A Baron in Her Bed Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d seen of Lord Byron in Albanian dress.
    “I’m feeling better already. It’s so dark there’s nothing to do but sleep. If you were a woman it would be another matter, oui ?” He laughed and tossed her the pillow.
    Unbalanced by his remark, she fumbled and almost dropped it. She held it against her chest, wondering what unnerving thing he would say or do next.
    He sat on the edge of the cot. “Would you mind doing one more thing for me? Help me with my boots?”
    “As you wish, my lord.” A tingle climbed her spine, and she marveled at how calm she sounded. How dangerous this had become. What would he do if he discovered her sex? She shivered.
    “You are cold?”
    “A little. The room feels warmer though.”
    He raised his leg and rested his boot on Horatia’s thigh. She grabbed the boot and pulled. It didn’t give an inch.
    “Perhaps if you turn around?” he said. “My valet used to do it that way.”
    She turned her back and reached her shaky hands down as he threaded his riding boot between her legs. The boot rubbed against her most vulnerable spot, stirring something within her. She started as he rested his other boot against her derrière. Frantic to get it over with, she grasped the boot and tugged with growing alarm as heat radiated out from her nether regions. She let out a relieved sigh as the boot came away in her hands.
    He repeated the procedure with his left boot. It was an exquisite torture.
    “You’re a slim young man, Simon,” he said from behind her. “When you’re a bit older, you will fill out and put on more muscle.” Was he studying her derrière? She quickly sat.
    By the time his lordship stood in his stocking feet, Horatia’s face burned so hot it must have rivaled the logs in the fireplace. She threw on several more, raising a cloud of sparks with the hope they would last the night. She sat and pulled off her boots before he suggested he might help.
    When he stood to loosen his trousers, she spun around and fussed over the arrangement of the horse blankets on the bed. She turned back as if compelled to watch him as he ran a hand over his chest beneath his shirt.
    He winced in pain. “I think I must have bruised a rib. Have a look, will you?”
    “I don’t think I can be of much help, my lord,” she said. “I doubt there’s a bone broken. The pain would be far more intense.”
    “I doubt that, too, but just look, will you?”
    She nodded and ran her tongue over her bottom lip. She had never seen a grown man’s naked chest before. He unbuttoned his waistcoat and lifted his shirt. She sucked in a breath and bent to examine him. Small nipples jutted from his sculpted chest, and his stomach was ridged with muscle. A soft mat of dark hair disappeared into his breeches. Her stomach clenched as his manly smell teased at her and her fingers curled into her palms with the need to touch him. What would happen if she did? Her tentative finger traced a rib. She’d never expected a man’s skin to be so smooth. She pulled her hand away as she fought the desire to sweep it over the planes of his chest. “You’re right; there is a bruise here.” How composed she sounded, when her whole body pulsed in the strangest way.
    “Thought as much.” He yawned then yelped, cradling his forehead. “Devil plague it!” He patted the cot. “We can throw those blankets over us and sleep top to tail. Not ideal, but ’twill do, will it not?” He gave another dazzling smile.
    He looked so trusting she felt ashamed of her dishonesty. “I can sleep anywhere. Curled up on the mat by the fire will do; ’tis all the same to me,” she said in a tight voice. That she found him so attractive surprised her, when she wasn’t sure she approved of him. But then, Byron’s transgressions only served to make him more attractive.
    He patted the cot. “I won’t hear of it. There’s plenty of room here.”
    She nodded, her throat too tight to speak.
    “You’re a gentlemanly fellow for a groom,