Every Whispered Word (27 page)

“Maybe you should have my tent.” She suddenly disliked the idea of his being confined in such a tiny, crowded space. “Mine is bigger, and you're going to need more room—”

“It's fine, Camelia,” Simon assured her. “I'm sure I'll be very comfortable. I can sleep just about anywhere, you know.”

She nodded, unconvinced. She wished she had thought to tell her men to put Simon's things in her tent instead, and she could have taken this smaller tent. Somehow she had forgotten how Spartan the accommodations were at Pumulani. Perhaps they had simply never struck her as being uncomfortable or spare until that moment.

“Well, then, unless there is anything else you need, I guess I'll say good night.”

“Good night, Camelia.”

She moved toward the tent opening, then stopped.

“Was there something else?” Simon wondered.

She regarded him uncertainly. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

She was silent a long moment. “What was being in prison like?” she finally asked, her voice small and tentative.

Simon tensed. He supposed it was only reasonable that she would be curious. She had assured him when she first met him that she was interested only in his abilities as a scientist and an inventor. But much had happened between them since then. There had been the most extraordinary passion he had ever known, but more, there had been the quiet, steady blossoming of something that went far deeper than his desire for her. It was this that made him reluctant to answer her question.

On some level he did not completely understand, he wanted Camelia to think only the best of him—at least as much as that was possible, given his sordid past, his obsessive preoccupations, and his eccentric ways. And so he hesitated, as if he did not quite understand what she was asking, when in fact he knew exactly what she was searching for.

“I know it must have been terrible.” Camelia didn't want him to think she was some sort of sheltered woman who had no concept of the cruelties of the prison system. “I don't mean what were the conditions like. What I would like to understand is, how did you survive it? You were just a boy, yet somehow you managed to endure years of living on the streets and being in prison, and—just look at you.”

“I'm not sure just what part of me, exactly, you are looking at.” His voice was faintly teasing as he tried to deflect her interest in his childhood.

“All of you. You're disciplined and brilliant—”

“I'm not brilliant, Camelia,” Simon protested. “I just look at things differently from the way other people do.”

“You
are
brilliant,” she insisted. “One has only to look at your academic success and all the wonderful papers you have written to see that.”

“Lots of people graduate from university and write papers, and I can assure you, most of them are complete idiots. In my experience, some of the most intelligent people I know have never been inside a schoolroom.”

“What makes you brilliant is that you see possibilities where other people see the end,” Camelia explained. “You don't look at something and think, ‘What a great thing that is,' the way most of us do. You look at something and think, ‘That's not good enough—how can I make it better?' And it doesn't matter what it is—whether it's a perfectly good mop that has been around for a hundred years, or the latest engines of a steamship—you're able to come up with ideas for improving everything.”

“Not everything.” His expression was unreadable as he quietly reflected, “Not when I see something that is already perfect.”

“Nothing is perfect.”

You are.

He studied her as she stood before him, her brow furrowed as she struggled to delve beneath the protective layers he had wrapped around himself for so many years. Her champagne-colored hair had nearly escaped the last of its pins and was falling across her shoulders in golden disarray, and her skin was bathed in the apricot cast of lamplight. Copious wrinkles and grime covered the dove gray silk of her traveling outfit, and a smudge of dirt streaked the velvety perfection of her cheek.

She had never looked more beautiful to him.

Something had happened to her since she stepped onto African soil, and whatever it was had increased a hundredfold the moment they arrived at Pumulani. She seemed stronger to him, stronger and more confident, like an animal that had been caged and then is finally released back into its own environment. It amazed him that Camelia could actually blossom in such a harsh and isolated environment, but then, she was utterly unlike any woman he had ever known. It was this realization that began to erode the wall he had built around himself since he had kissed her so long ago in London. That and the magnificent dark pools of her celadon eyes, the faintly citrus scent that seemed to waft about her wherever she went, and even that dusky smudge upon her sun-burnished cheek.

He inhaled a steadying breath, feeling as if he were entering a place where he was afraid to go, yet somehow he found he could not turn away.

“Being in prison was like being in hell,” he told her quietly.

She regarded him soberly, her expression not filled with pity, which would have unmanned him, but with acceptance and compassion. He took some shred of comfort in that, if there was any comfort to be taken when one is asked to expose scars that have long been hidden from view. No one had ever asked him directly about his past before. Not even Genevieve and Haydon, who believed that their children should lift the bandages off of their old wounds only if they chose to. But as Camelia stood there staring at him, Simon felt something within him change. She was reaching out to him, because for some reason he could barely comprehend, she wanted to understand what had made him who he was.

And for the first time in his life, he actually wanted to open the door to the hell he had fought so hard to escape—if only for a moment.

“I was barely nine at the time,” he continued in a low voice, “but I was already well schooled in the art of survival. And still I found prison to be far more terrifying than anything I had ever known. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely no control over what was to happen to me. And when I realized I was to continue in that state for a period of five years, I wanted to die.”

He stopped.

“I'm sorry, Simon.” Camelia voice was soft and laced with remorse. “I didn't mean to bring up such painful memories for you. I had no right to ask.”

“You have every right to ask, Camelia.” He moved toward her and brushed a wayward strand of hair off her cheek. “I want you to know.”

She stared up at him, mesmerized by the warmth of his fingers against her skin, the burning intensity of his silvery blue gaze, the low cadence of his gentle voice. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him close, to somehow absorb the pain of the memories he was delving into only because she had asked him to. And yet something within her told her no, that to enclose him in her arms would start something she would not be able to stop, something that would only confuse her when she desperately needed to be focused and clear. It was this that kept her where she was, quietly accepting the gentle caress of his fingers as they languidly began to trace a path along the curve of her jaw.

