“There is no you and me,” he stated.
“There’s you and me in this hammock,” she returned. And she moved her leg to touch that hot, vital part of him. At her touch, she saw darkness in his eyes, like the madness in her blood. “Please, Thorn. Please.”
He leaned closer and said against her lips, “What are you asking for, India?”
The hammock was swaying, and with it, his body against hers. The muscles in his shoulder rolled under her fingertips, the fine linen of his shirt sliding over his skin.
His lips opened against hers, and again his hand rounded her breast and put delicious pressure on her nipple. India clung to him, her belly strangely hot, her legs trembling.
She liked the feeling.
Very much.
When Thorn raised his head again, she saw a flare of wildness in his eyes.
“I want all of it,” she said, and gasped, because his fingers were skimming her side, the intimacy of that touch undeniable. “You and me.” She blinked. “I mean, you and I.”
Thorn had pulled aside her bodice again, his mouth descending to her breast. She arched her back and moaned. “I need. . . . Oh Thorn, I need . . .”
He moved to the other breast, and she lost control of whatever it was she had meant to say. One of his hands was sweeping up one of her legs, leaving raw hunger in its wake. The fever swept over her again: she wanted his taste, his smell, his consuming, ravishing kiss.
A foggy thought occurred to her: if she was going to play the trollop, she might as well do that. She let her leg fall open, inviting his caress.
Thorn’s teeth grazed her nipple and at the same moment his fingers curved inward. She was writhing against him, words flowing out of her mouth, an endless stream of pleas that would have embarrassed her except . . .
They didn’t.
It felt right. Like a natural thing, like the right thing. “I know you’re a gentleman under the skin, for all you say to the contrary.” The words caught in her throat. “But I’m asking you, Thorn. I’m—”
“What are you asking me for?”
He was looking down at her seriously, as if one hand wasn’t resting on the soft skin of her inner thigh. Her body was frozen, waiting for those fingers to inch higher.
“A gentleman would stop now,” she said, daring him.
His fingers drifted another inch, stopped again. The feeling raged through her, and she trembled from head to foot.
“A man who didn’t care about society would continue, because the woman in his arms was—was agreeable,” she whispered.
A dusky chuckle drifted into the air. “ ‘Agreeable’?”
His fingers drifted again, and the air whooshed from her lungs. “Please,” she said, her voice a thread of sound. She hated whispering. She just couldn’t seem to find the breath to make a forceful demand.
“Be sure of what you ask for,” Thorn said, his voice dark. “If you continue to beg me, India, I will seduce you, and I won’t be sorry. But I won’t marry you simply because my cock has been inside you.”
India’s heart quickened at his words, although she should have been outraged that anyone would say such a vulgar thing to her. But she wasn’t outraged. She was exhilarated.
“I do not want to marry you,” she said, being as clear as she could. She had managed to tug his shirt free, and the warm, sleek skin of his back was under her fingers. “I don’t even like you very much.”
“I like you,” he muttered against her lips. “But I have as good as committed myself to marry another.”
India was tired of talking about marriage, or indeed of talking at all. She wiggled down, which made the hammock sway, just enough so that her face was under his. “I want to do all the things in that book.”
His mouth quirked, even though his eyes were hungry. “All of them?”
She thought about it for a second, and nodded. “Except the one with two women. I’m not interested in that.”
“Damn,” he muttered, but she saw laughter in his eyes.
“You taught me how to kiss, and that didn’t make me want to marry you. Now you can teach me this,” she said, feeling as if she were about to jump out of her skin. “If you won’t, just tell me, because—”
The fierce look he gave her made the words catch in her throat. “Because what?”
“Because I’ll find another man who’s not a gentleman,” India said, not letting him intimidate her.
“You’d find another man,” he said, slowly and ominously.
Though he looked as if he were about to pounce on her, India didn’t flinch. Thorn liked to boast that he wasn’t a gentleman, but he was about to behave like one. He was going to refuse her. He wouldn’t take a lady’s dearest possession, her virtue.
She slid her palms up his back, under his shirt, and announced, “I am not a virgin.” She was whispering again, but really, how could a woman say such an outrageous thing, other than in a whisper?
She wasn’t accustomed to lying, and it was surprisingly difficult to lie to Thorn.
He stared down at her silently for a few long minutes, and at last said, “Do I have to find some scoundrel and kill him for taking you without your permission?”
She shook her head. Something imperceptible changed in the air around them. He shifted his weight, just slightly, but it was so delicious that a shudder coursed through her.
“I will not do this in a hammock,” he stated. His mouth drifted across her cheekbone and she felt the heated touch of his tongue.
She said, with a little gasp, “All right.”
“However, we can begin in the hammock,” he said, his voice like a purr. And with that, his hand swept up her leg and didn’t stop. Didn’t dandle and caress, or trace patterns on her inner thigh. Instead, it went straight to her sweetest spot, which had in truth never been touched by anyone but herself.
