by Olivia Drake
The erotic stone figures seemed to pulse with life. The woman straddled the man, her thighs spread and her feet hooked around his calves. Her face bore an absorbed look of inner ecstasy.
Sarah’s cheeks burned. Chaos blistered her belly. She was acutely conscious of Damien setting down the knapsack and then walking to her. Words fled her mind, as if she were straining desperately to decipher a page of unfamiliar script. It was one thing to read The Kama Sutra in the privacy of her bedchamber, and quite another to view the amorous display with Damien watching her.
She moved her eyes to the neighboring panel. Another man and woman engaged in sexual congress, flanked by two bare-busted courtesans who caressed the couple’s genitals.
Damien strolled to the sculpture and propped his scarred hand on the stone. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said. “I thought you might be interested to see how the Hindus revere the physical union of male and female.”
He casually touched the courtesan’s grapefruit breasts. Rising from the hidden depths of Sarah’s memory came the searing pleasure of his hand on her own breast. Shaken, she flicked her gaze away and focused on a jasmine-wrapped pillar. “You took photographs of this place?”
“Come now, Sarah,” he said, “surely you’re not offended by these statues. Sensuality is a part of India. If you’re to work with me on my book, you must set aside your virginal decorum.”
His voice was too smooth, too condescending. But why? Suspicion brought her chin sharply up. Studying Damien’s face, a face as powerful and compelling as the statues, she detected a tension about him, a sense of waiting.
It was a test.
He wanted her to be mortified. He wanted her to shrink from him in disgust. Hurt stabbed into the high happiness that had carried her through the morning. He was waiting to laugh at the plain-faced spinster who shied from the lecherous rogue.
“Perhaps,” he went on, “you’re shocked to see a man enjoying more than one woman at once. Are you, Sarah? No doubt you envisioned having sex with Reggie in the dark, under the covers with your nightgown pushed up to your waist.” Damien paused. “Or perhaps you’re too prudish to envision lovemaking at all.”
Like bullets hitting their mark, his words made her heart bleed. Haughtiness hardened his features. Leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, he looked lordly and aloof.
“So you planned this not to be a friendly outing,” she said. “You brought me here to mock my morals.”
“Let’s just say I thought it was high time you learned the kind of man that I am.”
She tasted the sting of tears, the bitterness of crushed hopes. Then fury blazed into the aching void of her chest. “So you think you’re superior, do you?”
“In some things, I am more experienced.”
“Oh?” Her gaze swept the wall and alighted on a sculpture. Marching toward it, she snapped, “Come over here. Unless you’re too embarrassed to see one woman enjoying three men at once.”
Frowning, he followed her. “Of course I’m not embarrassed—”
“Good, because neither am I.” Moving to the next panel, Sarah spied a woman on her hands and knees, her lover mounting her from behind. “In case you didn’t know,” she said, sweeping her hand toward the carving, “this position is called ‘congress of the horse.’”
His frown darkened. “Where did you hear that?”
She strode to another panel. “And this one, I believe, is known as ‘the lotus position.’”
He afforded the naked, entwined couple a furious glance. “Sarah, answer me.”
She advanced to the adjacent carving and craned her head to view the upside-down woman. “Oh, gracious, look here. This method requires lots of practice. It’s called—”
“Stop it!” He caught her arm and yanked her around to him. “I asked you a question, by God. Where did you come by your knowledge?”
She tossed back her head and confronted his thunderous glare. “Perhaps,” she said, imitating his lofty tone, “your plan to humiliate me failed. Perhaps you’re mistaken about my innocence. Perhaps Reginald and I have been lovers.”
Damien went still. He gave her a searching, scorching look. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? You don’t know everything about me, Damien Coleridge.”
Scowling, he perused her face. His fingers compressed the flesh of her arm. She heard the faint rasp of his breathing, the pulse of blood in her ears, the hum of a bee exploring a nearby jasmine vine.
Abruptly the violence smoothed out of his expression. A rare smile flitted over his hard mouth.
“You’ve never let Reggie touch your hallowed body,” he said with the satisfaction of solving a complex puzzle. “You’ve been reading my copy of The Kama Sutra.”
