Scandal in the Night (32 page)

“And what is that?” Her voice was low and breathless—it was a wonder she could speak at all over the pounding of her heart.

“Your smile.”

She practically launched herself at him, throwing her arms about his neck, and kissing him with everything she had within her, every ounce of gratitude, and wonder and love. And they were falling, tumbling down onto the low mattress, rolling in each other’s arms, giddy with happiness and the rush of pleasure that came from knowing that at last they were together.

And somehow she was free of her petticoats, and her legs were wrapping themselves around him, and they were kissing, kissing until she was laughing out loud from happiness.

“This is not good to laugh at a man as he is making love to you,
kaur.
”

“Tanvir. Tanvir, Tanvir, Tanvir. If I laugh, it is because I have never been so happy. I have been solemn for far too long.”

“I will make you happier yet, my Cat. Just wait and see.” His clever fingers were making short work of the lacing on the front of her stays.

She wanted to undress him as well, to unwrap him for herself, to peel off the long tunic to find the beautiful warm caramel of his skin. To give him the same kind of pleasure that he was evoking within her.

And then her stays were free, and his hand covered the roundness of her breast and he was kissing the hard peaks through her shift, wetting the fabric, making it cool and damp against her skin. And she was arching into him, giving herself to him, abandoning herself to the exquisite pleasure that blossomed deep as the pull of his lips created a tight needy heat between her legs.

He peeled the shift off her and the night air caressed her bare skin.

“Naked,” he said, his voice turning rough. “Nothing to shield you from my eyes. So very, very naked.” The low cadence of his voice was as heavy as a touch, pressing into her.

A glance of want stabbed into her belly.

“A naked gift to me.” He looked up at her with his warm green eyes glinting in the darkness. Those eyes that watched and saw everything, every blush and stammer, every change that she had let Mina’s servants make to her body.

Every sensation was new and fresh and magnified a hundred times over. The cool evening air on her shoulders, the warm waft of his breath against her navel. The heat of her skin along the inside of her thigh as he slowly, slowly rolled her stockings down.

And then she was nude, lying before him as he knelt above her, poised on the brink of something powerful and new.

“Naked,” he said. “Bare to me. Completely bare.”

And he touched her. One single finger. One point of contact with her skin. The tip of his index finger brushed a spot on her belly exactly halfway between her navel and her bare, smooth mons. He drew the tip of his finger across her sensitized skin in a minute circle, slowly tantalizing her. Nothing more than his finger riding lightly on the surface of her skin but she felt it all the way through her, deep inside, a tight constriction of pleasure that spread through her, drenching her in need.

“So gloriously, beautifully naked for me.”

“Only for you.” She had never felt so vulnerable. Or so completely powerful. “And you are not.”

“No. Not yet.” He stood and he reached up and began to unwind the long skein of his scarlet turban. When the last stand of fabric pulled away, he shook his head and the long dark, uneven hair fell in elegant disorder over his shoulders.

She was spellbound. He looked young and wild, an elemental force made man. But in freeing his hair, he seemed to have freed something within himself, some last vestige of gentlemanly restraint. He fell to removing his belt and dagger with a tense efficiency, tossing it aside and stripping off the jerkin covering his tunic, dropping it where he stood.

Yes. That was what she wanted. Forgetfulness. Carelessness. Need. Need. Need. Nothing but yawning, hungry need.

And oh, she needed him. She needed him to appease the long ache of unkindness, and doubt, and sacrifice and longing, longing, longing for something that had for so, so long seemed just out of reach, always beyond her tenacious grasp.

She let it rise within her, the willful forgetfulness, the reckless disregard for the past and the future and anything else that wasn’t now. That wasn’t him or her or pleasure and need so strong it burned under her skin like a fire that could not be contained by anything but more recklessness.

The moon rose outside the curtain of gauze and began to bathe the canvas walls in silver light that shone enough to turn his skin a shining, dark silver as he stood over her.

