Everything I Ever Wanted (29 page)

Once under the covers, she was met by a muffled chuckle with certain lascivious undertones. "Cold, is it?" South asked.

"Mmmm."

"I could build a fire for you."

"Yes, please."

South found India's slim shoulder and pressed her onto her back. He moved so that one of his long legs partially covered both of hers. His erection pressed her hip. South lowered his head, found her mouth, and nudged it open with his lips. He kissed her once, twice, tugging lightly on her lower lip as he pulled away. He kissed her cheek, the line of her jaw. His fingers sifted through her hair, and he kissed the corners of her eyes.

His breath stirred tendrils of hair near her temple, then her ear. He whispered, "Warmer?"

"Mmmm."

South smiled. His teeth caught the tip of her earlobe, and he worried it gently. She moved under him sinuously, her fingertips sliding along his shoulders, then his upper arms, the sole of her foot rubbing his calf. He nuzzled the curve of her neck and felt the vibration of her small cry against his lips.

India helped him with her shift, raising it first above her knees, then lifting her bottom so that it slid easily to her waist. She spread her legs for him, cradling his hips with her thighs. He did not enter her but slid lower instead, and dragged his mouth along the curved neckline of her shift, then over the thin batiste until he found her nipple. His tongue laved the puckered aureole. The fabric clung to her breast, gently abrading it as she moved under him.

She felt a heaviness steal over her that had nothing to do with South's weight on her body. It was there in her breasts, her belly, her arms and legs. It squeezed her heart and kept her eyes closed. It was there, especially between her thighs, where she was wet and warm.

That would change later. She knew that now. South would change it for her, making her light with his touch, making her feel as if she were no longer grounded but required his weight to keep her so.

India's throat arched as South's attentions moved to her other breast. He suckled her through the gown, drawing the fabric and her flesh into his mouth, drawing deeply until she sipped air to catch her breath.

She was not withdrawn from him now, South realized. That he should think of it at this moment struck him as both odd and ill-timed, but it was there at the periphery of his mind and would not be put away easily. It made him smile, this peculiar notion, because he embraced the idea that she could come to him so honestly in this manner, without guile or fear, and that he could have her heart laid open to him, if not her thoughts.

When he kissed India again, she tasted the sweetness of his smile against her lips. It started thus, she remembered. He would clear her mind of everything but the wanting of his touch. She kissed him back, drawing in the taste of him with her lips and teeth and tongue, and felt the lightness come upon her gradually as the dawn. It began with her smile.

India's arms slipped around South's shoulders, and she whispered against his mouth, "Shall you love me now, Matthew?"

India heard the words with a kind of horror. Had she been able to look anywhere else, she would have, but South's fingers had threaded into her thick hair and cradled her head, preventing any sideways movement. Her mouth remained slightly parted; her eyes remained open. "I am sorry, my lord. I did not mean that is, I"

South bent his head and nudged her lips with his. "You don't want me to love you?"

"No not" Even as she said it, her thighs were parting wider for him and his hips were lifting and settling, and then he was easing himself inside her. Slowly. With infinite care. So unlike the first time he had come into her that nothing about it was anticipated. Here was gentleness. And cautious attention. For a moment she allowed herself to do nothing but feel. Toward that end India closed her eyes briefly and pressed her lips together. Instead of a sigh, there was a hum of pleasure.

"Are you sorry?" South searched her face. "I hope you are not. I want to love you, India."

"I only meant"

He kissed her again."I know what you meant." He could feel her accommodating his entry, conforming to the intimate pressure he brought to bear. She held him snugly, hot and tight. Her body pulsed around him, yet she remained motionless, her dark eyes fixed on his. "Let me," he said against her mouth. "Let me love you."

At first there was only her faint nod; then he began to move, withdrawing once before he sank himself deeply inside her, and that was when she said, "Yes, Matthew."

He groaned softly, aware that she caught the sound of it with her lips. Her arms tightened around him; her hips lifted. He thrust, and then he thrust again. India rose to meet him. South buried his face in the curve of her neck and breathed deeply of the fragrance that was her skin and her hair. Her nails made tracks along his spine and down his arms. His muscles bunched under her touch. She left fire in her wake so that he knew the path her fingers had traveled long after they had moved on.

India let him love her. With his mouth. His hands. His cock. She did not think of what it meant to him, or even of what it meant to her. She did not think at all. These were moments like no other, with the lightness of pleasure upon her, and the sense that nothing mattered so much as giving herself up to them.