Now his fingers slid into her softness, plundering her without asking permission, taking what they wanted. Fire rushed up her body as he unerringly pressed down in just the right spot. India opened her mouth to scream, but he put his lips over hers. With the kiss, and what he was doing with his hands . . . she squirmed under him, breathless, unable to keep her legs from moving. Her fingers tightened on his back, thinking dimly that she wanted his weight, that feeling, the way it was when he—
One of his broad fingers sank into her and she tore her mouth from his because she was on fire and the sounds in her throat had to come out. . . .
And she came. Like that. In a hammock. The orgasms she gave herself were nothing to this one, not with Thorn beside her, one muscled leg pinning her down, the hammock swaying, his fingers . . . his tongue in her mouth.
“Thorn,” she gasped, not knowing what she wanted to say. “Thorn!”
His fingers slipped away and the hammock lurched. Then all his delicious weight was on top of her, elbows on the sides of her face, and he was kissing her with a fierce, consuming hunger that turned her nerves to fire. She had just come, and already she was shaking, her heart pounding, her hands flying over him. Instinctively she pushed up against his heat and strength.
He tore his mouth away, but India was beside herself, her breath coming in little sobs. Thorn wound a hand in her hair and pulled her head toward him. His lips brushed hers, the hammock swayed, and his body ground against hers. A desperate sound broke from her throat and drifted into the air.
“You will not be able to be quiet, will you?” Thorn asked, his eyes smoldering. “You will never be silent.”
India didn’t know how to reply. Her mind was clouded, absorbed by the chiseled contour of his mouth. She arched toward him again and licked his lower lip.
His eyelids dipped, and he answered his own question. “Never. You’re in it with your entire being, aren’t you, India? All of you.”
India was certain of only one thing: she was completely uninterested in a comparison of herself to other women. She felt at once satisfied and unfinished, replete and hungry. “I can be silent,” she sa
id with a gasp.
A half smile curled his lips. He tilted his hips. The hammock rolled and his weight pressed between her legs. A moan slipped from her throat.
“You’re lying,” he said, whispering it against her throat as he nipped and kissed her. “There aren’t many women like you, India.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” she cried, exasperated. “Are we to make love in this hammock?”
“No.”
Her heart plummeted into her slippers, and her hand slid from his back. “Oh.”
“We shall make love in my bed,” he murmured. “In that red bedroom you made for me.”
“I can’t make love to you in that bed!”
He chuckled, and she felt the quake of it against her skin. “Yes, you can.”
“Making love in your bedchamber would be wrong.”
“Wrong how?” It was miraculous, the way he could maneuver in the hammock without making it turn over and dump the two of them on the lawn. He pulled away her bodice again and the pale cream of her breast fell into his hand, overflowing his palm. She couldn’t see what he was doing because his hair fell forward.
But she could feel.
What she felt made her start to pant even as she tried to explain. “Your bedchamber is for your wife. For a man and his wife. We’re not that, and this is just one night, so . . .” Her voice trailed off when she forgot what she was saying.
Thorn raised his head and swiped a thumb across her nipple. She squeaked. “I can’t make love to you outdoors, India. That means my room.” He rolled fluidly from the hammock and pulled her straight into his arms. Just like that, they were both standing.
“Not in the house,” she managed.
“Why not?”
“As I just said, the house . . . the bedchamber is for you and your wife,” she tried again, stumbling into words as she tried to read his eyes. “You’ll make memories there, and I don’t want any of those memories to be—” She broke off awkwardly.
He gave her that ironic half smile of his. “Lady Xenobia India St. Clair, are you telling me that I’m not allowed to bring a mistress to Starberry Court?”
“I am telling you precisely that.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I made a home for you. You mustn’t sully it.”
“ ‘Sully it’?”
India was starting to feel distinctly querulous, as well as faintly ridiculous. Had she really allowed a man to put his hands between her legs . . . in the open air? It seemed that she had. The excuse of “an error in judgment” didn’t quite cover that foolishness.
She shook out her skirts, wondering if her hairpins were all lost. “I think we should—”
Her words stopped in a little squeak, because suddenly she was over Thorn’s shoulder and he was striding back up the hill. “Put me down!” she insisted. “Thorn!”
He just laughed. “We’ll be at the gatehouse in a moment. And by the way, I’m not a man to ever keep a mistress after I’m married. And I should also tell you that I have never made love without a French letter: you will face no danger of an unwanted child from me.”
“The gatehouse?” One of his hands was holding her bottom, cupping it tightly, and it felt . . . She began wiggling. “You must let me down. This is absurd!”
“You’re surprisingly light, considering your curves,” he said cheerfully, and that hand curled a bit tighter.
India pushed herself away from his back. “Are you saying that I’m fat? Let me down!”
His long strides had taken them from the grass onto the gravel path leading to the gatehouse. “Thorn!”
“I’d have to investigate more closely to know whether you’re carrying extra weight,” he said, his tone silky smooth.
“You certainly will not!” India wrenched herself up at precisely the moment that he swung her to her feet, so she lurched backward and fell against the door of the gatehouse. She looked up at Thorn, prepared to blister his ears as he had never been scolded before.
But he was looking down at her, and her words evaporated.
