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A Secret in Her Kiss

Page 24

by Anna Randol


  She nodded dazedly, trying to focus on the husky cadence of his voice. “I think you forgot this one.” Pausing, she gently held her lips against his, allowing his breath to mist over her. “Or this one.” With a soft throbbing motion, she caressed his mouth with her own. “And we haven’t even addressed the suggestions on different locations to kiss.” She twisted so she straddled him, the increased contact drawing a moan from her throat. “The forehead, the eyes, the cheeks . . .” She trailed her lips over each body part as she spoke. With each kiss, the sweet tension wrapped tighter around her.

  Bennett unfastened the remaining buttons of her shirt. “What about the neck?” Working his mouth downward, he paused at the spot right below her ear, then moved to the hollow at her throat. “And the breasts, surely, those are mentioned?” He cupped them in his palms, gently kneading her flesh through her shift. Mari arched against him helplessly. “I know you have mentioned them,” he said, his voice a slow, languorous seduction to her senses.

  “Yes.” Tossing her head back, she gloried in the wondrous sensations created by his hands and mouth. “Please.”

  “Mari.” Her name was almost a curse as he buried his face against her throat. “Whatever you want of me is yours.” He removed his coat and laid it on the floor. Then gently, he laid her back. Even with the coat, the stone was cold beneath her. But when Bennett dragged the neckline of her shift down with his index finger, baring her aching breast, she no longer cared.

  “What precisely did you have in mind?” His lips grazed her nipple as he spoke.

  She closed her eyes and laced her fingers around his neck, trying to draw him closer. She struggled to form words. “Everything. Your lips, your tongue, your mouth.”

  He laved the tip of her breast in a slow circle. “Only everything? I’ll see what I can do.” His lips moved over her breasts, pausing at the tip. “Shall I start here?” He slowly licked the sensitive skin. She gasped, closing her eyes, savoring the intensity of the bliss. He switched to the other breast, circling her nipple with his tongue. “Is it what you imagined?”

  No, if she’d imagined it would be this incredible she would have locked him in her bedroom with her and never emerged. “It is . . . it is—” Her words ended in a moan as he sucked on the hard nub.

  Her hips bucked as the exquisite pressure built between her legs. She wanted to feel the pleasure again. She needed it. “Please . . .”

  Bennett pulled back, blowing gently on her taut nipple. “Not yet. Didn’t your book tell you this can go on for hours?” He removed her shirt, then her shift. Cool air skimmed over her skin, raising gooseflesh on her arms.

  The cold floor disappeared, and Bennett’s voice was all she could hear.

  Each touch fed her desire and each murmur of admiration fed her need for his love. And she did want his love, no matter what she’d tried to tell herself previously, she wanted it desperately.

  His hands explored her waist before sliding her trousers down her legs, smoothing the skin of her calves with his callused hands, his lips followed, hot and intense, like poetry on her skin.

  Finally, his hand slid up her leg to her thigh. She froze, afraid that if she moved, the glorious sensations might cease. Her desperate gasps were the only sound in the cell. With exquisite slowness, Bennett lowered his head toward his hand. Every nerve in her body desperately awaited his caress, each second without it impossibly long. When his lips brushed her sensitized flesh, she jerked wildly, a small cry escaping her.

  “You are mine, sprite,” he whispered.

  “Sprite?”

  But his lips reached the junction of her thighs and she forgot to wonder. Her pleasure crested again. Moaning, she arched against his mouth. Yet again he pulled back, planting kisses across her stomach.

  But that wasn’t enough, not when she felt like she might fly apart at any moment. The wretch knew it, too.

  Growling, she rolled him onto his side and tugged his shirt from his waistband. She raked the hard planes of his back. “The Kama Sutra also says what one lover does, the other should return in kind.”

  Bennett groaned as Mari nipped and kissed her way over his body, intent on repaying him for his treatment of her. When he jerked in pleasure as she found a sensitive spot at the base of his throat, she returned to that spot again and again, driving him mad with her questing lips and curious touch.

