Their eyes clashed for the briefest moment before Will turned away and walked into the kitchen. She watched as he covered the fish and placed them into the fridge which she belatedly realized was making a humming noise.
“Oh! The power is on?”
“Yeah.”
“I saw the candles and presumed …”
“It was out last night. Ice in the fuse box. I fixed it this morning.”
With an even greater sense of inadequacy, she padded across the cabin and propped her back against one of the benches. Ignoring her presence, he tied the top of the rubbish bag and then lifted it into the freezer.
“We’ll take it back to the city when we leave,” he explained, aware that he was casting about for anything to say that wasn’t on the subject of the fantasies he was running through his mind.
“Uh huh.” She didn’t want to think about leaving. Not before she’d got everything she wanted – needed – out of this trip.
“Lilah …”
“Will,” she interrupted, lifting her hands to her zip. “Would you help me with this?”
He scowled at her. “No.”
Her laugh was a provocative invitation. “But it is stuck. I thought you were charged with keeping me safe? You can’t very well have me pass out from heat fever.”
He shook his head with true frustration and lifted his own fingers to the zip. It came easily and his look of accusation was impossible to miss. Only it was too late. As his fingers pulled the zip lower, parting the snowsuit, he fell deeper and deeper into a well of inevitability.
She wore some kind of silky camisole beneath. It was the kind of lingerie he’d only ever seen in movies. He stepped backwards as though he’d been burned.
Lilah was not going to be dissuaded. If anything, his reaction proved that he wanted something to happen between them as badly as she did. She stepped out of the snowsuit. Wearing only her underwear, she took two steps towards him.
“Lilah.” It was a guttural oath of impatience. “For God’s sake.”
“Your turn.” Her hands shook a little as she lifted them to his zipper. “May I?”
“I don’t think you’d listen if I said ‘no’.”
“You have a valid point.” She pulled the zip down, but had to bite her tongue to stop from groaning when she realized that he was wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans beneath his own outerwear. “That hardly seems fair,” she said with mock seriousness.
“What are you doing?” He asked seriously. And despite the sensible voice wading through his brain, he gripped her hips, enjoying the sensation of silky material beneath his work-roughened hands.
She blinked up at him. “You know I have servants who help me with everything, even dressing. Is there something wrong with this?”
He could have rolled his eyes, it was such a pathetic attempt at normalizing the slow, torturous seduction she was indulging.
“You want me to act like your servant?”
Her smile was slow to spread across her face. “I want you to undress me for a bath.”
“Lilah …”
“You keep saying my name as though I am doing something wrong.”
“You are, and we both know it.”
She wrapped her fingers around the base of her camisole and steeled herself to be strong. “Do you know what my life is like?” She lifted the silk slowly, enjoying the feeling as it glanced across her skin.
“Luxurious,” he said sharply.
“Yes.” She nodded. “It is that. But it is so far from perfect.”