Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [42]
Dione’s mouth was dry, her tongue incapable of moving. Blake’s intent look was as warm as a physical touch, and her nipples shrank into tiny points, thrusting out at him. He sucked in an audible breath, then slowly let his eyes dip lower, down the curve of her ribcage, the satiny smoothness of her stomach; his gaze probed the taut little indentation of her navel and finally settled on the juncture of her thighs.
An unfamiliar curling sensation low in her stomach frightened her, and she was finally able to move. She whirled away from him with a low cry, belatedly raising her arms to cover herself. Standing rigidly with her back to him, she said in a voice filled with mortification, “Oh, no! Please, get out!”
There was no obedient whir of an electric motor as he sent the wheelchair into motion, and she knew that he was still sitting there.
“I’ve never seen anyone blush all over before,” he said, his voice deep and filled with an almost tangible male amusement. “Even the backs of your knees are pink.”
“Get out” she cried in a strangled voice.
“Why are you so embarrassed?” he murmured. “You’re beautiful. A body like that just begs for a man to stare at it.”
“Would you please just leave?” she begged. “I can’t stand here like this all day!”
“Don’t hurry on my account,” he replied with maddening satisfaction. “I like the back view as well as I did the front. It’s a work of art, the way those long legs of yours sweep up into that perfect bottom. Is your skin as satiny as it looks?”
Embarrassment finally turned to anger and she stomped her foot, although it was largely a wasted effort, as the thick carpet muffled any sound her bare foot might have made. “Blake Remington, I’ll get back at you for this!” she threatened, her voice trembling with anger.
He laughed, the deep tone vibrating in the quiet morning air. “Don’t be such a sexist,” he taunted. “You’ve seen me in only a pair of undershorts, so why be shy about my seeing you wearing only panties? You don’t have anything to be ashamed of, but you have to know that already.”
He evidently wasn’t going to leave; he was probably enjoying himself, the wretch! She sidled around until she could reach her nightgown, where she had thrown it across the bed. She was careful to keep her back to him, and she was so fiercely preoccupied with reaching that nightgown that she didn’t hear the soft whir of the wheelchair as it came up behind her. Just as she touched the nightgown a much larger hand appeared from behind and anchored the garment to the bed.
“You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” he jibed, returning the teasing compliment she’d given him the day he’d become enraged when he had discovered that she lifted weights.
“Then I must be the world’s most beautiful woman right now,” she fumed, then added, “because I’m getting madder by the minute.”
“Don’t waste your energy,” he crooned, and she jumped as his hard hand suddenly swatted her on the bottom, then lingered to mold the round, firm cheek with his long fingers. He finished with an intimate pat, then removed his hand from the nightgown.
“I’ll be waiting for you at breakfast,” he said smoothly, and she heard him chuckling as he left the room.
She wadded up the nightgown and threw it at the closed door. Her face felt as if it were on fire, and she pressed her cold hands to her cheeks. Furiously she considered ways of paying him back, but she had to stop short of physical harm, and that left out all the most delicious schemes she could imagine. It would probably be impossible to embarrass him in return; since he was in so much better condition now, she doubted if it would bother him if she saw him stark naked. In fact, from the way he’d acted that morning, he’d probably enjoy it and proudly let her look all she wanted!
She was seething, until the thought came to her that her scheme to attract him couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. He hadn’t been thinking about sex, really; he’d been indulging a streak of pure devilry, but the end result was that he’d become aware of her as a woman. There was the added