  Bloody hell. It was as if each touch was fire on his flesh, abrading ragged nerve endings with pleasure. He craved each new caress with animal ferocity.

  Only pure selfishness held him in control. Her passionate caresses surpassed anything he’d ever experienced. A few of her ideas originated from her book, but most, he suspected, were her own heady combination of innocence and sensuality.

  Her tongue was slow and sultry as she circled his navel, yet when she reached the waistband of his trousers, her fingers fumbled.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, silently praying he had the strength to stop if she hesitated.

  But her answer was quick, her voice thick with untamed arousal. “I want to please you.”

  She already did, more than he could ever translate into words. He peeled off his trousers with a single tug.

  For a moment she was still. Silent. He would have traded anything for a bit of light so he could see her face.

  “May I touch you?”

  “Please,” he said, then realized it was the first time he had ever begged. Only Mari had that power over him.

  Her hand slid around his straining hardness, and Bennett pressed his eyes closed. The sprite had enslaved him. He could stand only a few seconds of her explorations before he rolled her beneath him.

  He didn’t know what would happen tomorrow, but that made him all the more focused. He intended to give her as much pleasure as was possible tonight. Tomorrow if the worst happened, he wanted this to cling to, to keep in his thoughts, to allow him to smile in their damned faces.

  But more than that, he wanted to give Mari everything she wanted. For some unfathomable reason, she seemed to want him. And he could hold nothing back.

  How could he? He’d thought the devil owned his soul, but now he had no doubt Mari had taken complete possession of it.

  Slowly, he brought his hand to the soft wetness at her core. She quivered as he teased the sensitive flesh.

  She was ready for him. He closed his eyes tightly, silencing his hungry groan. Everything else in their world might have turned hellishly wrong, but this he could make perfect. He repeated the rhythm that had pleasured her in the bath a few days before, catching her cries of pleasure with kisses, driving her until she gasped and dug her fingers into his arms, a moan of bliss issuing from her lips.

  Only then did he poise at her slick entrance. “You are certain?”

  “I already said yes.” Eagerly, she arched upward, then gasped in pain.

  He stilled and kissed the tear on her cheek. “You never do things the easy way, do you?” He showered kisses over her face and neck until her little sounds of pleasure began again.

  After a moment, she wriggled against him. “There is more to this, isn’t there?”

  He grinned at her in the darkness and stroked her breasts. “I think you and I will have a few new pages to add to your book when we return.”

  Mari gasped as Bennett started to withdraw. She locked her legs around him. “Don’t you dare.” The sensations were just beginning to build again. She didn’t know if it was possible to experience such pleasure twice in one night, but she intended to find out.

  “Trust me.” He slowly reentered her.

  She raised her hips to meet him, ensuring he didn’t change his mind and leave her. She bit her lip as bliss overcame any remaining discomfort.

  She trusted him. Almost.

  Clinging to the taut muscles of his shoulders, she held tight as he thrust again. Tension radiated from him and she could feel the tight control he placed on his body. But she didn’t want him to hold back. She wanted him over the edge, dragging her wi
th him.

  “Stop protecting me. Just love me.” She dropped her hands to his buttocks, urging him to press deeper and faster.

  He groaned against her neck. “Heaven help me, but I do.”

  Before she could ponder his statement, Bennett pressed hard and full, and she lost the ability to think.

  Bennett whispered beautiful things against her neck and lips as their bodies joined. Soon, there was nothing but the moment. Only the two of them existed. No orders. No missions. No prisons. Again she teetered on the edge of ecstasy so immense it terrified and yet enslaved her.

  “Don’t fight it, Mari. Let go.”

  “I can’t— I have to—”

  “Trust me.”

  Ecstasy exploded through her, sweeping though every fiber of her being. She clung to Bennett, his shoulders the only thing keeping her from being lost forever.

