Written on Your Skin

by Meredith Duran

  The bed sank beneath his weight. His trousers were dusty at the knees. “You’re a brilliant woman, but you’ve been wrong in every way tonight.” He laughed huskily. “Your cat doesn’t hate you, you know.”

  She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. “You know nothing about cats. You said it yourself.”

  “I was lying. The Sheldrakes had several, and they all adored me.”

  “They would,” she muttered. “Perverse creatures.”

  His hand settled on her thigh, palm up. After a moment, she put her fingers into it. As his hand closed, the connection of their flesh made something in her relax. “We can’t trust this,” she whispered.

  “If we were strangers, I would not want you to go to New York.”

  She frowned. “Of course you would. You wouldn’t care.”

  “On the contrary, it would be very convenient to have you here. I want Bonham. Bonham wants you. Voilà: you are bait. It speaks ill of me, Mina, but if I didn’t care about you, I would not hesitate to use you in that way. I tell you this because maybe we should discuss my faults as well. I’m not the best of men by any measure. My conscience has decayed over the years. I’m trying to reform myself, but…”

  She snorted. “You think you need to tell me? I’d already noticed you don’t concern yourself overmuch with honoring your obligations. At least, not in any mannerly fashion.”

  His soft laugh was accompanied by a squeeze of her hand. “Then you should believe me, shouldn’t you? You have firsthand experience. If I worry about you, it means something.”

  She scuffed her heel against the floor. “As compliments go, that leaves much to be desired.”

  He cleared his throat. “Do you want compliments?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. You don’t trust flattery, do you?” When she only shrugged, he said gently, “No, I’m right about that. Because, you see, we’re not strangers.” He paused, so long that she finally lifted her eyes to his. His expression was grave. “Perhaps it’s easier said this way,” he murmured. “Can you learn to hate in a day?”

  She heard the implication in his question. What a mad idea. Almost, she withdrew her hand. But there was courage in how frankly his dark eyes held hers. She would not prove less brave than he. “I suppose,” she said, and shrugged. Still a cowardly response, then, but it was the best she could manage.

  “I know it,” he replied steadily. “And I promise you, I have learned to hate in a day, and that hate will last my whole life long. Do you want to hear, then, how a mapmaker became a spy?”

  She knew what he was asking. Four years ago, her life had also acquired a central narrative. These were not tales to be told lightly; they were keys to the soul. “Yes,” she whispered.

  His fingers played lightly over hers. “I was an officer with the Survey, mapping the Himalayas. I got to places most men don’t go. One of my superiors took a particular interest in my achievements. I thought nothing of it, really; we had an old friend in common, a retired mapmaker and astronomer who had mentored me during my years at Eton. If I did have a moment or two of doubt about this officer, an uneasiness I couldn’t explain, then our mutual friend’s recommendation silenced it.

  “One day, this new mentor summoned me to Simla. He claimed to have lost a confederate who’d strayed over the westernmost border of the North-West Frontier Province, into Afghan territory. It was bad news. Disraeli had been pressuring Northbrook, the viceroy, to take a harder line with Sher Ali against the Russians, and Northbrook was fighting it. There was no reason an Englishman should be wandering into that mess without official instruction; it was like tossing a match onto tinder. But my new mentor was persuasive. He said my skills were the best chance for tracking down this man and getting him out without detection. If I failed, we’d have an international incident on our hands.”

  “A noble mission,” she said.

  “Precisely.” His lips shifted into a black curve. “Very noble, no doubt dangerous—exactly what I’d hoped for, when I enlisted. A chance to prove, once and for all, that I was not my father’s son.”

  His fingers were slipping away. She caught them, aware of the roughness of his scar. “You are nothing like him.” She knew that much. She could recognize such men from a mile distant. Collins had taught her that skill.

  “I have tried not to be,” he said. “But Ridland made it difficult.”

  “Ridland was the officer.”

