Despite her controlling hand, his fingers moved higher and found the edge of her panties. “I have a question that’s been driving me crazy,” he admitted in a low voice. He moved his hand again, delving beneath the elastic leg of her panties and curving his fingers over the cool bareness of her buttock.
A whimper escaped her before she bit her lip, controlling the wild little sound. How could he do this to her with just his touch? “Stop,” she whispered. “You have to stop.”
“Have we been sleeping together?”
Her breasts had tightened painfully, begging for that touch to be transferred to them, for him to claim them as he had before. His question destroyed what little concentration she had left. “This…there’s only this one bed. I don’t have a couch, only the love seats—”
“So we’ve been in the same bed for four days,” he interrupted, stopping a flow of words that she had felt edging toward incoherency. His eyes were glittering again, but this time with a different fire, and she couldn’t look away. “You’ve been taking care of me.”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes.”
“All alone?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been feeding me.”
“Yes.”
“Bathing me.”
“Yes. Your fever—I had to sponge you with cool water to keep it down.”
“You did everything that had to be done, took care of me like a baby.”
She didn’t know what to say, what to do. His hand was still on her, his palm warm and hard against the softness of her flesh.
“You touched me,” he said. “All over.”
She swallowed. “It was necessary.”
“I remember your hands on me. I liked it, but when I woke up this morning I thought it was a dream.”
“You did dream,” she said.
“Have I seen you naked?”
“No!”
“Then how do I know what your breasts look like? How they feel in my hands? It wasn’t all a dream, Rachel. Was it?”
A hot, wild blush colored her face, giving him an answer even before she spoke. Her voice was stifled, and she looked away from him, her embarrassment at last freeing her from his gaze. “Twice, when you woke up, you… uh…grabbed me.”
“Helped myself to the goodies?”
“Something like that.”
“And I saw you?”
She made a helpless gesture toward her neck. “My nightgown drooped when I bent over you. The neckline was hanging open….”
“Was I rough?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Did you like it?”
This had to stop, right now, though she had a feeling that it was already too late, that she should never have sat down on the bed. “Move your hand,” she said, trying desperately to put some strength into her voice. “Let me go.”