  Holding her close, Bennett thrust one final time and stiffened before his ragged breathing slowed to match hers. Even though she had to struggle against his weight for each breath, she never wanted to release him.

  But after a moment, he rolled to the side, pulling her tightly to him. “Try to get some sleep.”

  Mari closed her eyes, but now she could smell the moldering filth of the cell, feel the uneven floor grinding against her hip. And if she opened her eyes she knew she might be able to see shadows flickering in the light under the door.

  She reached desperately for Bennett and kissed his chest, running her hands down his abdomen. “Not yet. Our version of the book needs a few more chapters.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A door slammed in the distance. Mari blinked from the warm comfort of Bennett’s arms. She trembled and desperately hoped Bennett was too deeply asleep to notice.

  Footsteps moved past their cell. How long had she slept?

  The sound faded, and her stomach roiled. She closed her eyes against her terror. How long now until they came for her?

  Or Bennett.

  Anger built within her, edging out the sleepy tendrils of fear. She burrowed further into his arms. Well, they couldn’t have him. She’d do whatever was necessary to protect him.

  After running through every option of escape in her mind again, still she came up with nothing. She had no supplies, no resources.

  Or perhaps she did.

  A new plan blossomed with leaden certainty in her mind. The simplicity of it astounded her. It would work. Yet even though her heart soared, sickness pooled in her stomach. Nevertheless, she set her jaw.

  Bennett planned to confess to being the spy.

  Instead, she’d confess first. But not to the captain.

  Refusing to give Bennett a chance to stop her, Mari stood and knocked on the door.

  The guard’s voice from outside the cell was slurred with sleep. “What do you want?”

  “I need to speak with your captain,” Mari replied in Turkish. “I have information.”

  Bennett jumped to his feet and grabbed her shoulders. “Mari, what are you doing?”

  She cursed her impetuousness. Perhaps it would’ve been a good idea to talk this over. After all, his connection to the ambassador hadn’t helped earlier. She switched back to English. “I’m saving you by—”

  The door cracked opened. The butt of a rifle connected with Bennett’s face and he stumbled back. Mari gasped, reaching for him.

  The guard snickered, his skeletal face twisting into a sneer. “I’m no green recruit to fall for your ploys.”

  She moved away from Bennett and more fully into the light. “Your captain will want to hear what I have to say.”

  The guard grabbed her arm and dragged her against him. He smelled of sweat and onions. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

  Panic flared as his thick arms crushed her against him. “No, I—”

  A rock struck the side of the guard’s head. He fell with a grunt and she stumbled with him.

  Bennett untangled her from the man’s arms and helped her to her feet. Then he grabbed the guard’s rifle and her sketchbook. Red ribbons of blood trickled down his face from a cut on his forehead. “Damnation, Mari. I won’t let you sacrifice yourself for me.” He slipped past her into the corridor.

  “I wasn’t planning on—”

  “It’s clear. Come.”

  Mari sighed in exasperation, but followed. “My plan—”

  Bennett had reached the top of the stairs. He raised his finger to his lips. Stepping through the door, he swung the rifle into the face of the man just outside. The guard collapsed.

  Mari bit her tongue. Speaking now would get them both killed.

  The salty tang of the ocean hung rancid in the air, but anything was preferable to the stench of the dungeons. From the violet glow along the horizon, dawn was only a few minutes off. As they hugged the smooth stone wall of the building, she kept a few steps behind Bennett, placing each foot carefully and trying to emulate his noiseless progression.

  A soldier turned the corner directly into their path.

  Bennett dove for him, but the startled man managed a cry before Bennett reached him.

  The cry echoed around the dark courtyard. Soon guards swarmed their position, shouting commands with rifles aimed.

  Her heart hammered in time with the metallic click of hammers being drawn. “They want you to drop the gun.”

  Bennett’s lips quirked. “I’d surmised as much.” With great caution, he set the rifle on the ground.

