“Never saw him again that I remember,” he corrected. “Mahindar told me he’d been reported dead in Lahore, but that was when I was very ill, and I have little memory of anything I did during that time.”
“But Mahindar would know,” Juliana said. “He nursed you, didn’t he? He’s been with you through everything. Perhaps you ought to tell me exactly what happened to you.”
Elliot paused, but when Juliana thought he would begin pouring out the whole tale, he only said, “Have Mahindar tell you. He will be more coherent.”
“But if you had done such a dreadful thing, even if you didn’t remember, Mahindar would know about it. And he’d have told you.”
Elliot shook his head. “Mahindar might have kept it from me. From everyone.”
“Why on earth would he do that?”
“To protect me. If I don’t know what I’ve done, I won’t rush out and turn myself in to the police.”
He was far, far too calm about this. “Well, I refuse to believe it,” Juliana said. “What reason would you have for killing Mr. Stacy?”
Elliot’s shoulders went up in a small shrug. “Maybe I was taking my revenge on him.”
“This is all absurd. I will ask Mahindar to tell me the truth.”
“He lies for me very well. And to me.”
Juliana lifted her chin. “Not to me, he won’t. But we must do something about the Dalrymples. We cannot have the police rushing up here to arrest you.”
Elliot’s eyes narrowed as he at last looked at Juliana fully. “I agree. I’ve never heard of these Dalrymples.”
“They claim they lived in India and were great friends of Mr. Stacy. And that they’d met you at least once.”
“Stacy never mentioned them. And I never met them.”
“Interesting.” Juliana tapped her lip. “I believe we should learn more about them, and I believe I know who to ask. Now then, you said, before you dragged me through the caves, that you remembered why you’d come down to them this morning. What did you mean?”
“I’m not sure now. I had an idea, but…”
Juliana folded her hands. “I’d be ever so interested to learn, now that I’ve climbed through all the caves and am dirty and scratched.”
Elliot turned and looked straight at her, all interest in Mr. Stacy, the Dalrymples, and their horrible accusation gone. “But I’d rather go back to talking about children.” His focus was entirely on her again, penetrating any barrier Juliana might have raised, bypassing any stray thought. “I want children, and I want them with you. Do you want them with me?”
His look was heart-stopping. Juliana’s body warmed, the breeze in the shadows becoming nothing.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Chapter 14
The little smile she gave him when she answered, half coy, half innocent, made his blood incandescent.
He did not want Juliana involved in his past, did not want it to touch her. Juliana was his now, his future.
Elliot turned to face her as she leaned against the boulder, one of his knees going between her legs, leaned down, and kissed her.
She tasted of dust and the wind of the late afternoon. Her skin was damp with perspiration, cheeks streaked with dirt. She was achingly beautiful.
Elliot hadn’t bothered with breeches beneath his kilt, the weather being so warm. Juliana’s comment on his naked state below the tartan had twisted heat through him. She liked to look at him, had no embarrassment about her husband’s naked body. He’d always known she wasn’t a vaporish miss, and he loved her for it now. His cock bumped Juliana’s skirt through his plaid, wanting to be inside her, wanting them to be naked on the ground on this quiet, wild hill.
Dangerous. But he knew the watcher was gone, the noises of the countryside normal. Birds flitted in the brush and rabbits rustled, not worried about Elliot and Juliana.
Juliana’s mouth held warmth, her lips more skilled at kissing him now. She shaped them to his, and her tongue flicked across Elliot’s without him having to coax.
His cock tightened even more. He wanted her tongue on it, her lips closing around him while he skimmed his hands through her hair and thrust gently into her mouth. But that was the skill of a courtesan. Elliot would teach it to her, but not here, not yet.
Elliot broke the kiss, liking how Juliana kept her hands clasped behind his neck, her eyes half closed, as though not wanting to let him go. Her mouth was moist and red, and Elliot kissed it again.