He moved aside so the wash of moonlight fell across her skin, tinting her a shimmering, pale pink. “I want to look at you.”

She wanted him to look. Though the weeks in the
zenana
had changed her, her body looked foreign to her, a pale shimmering carnal offering, and she could not stop herself from sliding her hands down across the plane of her belly and glorying in the sensuality of the feel of her own skin beneath her fingers.

“Yes,” he encouraged her. “You are beautiful. Because you are yourself.”

She didn’t feel like herself. She felt new and daring and free all at the same time. A sound as elemental and raw as the wail of the winds through the trees wound its way out of her mouth.

“Shhh.” He closed her mouth with a kiss, and came down next to her, his long, sleek body filling up the space next to her. She turned into him, wrapping herself around him, pulling herself into him. Into his scent and his very being. The exotic scent of patchouli clung to his hair and perfumed the air around her, and she was lost in the haze of him.

Chapter Eighteen

Catriona watched him through eyes stretched wide in the sheltering dark, fascinated by the sight of him looking at her breasts, at her body. Held before him by her need, made still by his hot gaze as he followed her down, leaning in to kiss her mouth once more before he whispered, “Open to me.”

Her body was stretching, arching within his hands, and she was aroused by the exquisite feeling of his dark, masculine hands stroking her pale, white breasts. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to him, to the white-hot pleasure that burned under her skin as his hands drew down the length of her body, from her collarbone, down across her aching breasts, along her belly and down the long run of her legs. Again and again, until she was moving beneath him, arching and twisting in anticipation, opening to him as the soft rush of sensation broke over her.

He stirred the backs of his fingers along the inside of her thighs, and she felt her body draw taut and ready. Ready for the pleasure he fed her like a sweetmeat. And then his hands were on her, parting the folds of her flesh. Her skin prickled in anticipation as his work-roughened hands teased at the tight heat at the junction of her thighs.

And she couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but wait. Until the moment when the tip of his tongue slid into her and she could hear the harsh, hungry sound she made as she gasped air back into her lungs.

He answered her with a murmur of his own that vibrated into her core and echoed throughout her body like a shout. The warmth of his mouth filled her, heating and lulling her, both arousing and soothing, as she floated higher and higher, buoyed on the rising tide of pleasure. Adrift on the warm passion he lavished upon her.

Until he drew away for the briefest moment, and then with one deftly precise touch, he licked her once more. In a way or in a place that made the edges of her body unravel and melt away, loosening and tightening the tangled skein of heat within.

She let out a breathless sound, as if she could no longer find air. As if she didn’t need air and was happy to go under, drowning in her pleasure.

Tanvir touched her with his tongue again, his touch swirling through her, sending ripples spreading out under her skin until she felt the waves reach the palms of her hands, and there was nothing but him and his mouth and bliss pouring into her.

Until there was more, and she felt him slip his finger inside her, touching her deeply, stroking gently and strongly all at the same time, until a pleasure so sweet and intense it was almost pain galloped in.

Her hands closed in fists in his long, soft hair, and she knew she was nothing but desperate yearning and need that he brought out of her. Another sound, a gasp of frustrated want, poured out of her, and he heard her and understood, because in the next moment another finger followed the first and she began to feel full, as if he only could fill the frustrated well of her longing.

With his hand in her, his tongue swirled over her one last time, and she cast herself loose, out into the soft night, out into the enveloping oblivion, floating away on the bliss.

She let it carry her downstream, drifting along on the rushing torrent of her breath rising and falling as if she had drowned and could only pull air back into her lungs. She felt dazed, and lazy and so happy she could not think. “Tanvir,” was all that she could say, a breathless whisper of heat and wonder.

“Kaur.”
His voice came closer, and the mattress shifted as he moved over her to lean down and kiss first one, and then the other of her closed eyelids. And then the pad of his thumb brushed against her lower lip, a gentle proposal of a kiss. His mouth followed his hand with a deeper kiss, and she opened her mouth to him, to the heat and friction of his tongue. To the yearning hunger that reasserted itself inside her at the taste of him.