  “Yes.” He was looking through her, now, at the wall. “What he did not tell me was that his man had infiltrated the territory deliberately, in order to unsettle the viceroy’s authority. This man was conspiring to make his own retrieval as difficult and public as possible, in the hopes of forcing a war. 1 was also uninformed that if I was caught, the government, including those sections that had designed this mission, would disavow my official involvement. I would be branded a traitor, my presence in the territory construed as proof of my disloyalty.” He sighed. “Even had I known this, I still might have been forced to obey, of course. But at least I could have prepared my team. I took two assistants with me. They died before we realized we’d walked into a trap.”

  His fingers had tightened on hers. She gripped him now as hard as she was able. Sometimes that was what one needed. She had learned that in the train today. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “The point is, in less than a day, I learned to loathe Ridland with all my heart. And I had no choice but to relearn the wisdom of that hatred for a decade afterward.” His attention focused on her. “Every day, I relearned it. Never more so than when I left you behind in that window.”

  “You hesitated,” she said softly. “You tried to take the knife from me.”

  “A moment’s bravery. And then I put my instincts aside.”

  “You said you had no choice.”

  “Yes, I told myself that afterward, too. But it’s harder to believe when I know a woman who made choices for herself when none seemed to exist.” She felt herself flush, and his lips shifted into a softer curve. “I chose to ignore my instincts that day, just as I had when I decided to trust Ridland. So I hope you will understand when I tell you that I don’t mean to ignore them again. Indeed, it is a wondrous thing to recognize how right they are.”

  He reached up, very gently, to brush away her hair. His touch was seductive; she let herself lean into it, and shut her eyes.

  “Your instincts are good as well.” His fingertips pressed very lightly to her cheek. “If they tell you something, Mina, you should not ignore it.”

  She did not bother to move. Her instincts were hardly fluent in the language he was asking them to speak, but the eagerness of their attempt suggested a native talent for it. How odd. She had never thought she would fall in love. “And if they disagreed with yours?”

  “On small things, I would argue with you,” he said readily. “On the larger questions? If they disagreed, we’d not be having this conversation.”

  She opened one eye. “But if they do disagree,” she said. “On the larger issues.”

  “Then I won’t tell you what to believe. I was told for a very long time to mistrust myself. I would not do the same to you.”

  She let herself look her fill at him then, his long lips and the soft brush of his hair across his strong jaw. She had never mistrusted herself until she had begun to long for him. That made it easy to take his advice. And if he differed with her on what should count as a larger issue, they could wrestle with it tomorrow. “Lie with me,” she said, and drew him by the hand up the bed to her side.

  He came willingly. Maybe he’d been foolish enough to believe her when she said she only wished to lie beside him, for when she turned and closed her teeth on his jugular, he made a startled noise and went very still. Thus did a wolf kill its prey. Thus did she choose. She lifted her mouth, just enough to ensure that her words would trace hot moisture across his skin. “You’re going to have to trust me, Phin.”

  He rolled over and put her beneath him i
n one swift move, catching her wrists and pinning them over her head. “I could say the same,” he murmured, and bit her back, very lightly, on the chin.

  She lay quiescent for a moment, mastering the reflexive urge to balk at his teeth. She could find it in herself to trust him, but only in her own way.

  His hands opened, and hers slipped down to his sides, gripping him lightly. The shirt annoyed her. It bespoke his hesitance earlier, when she had cast at him every lure in her arsenal. “I like you better undressed.” She heard his breath catch, and opened her eyes to find him staring down at her. He smiled, which was not the reaction she wanted. “You’re supposed to say—”

  “That undressing is not always required.” His mouth lowered to hers; she moaned, simply for the fun of it, and then the moan became real as he kissed her more deeply than she’d expected. His tongue was honey, coasting over hers; it famished her. She arched up, wanting to swallow him, to eat him whole. He would make a feast for a woman, his brain and his body and his humor and his sensitivity—this last still a thing of wonder to her. He saw her so clearly.