Then he gently untwined her grip and sank down to kneel in front of her. Elliot bunched her skirt in his hands, the hem damp and muddy now, and pushed it upward.
Juliana reached down. “Elliot, what are you…?”
Elliot lifted the skirt and petticoat all the way to her hips. The bustle she wore today was smaller than her evening one, the stiff shaper plumping her skirt out at the back with a soft linen panel in the front.
He unfastened the hooks and pulled the bustle from her. He’d have to start dictating that she didn’t wear a bustle at all when they knew they’d be alone.
Elliot next undid the drawstring of her lawn drawers and tugged them down.
He barely heard her faint noise of protest. He studied his warm-scented Juliana, hair fiery red between her thighs, the curls already moist. He leaned forward and kissed her, breathing her in. “You’re wet for me.”
One slender finger traced his temple. “I cannot seem to help it.”
“I like you wet for me.” Elliot drew his tongue down the seam of her cleft. “I like tasting you.”
Her fingers moved in his hair, less controlled. “Someone might come.”
“Warn me.”
Elliot didn’t care if they did. Let these Highland people see him on his knees loving his wife. They’d know she belonged to him, know he’d go after them if they harmed her in any way.
Elliot held her skirts bunched in his hands. Smooth cotton brushed his face as he leaned into her, tongue dancing along her opening.
Juliana moved her feet apart without him asking. She smelled of honey and salt, and her own nectar. Elliot drew some onto his tongue, pausing to savor it.
Her little berry firmed as he breathed on it. Elliot, hands full of fabric, slid his tongue over her, opened his mouth to reach more of her. Her legs moved apart still farther, and there was her moisture, sweet and made for him.
“Dripping wet,” he murmured. Her swift intake of breath made him ache.
He thrust his mouth over her and drank. His tongue moved, his throat worked as he drew her into him. This woman was beauty in all things—heat, sex, innocence.
When he and she had been young, and Elliot had first become aware of the amazing eroticism of women, he’d fantasized about her. The day he’d helped her with the kite in the tree, when they’d both been sixteen, and she’d raised on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, he’d not only fallen in love with her, he’d wanted her in the most basic, primal way.
Her demure look, the blush as she pulled away from the kiss…She’d been so innocent. He’d wanted her bodice sliding down to her waist, baring the pink of her nipples, wanted her flush to deepen as he pushed up her skirts and did what he was doing now. He’d wanted to lay her down in that meadow and show her what it meant that they were man and woman.
Elliot had watched her run off, back to the children she’d been entertaining. But in his mind, they’d remained hidden behind the shrubbery, Elliot thrusting hard into her, claiming her, marking her, making her his.
“Mine,” he whispered now. He couldn’t help himself.
He licked and nipped her, and Juliana made sharp little noises, feminine and sweet. Elliot’s cock was pounding, but he ignored it to bask in the taste that was Juliana.
She rose on her tiptoes, her hands still in his hair, small fingers clenching. Elliot barely felt the tugs; he was surrounded by her and drowning in her. Her thighs were hot against his face, and he could scarcely breathe, but he didn’t care.
With his eyes closed, there was only darkness an
d the scent and taste of Juliana, the sound of her finding her highest pleasure.
She arched against him, betraying that she wanted his mouth. Elliot rewarded her, flickering his tongue inside her until more of her liquid flowed into him.
“I can’t…I can’t…”
Elliot held the fabric of her skirts against her body, tightly out of his way, as he drank her down.
Juliana drooped against the boulder, her legs bending. She swayed, her hands landing on Elliot’s shoulders to keep herself from falling.
Elliot finally granted her mercy. He wiped his mouth on a fold of his kilt and got to his feet, letting her skirts fall, and he plunged his mouth over hers. She kissed him back with strength that made his heart ache.
“We need to get indoors,” Elliot said. He kissed her hair, her face, her lips again. He needed to be inside her, needed it now.