“I want you,” he stated. “I shall have you, Lady Xenobia India. We’re not contemplating marriage, because you will marry better than I, and I am all but promised to another. But we shall give each other pleasure tonight. Have you any clarifications to add?”
She shook her head, unable to move her eyes from his face. Everything she did, all her adult life, had been regulated and disciplined, and directed toward the best possible marriage.
This had nothing to do with marriage.
This was for her.
“Do you know, I’ve never made love to a woman I trusted,” he said conversationally.
“What?”
“You understand a contract,” he said, reaching behind her to push open the door. “You are not trying to entrap me, because I know damn well that you’re wet between the legs thinking about me, not my money.”
He made her sound like a loose woman. Which, it seemed, she was.
Or rather, she would be as soon as she did this, because ladies did not make love to men to whom they weren’t married.
Ever.
She watched as he pushed open the shutters to let in the fading sunlight. He turned to look at her, and she was surprised by the ferocity in his eyes. “I will ask once more if someone took your virtue by force, India.” His voice had gone low and ominous again. He was ready to fight—no, to squash—every man who had offered her insult.
“No,” she said, giving him that new smile that existed only for him.
He said something she didn’t hear, and then she was in his arms and they were kissing again, so frantically that she couldn’t breathe. His shirt was already out of his breeches, and she slid her hands around his waist. He pulled back and threw the shirt over his head.
He was magnificent, bunched muscle narrowing to a waist without an inch of extra flesh on it. Not at all like her body. She frowned and reached out, tracing a white slash across his abdomen with her finger.
“My body’s covered with scars,” he said, glancing down.
“I’m sorry,” India said softly, bending to put a kiss where her finger had been. Then she straightened, turned, and climbed the narrow stairs to the bedchamber that she’d furnished for a gatekeeper, should Thorn ever hire one. The room held little more than a bed big enough for a man and his wife.
She had pushed open one shutter when a pair of hands slid around her waist and Thorn’s body came hard and warm against her back. “May I unbutton your gown?” His lips were on her neck, and she leaned back against him and reveled in a feeling of being outside herself.
She didn’t feel like Lady Xenobia, daughter of a marquess. At this moment, she was just India, just herself, making love to someone who had no expectations of her other than her own pleasure.
“Yes,” she said, her voice so husky that she cleared her throat and tried again. “Yes, you may.”
The shell-pink gown fell to her feet, followed by her corset. India turned about slowly, aware that her chemise was transparent. Compared to many fashionable women, she was generously shaped. When one grows up hungry . . . well, she liked to eat, and she made no apologies for that. And even though she sometimes thought she had too many curves, she didn’t care enough to go hungry again.
“Damnation,” Thorn growled.
India felt a smile form on her face without her volition. Her shape might not suit current fashion, but Thorn obviously appreciated it. She reached down, just as he had done with his shirt, pulled her chemise over her head, and tossed it aside.
Chapter Nineteen
Thorn took one look at India, who stood before him wearing no more than a pair of silk stockings tied just below her plump thighs, and knew that the control on which he had prided himself since he bedded his first woman was about to break. He wouldn’t be able to make love to India by hovering over her on rigid arms, analyzing the way her head turned, or the sounds that came from her mouth.
He was going to lose control and feast on her body. Sh
e had gorgeous breasts, a slightly rounded belly, lush hips, and legs that didn’t stop.
The curse that came from his mouth was heartfelt. It wasn’t just her body. It was the way she was looking at him, slightly amused, confident, with desire in her eyes. Her long hair was tousled and fell around her shoulders and over one breast. She looked like a dream, like Venus herself come to earth.
“Why do you smell so good?” he asked.
“My perfume is scented with moonflower. Aren’t you going to remove your breeches?” Her voice rolled over his skin like heated honey.
Her lips were dark cherries, swollen from his kisses. He wanted to push her onto her knees and beg her to take him in her mouth. Thank God she wasn’t a virgin. No virgin ever looked at a man as she looked at him now, as if she could lap him up.
He had to pull himself together. “I suspect you don’t need me to tell you how beautiful you are?”
Her lips curved, and the only thoughts in his mind were outrageous. He reached down and pulled off his boots.
“A woman can never hear that too often.”
“You are damned incredible,” he said bluntly, wrenching down his breeches and drawers in one movement, keeping his eyes on her.
She seemed entirely at ease. The thought that she must have stood like this before more than one man flitted through his mind, but he brushed it away.
Her eyes drifted down his naked body and caught at his groin. Her tongue touched her bottom lip, and he nearly groaned aloud at the sight of that pink tip, his cock sending a wild pulse of lust through him.
“Do you really want to try everything Feather did with his various inamoratas?” he asked, forcing his mouth to form words.
Her eyes came back to his face slowly, heavy-lidded but not sleepy. She let a smile answer him.
“Let’s start here.” He took a step forward and they were skin to skin, a second later tumbling on the bed. He bent one knee so he didn’t crush her with his weight, and then he was touching her everywhere, his mouth following his hands.
Her breasts: making her cry out.