Not Quite a Husband (25 page)

He grunted with the testes-jolting heat of it.

“I imagine I should take care to be very gentle about it?” she asked, the fingers of her right hand peeling apart the towel at his waist.

“I rather hope you will be very forceful about it. It’s not a Ming vase.”

“Goodness,” she murmured. “Will you show me what to do?”

He took her hand and wrapped it about his length. “Grip it, as hard as you can.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s what I always do.”

She whimpered. And then, with a soft grunt of effort, her hand clamped over him, a hot, smooth vise. She was strong. And he was so aroused it would take barely a touch to undo him.

He guided her hand into a naughty motion. “Yes, that’s it. Just—do that.”

And she did just that. His heart pumped. His breaths quickened—to his own ears he sounded like
a bellow operated by a madman. He seized a handful of her skirt.

Then she shifted her weight again and kissed him, her mouth warm, her tongue hungry. He lost all control. He kissed her back with the gentleness of an avalanche. His pelvis lifted from the bed despite all her exhortations to stay still. And he came hotly, endlessly, whispering incoherent words of relief and gratitude as he kissed and kissed her.

S
he scooted away from him to inspect his stitches, scolding him severely for not obeying her commandment. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t quite that stupid, that he’d used solely his uninjured limb for leverage. But his exhaustion at last caught up with him, and he fell asleep with her admonishing words echoing sweetly in his ears.

He awoke three hours later, when the hospital assistant came to call her away to help an injured sowar. Within fifteen minutes he was back on the rampart and did not leave for the next thirty-six hours. She sent the hospital assistant after him one time. But Ranjit Singh took one look at the situation—the enemy inside the barbed wire enclosure, ladders raised against the walls of the fort—and concluded that it was no time to pull any man away from the battle.

When Leo did finally get away, he stopped by the surgery, but she was in the middle of an operation, her brows furrowed, her face pale, cursing in surprisingly vivid German. So he hobbled to their quarters, fell into bed and fell asleep instantly.

He dreamed that she was there with him, carefully nudging his trousers down to examine the stitches on his thigh and tsking in disapproval. Her fingers were cool and reassuring. He adored her touch.

Her fingers meandered away from the stitches and dipped down to the inside of his thigh. He was immediately aroused.
Put your hand on me. Give me some blessed relief. I have wanted you too long
.

Her hand moved away. His hopes plunged. But then something even better happened. She kissed him just above the dressing, a moist, lingering kiss. He groaned with the magnitude of his need. Inch by inch she nibbled and licked. He was dying—such pleasure, such torture.

And then she came to a most logical but no less shocking destination: She took him inside her mouth. He was instantly on the verge. It was
her
mouth,
her
lips,
her
tongue on him. Burning, exquisite, unbearable.

He shuddered and jerked, barely holding back at the edge. He tried to give her a
warning. I have to—I’m
going to—
Too late. He lost all control. His emptied into her in hot convulsions, the pleasure fearsome, almost terrible in its blinding intensity. And she—good God—she swallowed everything.

In the aftermath he trembled and gasped, undone. This had to be the best bloody dream he’d had in a long time. In real life, he would never even think to suggest to her that she pleasure him with her mouth, let alone that—

He opened his eyes. Judging by the light seeping in around the edges of the door, it was still the middle of the day. But as the shutters were kept shut—there were constant sniper shots during daytime—a kerosene lamp had been lit to dispel the dimness inside the room.

He had not lit the lamp.

He turned his head. Bryony knelt between his legs, panting slightly. At his look she quickly lowered her head and pulled up his trousers.

It had not been a dream. For a moment he was paralyzed with dismay.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I thought I was dreaming. I didn’t know—I wouldn’t have—”

“Don’t be silly,” she said softly. “It had to go somewhere and it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what was coming.”

Then she did something that amazed him: She
giggled at her own words. “That was a horrible pun, wasn’t it? I’d better go make my rounds. You go back to sleep.”

That night she woke up panting in arousal. It was pitch dark. He was in bed with her, his hand between her legs, playing her like a lyre.

“Move a little higher,” he ordered.

He was on his back, she on her side. She wiggled toward the head of the bed, careful not to bump into his right thigh even by accident.

“Now come closer.”

She did. In the next moment, his mouth captured her nipple, and warmly, kindly lavished it with attention. Desire ripped through her—he knew exactly how wildly she responded to the coddling of her nipples: A breath of air blown across the tips had them hard and quivering for touch; a gentle lick had her moaning and straining for more; a tug with just the right amount of force as she hovered on the edge of a paroxysm sent her over promptly.

When his lips retreated, she moaned in protest. He palmed her breast. “Patience, patience,” he murmured.