When she made small inarticulate sounds at the back of her throat, he pressed her to give them full voice. "I want to hear you," he said. "Let me hear."

When she closed her eyes and would have disappeared into herself, he called her back. "Look at us," he said. "See what you do to me."

When she arched under him, her body lifting and tensing and straining for release, he countered with his own."Yes," he said. "Yes."

India felt as if she might be lost if not for South's body covering hers. He kept her in place, the warmth of him there on her skin, at her hip, her shoulder, her breast. He made her aware of the limits of her self , separate from him yet intrinsically, powerfully of his flesh.

Pleasure uncoiled in her, and moments later it was the same for him. They shared a single shudder and sought the same breath. Their bodies surged a final time before they lay quiet. There were occasional aftershocks between them, rippling contractions of muscle and sinew and skin, where memories of pleasure were suddenly triggered and fired. India felt such a frisson slip under her skin as South removed himself and turned to lie on his back. Embarrassed that she could still experience his touch so deeply, she burrowed under the covers as if it were a mere chill she felt.

South was having none of it. He reached for India and made a place beside him where she could nest, her head on his shoulder, her hip touching his. His encouragement to join him was all she required. She did not resist. South bent his head and brushed her silky hair with his lips. It was like kissing sunlight.

"I would not have you far from me just yet," he said. "Unless you wish it. Do you?"

India, shook her head.

"Good."

She closed her eyes. "I have had this dream," she said quietly. "The deep warmth of a bed. This precise embrace. My heart my heart at ease." India said nothing for a moment, waiting for the ache in her throat to pass. "The reality is more profoundly satisfying than the dream, my lord."

"My lord?"

"South."

He gave her shoulder a light squeeze.

"Matthew," she said. The vibration of his chuckle against her ear was pleasant. "I confess my dreams made no allowance for you."

His smile was wryly tender. "You cut me to the quick."

"The fault lies with my imagination. You were outside of it."

"And now?" he asked.

India's quiet response came at length. "And now you fill it" She turned on him quickly, rising up on one elbow. "Forgive me," she said. "I should not have"

South placed two fingers over her lips."You must always say whatever you like," he said. "And make no apology for rendering me quite speechless. It is not a thing often done. My friends and family would pay you well to learn the trick of it." Behind his fingers, her smile was tremulous. "I have never thought myself lacking in imagination, India. I once passed eight months aboard a French prison barge, certain it was only my imaginings that kept me alive, and never once in all that time did I arrive at this place in my mind."

He let his hand fall away from her mouth."I do not mean this cottage, this bed, or even this embrace. I knew them all on cold nights when I lay huddled on a damp deck, chained to men fore and aft, befouled by waste, and craving something other than stale air to fill my lungs. It was a simple thing to lose myself in dreams of what had once been familiar, perhaps even taken for granted. Friends. Family. Lovers. It all came easily. Some men despaired when those memories were brought to mind. Others found peace."

India could only stare at him. She had never once suspected that they might share this thing.

South went on. "I found hope, India, and yet, even then, I did not find you. I had not the capacity for it. If I have been outside your imaginings, then you have also been well beyond mine."

She nodded slowly and lay her head once more on his shoulder. "Is it Providence, do you think? That we should come together, I mean, and have some sense of the rightness of it."

"Providence?" South asked dryly."Only if God is using the colonel as his prophet."

India jabbed him lightly with her elbow and ignored his grunt of pain. "That is blasphemous."

South did not apologize. He rubbed his side instead. "I had forgotten you were a governess once. You are very quick to correct one's smallest indiscretions."

"Hardly. I make many allowances for you. You should be a single bruise otherwise."

He sighed. No doubt she was right. "How long were you a governess?" he asked.

"A few months."

"It did not suit?"

She shook her head and started to rise. South's hand on her shoulder stopped her. "The fire" she said for want of a better excuse to leave the bed. "It has"

"I will take care of it."

"But the last time you"

South gave her a splendidly arch look, and India's mouth snapped closed. "Good," he said. Unconcerned by his nakedness, he rose from the bed while India immediately slid into the warm depression he vacated. "Do not make yourself too comfortable there. I will not be gone from it long."

Her reply was muffled as she pulled the quilt up to her nose. "I'm keeping it warm for you."

Grinning, he grabbed his nightshirt from inside the armoire and slipped it on over his head. By the time he finished setting the fire, South was shivering. He did not wait nearby to take advantage of its heat but dove back into bed and unceremoniously pushed India to one side. In spite of that, she rolled close again to lend her heat.