She tried to jerk free, but he easily held her tight against his firm body. “Unhand me,” she said in her iciest tone.
Humor danced in his eyes, brown eyes flecked with gold in the dust-moted sunlight. “Admit it, Sarah. You sneaked the book from my shelf. I’ll wager it’s hidden somewhere in your room. It’s probably beneath your mattress at this very moment.”
Her skin blazed. Not for a maharaja’s jewels would she admit he was right. To her utter mortification, tears altered his image into the visage of a darkly shimmering idol. She ducked her head and glowered at his shirt. “Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she said between gritted teeth. “I may be a plain-faced spinster, but at least I have principles. I don’t bolster my pride at the expense of others.”
Her words snuffed the glow of gratification in Damien. He gazed numbly at the crown of her head. Her hair draped her back in a thick braid of rich dark gold.
The thought of Sarah studying The Kama Sutra staggered him. The thought of her unplumbed erotic depths plunged him into a sea of torrid lust. Not that lechery did him a damned bit of good. He’d made her weep. He lacked even an ounce of honor. She’d never desire a miserable sod like him.
His forefinger nudged her delicate jaw. “Look at me.”
“Since you seem intent on educating me,” she said coldly, “I’d sooner look at the rest of the panels. Then I should like to return home.”
“Wait.” His thumbs tilted her unwilling chin upward. Her tear-wet eyes stirred a vortex of emotions inside him. “Sarah, I...” He burned in a maelstrom of regret. Catching a warm tear, he absently smoothed it over her cheekbone. Finally he managed to mutter, “I’m sorry for deriding your morals. And for calling you a plain-faced spinster. It was cruel and unforgivable.”
“You needn’t apologize for stating your true opinion,” she said stiffly. “I far prefer honest dislike to insincere friendship.”
“But that’s just it. I lied.” He was seized by the overpowering need to coax forth the wonder of her smile and the balm of her forgiveness. “You’re anything but plain, Sarah. Shall I tell you what I see in you?”
“Not ifyou’re going to tell me more lies.”
It was hardly an auspicious beginning. He cleared his throat. “Well, I won’t.” Aware of a soul-deep desire to make amends, he let his gaze travel over her, the purity of skin dusted by roses, the steadiness of her blue eyes moist with the remnants of tears, the shimmering gold hair that seemed to have a life of its own. More than her physical beauty, he admired the way she stood straight and unafraid, ready to parry his thrusts as an equal, even if it meant enduring another blow to her feminine pride.
“I see a woman who’s clever and brave,” he said slowly. “A woman with the spirit and tenacity to survive a mutiny and a flight through enemy territory. A woman who would run to the rescue of a man she has every reason to despise. A woman who can listen to the sins he committed and not pass judgment.”
She tilted her chin up. The bitterness still lurked like misty pain in her eyes. “You make me sound more like the warrior goddess Kali than a woman who would invite the interest of a man.”
“Then let me correct that notion.” His voice lowered to a husky murmur. “I see a woman as lovely as Saraswati riding the heave
ns on her peacock.”
Wistful suspicion lifted the fine arch of her brows. She swung away and walked the few steps to the wall, her arms crossed and her head bent. “You must be teasing, Damien. It isn’t like you to shower me with glib compliments.”
He stalked after her. “I know it isn’t like me,” he said, irritated with his inept eloquence. “For God’s sake, I hardly make a habit of baring my soul to women.”
She shook her head, stirring the wisps of hair around her profile. “If you truly believed I was the female paragon you say I am, you would...” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her teeth nibbling her lower lip.
He watched her mouth with all the desperation of a drowning man glimpsing the shore. “I would what?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Tell me...please.”
“You would feel drawn to me.” Her voice was so low he bent closer to hear. “You would want to hold me close and kiss me.”
Longing clenched his groin in a hot fist. His throat felt parched, his palms damp. The damnable thing was, he hadn’t the faintest notion of what had motivated her admission. He pulled her around to face him. “Is that an invitation?”