  Her thoughts tangled as his hand slipped into her bodice. His palm found her breast, stroking her nipple, almost lazy as he kissed her. She relaxed beneath him. She liked the weight of him pressing into her, how solid he felt. That she could support his weight made her feel larger in her own right. Her hands skated across the broad expanse of his back, confirming her capabilities; she cupped his buttocks, squeezing, and the muscles there contracted. Slipping lower, pressing into the seam of his trousers, her fingers found the soft weight of his testicles, and when she stroked him, his lips broke from hers on a groan.

  It reminded her of her earlier plans, which had involved his acquiescence, not hers. She slid out from under him and pushed him by the shoulder until he fell willingly onto his back. The cravat lay discarded at the foot of the bed; she started to reach for it, but he caught her arm and hauled her back atop him, her neck in line with his mouth. Down her throat his kisses moved, lower, until they circled around her nipple. His teeth came into play again, and then the soft sucking of his lips; she splayed weakly, limp and obedient—temporarily, she told herself—atop him. His hand pulled up her skirts, bit by bit. A fingernail trailed up her calf, moving along the inside of her leg, higher and higher, suggesting the goal but refusing to arrive there. He drew lazy circles on her inner thigh. He was going to overwhelm her in a second, which was not how she’d intended it at all.

  She pushed herself off him and leaned backward, her hand blindly groping, finding luck as it closed on the cravat. When he spotted it, his eyebrow cocked. “No,” he said.

  She smirked. “Afraid?”

  He smoothed his hand down her bottom and cupped her between her legs, rubbing, now pressing. “Oh, terribly,” he said, as she squirmed for him. “And you?”

  “Not at all,” she managed. She loosed a shuddering breath, then leaned forward and looped the stock cloth behind his head. His hand found the slit in her drawers, stroking her sensitive flesh, stirring the moisture that rose at his touch. “You will not distract me,” she whispered, but her breathiness made him smile too smugly for her liking. She pulled the cravat loosely over his eyes and knotted it at his ear, catching his free hand when it rose and forcing it back to the bed. “Behave,” she said.

  His finger nudged up through her folds, finding the spot that pleased her most, and she bucked. “I can do this in the dark,” he said, his voice low and smoky. “I expect I can do it blindfolded, too.”

  She paused, not having considered this point. And then an idea came to her. She slid down his body, pushing up his shirt to lick his chest. He liked this; his hands came to her neck, massaging, encouraging her. His trousers were not difficult to open. She licked him up the length of his cock.

  He swore; his hands tightened and then fell away from her. “Mina,” he said, but she could not tell if it was a warning or praise. So she did it again, taking the tip of him lightly into her mouth, tasting the salt and musk of him, suckling him as he had done to her nipples. The way his body jerked beneath her, and the sounds that growled from his throat, decided her: praise, definitely. She tried to take him deeper, opening her mouth and using the full length of her tongue, simply for the pleasure of making him shake. So easily he writhed for her.

  But his patience snapped. He took her beneath the arms and pulled her up, and when he ripped away the cravat, his expression afforded her a premonition. “I’ve a better use for this,” he said, and took hold of her wrists.

  “Wait,” she said, her heart quickening. “I don’t—”

  “You do.” He put her arms over her head, looping the cloth around them and tying a loose knot. “I saw your face,” he murmured into her ear. “I saw your face when I suggested this before.”

  “But I was thinking I would bite your throat out,” she said hoarsely.

  He laughed and moved down her body. It became clear, very quickly, where he was going: he took her by the bum and lifted her skirts free, and they came up over her face so that she was blinded as well as bound. “Unfair,” she gasped, but her protest broke off as the wet heat of his mouth touched the crease of her inner thigh. His tongue danced over her flesh, licking up the very seam of her, retreating and returning, teasing her delicately; the violent throbbing she felt was all out of proportion to it. For a moment it frightened her again, and in that moment, she recognized that the choice was still hers: no cravat, no blindfold, could make her give him anything of herself. She could still hold herself away from him. But why would she want to?

