Written on Your Skin

  “Try it,” she said, and then, going up on her tiptoes, she kissed him.

  He did not hesitate. He cupped her elbows and kissed her back, deeply, his mouth bitter from the ale. Around them, cheers broke out and also, belatedly, a few good-natured admonitions. The alcohol had been flowing freely enough to erode the basis for moral outrage, perhaps. There is no society so upright as an English country town. Ha! Poor Mama would be so shocked.

  Her calves began to tremble, and she pulled away. His hand followed, cupping her neck. “The room at the inn is ours,” he said.

  “Yes,” she whispered. All that lavender growing against the windows, and the rosemary inside, promising comfort, and the pleasures of a warm, clean bed.

  She was not sure what she had expected of Ashmore. Her liaison with Henry had been carried on in darkness, in the silent hush of silk-draped bedrooms with curtains drawn, lights doused, voices hushed at his request, lest his servants, his sister, his nephew, a host of ears overhear. Sex with Henry, in her memory, tasted of his shame, and darkness, and his mounting frustration with her refusal to let him make her “honorable,” to wear his ring so he might lie down with her and turn the lamps up beforehand.

  But their room at the inn, when Ashmore unlocked the door, gave her a foretaste of how different this would be. The chamber was flooded with the lambent light of late afternoon, picking molten highlights from the floorboards exposed by the edge of the rug. When she turned back, she found him still at the door, in no hurry to shut out the light. He made no move at all, in fact. He stood and stared at her, not at her breasts or her hips, but at her, his eyes dark and deep. He seemed to be deliberating on something, and her body appreciated the implications, although her mind was not so sure of them; pulses began to quicken in every secret part of her as he looked.

  “Are you awaiting an invitation?” A marvel that her voice could sound so confident, in defiance of the weakness in her knees.

  “No,” he said. “The light on your face is quite beautiful. You look dipped in gold.”

  She took a breath. Compliments to her beauty were routine. There was no cause to find his words miraculous. But this time, at least, her reply was very easy to give. “Come and kiss me, then.”

  He smiled a little. With one hand, he flipped open the buttons on his jacket. It dropped to the ground and he stepped away from it, now working on his waistcoat. Even the finest jacket worked against him by disguising this silhouette now bared by his shirtsleeves, the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. Her gaze wandered lower, to the distinct bulge in his trousers. She felt a little foolish for flushing, as though the sight came as a surprise. He had been ready for her for some time; she had felt his hardness when she kissed him on the village green.

  “Your turn,” he said softly.

  This startled her; he was not fully undressed yet. But her hesitation was brief; she had ingenuity at her disposal, if no experience in this sort of game. She started with her gloves, loosening them finger by finger as he settled back against the door to watch. He looked too comfortable lounging there, too indolent, as though this were all a game for his amusement, and so she drew out the process, taking each finger in her teeth to draw the gloves off bit by bit. But he seemed amenable to waiting; only when she reached up to her hair to pluck out the pins did a low noise come from his throat. “Let me,” he said, and she turned, seeing the bright blue sky glowing through the tree limbs outside the window as his footsteps approached.

  His fingers settled at the crook of her neck, warm and firm. Lips pressed against her nape, opening, a hot, moist pressure that lingered there as his hand slowly moved down to cup her breast. His teeth closed lightly on her neck, and for a long moment he made no other move. He simply held her there, as if to warn her that her decision was made now, and the view out the window should not concern her; all she needed to know was how wholly she stood in his grasp.

  And then his other hand delved into her chignon. The heavy weight of her hair fell coiled over her shoulder; a light touch threaded through it, pulling it behind her back, smoothing through the length of it. She closed her eyes, lulled by these strokes, surprised by his gentleness. This was not what she’d expected of him; she wasn’t sure if it was what she wanted. It felt too much like tenderness, while what had sprung up between them outside was more elemental and fierce, nothing to do with caring.

  Nothing between them had to do with caring. Her eyes opened; she was frowning. “Let my hair alone,” she said.

  His laughter was soft and hot against her neck. It sounded wicked, raising goose bumps along her flesh. “No,” he said, and the mean edge to his voice lent his slow, deliberate strokes through her hair some new and mysterious significance.

  “Yes.” She tried to turn and face him. Her hair pulled by the roots; he had wound it around his hand to hold her in place.

  His lips touched her ear. “No,” he repeated very softly. His hand cupped her breast again, then slid down slowly over her abdomen, pressing into her skirts, finding the space between her thighs. He cupped her mound and pulled her back against his body, his cock pressed now against her lower back, while outside the oak branches waved against the sky. His fingers rippled, once, and she felt herself grow moist and heard a whimper die in her throat.

