Something shifted inside. ‘So you’d have done that for any woman.’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘But when I saw it was you …’ His stare bored into her, igniting heat to counteract the chill that held her body in stasis. Flames licked her belly, her breasts, her heart.
‘Yes?’
She didn’t want to know. She really didn’t want to know. They’d agreed there was no relationship, no future for them. Just sexual pleasure. But some yearning part of her leaned closer.
‘When I saw it was you I wanted to kill him.’
CHAPTER TEN
His WORDS HUNG in the still air. Orsino couldn’t even bring himself to regret giving so much away. Not when her eyes looked like windows to a soul in torment.
Gingerly he lifted his hand and rubbed his collarbone, almost grateful for the hard throb of pain filling his body. But it wasn’t enough to distract him from her.
‘Poppy?’
He’d stunned her. He read it in her slack jaw and staring eyes. He recalled her sheltered upbringing, her years in a cloistered boarding school for girls that catered to the flowers of Britain’s aristocracy. She’d probably never seen so much as a punch thrown in her life, much less real bloodlust.
For that’s what he’d felt when that lowlife had lunged at Poppy. He’d wanted to pound the guy’s head into the floor so hard he’d never get up again.
Or maybe she was shocked not just at the violence, but at his need to protect her.
Slowly Orsino flexed his fingers and pain screamed up his arm.
Poppy wasn’t the only one in shock. His visceral response to the sight of her in danger overrode everything he thought he knew about the pair of them.
He told himself he’d react the same way if any woman had been in that situation. It was true, but he knew with a certainty that punched a hole through his belly that he wouldn’t have felt the same. As if someone had taken a hunting knife to his guts and yanked them from his body.
How could he feel that away about a woman who was going to walk out of his life soon?
He didn’t want her as his wife. Not after her betrayal, yet still something bound them. Something more profound than sex.
Suddenly Orsino felt wearier than he had since he’d hauled Michael out of the ice. He slumped, the adrenaline finally wearing off enough for his body to feel the full extent of his pain.
‘Orsino!’
She was there beside him, her hands warm and soft on his bare skin. He groaned. How could he feel pain and arousal at the same time?
Dimly he acknowledged either was better than grappling with the conundrum that was Poppy and her place in his world. He’d think about that later. Much later.
‘You need a doctor. I’ll call one now.’
‘No!’ His hand closed around her wrist. ‘Not tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough. For now I just want to rest.’
‘But what if—?’
‘Please, Poppy. Don’t fuss. I’m bruised and sore but that’s all.’ His grip loosened, his fingers threading through hers.
Still she looked worried; her teeth sank into her bottom lip and her brow puckered.
‘If you want something to do you can help me into bed.’ Suddenly he felt a hundred years old, each movement an exercise in exquisite agony. ‘I’ll even let you share with me.’
He waggled his eyebrows in an approximation of a leer and was rewarded with a huff of laughter. It was the best thing he’d heard all day.
‘Not even you could think about sex right now.’
Orsino let his gaze drop to the creamy swell of her breasts above the low neckline of her dress. Was it still called a neckline when it skimmed the plump flesh just a fraction above her nipples?
His mouth twisted in a smile that stretched his bruised lip. He groaned again and was rewarded with a light caress along his neck and shoulder.
‘I approve of the dress. Take it off.’
‘Soon.’ He looked up, surprised. ‘But only because the designer would have my hide if I damaged it.’
Ten minutes later Orsino lay naked in bed. Poppy lay beside him, demurely covered in a T-shirt of his that hung down her thighs.
He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or thankful that she’d refused to leave him to go upstairs to get her own clothes. But he wouldn’t have missed the sight of her in his T-shirt for anything. Plain grey cotton had never looked so alluring.
Yet even dosed with painkillers he didn’t have the strength left to do more than wrap her close, revelling in the waft of her breath warm across his chest, the weight of her head on his shoulder and one slim leg tangled with his.
It must be the medication but he felt he could happily stay like this for ever.
‘Thank you.’ It was a breath of sound in the darkness. ‘For what you did. For stopping him.’