  She let her thighs fall farther apart and gave herself over to his mouth. The pleasure rippled up behind her knees, past her thighs, and down the backs of her arms; she seized beneath him and did not try to stifle her sob.

  He kissed his way up her body then, freeing her wrists, nipping at her fingers. Her palm caught his attention; he nuzzled it, his tongue tasting the fleshy mound beneath her thumb. The indolence of his interest puzzled her. She knew he was not yet satisfied; she could feel the stiffness in him, feel his erection against her leg. “I want you inside me,” she said.

  He pressed a kiss into her hand and took her by the hips, twisting so that she fell atop him. Briefly she hesitated, baffled by this position. Did he not want her, then?

  He caught her eyes. “Then have me,” he said, and thrust upward with his hips. The brush of his cock suddenly suggested possibilities she’d never contemplated. A little awkwardly, she came up on her knees.

  Too late, she realized the matter would require assistance; his long brown fingers closed over his own length, and he positioned himself against her, his eyes on hers hot and unflinching. There was no need to be embarrassed; there was nothing between them of judging. Slowly she seated herself.

  The sensation of fullness took her breath, made the aftermath of her climax shiver through her again. The pressure of his hands coaxed her to rise, and then sink back down. She took his tutorship for two long strokes, and then planted her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself up without prompting.

  His eyes fluttered shut, and he gave a soft moan. Amazement flooded her, hot and tender and weakening: that he could close his eyes with her and surrender to his pleasure so unabashedly, when with this body of his he might have demanded anything, might have taken anything. She rocked back and forth now, rubbing herself along him. Her hunger had announced itself again, pulsing and building between her thighs. A daring thought came to her. She reached down to touch the place of their joining.

  He made a guttural, choked sound and caught hold of her hips to stop her. For a moment she thought she had done something wrong, but no—he was only fixing her in place for his own designs. His grip tightening, he pulled her hips down as he thrust upward, into her.

  She felt herself tighten—at first a startled response, and then, with a whimper, from pleasure alone. Again and again he thrust, pulling her and pushing her, working her harder and more deeply with each stroke, until she could not hold
herself upright any longer. She collapsed forward, pressing her forehead to the hot hollow of his throat, splayed over him, willingly limp as he penetrated her.

  He was right, all of this was far from one-sided; he gasped and she gasped back, their bodies communicating toward a mutual goal. He set his face into the crook of her neck and groaned, unafraid of what she might hear in it, and she thought, Love, yes. I am not afraid anymore.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They slept that night with limbs overlapping like puzzle pieces. Phin woke once; she lay peacefully, her lips parted slightly, as though thirsty for the moonlight falling through the window. Her dreams did not appear to trouble her. Perhaps that was partly his doing. He wanted to think so. Love makes everything that is heavy, light: trust a theologian to misinterpret the fleshly equation. In fact, he felt curiously heavy as he looked at her, a not unpleasant sensation, but also tired, like a ship anchored in harbor after a long trial of rough seas.

  It seemed unwise to feel restful when so much lay ahead. But he remembered her advice, and permitted himself to breathe out the tension that wanted to stiffen him. He stroked her cheek for a minute, then fell back to sleep almost immediately.

  The next morning, a new silence sat between them. She put on her mother’s diamond ring, and as they boarded the train and the guard called out their destination of London, she gave him an indecipherable look. Not yet in port, he thought ruefully. They sat side by side in an empty compartment, but he did not buy a newspaper, and she did not pretend to take an interest in the scenery out the window. London was coming up on them like darkness, clouding their horizon.

  He was not going to indulge her at her own expense. As they entered the outlying suburbs of the city, the crouching houses hunched in rows, he touched her hand briefly. “Let me book you passage.”

  She glanced from his hand to his face. “I’m the one who has what he wants. I can lure him out. Let me help you.”

  He thought of her face in the window so many years ago, and the cost of stifling memories and guilt. He had stifled himself in the process; he was not willing to abdicate his responsibility to her again. “What will help me is knowing that you’re safe.”