Page 63 of A Story of Love

“What?” she asked in a stupidly breathy voice, unable to look away from his eyes.

“Let me do this for you. Please.”

After a moment, she nodded, unwilling to trust her voice.

He added more hot water to the basin and proceeded to wash her with the same care he’d used to tend to her injury. He snorted softly when he peeled off the black beauty spot. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy. I had a great-aunt who wore them.”

“I had only seen them in stage plays until this evening,” she admitted.

When he’d cleansed her to his satisfaction, the water in the basin was cloudy.

“That is revolting,” Lori said, eying the flannel cloth he’d used, which had been white and was now a sickly gray. “Why on earth would people tolerate wearing cosmetics all day, every day?”

“Probably because they did not possess skin as lovely as yours.”

Heat immediately crept up her neck at his compliment—which seemed all the more flattering for the matter-of-fact way in which he delivered it—and Severn smiled.

She gave an exasperated laugh. “You said that on purpose! Just to make me blush.”

“Yes, I did. But that does not make it any less true. Hold still, there is just one last thing.”

Before she could ask what, he began plucking pins out of her hair, his large hands quick and deft.

There was such a feeling of unreality to it—Lord Stand Fast Severn, the King of the Rakes, serving as her lady’s maid—that Lori couldn’t think of anything to say or do except sit there and watch, rapt, as he carefully deconstructed the horrendous coiffure.

Dorian, her only lover, had never tended to her with such tender care—or any care at all, really. And Dorian had never—not even when he’d been rutting in her—caused a fraction of the bewildering and pleasurable sensations currently rampaging through her body like a fever.

She was sweating and her lungs felt the way they had when she’d fallen off those piled up packing crates and knocked the air from her chest. Thinking—at least thinking any rational thoughts—was impossible. All she wanted to do was feel more of his big hard body against hers. She desperately wanted him to touch her the way he had done that night at the ball, when his hands and mouth had roamed her person with a possessive intent that made Lori regret refusing his shocking invitation to go to his house every night since.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m not going to stop at just removing your face paint and hair pins.” He punctuated his words by tossing aside the last pin with a soft ping.

“Loo—” Lori’s voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s. She cleared her throat. “Looking at you how, pray?” Her attempt to sound chilly was dismal.

“You know how.”

“What—what might you do if I don’t stop?”

His lips tightened and he slowly slid his fingers into the sausage-like curls, capturing her gaze as he gently raked his hands through her heavy tresses. “You have beautiful hair,” he said, his disconcerting eyes finally releasing her and moving over her face until he was regarding his fistful of curls which he then lifted higher, until he could bury his nose in the tangled locks. His eyes drifted shut as his chest expanded and he murmured, “Even that hideous rose perfume can’t entirely hide your scent.”

Lori gawked. “You—you know my scent?”

He opened his eyes. “Why do you smell so damned good?”

“I, er, wasn’t aware that I did. My sister-in-law makes soap with calendula and—”

“You smell like summer.” He inhaled another lungful. “And fresh bedsheets.”

Lori laughed. “Bedsheets? That doesn’t sound very—”

“You drive me mad.” He growled, releasing her hair and moving his hands to her waist.

The room rocked around her.

Except it wasn’t the room, but Lori who was moving as Severn lifted her onto his lap as easily as if she were a toddler.

“What are you—”

His lips crashed down over hers and she opened her mouth to let him in, not waiting to be asked.