The Lost - J. D. Robb [79]
He raised his hands to her back and Isabelle stared out the window at the water, today looking as benign as a baby’s bathtub.
Sebastian Dushayne smoothed the cream, warmed by his hands, from the back of her neck all the way down her spine, then began to rub it in with the most sensual of pressure, not too soft and not hard enough to hurt, but just firmly enough to make her feel wonderful. He might not be interested in seducing her, but that did not mean she was oblivious to it.
Dushayne ran his hands very slowly down the outsides of her arms and then, even more slowly, up the insides of her arms so that his fingertips brushed the edge of her breasts.
She straightened instinctively but said nothing, wondering if she was overreacting, deciding she was when he stepped back a moment for more salve.
Dushayne used both hands to massage the cream into her lower back, the feeling so relaxing that Isabelle dropped her head, her long hair falling around her face, loosened crystals of sand spilling onto the sheet.
Moving his hands over her hips, he cupped her buttocks and she wondered whether the magic was in the salve or in his hands.
“That is quite enough.” Isabelle used as firm a voice as she could command, the kind she used to the children who were using markers to make tattoos on one another.
Dushayne ended the treatment abruptly. The next thing she felt was his breath near her ear. “No,” he whispered. “Do not lie. It is not nearly enough and we both know it.”
Isabelle wasn’t lying. It wasn’t nearly enough pleasure, but it was quite enough temptation. She turned around to tell him that and saw the door closing.
How could she even be thinking about something so physical when she still ached, when her friend was dead, when Sebastian Dushayne himself was such an unknown?
For now, all she wanted was sleep. The scent of the ointment was part of its power, she was sure, so soothing.
She pulled the sheet up to her neck and prayed for strength to resist and tried to recall all the questions still unanswered.
Sebastian closed the door quietly.
“Sit here,” he told the servant, indicating the chair near the door. “Come to me for help if she is upset or has nightmares.” The servant nodded and Sebastian headed for the beach. He needed a woman or a swim in cold water, and right now there was only one woman he wanted.
Isabelle Reynaud was a sweet confection. Tiny, not so much short as fine boned and perfectly proportioned, what a Regency man would have called a “Pocket Venus.” Her hair was so dark and so long that he wondered how her neck could bear the weight of it. He could hardly wait to feel that hair once it had been washed, to taste her, to make himself part of her.
But the woman would need to grieve awhile. He understood that, even if death no longer moved him.
Anticipation would make her surrender all the more satisfying. He could spend weeks tutoring her in the finer points of erotic pleasure.
What a lovely surprise Joubay had brought for him. Sebastian decided she was meant as a consolation if Joubay’s idea for ending the curse did not work.
Damn, damn, damn. The old man was free now. Even worse, without him in the world searching for the solution, there was no hope of ending it. A dozen women were not consolation enough.
Shedding his clothes, Sebastian walked into the water, dove into a small wave and swam out to the deeper, cooler part of the harbor.
Three
Isabelle closed her eyes and prayed, for Father Joubay, the ship’s owner, herself and Sebastian Dushayne. She was not sure which one of them needed it more.
Her dreams were filled with grief this time, the dead, bloated bodies of Father Joubay and the captain and a Sebastian Dushayne who did not care if the birds feasted on them. Just as the dream verged on a nightmare, Father Joubay rose from the water