Page 44 of Hot Zone

She was stunned when he didn’t go with her. But a moment later she heard the faint splash of water and glimpsed his big body, shrouded in shadows, sliding into the pool.

“Do you need me to scrub your back?” she called out quietly.

“No. You warm yourself. Relax.”

Relax?He was kidding, right? She was strung so tight she could hardly sit still.

His bath was quick. Either he didn’t need to soak his muscles, or he was more impatient to bed her than he’d let on. He towel-dried his shoulder-length hair into a silky, damp mane. Then he wrapped the towel around his hips and strolled over to the fire. He didn’t seem the least bit affected by the chill descending with the night.

The firelight turned his skin to liquid bronze, flowing over muscles a sculptor could not have fashioned more perfectly. Not an ounce of fat marred the rippling contours of his abs or the sculpted definition of his thigh muscles. That towel, hanging low on his hips, was positively tantalizing.

“I knew you were a hunk,” she breathed as he drew near, “but wow. No wonder Artemesia hoarded you all to herself.”

“She never controlled me. I have always chosen when and with whom I lie.”

Tessa forced her greedy gaze upward to meet his eyes. “And do you choose to lie with me?”

“No, I do not.” Her jaw went slack with shock, but he continued quickly. “I do not choose merely to lie with you, Tessa of Marconi. I choose to make you my lover.”

“The two are different?” she managed to mumble.

“Entirely. In the first place, I have not taken a lover since I became stranded here. I have bedded women but that is all. Even back in my home, I’ve never chosen a consort.”

A consort?He was some sort of noble among his own people, then? No surprise. He had natural-born leader stamped all over him.

“I’m honored,” she murmured formally. “Should I be worried about any assumed commitments or responsibilities that come with this status as your lover-consort?”

He laughed quietly. “Being my consort is not as miserable as all that. And there is the considerable side benefit of us being permitted to have sex with one another whenever and wherever we want. Did I mention I want you so badly right now that I can hardly stand?”

She blinked rapidly, startled, then rallied enough to quip, “Frankly, you strike me as the kind of man who just throws a woman over his shoulder and has his way with her, not the sort who stands around talking about it.”

His finely shaped black eyebrows arched in amusement. “Are you impugning my manhood, madam?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t have much to judge it by, yet.”

“Have my kisses left you cold, then? I seem to recall them differently.”

She said lightly, “My recollection of our last one is rather vague and distant. Perhaps you should refresh my memory.”

He grinned broadly. “Forward female. Most men in my land would beat that out of you. But I prefer to tame my women by other means.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m beginning to think you’re all talk and no action.”

He laughed then, his rich baritone rolling up into the mountains around them, as much a part of the night as the stars overhead. No wonder the locals thought this man was a sorcerer or even a rumored god in their midst. He was larger than life. A force of nature.

All of a sudden, he was standing directly in front of her, though she hadn’t seen him move. “I believe, madam, that you have failed to return the towel you borrowed from me.”

Slowly, she reached for the end, where it was tucked in over her left breast. He folded his arms and watched her uncover herself, his eyes snapping now with unmistakable lust. She tugged the cloth free and unwrapped it slowly from around her.

And then it fell away. The firelight leaped, shining upon her bare skin, lending its faint golden hue to her flesh. How long she stood there, naked before him as he drank in the sight of her, she didn’t know. Long enough for her initial shyness to give way to intense awareness of the eroticism of the moment.

If she’d expected Rustam to step forward, sweep her into his arms and kiss her into a sexual frenzy, she was surprised when he did none of those things. Instead, he reached out with both palms, holding them several inches away from her skin. He passed them all over her body, never touching her, just moving his hands alongside her flesh.

If she’d been a native of this time period, she would have sworn he was weaving some sort of magic spell upon her. As it was, she gradually became aware of a shift in the natural energy field around her.

And then she noticed something else. Her entire body felt intensely alive, each and every cell registering and reporting sensations to her brain. How was it that every square inch of her was completely energized and awake like this? It was an extraordinary feeling.

Just when she feared her skin might not be able to contain all of the tingling life energy flowing through her for another second, Rustam murmured, “There. Now you are ready to make love with me.”

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