LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Two

      ‘Let me help you.’ Her voice was soft, soothing, entirely at odds with the excited turmoil inside her. She’d got him this far, upstairs and into his room. But he’d done nothing to undress himself, so she’d do it for him.

      He forgot to restrain her hands this time when she worked the buttons free. She pressed her advantage, slight as it was. ‘You came to the tavern to forget something tonight. I saw it in your face out there.’ She slid the waistcoat over his shoulders, down his arms and tossed it aside as if she undressed men every night. Pavia pulled his shirttails loose, praying at some point, he would take over. She would soon be in over her head despite whatever theoretical knowledge she had gleaned growing up in her uncle’s zenana, but even that was scarce little. She had not been in India since she was twelve. ‘You are hurting.’ Her hand stopped over his heart. ‘In here. I’ve seen men like you before.’

      She had his shirt off him in moments, her hands pressed against his chest. She appealed to whatever sense of fair play he might possess—a trade. ‘You helped me down there tonight, now I will help you forget whatever it is that’s on your mind.’ She raised up on her tiptoes and took his mouth in a soft kiss. ‘Then, in the morning, we will be even. All debts between us paid.’ Such a bargain should appeal to a military man.

      Under her mouth, he gave a harsh chuckle. ‘I will never be able to wipe my slate clean again.’

      Ah, so she’d been right about the demons. Leave it to her luck to seduce the one man who didn’t have seduction on his mind. She twined her arms about his neck. She’d come too far to give up now. ‘Then erase it just for tonight.’ She whispered the temptation. ‘There is comfort here, free for the taking.’

      She moved against him, kissing him again as if he’d already accepted her offer, her terms, and this time he gave over. His hands settled at her hips, holding her to him, his mouth opened to her, letting the kiss seduce him, draw him in to the fantasy until he became an active participant, kissing her back, with tongue and teeth at her ear, her neck, the caress of his mouth drawing heady sensations from her—sensations she had not expected. This was meant to be a job. She’d assumed it would be joyless. That was not the case.

      The kiss was consuming. Pavia let the world shrink to encompass only this room, only this man, only this time as he took the kiss away from her, making it into his seduction at last, his hand in her hair, gathering it at the nape of her neck, his mouth insistent on hers, and her mouth answering with an insistent hunger of its own. Then they were both falling, to the bed, into the void of the night. Had he taken her down or had she pulled him? She didn’t know, she didn’t care. He was over her, her body warm as it stretched beneath him, all lush curves and slim lines against the hard muscle of him. The dusky peaks of her breasts arched up to brush his chest, teasing themselves into erectness. Her thighs cradled him, inviting him. This business of lovemaking was easier than she’d imagined, far easier than getting him up the stairs, and she knew she’d been lucky in her choice.

      He was a deliberate lover, his body savouring the slow sheathing of itself in hers, making it clear this was not a fantasy to rush. He did not want to lose himself for just mere minutes, but for a night, for hours at a time. She gave a delicate moan beneath him at his first breaching, her body stirring in discomfort and then in accommodation. She arched against him in an untutored squirm that made him laugh, a warm, intimate chuckle. ‘Easy now, I know what you want. Be patient. I will take you there.’ His mouth hovered above hers, his hand pushing her hair back from her forehead in a gentle gesture as his hips began to move, and his body picked up an ancient rhythm of easement and surge.

      She joined him in the intimate waltz, letting him set the pace, letting him drive them towards ecstasy’s cliffs as she lifted and fell with him. Her hands dug into his shoulders, her legs wrapped tight about him, holding him close, her body desperate for the promised fulfilment that hovered on the horizon they’d created. His exhalations suggested he was nearly there and she sensed that he was somehow with her and beyond her. When the pleasure took him, she was left alone, that same pleasure eluding her. But she could not complain as his chest heaved and his muscled arms trembled with his release. She had got what she’d come for.

      It was done. Completely and most thoroughly. Not that she’d been any judge before, but she was now. Her nameless lover had comported himself well. She could have asked for nothing better. Pavia imagined this would become the measure against which any other lover would be compared. He would be measured against this golden-haired, broad-shouldered god of a man who lay sleeping beside her in post-coital exhaustion. She had chosen well. Maybe too well. Instead of leaping out of bed while he slept and running back to her inn a few streets away, she wanted to stay. She wanted to watch him sleep, wanted to trace the musculature of his chest with her finger, wanted to indulge her imagination in guessing his story. Who was he? What was he doing here? Where was he going? Answering those questions broke her rules. No names, no regrets, no tomorrows.

      It was the novelty of him that tempted her to linger. She’d not thought a man could be so beautiful. She’d not expected to enjoy his body, seeing it, touching it. It was well muscled and smooth, his chest tanned and devoid of coarse hair, perhaps from campaigns spent sleeping out of doors and bathing in foreign rivers. Pavia let her imagination run wild, shamelessly romanticising the life of a soldier. Not just any soldier, an officer of some rank if she read his uniform aright. There’d been plenty of the East India Company men at their home in India, enough for her to know an officer’s uniform when she saw one.

      She’d not been prepared either for the surge of emotion the act had raised. She’d expected a messy, painful interlude of grunts and thrusts until the deed was done. There had been discomfort, but nothing unbearable and nothing that had lasted once the initial shock had receded, replaced by something, if not breathtaking and heart-stopping, certainly pleasant in its own right. It had been different for him, however. For him, it had been breathtaking and heart-stopping. She’d seen it in his face as his release came over him like a wave. A nugget of irrational, womanly pride had formed in realisation that she’d been the cause of it. Whatever had haunted him in the taproom had been temporarily exorcised.

      He stirred beside her, his blue eyes searching for her. Somewhere in the room, a log crackled and split in the fireplace. His arm reached for her, drawing her against his side, her head cushioned on the place where his shoulder met chest. This was one more thing she’d not counted on—this easy intimacy of lying naked with a man. She didn’t want to question it, didn’t want to over think it and become self-conscious.

      ‘I’ve

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