Chapter 13

Raising her chin she stared at the mantelshelf. The ormolu clock said midnight. Midnight? Time hadn't just gone, it had been wasted. Squandered, while he splashed about in a bath. A bath she daren't move away from in case he thought he somehow challenged her.

"You think you can get my back?"

"No, I don't. I think we agreed that I will not touch you."

"Then why don't I just lie here? Water's nice and warm. I could stay all night."

Damn him. He would too. Till icicles formed.

Touching him, washing his back, was an intimacy. But the aim of this was to father the heir. So far, although James Flint Blackmoore had been in this bedroom a total of two hours, she was no closer to being pregnant than a day, a week, or a month ago.

Lady Margaret might be in England, but Thomas lay in the cellar.

Anyway, what was she afraid of? Given all he'd done to her? Why not think of that?

"Fine." Cinching her lips, she reached out her hand. "The sponge, if it's not too much of a trouble?"

It wouldn't do, after all, to put her hand in that tub and grasp something other than that. That would give him ideas. Although the sight of him, slippery with suds, the corn-husk hair clinging to the sides of his face, made it hard not to have some ideas of her own. How easy it would be, with his face as close as this, when their fingertips brushed, to reach into that tub. To touch him. To have all this as it once was.

"Just my shoulders, will you?"

How easy indeed? There were some things the clock couldn't be turned back on. Not with an arrogant son of a swine like him.

She took the sponge.

He sat back, flinching as his back brushed the curve of the tub. "The rest is fine."

"You can't think how my heart sings to hear it."

And if he thought she was going to question the flinch, he could think again. There was something too intimate about this. He would never, ever, have let her drip water on him like this on the Calypso. There he'd been master of everything. Including her.

It was why, although the sponge may have separated her fingers from his skin, there was no way she'd let her detachment crumble.

"So." She dusted the nape of his neck. "What happened to your arm?"

"My arm?"

"Yes." She applied the sponge to his shoulder. "That mark. Were you shot?"

He turned his head, his lazy gaze colliding with hers. "Looking, are you?"

She dipped the sponge back in the water. "Not especially. But it would be hard not to see when you're sitting beneath my nose."

"It's the same as you said to me." His gaze iced. "None of your damn business."

The mercurial change now that was Flint all over. He also had this way, this disgusting, flirtatious way--not a moth to a flame exactly, when he was the flame but this way of flaunting himself to bring women to their melted knees.

He might as well see her knees were steel-capped, and this feeble attempt at even-feebler prevarication was over.

He'd said terms, plural. It was time to remind him of what was at stake, instead of spending all night dealing with just one.

At this rate she'd never have the Beaumont heir. Now, either that was his plan, or maybe he just wanted to break her down, play with her a little, so by the time she got to the task in hand, she was melted honey?

She favored the break her down option.

"So? Is this one of your terms?"

"Is what one of my terms?"

"Me servicing you."

"I'd hate to think it if you were. Your touch isn't exactly soft." Without warning, he rose, water cascading from his sculpted body. "But I am ready for my next term."

She almost dropped the sponge. The bastard.

"Term? And what pray do allow me to contain myself is that going to be? After all, time is going on. I don't like to say, but we don't have all night."

"Then pass me that towel, Fury. So my butt-nakedness doesn't offend you."

"It " Say doesn't and he'd take it all the wrong way, parading naked from now till doomsday. She reached for the towel.

"Something to eat, I think." He stepped out of the tub.

She jerked to her feet. "What?"

"Anything will do." He wrapped the towel around himself and padded across the floor. "I'm not fussy. Just whatever you have in your kitchen."

That would be a scrap of bread and some moldy cheese. There were some tomatoes on the plant in the garden. Some being the operative word. At the last count it was three. If she gave him one that would be two. Tomorrow's breakfast for her and Susan.

"I'll get dressed while you fix it."

Precisely. Then what? All he had to do was slip down the stairs while she was doing that. She considered waking Susan, then she considered against it. Susan may have rescued her from Fishside Wharf, but there were aspects of her life she discussed with no one. Flint Blackmoore was one, because the damned bastard hadn't just left her on Fishside Wharf. Oh no. If he had, she wouldn't be in this mess, because she would never have married Thomas.

Quite apposite, though, that having landed her in it, he now got her out of it.

"There's some fruit there in the bowl. It would save me waking the kitchen staff at this hour."

Flint sank his teeth into an apple. The crisp, clean bite cut the air.

"You got anything to wash it down with?" His rudeness was preferable to him discovering she'd no kitchen staff at least it meant he'd not poked his nose in there. "Some rum?"

"Why would I keep rum? What do you think I am? Next you'll be expecting me to call you me hearty'."

He grinned. "It's preferable to some of the things you have called me."