When she was done, Ruby asked for a towel. Thork brought one over, but before he gave it to her, he pulled her to a standing position, then soaped a washcloth lying at the edge of the tub. The tub water reached only as far as her knees.
Ruby gazed at him questioningly, her face flaming with embarrassment to be standing exposed before him.
“You did not wash there,” he said hoarsely, pointing to the vee at her thighs. “Move your legs apart and do it whilst I watch. Slowly.”
“No,” Ruby choked out and tried to get out of the tub.
“Yea,” he demanded softly and forced her to stand in place. He spread her upper thighs several inches apart, then handed her the soapy cloth with an implacable expression on his face. “Do it, sweetling.”
She did. And would have died of mortification if she hadn’t soon realized that her actions had cracked the composure of Thork’s self-control. A pulse-beat in his straining neck told her how hard he tried to appear unaffected by her actions. His shaft attested to his rock-hard readiness.
“Now can I dry off?” she rasped out finally.
“Nay. Stay where you are.”
Thork took a bucket and emptied the tub’s water out the window until Ruby stood in water barely up to her ankles. What was he up to now?
Ruby got her answer soon enough as Thork knelt before the tub and gripped her ankles in his hands, then moved them two feet apart. He lathered her legs from her ankles to the top of her thighs. Then he smiled wickedly at her, took a sharp knife in his hands and began to shave her legs.
“Do not look at me so, sweetling. This was your idea, not mine,” he growled, “but I must admit I have been picturing the shaving in my dreams for weeks.” When she did not speak, Thork chuckled softly and went on, “Sometimes I shaved you as you lay, arms and creamed legs widespread, on that flat boulder by Dar’s pond. Then, too, I visualized you lying on the masthead of my ship with each lathered thigh on a rail of the prow opening. My favorite, though, was me sitting naked on a chair and you likewise nude, but astraddle the arms of the chair, with my hardened staff just barely touching the dew of your woman’s opening, and then I soaped you…”
Ruby was speechless under the onslaught of his softly spoken fantasies. Her blood felt thick. Her skin, all over, seemed to expand.
Thork rambled on seductively with his sexual images as he slowly, methodically, shaved her legs with all the concentration of a veteran barber. If occasionally the hair of his bent head brushed the nipples of her breasts or her pubic hair, Ruby couldn’t tell whether it was deliberate or not. All she knew was that his actions had ignited a fire in her which seared her skin and centered in a tiny pleasure point of her body which seemed to swell and ache for touch. Ruby bit her lip to keep from moaning.
“Why do you tremble, sweetling?” Thork asked with smug delight as he wielded his razor-sharp blade on the inside of her upper thigh. “Do you not trust me to be careful?”
Ruby said nothing, unable to utter a word. Suddenly the fingertips of one hand which had been encircling her thigh to hold it steady inadvertently touched her feminine inner folds.
Ruby gasped.
Thork’s passion-hungry eyes shot up in surprise, then delved deeper for confirmation. He moaned hoarsely and dropped the knife on the floor.
“You are wet,” he declared with a groan.
“From my bath,” she choked out.
Thork laughed. “Nay! ‘Tis for me, dearling. For me!”
He turned and picked up the teddy. “Put it on for me,” he said huskily. His face was flushed and his lips parted slightly in anticipation. Ruby didn’t need to look down to see how much he wanted her.
“No,” she refused recklessly, fighting with all her fast-fading willpower the fire that flamed between her legs.
“I will not force you, but you will put it on—one way or another,” Thork promised tautly.