Perilous Pleasures by Jenny Brown Page B

body had upon him. She was the daughter of a woman of pleasure. Who was to say what tricks her mother had taught her?
    And yet her face looked so innocent.
    He jogged her shoulder to force her awake, more roughly than he’d intended. At his touch, her eyes fluttered open. As soon as she became aware of him watching her, she clutched at her bodice and pulled it closed with what looked like true modesty.
    He suppressed the urge to pat her arm to reassure her all was well. He must not touch her. Not here, where she lay alone with him, half clad, in bed—in an anonymous inn chamber where so many strangers before them must have coupled.
    They must continue their journey. He couldn’t take much more of this.
    â€œHow do you feel this morning?” Tension made his voice sound severe, despite his desire not to frighten her.
    â€œI don’t know.” She winced as she sat up in the bed, and swung her legs around so that they hung over the side. But when she attempted to put weight on her injured ankle, her face twisted in pain.
    â€œLet me examine it,” he said. “There is a small chance it could be broken.”
    With a look of concern, she sat back on the bed and lifted her ankle toward him, letting her skirt fall back to reveal a long sweep of naked leg.
    He sucked in his breath. Her leg was smooth, pale, and muscular, rounded as only a woman’s flesh could be—and disastrously arousing. He hoped she couldn’t tell how strongly the sight of her naked limb affected him, but that was too much to hope. Proof of her effect on him strained against his breeches.
    Struggling to regain his professional objectivity, he motioned for her to show him her other ankle, so that he could compare it with the injured one. As she lifted it up, he caught another glimpse of naked flesh.
    His groin throbbed. Disgusted, he forced himself to ignore it. What was wrong with him? He was a trained physician. Hundreds of women had revealed their bodies to him when he’d examined them.
    But those women had not been this woman. They hadn’t crawled into his bed and caressed him into a state of near insanity. Breathing slowly to calm himself, he took her injured ankle in his hand and gently explored it with his fingers. But as he pressed against the soft swollen flesh, he couldn’t help but remember another fleshy swelling and the way Zoe had rubbed it against him two nights before, when she’d come so close to becoming one with him.
    He jerked his hand away. She gave a sharp cry.
    He’d hurt her. He must get a grip on himself.
    â€œIt isn’t broken.” He controlled his voice as best he could. “It will heal in a few days. I’ve rung for some food, and we’ll resume our journey as soon as you finish breaking your fast.” He forced himself to look stern. “Your foolishness last night cost us much time. We’ll be hard-pressed to make up for it, but we must if we’re to arrive at the island while the Dark Lord still lives. I’ll send someone to help you down to the carriage.”
    Half an hour later, she joined him in the inn’s courtyard, leaning heavily on the shoulder of the innkeeper’s burly wife who’d dressed her wound the night before. He wished it had been possible to have the woman take another look at it, but there wasn’t time. They’d already dawdled enough.
    As they took their places in the post chaise, he drew away as far from her as he could on the narrow seat, taking refuge in the tiny print of the book of meditations he always carried in his pocket. But though he tried to immerse himself in reading, he kept picturing her ankle, and her leg, so pale and firm, and as he remembered the leg, he couldn’t help but imagine the thigh above it, so soft and yet so muscular, and from there his mind leapt to what that thigh would feel like wrapped around him as he plunged himself into her.
    Chaste he might still be by the letter of