She sensed he was avoiding the conversation, yet here he still was in the room, clearly needing and wanting to impose his presence. He could have easily taken him book elsewhere but didn’t.
She eyed him. “Are you angry with me about last night?”
“No.” He kept reading. “Why would I be?”
This one might as well have said yes. “You are.”
“If I were angry, Kumar, I wouldn’t be sitting in this room out of fear for you.”
She scrunched her nose knowing it. “Is it really two in the afternoon?”
He gave her a withering look. “I’m not known to lie about the time.” He set the book onto the small side table and tapped the ash of his cigar into the ash pan beside him. He leaned back with his cigar, his gaze methodically skimming the entire outline of the linen she was buried under.
Searching her face, he patted his knee. “Come to me.”
She pinched her lips and eyed that knee. One would think he were calling over a pet. “Why?”
Pulling in a long breath of smoke, he released it through his nostrils. “Because I asked you to. Are you insinuating after I rejected your advances I am now keen on seducing you when I could have done so last night? You didn’t stop me, Kumar. I stopped me. Now come to me.”
Her face burned. Despite common sense, she scooted out of bed and trailed toward him with bare feet, her unhooked gown and loosened corset slipping from her torso. She kept dragging both up and paused before him, searching his rugged features in an attempt to gauge what would happen next.
Setting the cigar between his teeth, he tapped his knee.
She swallowed, turned and seated herself on that hard knee, letting it dig into her bum.
He removed his cigar from his lips. “Do you smoke?”
It wasn’t something she usually admitted to given it was frowned upon. “Haan. I smoke bidis. I brought four bundles with me, but they were confiscated by Peter when he found them in my luggage on the way over.” The troll.
Ridley held out the cigar. “I firmly believe in the equality of men and women. Otherwise, there will never be peace. Here. For you.”
He’d be the first man to offer her such a grand gesture of equality.
Needing to take off the edge of not having smoked in days, she quickly took it from his fingers. She drew in the earthy, sweetness of the tobacco smoke, letting it pool in her mouth before easing it out with a glorying breath. After everything she’d been through, it was a kiss of heaven. She tugged in more and eyed him, easing out another breath. “A more glorious moment I have never known. I thank you.”
He watched her lips. “I thank you,” he dipped his voice.
Why did she sense he was enjoying this? She fingered the large cigar, trying not to think about the fact that all of this was rather…phallic. She paused.
“Again.” His deep tone hinted at a strained need.
Her fingers now trembled realizing his gaze was still trained on her lips. She took another quick puff, gathering a mouthful of smoke. Turning her face toward him, she purposefully blew the sizable cloud of smoke at his face. “I am on to you, Mr. Ridley,” she tossed. “This is not at all about offering me equality given I am sitting on your knee. You, sir, are enjoying this a bit too much.”
His amber eyes clouded in the smoke she had blown at him. “What if I am?” he rumbled out, holding her gaze. “I think you’re beautiful.”
Her pulse skittered.
She had invited the dragon out of its lair and could hear the tail scraping the gravel.
Daft as she was, she didn’t mind. For he and this and her and this was the most excitement she’d had since…climbing abandoned temples without any sandals.
She knew how to balance herself without falling.
Reveling in the idea of such a powerful, dashing man being in her control, she set the cigar slowly between her lips, ensuring her entire mouth rounded the end of the cigar ever so invitingly. She dragged in a heated puff of tobacco. She even took the tip of her pink tongue and dragged it across the end of the rolled leaves she had just puffed on.
Staring, he reached out and took the cigar, bringing it to his own lips. Holding her gaze, he stuck it between his teeth, biting down on it hard enough to make the rolled leaves crinkle. “What sort of a virgin are you? Hm? What sort of a virgin revels in toying with men almost twice her age?” he asked from between his teeth.
“I was raised differently from what your British society would approve of, Mr. Ridley. My mother was a basket weaver and though she did her best to shield me from the rabble around us, I saw too much to pretend I wasn’t one of them. I will admit I have done things in my youth I wish I had not.”
He searched her eyes. “Like what?”
She averted her gaze, cringing at the troublemaker she’d once been. The troublemaker she still was. For here she sat on his lap, her gown sagging off her shoulders, smoking his tobacco.
With the cigar still clamped between his straight teeth, Ridley’s large, calloused fingers turned her chin toward himself. “Tell me. What sins could one with eyes like yours possibly have? Are you saying you fucked someone?”
Lowering her startled gaze to the pin in his cravat knowing how casually he said the word ‘fuck’, she tried not to feel the heat of his gaze or the heat of things she remembered. “No. I…I have never…no. There was a hovel where a certain woman paid me a rupee to stand at her door to warn her if her husband was coming given she prostituted herself without him knowing. Maa and I needed the money, so I…”
She felt guilty about it to this day. That poor husband. “I would sit by the draped door and whistle when I saw him coming down the long corridor. That gave men in her hovel time to crawl out through the mud wall window in the back. Sometimes, when I got bored, I watched out of curiosity. It was as disturbing as it was entertaining. That woman had no shame. She would even let men put eels into her.” She shuddered.
