Free Bride of the Beast by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page B

disconcerting silence, branding her with the heat of his stare. Raw masculinity poured off him in such extremes that simply being in the same room with him made every inch of her thrum with crackling anticipation.
    Caterine turned aside to smooth her trembling hands on her skirts.
    I have naught to fear... 1 have seen scores of bare-bottomed men.
    The backs and the fronts of them. She mouthed the words, a silent litany, her palms growing more damp with each beat of her heart.
    She had no cause for alarm.
    Many were the knights and nobles she'd granted such attentions.
    "'Tis but a custom, my lady," came his voice again. Deep, smooth, and much nearer. "A mere courtesy, the execution of which means nothing."
    Caterine swallowed hard at his lie. He erred. The execution of this particular courtesy would cost her much.
    And not in the way he'd believe were she to voice her hesitation.
    Her acquiescence sealed, she locked her gaze on his. He stood not four paces away, one arm slung about his friend's bare shoulders, his own broad chest equally clothes-free.
    And so perfect, her knees went liquid at the sight.
    His hard-muscled magnificence, every taut well-defined plane, stole her breath and sent a floodtide of stunned surprise spiraling through her.
    Wave upon wave of something so intense, so thoroughly different from anything she'd ever experienced, she could only stare.
    A dusting of crisp dark hair arrowed down the sculpted tautness of his abdomen to disappear beneath the rolled waistband of his braies. The light woolen cloth, still damp from his rigors in the bailey, hugged his muscular thighs and clung to his maleness in such a brazen manner, nary a secret remained about the grandness of his virility.
    Finding her voice at last, Caterine... gasped.
    He smiled.
    A slow and lazy half-smile of such bone-melting potency the wonder of it reached clear inside her soul to the secret place her gasp had come from.
    The place she hid her dreams.
    He hid nothing.
    And nothing could stop the waves of tight-pitched anticipation rippling through her the longer she stared.
    "Heavenly saints," she breathed at last, her throat going unbearably dry.
    "They had nary a hand in it, I assure you," he said, a bitter edge marring the beauty of his voice.
    And slicing through the mysterious bond his oh-so-seductive gallantry had been weaving of her long-slumbering desires.
    Hopes and dreams so deeply buried, she'd forgotten she'd ever spun them.
    Lifting a hand to his face, he trailed long fingers down the scar slashing across his left cheekbone. "Dear lady, the good saints had their backs turned the day I was thus blighted, but they watch over me now, I assure you."
    She looked away, heat flooding her cheeks.
    "And as they guard me, so shall I guard you." He skimmed his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. "Your person, your home, and your sensibilities."
    "My sensibilities?"
    He nodded. "The bathing ceremony is a much appreciated custom amongst men of breeding, but I am not an old done man incapable of tending my own needs."
    There is naught old and done about me, his heart proclaimed, demanding her ear.
    "Nor am I injured," he said, tempted beyond all reason by the sensual promise of her lips. "I can bathe myself."
    "I am sorry." She had the good grace to blush, and her high discomfiture turned her eyes a deeper shade of blue.
    So dark a blue, he released her at once lest he drown in their sapphire depths.
    She touched his arm and his breath caught at the simple contact. "You truly do not mind?"
    "And if I did?"
    She hesitated but a moment. "Then I would oblige you."
    "But not willingly."
    "Willing, aye," she said, surprising him. "But not happily."
    A pang of bitterness shot through him at her frankness.
    "Then we shall wait."
    "Wait?" She blinked. "Wait for what?"
    Marmaduke allowed himself a wry smile. "Until you attend my bath because it is your will to do so."
    "My will?"
    "So I have said." He smoothed a few wispy strands of pale gold hair