  Three guards rushed Bennett, taking him to the dirt. Once they pinned him, one of them kicked him viciously in the ribs. Bennett grunted, his face contracting in a grimace.

  She tried to run to him, but a soldier grabbed her. “Stop it!” she screamed, clawing at his face, anything to get to Bennett’s side. They’d kill him before she had a chance to explain.

  They kicked him again.

  “Stop or you will answer to Esad Pasha!”

  The group of men quieted and the man who’d been kicking Bennett took a large step back.

  A buzz hummed through the crowd. Torchlight flickered across suspicious faces.

  “What is going on?” The captain strode to the center of the gathering. His clothes hung slightly askew, testifying that he’d hurried from his bed.

  One of the officers scurried to his side. They conversed in hushed tones. The captain looked her way several times. Annoyance marred his features, but she saw hesitation there, too. “What would the esteemed pasha have to do with you?”

  This was her only chance to make him believe. She straightened and held her chin at an angle that would have done Fatima proud. “He’s my father’s friend. He raised me.”

  The captain scowled. “How do I know this isn’t a trick to buy you time?”

  “Send for him.” She glanced over to where Bennett had risen unsteadily to his feet. His face betrayed nothing of his agony, but he couldn’t straighten to his full height.

  Please let them believe. Please. The courage she thought she’d be able to muster didn’t exist. If they hurt him again, she’d confess to anything to make them stop.

  The captain snorted. “You’re important enough for him to come to this hellhole?”

  She nodded. Whether he’d order them hanged once he came was another question entirely.

  “Lock them back up. No one opens the door for any reason until the pasha comes. No food or water.” The captain smiled. “You’d better hope your pasha finds you important enough to make haste.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Esad’s well-sprung travel coach barely bounced on the rutted roads. He hadn’t spoken since he’d ordered Mari and Bennett inside.

  His hand tapped on the muted gray of his trousers, the dull color terrifying her as much as the rage that corded his neck.

  “Give it to me,” Esad ordered.

  “I don’t—” The automatic denial sprang to her lips.

  “I may have confirmed your story about drawing insects to the captain back there, but do not for a moment delude yours
elf into thinking I believe it.”

  Bennett stiffened beside her, but made no move to touch the sketchbook that rested between them.

  She wanted to beg Bennett to understand what she was about to do and not be disappointed with her again, but she could hardly address that now. She tried one final tactic to maintain peace with both men. “The soldiers would’ve taken anything when they captured us.”

  Esad saw it for the weak attempt it was. “And you would’ve found a way to keep it. I know you better than that, Mari. Do you have the information on the fort, yes or no?”

  Tears burned in the back of her throat. Bennett’s life was worth the price, but Esad’s hatred flayed her. I was trying to do the right thing, she wanted to cry. But she knew that wouldn’t save her; doing what she thought was right had brought nothing but anguish these past months.

  She handed him the sketchbook.

  Esad sighed wearily, and his eyes dimmed. He flipped the book open and scanned the images. “Where’s the information hidden?”

  “I—”

  Bennett placed his hand on her knee. “You have the information in your hand whether you know where to find it or not. That is enough.”

  Mari quieted.

  “How long?” Esad asked. “How long have you been a spy? All those times I welcomed you into my house, you were plotting against me.”

  Bennett cast her a look, warning her to be silent.

  But she could not. “I only sought freedom for the Greeks.”

  “The Greek rebel a few months ago, were you involved in the plan to assassinate the sultan?”

  If she had been, Mari didn’t doubt Esad would see her executed. “No! I had no part in that.”

  Esad studied her, then shook his head. “I understand your part in this, Major. You are no doubt under orders. But Mari, I thought you despised the English. Why betray me for them?”

  Her chest burned like it had been ripped open. “I never betrayed you!”

  “You betrayed the empire. It is the same thing. Why?”

  “My mother’s people deserve their freedom.”

 

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