Her clear blue eyes met his. “Damien, I—”
He so feared her denial that his lips came down on hers and stole the rest of her words. Their bodies surged together in an embrace that crushed her pliant breasts against him and enticed his hands downward to curve over her bottom and press her thighs to the part of him that burned for her. The honeyed elixir of her mouth sapped his willpower and bathed him in carnal desire.
He was consumed by the impulse to make long, sweet love to her. It was wrong. It was wicked. It was dangerous.
She’d hate him for seducing her. He couldn’t live with that. He’d never before cared what anyone thought of him.
Yet he drew her down onto the sun-warmed grass and covered her slim body with his own. Their mouths blended in a slow, torrid kiss, his tongue tracing the shape of her lips and tasting the silken softness within. Madness beat in his blood, his loins, his heart. It was madness to hold Sarah’s supple form, madness to inhale her intoxicating aroma, madness to lure her to this place where sensuality saturated the very air.
His lips coursed over her velvet cheek, then downward to the tender curve of her throat. “Sarah, sweet Sarah,” he murmured against her fragrant skin. “I didn’t bring you here for this. I swear to God I didn’t.”
Her fingers threaded gently through his hair, and he looked up to find her gazing at him, her eyes dreamy and drowsy. “I believe you, Damien. But I wanted you to kiss me. Part of me has wanted it for a long, long time.”
Her naïve declaration roused his dormant morality. She belonged with a man of integrity, a man who could give her security and love, a man who could promise her devotion and happiness for a lifetime. A man like the noble Dr. Reginald Pemberton-Sykes.
The thought so filled Damien with livid jealousy that he choked on the yearning to seduce her with empty vows. He could not lie to her, not here, with the sunshine illuminating her vulnerable, trusting face. He could offer her only fleeting ecstasy.
She would despise him afterward. When she came to her senses, Sarah would condemn him forever as the devil who’d sullied her high morals and cheated her of the chance to bestow the wedding-night gift of her purity upon her husband.
He had only to stand up and walk away. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave her scented warmth and the comfort she offered his shattered soul. “I’m speaking of more than mere kisses. If you don’t stop me, Sarah, I’m going to make love to you.”
Instead of the disgust he expected, a smile transformed her features into heart-stopping beauty. Her gaze flitted to the wall of erotic carvings. “The Kama Sutra describes so many positions,” she said. “Which way will you do it?”
A chuckle of astonished delight swelled his throat. Damn the consequences. The world had turned upside down, and life was short. He opened the knot of her sash. A lacy pattern of sunlight draped the voluptuous glory of her breasts.
“My way,” he said.
He settled his mouth over her breast and suckled the blush-hued peak. Leaving the nipple wet, he kissed a path to the other, and her muted sighs of pleasure seared him like fire on the wind. Her spine bowed as she offered herself to him. He devoured the sensual feast of her skin, a feast that made his blood flow with the hot sap of lust. Her arms enveloped him in a bond as soft as satin ribbons and yet stronger than iron chains. He could scarcely believe this was Sarah responding like a wanton miracle beneath him, starched and straitlaced Sarah who aroused him to hard, explosive need.
His fingers curled into her hair and worked the strands free of confinement until she lay beneath him, like an angel haloed in luminous gold. He submerged himself in the mysteries of her mouth, and she opened her lips to accept his ravenous kiss. She made him feel whole and good, unfettered by past mistakes, rich with hopes and yearnings too new to name.
Her lovely hands smoothed over his chest on a journey of discovery. He had never thought of sex as anything more than an act meant to appease bodily urges. Now he wanted so badly to please her that he hurt with the mere thought of it.
“You’re shaped like a goddess,” he said, tracing the tip of one breast. “A goddess molded of flesh and blood and fantasy.”
For all her womanly attributes, she looked at him with the wistfulness of a girl wishing upon the stars. “Do you truly think so?”
“Truly. I’m through lying to you.” Kissing her brow, he felt humbled and taut with the fear that he might fail her. It struck him that he’d never taken a virgin before; all of his women had known how to please a man and how to reach their own release. Fever seized him, the fever to be the first man to entice Sarah to the peak of womanhood. “By God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. “For so many weeks I’ve wanted to lie with you like this.”
