Page 81 of One Day for a Valet

“Tell me what you feel.”

“Hungry for the taste of your skin. Hot and shivery. Intoxicated by the trust I see in your eyes.”

“Then believe what you see there and kiss me.” She waited for him. Waited for his first hesitant touch to grow certain. Waited for his sigh of relief that she was all right. That they were all right. And then she came alive beneath him, following his lead with such tenderness that it left him throbbing. He was careful not to hurt her, allowing them to sizzle without combusting into flames, and they sank into the comfort of one another for endless perfect minutes.

A knock sounded at the door and Christopher rolled away just in time for Doctor Higgins to stroll into the room.

Higgins chuckled, his eyebrows raised clear to his hairline. “I am pleased to see our patient is awake. Though clearly not as pleased as Mr Keene. He’s been quite at loose ends, Miss Lioni.” The doctor cleared his throat. “Perhaps you might want to acquire a shirt, Christopher … and button your falls.”

Violet popped her head through the doorway. “I think his state of déshabillé can only aid in a swift recovery!”

Christopher looked away to hide his blush and made for the exit.

“I haven’t had a fever in five days. If I have to eat another meal staring at this wall, I’ll go mad.” Sofia tried to cross her arms in protest, but winced as her brain promptly reminded her that she had been shot ten days before.

Christopher looked up from his novel. “I’ll have my meal brought up and we can suffer the boring wall together.”

“You’re being a tyrant. I want to move around.”

He placed the book face-down in his lap, pinning her with an obstinate glare. “And you are being bull-headed. You have been moving around, according to the doctor’s prescribed treatment.” He flipped his book over, licked his finger, and turned a page.

This had been the vicious cycle for the last several days.

The previous night, after she’d eaten a full meal and had a thorough bath to prove to him she had largely recovered, Sofia had tried everything short of dragging his body to coax him into her bed. But Christopher had refused, then gone a step further and retired to his own room rather than the chair at her bedside for the first time since she had been hurt. She wanted him close to her, but he was equally stubborn about creating inflexible boundaries while she recovered.

Since the day she had awoken, he had done little more than bus her forehead like a spinster aunt. Sofia’s tolerance for his prudishness was dwindling quickly. She was fairly certain her body wouldn’t tolerate the sort of intimacies she longed for, but his complete abstinence from her touch was beyond excessive. If she couldn’t coax some kind of physical affection from Christopher, she at least wanted to spend a meal at the table with her brother and friends.

He stood and stretched as if she hadn’t said anything at all.

“I will see you downstairs for supper,” she stated flatly.

“It’s too soon.”

“Then you’ll have to climb into this bed and make me stay here.” She deployed a coy, flirtatious smile, purposefully lowering her lashes.

He laughed. “It’s too soon for that as well.”

“I miss you, Christopher.”

His jaw tightened, and he walked to her bed but did not sit down. “I miss you too.”

Leaning down, he angled for her cheek, but she blocked his progress with a flat palm to his chest. “Kiss my cheek again and I will find a foil and cut you from navel to nipple. Wounded or not, you know I’m equally proficient with either hand.”

Christopher wrenched back as if she had actually cut him.

“You behave as if you take my threat seriously,” she scoffed, confused. Sofia held out her hand like an olive branch.

He shook his head with a rueful smile. “No. Not that. I-it’s …”

He stammered adorably, and she considered accepting even his dry dowager kiss just to touch him again.

“You are,” he began again, equally inarticulately, “inexperienced. Naive … in a sweet way.” He added the last bit when she lifted her chin. “You say and do things without realising how they affect me. It was easier to keep my head when our future remained uncertain, but now that the only obstacle between us is a quickly healing hole in your shoulder, I find it’s much more difficult to stay the course and allow you time to heal.”

Sofia considered his words, searching for anything she had said or done that would have piqued his interest, but she could think of nothing.

He smiled at her quizzical expression, and she decided she didn’t want him to kiss her after all. “Do not bother, Christopher. If you are going to look at me as if I am a child then I don’t need to know.”

“There is absolutely nothing childlike about you,” he said, his voice dropping low and serious. He took a tentative step toward her, then another. “Equally proficient with either hand, are you?” Her earlier words fell from his lips in an entirely different tone. With the syllables drawn out, it suddenly sounded rather roguish, alluring. “You cast out the comment as a casual threat, but in my imagination, that dexterous right hand found an entirely different occupation than the pommel of your foil.”