“Yet you watched.”
“I was bored.”
He slowly shook his head, his features offering a form of pained tolerance. “Do you know what you are, Kumar? Angustia.”
That didn’t sound like a compliment. “Meaning?”
“It’s Latin for trouble. T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”
She poked his muscled shoulder. “I know how to spell trouble.”
“I don’t think you do.” He leaned far back in the leather chair, jostling his knee for emphasis and continued smoking with the tilt of his head. “How did you get involved in phytology?”
It would seem he was curious to know more about her.
It was darling. Most men didn’t even know what phytology was. Then again, Mr. Ridley was not most men. “I was always taking trips into the surrounding jungles with Peter whilst growing up in India.”
She leaned toward him and wedged out the cigar from between his fingers, shifting against his knee. Taking several regal puffs, she handed it back to him, enjoying the intimacy of their words and the cigar they were sharing. “I was about nine and had been in his care for several months when I had accidentally plucked the shiny leaf of a rhus acuminata from between the stones of an abandoned temple we were visiting.”
“Is that a form of poisonous sumac?”
Of course he would know. “Yes. ‘Tis native to India. The oil on that sharp edge created a severe reaction of boils on my hands that had burned and itched like demons trying to crawl in for a week. Any normal child would have cried and never gone back into any jungle. I, on the other hand, gaped at it in reverence and returned to collect more. For the power yielded by that seemingly insignificant and small leaf came to represent what few saw in it: magic. Much like the rash of poverty that had marked my skin and taken my mother, I was humbled and inspired by a mere rhus acuminate to leave my own mark on the world. I wanted to understand it.
“So I started collecting, sketching, documenting and dissecting every seed and leaf and plant found in the jungles and unveiling its potential. Peter was impressed enough to
hire a prominent Parsee teacher to navigate me through the world of botany, and soon, it turned into a passion of having crates of endless exotic plants being shipped in from other continents.”
Ridley eased out smoke, his shaven jaw tightening. He searched her face intently before asking in an overly even tone, “Are you insinuating the pain you endured at the hands of that sumac wasn’t enough to deter you from understanding it? Does pain fascinate you?”
She made a face. “Not at all. Pain is simply part of life, Mr. Ridley, and I have never let it keep me from what I wanted. In truth, we dip ourselves in pain the moment we are born.”
He thoughtfully dragged in more smoke. “So true.” He let a misting circle drift toward her throat, creating the illusion of a collar.
She sensed there was more meaning in it than she cared to acknowledge.
His arm slipped slowly and tightly around her waist and dragged her closer, as if resigning them both to the reality of a situation neither had any further say in. “I had the servants bring up hot water for the tub a half hour ago. We should bathe you.”
She dug her fingers into that broad shoulder he had propped her against, his heat melding into her own. Why did she sense he was offering to bathe her?
Her entire body burned like the red cigar tip pointed at her. She eyed him.
Dashing out the cigar into the ash pan beside the chair, he dragged her legs over his one arm, wedging his hand behind her back and rose, lifting her up and into his arms effortlessly. He straightened to his imposing height that now took her up toward the low ceiling.
He rounded the chair and carried her into the adjoining bath chamber.
Her heart pounded as she clutched at his shoulders. She tried to read the expression on his face but it remained what it usually was: unreadable. “You are not actually going to bathe me, are you?”
Not that she minded, but…her poor heart!
Striding into the massive bath chamber, which echoed all around from the impact of his booted foot falls, he set her down before the still steaming water and straightened. “I should hope you know me better than that by now,” he said in a low tone, dragging her unraveling braid away from her throat and skimming his hand down its length to its end. His rigid fingers grazed her bum, following its curve to her crack, which he edged a finger into and pressed, pushing the fabric inward.
He stepped back. “Do you need assistance removing your gown? Or can you reach everything on your own?”
Her legs quaked, barely holding her up in place, still feeling the graze of those rigid fingers on her rear as if he’d wanted in with the fabric he’d pushed.
The amount of restraint this man had was something to be respected and feared.
Especially feared.
Though her own physical desire for him was base, she knew herself well enough to admit that if she were to fall into his arms, she would be giving him far more than her body. She would be giving him control over what mattered most to her: her mind. “I can manage.”
He pointed to a freshly folded towel on the brass stand and a carved bar of soap set on the ledge of the copper tub. “Take your time.” He strode out. “I’ll be reading.”
She swallowed, disappointed in him for not acknowledging the intimacy they both wanted to feel. Those fingers on her rear were an indication of more than a mild interest.
“The water is getting cold,” he called. “I suggest warming it up by getting in.”
“You are angustia,” she called back, knowing it had to be said. How can it not be said? “Any other man would have done a dozen other things to me aside from reading. Why did you not stay?”
“Because every tile in that bathroom would have cracked.”
“You can afford to replace them.”
“I’m not worried about the tile,” he rumbled out from the other room. “I’m worried about that rear I touched.”
Jemdanee set a trembling hand to chest, feeling as if she was going to suffer heart failure. “Your level of restraint is disturbing.”
