The Earl of Christmas Past (Goode Girls Romance #5) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,6

with infinite, infuriating increments, regain a semblance of corporality.

He would have welcomed the sensation, if he wasn’t so utterly distracted by the sight of her in all her nude glory.

Christ. She was a masterpiece, someone crafted by a loving artisan from some other material than the minerals and mud that forged the rest of man. Every other woman now seemed a clumsy clay attempt at the marble-smooth perfection of her.

Though her form was diminutive, her shoulders were not; they were straight and proud, held so by an erect spine and practiced posture. Said posture displayed her tear-shaped breasts to perfect effect, their nipples, peaked and puckered with cold, the same peach hue as her cupid’s bow mouth.

God but his hands ached to touch her. To explore every creamy inch of her. To find the places that made her gasp and tremble.

To discover where else she might be peach and perfect.

As if she was loath to leave the warmth of the fire, she took up the soap and her underthings, and tiptoed to the edge of the bath.

The crude basin only came up to about past her knees, so she barely had to lift her leg to test the water within. She dipped a toe, then engulfed the delightfully feminine arch of her foot before wading in to her shapely calf.

John had never been jealous of an inanimate object in his life, but as she hissed and sputtered whilst lowering her chilled body into the hot water, he would have changed places with the liquid in an instant.

It’s not as if he was exactly solid.

Though, he was getting hard…

He crouched when she did, his eyes unable to leave her as she drew her legs into her chest and settled into the heat with a sibilant sigh of surrender.

He’d give what was left of his soul to coax a sound like that from her. Especially now that he knew what she looked like with naked pleasure parting her lips, and the dew of steam curling the tendrils of her hair that she had yet to take down from its braided knot.

Abandoning her soap and undergarments to the side, she did little but enjoy the heat of the water for a moment, cupping it in her hand and pouring it over what parts of her chest, breasts, and shoulders, she couldn’t completely submerge.

God, he remembered what that felt like, sinking into a hot bath on a chilly night.

He’d give anything just to feel warmth.

John made himself dizzy trying to follow every bead of water that caught the firelight along the tantalizing peaks and valleys of her body. Though she was a woman in a crude basin on a packed floor on the edge of the civilized world, she might as well have been a winter goddess bathing in a dark pool.

Would that he could attend her. That he could follow the little bejeweled droplets with his tongue and find the intriguing places they would land.

Would that he could make her wet.

She eventually gathered up her undergarments, which were still rather clean all things considered, and scrubbed at them with the soap.

He remembered that she’d mentioned she had no trunk with her, and would likely need to wear them again tomorrow until her things could be fetched.

That finished, she wrung them out and set them aside before taking up the soap once more.

John had been no saint as a young man. He’d frolicked and fornicated in the presence of his young and noble mates, sharing courtesans and the like. He’d enjoyed watching women. What they did to each other, to other men.

To themselves.

But he could truly never remember gleaning as much intimate enjoyment as he did watching her start at her foot, and lather a bit of coarse soap up her leg to her thigh and in between them before working her way back down the other side.

Had he not been dead, he might have expired from the length of time he held his breath.

Restless, aroused, John drifted in circles around the tub as she washed, humming an unfamiliar tune softly as the firelight danced across her skin.

He found himself behind her as she ran a lathered hand over her shoulders and did her best to reach her back. She was about to get suds on a dark velvet curl that had escaped her coiffure and reflexively, John’s hand made to brush it aside.

Knowing he couldn’t. Understanding that his hand would pass through her before it actually did.

Even so, his body was helpless but