He kissed her again, a deep and patient kiss that strained the bounds of his willpower. It was all he could do to keep from driving into her, from snatching the release he had craved for too, too long. He trailed more kisses over her face and throat and breasts, imbibing the taste of her skin until he felt dizzy and half drunk.
“I want to touch you, Sarah. All of you.”
Her smile held a hesitant, ladylike quality. “Yes...I want that, too.”
With unsteady hands, he divested her of clothing until she lay before him as pure as the morning dew, her bare legs gleaming in the sunshine, her perfectly formed breasts rising and falling. He propped himself on an elbow, his fingertips trailing up her legs, his eyes drinking in the intoxicating grace of her. The satin smoothness of her thighs lay closed, hiding her feminine secrets.
Seeking to woo her, he murmured, “Your skin feels like silk and cream. I’ve dreamed about this, Sarah. I’ve dreamed of holding you naked in my arms. I’ve dreamed of you opening yourself to me.” He was surprised at himself. She managed to coax poetry from the devil himself.
He cupped his palm over the apex of her legs. Her eyes rounded and she drew a breath. “Damien, no one has ever touched me there before.”
“Don’t be afraid. It won’t hurt. I promise it’ll be the best feeling you’ve ever had.” Bedazzled by the fear that she might yet refuse him, he distracted her by kissing her breast as he slipped his finger into the silky bush and found the sleek petals of a rosebud within, damp with the dew of desire.
“Ohh.” A sigh fraught with enchantment gusted from her. She clutched his shoulders, her long lashes lifting, then closing. “Oh, that feels...”
“How?” he demanded, greedy to hear her response. “How do you feel?”
“Strange...and wicked...and wonderful.”
Her words enslaved him and pulled him deeper into her guileless web of witchery. Yet he sensed the tension gripping her limbs, a latent resistance that skirmished with her natural passion. Desperate to take her to the heights of glory, he murmured, “It’s all right to give in to me, Sarah. All my meanness has b
een an act. I was fighting the need to love you like this, to touch you.”
She whimpered in surrender. Her legs parted and she pressed deeper into his hand, accepting his feathery massage. She was ripe for him, ripe and ready. “Let it come,” he crooned. “Relax and let it come.”
Her brow wrinkled in rapt confusion. “Let what come?”
He bent and kissed her nose. “Shush...be patient and you’ll see.”
She hid her face in the hollow of his shoulder. Her hips eased into a rich flowing rhythm that kept pace with his seductive stroking. Her slick essence, her inarticulate sounds of pleasure, sharpened his own arousal to a violent pitch. Hunger savaged his groin, but he forced himself to go slowly, to let the bud of her passion swell and bloom until he coaxed her chaste body into full flowering.
“Give yourself to me,” he murmured. “Trust me, Sarah...trust me.”
Her breath quickened, hot against his shoulder. She arched in his arms, holding tightly to him as tremor upon tremor coursed through her. “Damien!”
Her head fell back, the wealth of sunbeam hair cascading over his arm and onto the grass. Eyes closed, lips parted, she was the embodiment of ananda, the state of perfect bliss. The swiftness of her response, the exultation on her delicate features, washed him in primal joy.
“Oh...oh, mercy.” Lifting herself, she gazed at him with the fascination of a grand discovery. “I never thought...The Kama Sutra told of pleasure, but I never imagined you could show me such splendor.”
The glow of her eyes lit the blackness of his soul. He felt as if it were his first time, too, and the odd thought wrenched his heart. Oh, God. If only he were worthy of her; if only he could bask in her adoration forever. Suddenly he craved the oblivion of his own release, and his insistent need burned away the foolish sentiment.
“The splendor is far from over,” he said, yanking at the strings of his sandals.
Still weak from the spasms of rapture, Sarah realized the act had yet to be consummated, a thought that heated her belly with renewed anticipation. Whatever lay ahead no longer frightened her. The stunning ecstasy left her forever transformed, as if Damien had reincarnated her into a new realm of womanhood.