“Who says I have any left?” His voice broke with riled huskiness. “What do you want from me, Kumar? What in hell do you think you are going to get?”
She half-expected him to dart in, her breaths uneven.
He didn’t.
Trying to steady her mind, she eventually said, “What does any woman want from a man? To feel wanted and needed. To feel part of something bigger in a world that makes us feel small.”
There was a moment of silence. “You are small, Kumar. Damnably small and therefore all too easy to hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The softness of that tone hinted he meant it.
She swallowed, feeling a mutual adoration for him. “I’m not without strength. I still live because I have strength. More than most.”
He said nothing.
A part of her knew that once she left London, she most likely would never see him again. Why did she already ache? Why did the thought of not seeing those ambers eyes or that overly serious demeanor drag her into wanting more? “Might you at least kiss me?” she ventured. “Once?”
His boot hit the floorboard twice. “Kumar, I’m still human.”
That strained voice hinted of his need. It was sweetly draining. It meant he wanted to. “I sometimes doubt you are human, Mr. Ridley. You appear to have built an altar of refinement, distancing yourself from those around you, but I sense it is an illusion meant to hide who you really are.”
“Bravo. Do you need me to clap?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you hide?”
He shifted against the chair, creaking the leather. “The very thing all men hide.”
“What would that be?”
“The devil.”
She refused to believe that he harbored any demon within him. Not given everything he had already done for her. Not given the way he continued to protect her from even himself. “I doubt you let him rule over you.”
“What little you know. He rules over me as if I were the clock and he the key. Most clocks are set to run for eight days before having to be wound. He turns that key far enough every time, straining the coils and the gears to a point that if anyone touches the hands…pop.”
Something about the way he said, dragged a bony finger down her spine. “You speak of the devil as if he were real.”
“Oh, he is,” he chided. “He chants to me to overstep bounds. It’s what he wants. In fact, he is chanting to me right now. Chanting,” his voice dipped.
Her throat tightened. She eyed the door. “What is he chanting?”
“If I tell you, Kumar, I would have to do it.”
She swallowed. “I trust that it would not be anything I would fear.”
“Only because your youth makes you think you’re invincible, when in fact, it only makes you stupid.” He hesitated. “The water is getting cool. Why are you not bathing?” A thud against the wall resounded within the bath chamber. “Remove your clothing.”
She lingered, endlessly disappointed in his inability to seduce her.
His tone hardened. “Remove your clothing, Kumar. Strip.”
She almost needed the wall for support.
With quivering fingers, she tugged off the already open back of her calico gown, letting it rustle and whisper to the marble floor. Keeping her gaze on the open door, she shimmied out of it and wedged down the overly loose corset he had undone last night.
She now stood naked, her skin on fire. “I am unclothed.”
“Good. Slip into the water,” he instructed. “Is it still warm?”
Glancing toward the open door, she scrambled into the large copper tub and sank into the depths of the warm water that splashed up to her chin. A breath escaped her lips against the wet warmth. Was he going to walk in?
She wanted him to. “It is still very warm.”
“Good.” He was quiet for a moment. “Wet your hair.”
“What if I do not want to?”
“I’m not going into that bath chamb
er, Kumar.”
“What if I want you to?”
“Wet your hair.”
It was a subtle command. One she hoped would bring him to her. She slowly slid down beneath the surface of the water, cocooned in a moment of silence, her eyes open in expectation that she would see him standing above the tub watching her.
He wasn’t there.
She bubbled out air from her lips, wondering if she held her breath long enough, would he run in and rescue her? Of course he would.
Needing air, she slid back up out of the water, her breaths ragged as if he and she had been making love. She waited for the sound of his voice. “Now what am I to do?” she softly teased him.
His deep voice turned sensual, sending a ripple of awareness through her. “Lather yourself.”
Dragging in the cool air of the bath chamber, she gripped the wedge of soap and with a trembling hand, touching her nose to it.
The crisp scent hinted it was the same soap he had used on his own body.
The wetness between her thighs had nothing to do with the water.
She now knew why women allowed themselves to be seduced.
It made the body feel it was being remolded and reborn into a greater purpose.
One meant to be worshipped.
Glancing toward the still open door, she slowly rubbed and lathered the soap over her brown arms, throat, her breasts whose nipples had hardened and tingled at the very thought of him walking in at any moment. She dangled up each foot, rubbing soap on each one before veering her way to her legs and thighs. Though her legs were unsteady, she stood with a splash, and with circling motions lathered the soap across her belly, her rear, which he had touched, and then used her hand to soap between her thighs using the wedge she knew had been between his thighs.
“Are you standing?” he asked.
She stilled. “Yes. I am.”
“Grip the edge,” he intoned.
She did, willing him and wanting him to come to her. Come to me.
“Release your need. The one I hear in your voice.” A huskiness lingered in that ragged tone. “Find your nub. Do it knowing I acknowledge your desire. Do it knowing I want you to.”
He was becoming the voice in her head and the very thing she wanted to gasp to.
Mr. Ridley: A Whipping Society Novel Page 17