Touch Me Read Free Page B

his gaze locked on her luscious form once again, he utterly failed. By God, Ridgemoor must have been jaded indeed to have tired of this woman. Had she sought revenge by murdering him?
    Or perhaps he hadn’t tired of her as rumors had suggested—perhaps she’d betrayed him and that had precipitated Ridgemoor’s swift ending of their relationship. As Simon well knew, women could be perfidious creatures. And he had no doubt there was more to this particular woman than her simple existence as a former mistress who’d retired to the country. At the minimum, she possessed a box that contained information vital to Simon and many other people—or at least, it had contained that information, until the box had come into her possession. What possible reason other than guilt of some sort could have driven her to remove the letter?
    She laid her cloak over the back of a wing chair near the fireplace and he held his breath. For several tension-filled seconds, she stood so close to him he had but to reach out his hand to touch her arm.
    “What are you doing in the corner, Sophia?” she murmured. “I hope you haven’t found a mouse.”
    No, not a mouse.
    Sophia unwrapped herself from Simon’s boots and trotted toward her mistress. After giving the cat an affectionate pat, Mrs. Ralston crossed to her dresser and removed a clean chemise from the drawer, while Sophia jumped onto the bed and settled herself in the center of the counterpane. Simon pulled in a slow, deep breath of relief, noting Mrs. Ralston had left behind a hint of her scent—the same soft rose fragrance that filled the crystal bottle on her dresser.
    Standing with her back to him, she peeled the wet chemise down her body, giving a slow wriggle that had him clenching his hands. A fine layer of sweat misted his forehead and, although he continued to fight to control his body’s reaction to her, it was a battle well and truly lost when she bent over to pick up the garment, a move that hiked her shapely bottom in the air and afforded him an unimpeded view of her feminine charms—a heart-stopping, concentration-destroying vision that drove every thought from his mind, including the fact that the verdict of hanged by the neck until dead could figure prominently in his near future.
    As he gritted his teeth and bit back a groan, she pulled the fresh chemise over her head, then walked to the wardrobe and, thank God, pulled out a satin robe which she donned. The soft material clung to her curveslike a second skin, but at least they were covered. He hoped now she’d go to bed.
    Instead, she returned to the dresser and massaged cream from one of the pots into her hands, wincing several times as if in pain. Then she donned a pair of gloves from the top drawer. The ritual struck him as odd. Did all women wear gloves to bed? Any time he’d spent the night with a woman, he kept her too busy and too sated to think about anything as mundane as hand cream and gloves.
    His hope that Mrs. Ralston would now retire was dashed when she reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, releasing a curtain of shimmering blond curls that fell to her hips. He immediately imagined running his hands through those spiral tresses, wrapping them around his fist. Pulling her closer—
    He briefly squeezed his eyes shut to dispel the unexpected, unwanted image. What the hell was wrong with him? Bad enough he should be entertaining fantasies while on a mission, but it was completely unacceptable that he do so when the subject of those fantasies was a woman who well might be implicated in a deadly plot.
    She emitted a low groan and his eyes snapped open to find her tying off the end of the braid she’d made with a pale blue ribbon while he’d been lustfully daydreaming. Before he could decide why she’d made such a sound, she again walked toward him. His every muscle tensed. Had she detected his presence? Sensed she was being watched? Bloody hell, it seemed as if she were staring directly at him. If