“And then Lady Redmond came and took you out,” she said softly, trying to ignore the path of flame he was creating everywhere his fingers caressed.

“She rescued me.” His fingers were moving lower now, down the slender column of her neck and across the silky hollow at the base of her throat. “But it was years before I truly believed that someone wouldn't come to the door and drag me back, or that my circumstances wouldn't suddenly change and I'd find myself out on the street again. Once you have lost control of your life, you do everything you can to protect yourself, because you know it could happen again. You're afraid to trust anyone. You're afraid to believe in anyone. Everything in your life is shadowed by the belief that there is nothing out there that is truly good and beautiful and pure.” He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her close, still tracing the silky paleness of her throat and cheek. “But there was something I didn't know then, Camelia.”

“What?” Her voice was a wisp of sound against the pounding of her heart.

He lowered his head until his lips were barely grazing hers. “I didn't know about you.”

He closed his mouth over hers, trying to make her understand. One kiss, he told himself desperately, and then he would stop. Just one simple kiss, to ease the fire that had been raging within him ever since that night in London. He could be disciplined, he swore, even as a little moan escaped her throat and she opened to him, inviting him into the sweet darkness of her mouth. He swept his tongue inside, eager to reclaim the secrets she had shared with him once before.

It was only a kiss, he told himself fervently as his hands began to roam across the lush curves of her breasts and waist and backside. It was really nothing more, he reasoned, pulling her closer until the soft mound between her thighs was pressing against his aching hardness. Just a simple, passionate kiss, he insisted, unable to comprehend how his fingers had begun to unfasten the buttons at the front of her jacket. He peeled the garment off her and then did away with the blouse underneath, still telling himself this was nothing, merely a loosening of some garments that she didn't need anyway. Her skirt slid to the floor in a puddle of crushed gray silk, and was quickly followed by the ivory layers of her petticoats.

And still he insisted to himself that this was just a kiss, that he could easily stop it if she wanted him to.

He swept her up into his arms and laid her down upon the narrow cot, telling himself he would kiss her for another moment and then no longer. But her hands were upon him now, stripping away his shirt and his trousers, exposing his skin to the warm African night air and the desperate heat of her touch as she explored the muscled contours of his body. His kisses began to move lower as he swiftly unfastened the hooks of her corset, exposing the beauty of her coral-tipped breasts and creamy belly inch by glorious inch. He slipped her drawers down her legs and eased her stockings off next, until finally she lay magnificently naked beneath him.

He rained reverent kisses along the pale silk of her thighs, then dipped his tongue into the hot pink slickness between. She moaned and shifted against the cot, opening herself to him, threading her fingers into his hair as she held him between her slender legs. He tasted her deeply, lapping at the sweet dark pool of her until her breath was coming in frantic little gasps and her thighs were squeezing against him. He eased her legs open more and slipped his finger inside her, slowly, languidly, seeking out the most intimate secrets of her body while his tongue stroked and swirled against her.

She writhed upon the cot, accepting the pleasure he was giving her and wanting more. He slipped another finger into her and increased his rhythm, licking and suckling harder and faster as his fingers moved in and out. He could feel the pleasure mounting within her as surely as if it was his own, her body growing tauter and her breaths coming faster. Frantic whispered pleas filled the quiet of the tent, as she desperately reached for what he was trying to give her.

Over and over he kissed her and licked her and filled her, feeling as if he would surely go mad from the raw desire surging through him as she responded to his impassioned touch. Her body went taut suddenly, and she cried out, her pleasure so intense that it nearly shattered what little remained of his control. He stretched over her, burying himself into her as the tremors of her climax squeezed him again and again.

Then he began to shift within her, fighting for some semblance of control as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, kissing him deeply.

He wanted to go slowly, to make it last, to somehow make her understand whatever was happening between them, even though he barely understood it himself. But his body was treacherous. Having waited so long for the wonder of being inside Camelia once more, he found he could not go slowly, any more than he could have stopped night from turning into morning. And so he moaned and kissed her fervently, caressing her everywhere he could as he pulsed deeper and deeper inside her.

He wanted her with a desperation that was overwhelming, more than he had wanted anything before in his life. And the realization was agonizing, because at his very core his mind was still rational enough to recognize that she would never be his. Camelia belonged in Africa, with all its exquisite harsh beauty, living a life that was utterly foreign to him—a life in which he could never belong. Deeper and deeper he thrust, holding her close and kissing her hard as he pressed her against the creaking cot. And she moved with him, rising and falling with every aching thrust, matching his rhythm and urging him to go faster.

Suddenly he was falling, down and down, into a vortex of darkness and light. He cried out, a cry of ecstasy and despair, because he knew when it was over she would retreat from him once more. He wrapped his arms around her and crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her with desperate possession, wanting to make her understand that she belonged with him far more than she belonged in Africa. But as he lay against her, covering her with his heat and strength and desire, he could feel her begin to withdraw from him, as surely as he could feel his own heart begin to slow. He buried his head against her neck and held her fast, unwilling to move off of her.

Stay with me,
he pleaded silently, knowing it was a hopeless request. He gently brushed a golden strand of hair off her forehead, then traced the sweet curves of her cheek and nose and chin, trying to memorize every wondrous detail of her. It was a small torture to caress her so, but he did it anyway, so that when he finally had to let her go, he would be able to remember what it was to lie against her and brush his fingers over her satin skin.