“We’ll have to walk,” Juliana said. “I do not believe I can crawl back through the tunnels.”
“Then we walk.”
Elliot snatched up her bustle, grabbed her firmly by the elbow, and strode away with her, in search of the shortest route back to the house.
The summer sun didn’t set until after ten. Juliana lay naked in the big bed with Elliot, the last light of the day caressing the long planes of his body.
Elliot wasn’t asleep. He skimmed his fingertips down her damp side and around her breast, thumb finding and teasing her nipple.
He’d brought her in here, stripped off her clothes and his, laid her on the bed, and made love to her for two hours.
Now he stretched out on his side, his half erection heavy against her thigh. Elliot’s gray eyes were soft in the light, but he looked nowhere near tired.
Juliana said softly, “When I was told what happened in the marriage bed, my stepmother mentioned none of this.”
Elliot lifted the weight of her breast, caressing the tightness of her nipple. “None of what?” His head was on her pillow, the covers long ago kicked off.
“None of what we’ve done today. I was told to lie quietly on my back and let you adjust me as necessary, and then you would come in on top of me.” She smiled at her questions—What will I do in the time between that and when he spills his seed? The whole discussion seemed long ago and innocent now. “You would derive pleasure in the act, but I probably wouldn’t. I was to hold and comfort you when you released, because at that moment, a man was, for the only time in his life, weaker than a woman.”
Elliot laughed, a deep-voiced, masculine laugh. “Was this in a book?”
“I expect so.” Come to think of it, she couldn’t picture Gemma lying back so tamely, and Ainsley had said, with a twinkle in her eye, that the marriage bed could be a fine place. “But no one mentioned dining room tables, or what you did outdoors today, or me wanting to hold you in so many different ways.”
“Mmm. What sort of different ways?”
Juliana ran her hand over his shoulder. “I never thought I’d need to touch my husband at all. But you are so very touchable.” Juliana glided her fingertips across his knotted shoulders, tracing the scars that lined them. “I don’t like that they hurt you.”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
But it had hurt him. Very much indeed. “You’re safe now,” Juliana said. “Here in this house, with me, you’re safe.”
“I know that.”
“But this morning, you thought you were back in the prison.”
Elliot twined his hand through hers, stilling her touch. “It happens.”
“Quite often?”
Elliot’s eyes lost their warmth while he kissed her fingers then let them go. “Not as much now.”
Juliana skimmed her touch across the tattoo around his bicep then moved to his flat nipples, his wiry hair catching the last of the sunlight. “I want you to be well.”
“I’m well when I’m with you, Juliana.”
“I want you to be well even when you’re not with me.”
Elliot closed his hand around her wrist and gave her a heart-stopping smile. “Then you’ll have to stay with me always.”
“Well, of course. I did marry you. But seriously, Elliot, you know that some days I will have to leave you alone, and you, me.”
He caressed her wrist, but didn’t let go. “I don’t know if I will ever heal as much you want me to.”
“Perhaps if you talk about it…”
“No.” His voice grew hard. “I don’t want to remember, or talk it over, or dwell on it. I want to be in the here and now. They never knew about you. They could never take you away from me.”
Juliana wasn’t quite sure what he meant by this last, but it made sense to her that he would want to push aside bad memories to enjoy the safety and calm of being home. But she also knew that the distance she felt between herself and Elliot wouldn’t lessen until she understood what had happened to him.
Or perhaps she expected too much. Many a husband and wife had distance between them that they never closed. The man stayed at his business or in his club; the wife made her calls and planned her social engagements. They came together when they hosted a gathering or attended one together, but only briefly. Juliana had friends who barely communicated with their husbands at all. They’d conceived children with these men but barely knew them.
Elliot said he wanted more children. Juliana had seen hunger in his eyes when he’d announced that desire.
She let her hand slide from Elliot’s chest to his tight abdomen, touching the indentation of his navel. Elliot released her wrist as she traced below his abdomen to the organ that was again as hard as when he’d made love to her not a quarter of an hour ago.
