Page 27 of Eight for Losing, One for Loving

“Don’t leave out all the good bits,” he called out to her.

Vi huffed at him, amused. “I am not going to annotate everything.”

“Spoilsport,” he replied, still laughing softly.

Vi rediscovered the soap and spent the next few moments attending to the private places she was not about to tell Leo about.

“Shall I come and wash your back?”

The question hung in the air, somehow having far more weight and substance that the steam coiling around her.

“Vi?”

One night out of time, she reminded herself. Be brave, Vi.

“Yes, p-please,” she stammered, squeezing her eyes shut and wincing. The desire to change her mind was in every heavy thud of her heart as it pounded behind her ribs, but then she heard the curtains pull back and Leo was standing before her.

Vi shivered in the bath water, though she wasn’t cold. She had wrapped her arms about her legs and now pressed her face against her knees, avoiding his gaze.

“That was a yes?” he asked her, his tone careful.

Vi nodded, feeling the heat in her cheeks against her bare legs.

Leo sat down on the floor beside the tub and reached for the soap she had set back on the table.

“A lovely scent, delicate,” he said, dipping his hands in the water behind her. She felt the movement ripple the water, but he did not touch her. The sound of the soap, slick between his hands made her pulse leap, however, knowing he would do so any moment.

“Vi? Is this all right?”

She breathed steadily for a long moment before she nodded. “Yes, Leo.”

He shifted behind her and then she felt his warm hands, slick with soap, gliding over her shoulders and upper back.

“How lovely you are,” he murmured. “Your skin is so beautiful, like silk. You have the loveliest back.”

A sarcastic comment about it being her best side leapt to Vi’s tongue, but she swallowed it. Why not believe him? She had offered him everything, with no strings. If he was the kind of man to say such things merely to get her into bed, she had done the hard work for him, and she did not believe Leo to be such a man. Though his reasons for wanting to marry a woman past her prime who would only nag him dreadfully still eluded her, perhaps she ought to believe that he at least found her attractive, desirable. It was true men had told her she was beautiful before, just as he’d said, and it wasn’t as though she believed she was unattractive, just that their words had been gilded by the promise of a connection to Lord Trevick and her rather hefty dowry. Leo would not say it for those reasons.

His hand slid down her spine, smoothing the soap over her skin and she gasped as he got to her waist, jumping a little.

“Ticklish?” he asked, and she could hear the grin in his words without looking at him. “Beg pardon. I’ll be careful.”

He was too, though her breath hitched again as his hand drifted lower.

“Th-That’s not my back,” she said in a rush.

“No, but it’s the next part on the list,” he said with amusement.

“I did that bit,” she told him, turning to look at him over her shoulder, his warm gaze meeting hers.

“Without telling me? How cruel you are, to leave out all the interesting places.”

She rolled her eyes at him but felt a smile tug at her lips. “Heartless, I know,” she agreed.

He chuckled and got to his feet, drying his hands before unfolding the large towel that had arrived with the bath. He stood beside the bath, holding the towel out before closing his eyes and turning his head away.

“Up you come, then. I’m not looking.”

Vi smiled and got to her feet, feeling strangely cosseted and cared for as he wrapped the towel around her. He kept his arms in place about her, holding her for a moment as he cracked one eye open.