her own skin. She could barely draw the heavy, sultry air into her lungs.

"As you can see," he taunted as his soapy hands slid to the lower part of his body, "we're equipped just like any other man."

Well, not quite, Aislinn thought with a secret part of her mind, as her eyes took one forbidden glance down his torso to where that beautiful body hair provided a dense, lush base for his impressive manhood.

"You're crude," she said scathingly, "as well as being criminal."

He smiled cynically and whipped off the makeshift headband, tossing it out of the tub and down on top of his other clothes. He ducked his head under the shower's spray just long enough to moisten it, then picked up a bottle of shampoo. He sniffed the top of it before pouring a dollop of the creamy stuff into his hand, slapping it to the top of his head and lathering it into a white foam that soon coated the ebony strands of his hair. He scrubbed mercilessly.

"This smells better than prison shampoo," he remarked as he ran his fingers through the luxuriant lather.

Aislinn said nothing because a plan was formulating in her mind. If he had put his head under the shower nozzle to wet his hair, he'd have to put it under there longer to rinse all the shampoo off, wouldn't he? She didn't have long to think her plan through. Already he was squeezing the suds out of his hair and slinging them off his fingers into the water that swirled around his feet.

There was a telephone on the nightstand beside her bed. If she could dash through the bathroom door and manage to dial the emergency number before—

He plunged his head beneath the shower's nozzle. There was no more time to ruminate.

Aislinn hurled herself toward the door, pulled it open, almost wrenching her arm from its socket in the process, and flew into the bedroom. She reached the nightstand in less than a second, grabbed up the telephone receiver and began frantically punching out the sequence of numbers she had memorized.

She pressed the receiver against her ear and waited for the ring. Nothing happened. Damn!

In her haste, had she punched a wrong number?

She clicked the disconnect button and tried again, her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold the receiver. Risking one frenzied glance over her shoulder, she was dismayed to see Lucas Greywolf framed in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom, his shoulder propped against it in a stance of lazy indifference.

A towel was draped around his neck. Other than that, he was naked. Water dripped from his wet hair and funneled down his coppery body. Beads of it clung to places she wished she didn't notice. He held the wicked knife in his right hand, idly tapping the flat side of the blade against his bare thigh.