Elliot laced his hands behind his head and rolled over onto his back, giving her full access to his body.
“So you find you want to touch me, do you?” he asked, sinful heat in his eyes.
Juliana had felt him wonderfully inside her, had seen his hardness dark and beautiful, but she’d not touched it until now. She daringly dipped her hand to his warm balls, which became tight against her palm.
Elliot lay rigidly, as though he forced himself to remain still, his hands tucked firmly behind his head. He made a noise of pleasure as Juliana drew her fingers up either side of his shaft, liking the satin smoothness of his skin. In the dying light, he was dark with wanting, heavy in her hand.
She closed her fingers around him and squeezed, and a louder groan escaped Elliot’s lips. The tip reddened as she drew her hand to it. The head was different from the shaft, she found as she traced it, more giving, but at the same time stiff and warm.
Juliana wondered what he tasted like. Her thoughts shot back to Elliot licking and drinking her on the path in the woods. She’d never felt anything like that in her life. The heat of his mouth, the friction of his tongue…she squirmed to remember.
She leaned down and licked his tip.
“God, Juliana, you’ll kill me.” The words were soft, tight.
Juliana brushed her tongue over him again, liking the warm salt taste of his skin. She enjoyed the various textures of him too, the slight sponginess of the tip, the edge of the head, the straight sides of the shaft. The coarse hair at the base tickled her tongue, his balls like warm velvet.
Elliot’s abdomen rose and fell with his breath, and she couldn’t resist moving upward to lick his navel. Her hair fell forward, pooling around him.
His breath went out in a grating sigh. One hand found her hair, bunching it in his fist. “No, they couldn’t take you away from me.”
The words were so soft Juliana wasn’t certain she heard them. She circled his navel with her tongue then traced down the line of hair that led back to his staff.
She began tasting him again, moving her tongue up and down the sides of his shaft, dropping little kisses all the way up to the tip. Then she raised her head and smiled at him, thinking he’d laugh at how silly she was.
The look on Elliot’s face made her stop. His eyes held pure carnality, raw need. He was a beautiful man
, naked on his back, his tanned body spread for her on the sheets.
She had time for only one delicious glance before Elliot seized her under her arms and dragged her up his body. His mouth opened over hers, and his hands parted her legs.
Elliot lifted her hips a little, then sank her down onto him, his hardness entering her and rising high inside her. Juliana gasped, the position opening her, her body arching as more of him went into her.
Elliot’s hips were moving then, his hands strong on her waist. Juliana felt joy build within her, the tight spiraling where nothing was real but Elliot inside her and the feelings in her heart.
As cries escaped her lips, Elliot rolled her over, the mattress crackling, and drove down into her. His eyes were fixed with a determined, almost mad light as their bodies came together.
Juliana remembered crying out, then Elliot shouting, then both of them collapsing onto cool sheets.
Elliot landed next to her, pulling her back into his embrace. Lassitude and peace struck her, and Juliana fell into a pit of sleep.
Elliot jumped awake.
Nothing had moved. Nothing had changed. And yet…
Moonlight mixed with lingering twilight outside the window, keeping darkness at bay. The half-light made Juliana’s already pale skin white as marble.
Her quiet breathing hadn’t woken him. Nor had any shout in the corridor—not McGregor and Komal in one of their English-Punjabi arguments, not Hamish bellowing something down the hall. The house was silent, the frogs, crickets, and night birds outside filling the dusk with soothing music.
A clock in the hall, which Juliana had insisted be cleaned, wound, and set, chimed twelve times. Midnight. An enchanted hour.
Elliot rose noiselessly from the bed. He could move like a ghost, skills learned as a tracker and hunter settling on him without him having to think about it.
Juliana slept on, undisturbed. Elliot pulled on his shirt, wrapped his kilt around his waist, grabbed his boots, and went into the hall.