The Water Nymph Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sandal.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” Crispin replied, unconcerned. “Even animals are most attracted to their own kind. But your predilection does make me wonder why you are so afraid of me.”
    “Afraid of you?” Sophie repeated, appalled.
    “Clearly. If you are innocent, as you claim, and do not have what I am looking for, your refusal to remove your clothes obviously proves that you are afraid of me.”
    “I am not familiar with your use of the words ‘clearly,’ ‘obviously,’ and ‘proves,’” Sophie mimicked.
    Crispin pretended not to hear. “Be honest, Miss Champion. Is it that you don’t think you can trust yourself around me? My charms are famously hard to resist.”
    He knew he had won then, even though it took another few moments for his victory to manifest itself. The striptease that followed was the least erotic striptease Crispin had ever witnessed, possibly the least erotic striptease ever, probably the only one conducted to the snores of a sleeping raven.
    And yet it nearly undid him.
    Sophie rose from her chair and, her eyes never leaving his, proceeded to remove her red velvet doublet. Her boots came next, then her leggings, until finally she was standing in only her hat and a thin linen shirt that ended just below her bottom. Reaching over her head, she deftly removed three pins and the hat, liberating a riot of long, ruby-colored waves that reached to her stomach. Finally, she loosened the ties at her neck and cuffs and pulled the shirt over her head. Her gaze left Crispin’s as the fabric passed across her face, and he had his expression back under control by the time she was done, so she never saw what passed through his eyes that first moment she stood before him completely naked.
    During his service for Queen Elizabeth, Crispin had learned that impulses, like emotions, made people vulnerable, which was only a half-step from making them dead. Containing his emotions was easy, and he had trained himself rigorously to overmaster the impulses of his body as well. He could hold his breath underwater for ten minutes, slow his heartbeat to appear dead, and stand stockstill for twelve hours. Compared to these feats, curtailing amorous urges was child’s play, and he had become so good at it that he had begun to wonder if he had not eradicated them entirely. He had completely lost interest in seducing women, finding the thrill and adventure of his secret commissions far more exciting than anything he experienced between the arms of even the most talented courtesans.
    Until now. Now it all came rushing back in a torrent that threatened to overwhelm him, to burst all his carefully crafted restraints, unseat all his rigorously upheld rules.
    Sophie stood before him, conscious only of his intense scrutiny. “Are you satisfied?”
    “No,” Crispin replied, but he was answering a different question than the one she had asked. When he realized what he had done, he cleared his throat and elaborated. “I want to look through your clothes as well.”
    It was the mustache that saved him. Only the mustache kept Crispin from forgetting what he was doing there, what his purpose was, what, for that matter, his name was. And even the mustache posed problems, particularly the way it drew the eye to her wide, sensual lips. Would they feel like silk brushing against his neck, or like velvet? Crispin found himself wondering and immediately instructed himself to stop. He had much more important matters to consider, he reminded himself, than whether the mark over her lip was a birthmark or a shadow, and how the gentle curve of her waist would look from the back, and whether her head would reach to just under his nose so that he could rest his cheek on the crown of her hair, and what it would feel like to cup her full breasts in his hands, or have her legs twined around his waist or…
    Crispin rose so abruptly from his chair that it fell backward, startling both Sophie and the sleeping raven, who immediately