The Pleasure Master by Nina Bangs

moved toward Kathy. To her relief, he stopped several feet away.
    He held out the cloth. “Dry me, lass.”
    It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t exactly an order. It was simply something he expected.
    Well, he could drip-dry all day before she’d touch him.
    â€œYe want to, lass.” His voice lowered to that tempting murmur. “Run yer hands over my bare body. Know me. Ye willna be harmed. I wouldna touch ye if ye didna want it.”
    â€œRight. No harm.” Was she crazy? No,
she
wasn’t crazy, but her hands were because they took the cloth. Her feet were because they stepped close to him. “We have a situation here.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing. I was just explaining something to my mind.” Her mind had better deal with it. This was insurrection on a major scale. If her brain couldn’t control her hands and feet, what
could
it control?
    â€œTurn around.” When he obeyed, she slid the cloth across the smooth expanse of his back. Marveled at the delicious indentation at the base of his spine. Considered all the interesting things a woman could do with that indentation.
    She abandoned the cloth long enough to trace with her fingertip the white line of a scar that slashed across the middle of his lower back, to wince at the imagined pain. “I fell off my bike when I was ten years old. Landed on a piece of glass and needed stitches in my leg. I still remember how much it hurt.”
    â€œI fell off a horse onto the knife of an enemy. ’Tis not something soon forgotten. It has made me overly careful about falling off horses.”
    She moved the cloth lower and rubbed the fabric over each marvelous bun. Her body clenched on a need so strong that she froze. She couldn’t believethe things her mind was suggesting she do with those buns. No wonder it didn’t have time to keep her hands and feet in control. It was too busy thinking up erotic activities involving Ian’s . . . lower extremities.
    As she stood frozen, doing a bang-up imitation of a wax figure, Ian turned. Her hands were still poised over his . . . lower extremities.
    She swallowed hard. Speaking of hard . . . No. Not even her wayward hands had the nerve to go
there.
    Kathy raised her gaze to Ian’s.
    His eyes glittered a silver challenge. “Ye canna tell me, Kathy of Hair, that no man can make ye feel. If ye touch me now, I will lay ye down beside yon pool and teach ye the truth of yer own body.”
    The cloth dropped from her nerveless fingers. Forcing her gaze the long gleaming length of his body, she admitted the truth.
    She didn’t know whether Ian Ross could help her achieve the long sought after, ever elusive orgasm, but he certainly made her want to try.
    Another truth coughed politely, gaining her attention. She couldn’t try with Ian Ross, because if he succeeded where her ex-husband had failed, she’d be forced to feel something for him. And he was a man for whom no woman should have feelings. The ultimate love-’em-and-leave-’em guy.
    â€œI . . . I have to do something.” Without even trying to make her retreat seem anything other than the escape it was, she turned and hurried down thetunnel with her puny pen flashlight casting its tiny beam.
    Behind her, Peter clattered along, happily chanting, “Follow the yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road.”

Chapter Six
    Ian smiled as he donned his plaid and followed the woman back to the main chamber. Fear had prompted her retreat, but she would soon realize that he was not the enemy, that the enemy lived within. Her own desire would bring her to him. ’Twas always so.
    His smile widened when he emerged from the tunnel to find her trying to put pieces of the flower together.
    â€œWhat did Suzy Sunshine ever do to you? I’ll never get her back in one piece again.”
    She cast him an accusing glare that made him laugh. His laughter surprised him. Between the Mackays, the