"Where were you a governess?" South asked.

India raised her head."Is there no moving you from your course once it is set?" she asked.

"Let us say it is not easily done," he told her. "I was a navigator. Even once moved I can plot my way back."

Though he said it matter-of-f actly, India thought he looked rather too pleased with himself. "Vexing," she said under her breath.

"I believe you have said so."

"Well, it is no less true now than it was then." She laid her arm across his chest and then lowered her head. "I was employed by Mr. Robert Olmstead." Before South asked, she added, "He is a wool merchant in the Cotswold Hills, near Chipping Campden."

"A widower?"

"No. Why do you think so?"

"Because it is difficult to understand why Mrs. Olmstead would agree to have you in her home."

"Mayhap because she trusted her husband," India said tartly.

South was not fooled. "Did she?"

"No," India admitted after a moment. "But she trusted me. I was also possessed of more patience for the children. They minded me in a way they would not often do for her."

He made a point of rubbing the spot where she had jabbed him earlier. "She had not your touch for discipline, I collect."

India's lips twitched when she saw what he was doing. "Oh, you have certainly been sorely abused, my lord."

South gathered he could expect no sympathy from her. "What happened to make you leave Cotswold?"

She sighed. "It is much as you suspected. Mr. Olmstead was unpleasant. It was better that I left."

"Did he hurt you, India?"

"You know he did not."

"I know he did not rape you."

India considered her words carefully before she finally said, "I gave as good as I got, my lord. On occasion I gave better. Mr. Olmstead was happy to see the last of me."

Which was no straightforward answer to his question, South thought. "How long ago was this, India?"

"Six no, almost seven years ago."

South's brows rose. "You must have been a child yourself."

"I was almost seventeen. Hardly in need of a governess."

"Then you were sixteen and barely out of the schoolroom."

"I was prepared."

South could not help think about his sister Emma at that same age. She had talked of little more than her upcoming Season, still a year in the future. Emma would not have been prepared for such a position. But then, he thought, she had been raised from birth to expect something different from life. What had been India Parr's expectations? he wondered. "Were you employed as a governess again?"

"No."

"Because you were given no character or because you wanted none of it?"

"Both."

He started to ask another question, but she forestalled him, sitting up and dragging a good number of blankets with her. He watched with some amusement as she allowed one bare leg to slide outside the covers and over the edge of the bed and then used it to fish for her discarded nightshift. South did not miss the moment she snagged it with her toes. Her smile was as triumphant as that of any angler with a trout on his line. She gave her leg a sprightly kick, and the nightshift sailed upward. India caught it midair and pulled it under the blankets. What followed involved considerable wriggling and the occasional epithet. South's gallant offer to assist her was met with skepticism. When India finally emerged, covered in her batiste nightshift, it was an accomplishment of some merit, and she accepted his mocking smile and marked applause as her due.

India pushed the blankets in South's direction and hopped out of bed. "I would have my breakfast, my lord. If you mean to question me without cease, then you must also feed me." She eluded the hand he put out to catch her, neatly dancing out of the way. She did not miss the darkening of his eyes or the way they grazed her face and then took in all of her. Her cheeks flushed, and her palms came up of their own accord to cover the color. "I must dress," she said quickly, not looking at him. Then she hurried from the room before South made a second attempt to draw her back into his arms.

South sat up in bed and leaned back against the headboard. He stared at the closed door. His first thought was that she had been embarrassed by his open regard, but the more he considered it, the more it did not settle right in his mind. Embarrassment was not quite the right word to capture what he had seen in her face. He was not entirely certain that her maneuverings under the covers had been as playful as she was wont to have him believe.

South glanced toward the window and realized how much daylight had finally spilled into the room. There was no longer any shadow play to conceal her. He had not closed the curtains last evening, and she had had no reason to do so when she came upon him in the middle of the night. But morning brought a different reality. One that South did not think was to India's liking.

Was she ashamed? he wondered. Was such a thing possible? She had no secrets from his hands and mouth. He had touched her everywhere, tasted her. She was all smooth skin and long, slowly curving lines. Her breasts had filled the cup of his palms. He had suckled her. He had pressed himself between her thighs and taken her mouth with his. His tongue had laved her nipples and flicked the hollow beneath her ear. It had traced the line of her collarbone and the sensitive underside of her wrist. She had let him do exactly as he wished. Touching. Tasting. Mounting her.