His other hand still fiddled with her, gently, almost
sleepily. She wanted more. She wanted more aggression from him, more urgency, more—

He pinched her nipple. As aggressive and urgent a pleasure as she ever knew jolted her. Suddenly she was there, her spine curving, her inside quaking.

He kissed her on the forehead. “I’d tell you to go back to sleep, but I’m not sure you are even properly awake.”

“I am,” she protested. And fell back asleep in the next second.

When she woke up again, it was still night.

She stared at the ceiling, wondering what had pulled her out of her deep slumber. After a while she realized that it was the silence, the night as still as a thief. She sat up. Where was everyone? Was the battle over?

A match flared into life. Leo, seated at the edge of the table, his good leg propped up on a chair, lit the lamp. He discarded the match and lifted a half-eaten fig from the table. His clothes were hopelessly rumpled, his hair mussed, his face rough with a four-day growth of beard. He should appear haggard, but as he watched her, there was such a jauntiness to him—almost a swagger—that he merely looked at once battle-tested and virile.

Remembering the state she had been reduced to in her sleep—the front of her shirt open, her corset hanging loose, the top buttons of her combination undone, her skirt and petticoat up around her waist—she hastily reached for a blanket, only to realize that she was decently dressed, her skirts down at her ankles, her breasts perfectly contained.

“I didn’t want to imperil anyone’s chance of survival by keeping the surgeon in a state of undress,” he said, smiling. “I also didn’t want soldiers dying of bliss should you rush out of this room with your bosom in plain view.”

She cleared her throat. “Thank you. Most kind of you.”

“But
I
would like to see you,” he said softly. “And perish of bliss.”

She bit her lower lip, then set her face into an austere expression. “Not when I’m still upset with you.”

He flushed. She stared at the abrupt and visible reddening of his complexion—she’d never seen him flush before.

“I’m sorry. I was dreaming and I—I—” he stammered.

She flushed too. “That’s not what I’m upset about.”

“No?”

She felt the warmth of her cheeks spread to her throat and bosom. It was a few seconds before she
could speak. “You promised you would stay off your feet and only load rifles for others. But when Captain Bartlett came to tour the injury ward he couldn’t say enough about your marksmanship.”

He relaxed and tossed her a fig. “That is pure slander. I will have you know that I stayed calmly uninvolved as pandemonium erupted all about me.”

“Captain Bartlett further said that when the sight on one of the machine guns malfunctioned, and their regular sharpshooter became injured, you were the one who held off the enemy while the sepoys repaired the sight.”

“A momentary lapse. I blame it on the general panic among the men.”

“A momentary lapse that lasted a day and a half?”

“Will you forgive me if I tell you that all throughout I was extremely, excessively careful with my stitches?”

“Your dressing was soaked in blood.”

“Was it?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know.”

“The stitches mainly held. But it took a while to clean and disinfect.”

“I didn’t know that either,” he said sheepishly. “I thought you came, took a look at it, then …”

They both flushed again. She’d always viewed
such sexual acts as analogous to cliff-diving: survivable, and no doubt thrilling to a tiny portion of the population, but what was the point really? Yet as she’d knelt before him that afternoon, she’d remembered the searing pleasure he’d once given her in just such a manner.
One day you will return the favor
, he’d whispered in her ear that night. And she’d decided to return the favor then and there, because they might not live to see another day.

Perhaps she ought to rethink cliff-diving. Because she certainly enjoyed its analogous act more than she’d ever thought possible for anyone. Even the scramble at the end.

She cleared her throat. “I’m going to write a letter to the
Times,”
she said, changing the subject completely. “The last man I operated on was hit by friendly fire. The bullet shattered upon impact. And it was horrible—took me four hours to extract all the fragments. Ranjit Singh told me that these Dum-Dum bullets are designed to do that, to inflict maximum damage. I understand that bullets are supposed to be deadly, but surely it is against the spirit of the Geneva Convention to have bullets that maim so viciously when they don’t kill.”

He sighed. “This entire thing is mad. We spent untold amounts to maintain these forward posts, because we fear the Russians would come sweeping
down the Pamirs any day. But I’ve seen photographs of the Pamirs taken from the air: It would be worse than Napoleon marching on St. Petersburg for the Russians to invade India via the Pamirs—they’d have a better chance sacrificing half their army in Afghanistan first.”

She took a bite of the fig he’d given her. “I didn’t know there were photographs of the Pamirs taken from the air.”

“Remember my purpose for being in Gilgit, the balloon expedition? It wasn’t to survey the Nanga Parbat, but to take aerial images of the Pamirs and study the routes the Russians could take.”

Her eyes went wide. “You were on a
spy
mission?”

“It wasn’t exactly spying since the Pamirs don’t belong to either side. But I’d certainly gone to Gilgit in service to the empire. So I’m not quite as innocent a bystander in this uprising as you are.”