Untamed by Jessica L. Jackson Page B

dog.”
    Desarae hurried through the tall grass and absently smiled at her guardian sculptures as she passed. She flung open the front door of her home and ran up the steps to a small bedchamber. Quickly she dragged the truckle bed out from beneath the bed. The casters whined and complained as she wrestled with it through the door and over to the stairs. She took hold of the front of the truckle bed and cautiously backed down the stairs. The rear clunked down each step after her. Once the bed was on the grass beside the sailor, she hurried back into the house and returned with an armload of bedding. She covered the still figure with a blanket before making up the bed.
    “Now what should we do?” she asked Athena, who hadn’t budged from beside the man. “He’s awfully dirty and we can’t leave him in his wet clothing or he could die.”
    Desarae jumped up from the bed and raced across the terrace again, nodding once more to the silent sentinels covered with climbing vines. She heated some water and carried the steaming can out beside the bed. Another trip back to the house provided her with a basin, soap, a pair of scissors and one of her dear uncle’s nightshirts.
    “Now, his clothes,” Desarae murmured, waving Athena off the man, who still hadn’t shifted since she had dragged him there. That worried her. Desarae leaned down and felt his faint breath against her cheek. She nodded, satisfied.
    Desarae pulled his soaked tunic first away from his body and began the laborious chore of cutting his shirt off his body. With one side cut free, she flipped the cloth over his body, revealing the tanned damp skin to the warm sunlight. Here she paused to admire his broad expansive bare chest. Golden tipped hair dusted his pectoralis major muscles and her hand paused above them, her splayed fingers trembling. Desarae had studied male forms in her uncle’s books so that she could be accurate in her sculpting, but never before had she been in the position to truly appreciate their powerful magnetism. She looked at his face. He was a most handsome male specimen.
    A gasp escaped her lips when her hand rested on the magnificent strength laid before her. Eagerly she traced the shape of the muscles with her palm and she grinned with pleasure at the feel of his curls between her fingers. She blinked rapidly and forced herself to ignore the strange swooping feeling in her stomach while she examined his torso for cuts and bruises. After examining his head for bumps or cuts, finding none, she rolled him almost entirely onto her lap so she could remove his tunic entirely. She lowered him gently back onto the ground and tossed the ruined garment to the side.
    Desarae lifted first one arm and then the other examining them for injuries. She felt along their lengths and assured herself that none of his bones had broken. She held his large hand between the two of hers, using her thumbs to feel for damaged bones. He had beautiful hands, she thought and then imagined them vital and active. Desarae snatched her hands away and pressed her fists into her stomach where something like butterflies fluttered.
    “Oh, my,” she whispered. “Now I begin to understand Uncle’s journals.” A rough chuckle escaped her lips as she shook herself back to normal. She still had to get the rest of his wet clothes off of him so she could wash away the salt and sand. The effort was going to be a trial, albeit an unexpected, pleasure as well, she suspected.
    Before cutting off his trousers, she could not stop herself from tracing the shape of his biceps brachii with her increasingly bold touch. Her imagination, stretched through her uncle’s varied library, lingered on his shapely arms and taut stomach. She licked her dry lips and swallowed. After clearing her throat and taking several deep, calming breaths, she turned to contemplate his lower half, knowing what she would find there once she completed her task.
    “My thoughts are empty. My mind is blank,”