And he was kissing her with the same sort of hunger, as if he were as desperate as she. As if he had at last exhausted his share of patience and prudence and caution. As if he, too, had a need that only she could fill.

The weight of his body pressed her deep into the soft mattress and her senses were filled with him, with the taut texture of his mouth, with the exotic scent of patchouli, with the soft fall of his hair as it brushed against her breasts, with the sharp rasp of his teeth as he kissed his rough way along the line of her jaw.

Her head fell back, and he kissed lower, touching his tongue to the hollow at her throat, and moving on until his lips and tongue were at her breasts, teasing and nipping, tugging at the seams that bound her. And she was arching up to him, giving herself, offering him the entirety of herself if only he kept giving her the pleasure, the fierce bliss that was as potent and addictive as opium.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him against her and raking her fingers through his long, wild hair. Holding herself just as tight. She clenched her leg muscles together and was shocked at the stabbing rush of pleasure that rose so easily.

He levered himself away, and she felt the loss of him, of his heat and his weight holding her down, keeping her from floating away. Before she could pull him back, he found her hands, and interlaced his fingers with hers, holding her surely as he placed their hands over her head.

And then he was kneeling between her legs, kneeing her thighs apart, and she was open and vulnerable, stretched past the limits of experience and imagination, and she felt the blunt velvet probe of his body as he settled his weight into her hips. And he was pushing into her, stretching and filling her, slowly making his way into her body until he was sheathed fully within.

“Cat.” He said her name like a prayer, like an incantation to an unknown God who might bless them with nothing but heavenly bliss.

She felt heat and pressure, and pleasure and pain all spilling together, tumbling her like a wave. And then he was moving, too, advancing and retreating like the tide, slowly gathering strength like a wave, until the current rose in him as well.

He made a sound that was both anguish and awe, as if he were drowning in it, too. As if he could no longer hold the deluge back. He leaned his weight into his hands where they were joined with hers above her head and she felt her body bow up toward him, and his body came against hers more fully, and when he surged into her again, she felt him all the way to her core. And then farther, because he leaned down and took her breasts between his lips and teeth, closing around her sensitized nipple, sucking and sending a burst of blissful heat radiating through her body.

And still her body pressed upward toward him, wanting more of him, wanting more of the friction of his taut belly against her. More of his strength. More.

And then he let go of her hand, and her hand rose to cradle his head, to hold him to her breast, to keep him there lavishing her with pleasure. But his hand was not idle, and skimmed down, sliding across the flat of her belly, and lower, grazing across the bare flesh of her mons. He stroked across that naked, naked skin before he parted her flesh and brushed a feather-light touch across the place where his tongue had been before. Sensation burst from her again and she was loose, rushing over the edge.

And he was with her, clutching her, swept away with her, falling, falling over the edge, floating down into the tranquil pool below.

She stayed there, buoyed along by the afterglow, as her heart eventually slowed its pace and her breathing returned to normal. It seemed like hours before she felt herself equal to even opening her eyes. Tanvir lay on his side next to her, stroking her fine, flyaway hair away from her temple. He leaned over to kiss her there. “Stay with me.”

“Yes.” She was lingering at the last edge of ecstasy, wanting the languorous feeling of satiation, of rightness, to last as long as possible before the world intruded with its concerns and cares.

“No.” Tanvir rose up on one elbow to look down at her, and his voice was low and rough with something more urgent than drowsy satiation—it was the need to explain. “Be with me. Always. Come away with me. Now. Tonight.”

Relief and joy poured into her lungs until she thought she might drown of happiness. Catriona had not thought she could feel any happier, any more complete than she had up until that moment, but she had been wrong. The feeling of finally, at last, achieving her heart’s desire filled her with a giddy delight that left her breathless with laughter.