  She forced herself to swallow. “All right then,” she said coolly. “Do as you like. Maybe I’ll be impressed.”

  “I do hope so,” he said. A steady pressure exerted itself on her hair, gently pulling her head toward her left shoulder. She shut her eyes and submitted, feeling the delicate flick of his tongue along her neck. His hand released her mound, and she felt the loss as a pang, only slightly alleviated when she realized his hands had moved to the hooks of her gown. She should not have worn a corset, she thought distantly. It made things so much more complicated. In one of her artistic gowns, she might already be naked and this curiosity might be sated; already she would know what his lips felt like on her breast.

  But she’d underestimated his cleverness. The gown parted around her, sagging with an audible puff as though protesting its mistress’s lack of manners, letting a man handle it so rudely. Now came the hiss and slap of laces being loosened; his hands at her waist lifted her out of the tangle, and redirected her to face him.

  His face was intent, almost fierce in the sunlight. His eyes and hair were no lighter for the sun on them, a deep rich brown immune to auburn. But the fine contours of his lips seemed newly beautiful to her, hewn with greater precision than those of Bernini’s anguished saints. She reached up to touch them, and he sucked her finger into his mouth, watching her all the while, as though he wished to know what she thought of this, as though it mattered to him very much. Her own lips parted; she would have told him how her bones seemed to be liquid and a tremor was starting within her, but when he released her finger, his little smile told her not to bother. He took her wet finger in his hand and directed it down his chin, over his throat, trailing it to the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple, never looking away from her. It came to her then that she had, perhaps, overestimated herself: she knew nothing of the games his smile hinted at.

  “We are going to enjoy each other,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” she whispered back. She did not back down from a challenge.

  She broke from his hold to pull away his suspenders and yank his shirttails from his trousers, pushing his shirt from his shoulders. His upper body, bared, was an expanse of golden skin, chiseled with muscle. She touched his abdomen lightly, astonished by its sculpted flatness; she had thought these segmented bands of muscle a figment of artists’ imaginations. When his belly contracted, she could see the working of his physique; she laid her palm flat against it, to feel how it moved. “You are beautiful,” she said. She had never said such a thing to a man, had never understood the word could be so applied. The idea pleased her fiercely; it seemed powerful to her. “Very beautiful,” she amended. And then, on a sudden weird burst of humor, remembering all the times she
had been so praised, she added, “Why, you’re a pocket Venus writ large, Ashmore.”

  He laughed, which surprised her; she looked up at him, and surprise turned to amazed gratification—he understood exactly what she meant. “I will not return the compliment,” he said. “Venus was a hell of a lot less trouble than you are. But Helen…” He reached for her shift, and she raised her arms to help him. A silent breath came from him, passing over her forehead as he looked at her. “Helen,” he confirmed softly, and then went to his knees in one fluid, soundless movement, to kiss her waist and then her breast.

  Her arms came around his head, touching the softness of his wild hair. She wanted to close her eyes, but when she did she felt dizzy; she opened them and watched his tongue touch lightly to her nipple, and then his lips close over it. It drew an intense, almost violent feeling from her; her arms tightened around him, and then she wondered at herself, clutching him close as if he provided her balance, when she was standing on her own two feet. She did not want to be standing, suddenly; she wanted to be lying next to him, or no, she wanted to watch him, naked, walk to the bed. “Take your clothes off,” she said hoarsely.

  His teeth pulled at her nipple one more time before he stood. His hands moved to the fly of his trousers, but she pushed them away, unclasping the hook and sliding the fabric over his hips. She told herself there was no need to disguise her curiosity; he did not expect shyness from her. But she had never seen a man in the light, and it unsettled her to see him so openly bared. She put a hand around his cock, and realized the differences between men; she would have more trouble with him than with Henry, although her body seemed to like his better.

  She tightened her grip, and he gasped. She exhaled, too, because the feel of him leaping in her palm made something within her pulse deeply. She felt open and clutching, ready for him. She wanted to tell him that. She wondered if she dared. The words were ordinary, but their order and meaning would be unprecedented for her; perhaps they required rehearsal, although she could not envision failing right now. Her fingers tightened again. “I want this,” she said. It was the best she could do.

  It served. He scooped her up from the floor—and she did not like that; she did not like the reminder of how light she was, or how easily he could carry her. But when he dropped her onto the bed, she saw the full length of him, his calves corded with muscle, his thighs flexing as he sank onto his knees on the mattress, and she forgot her irritation. I am a woman of the world, she thought, bedding this man, the unwilling man of intrigue, and she felt her lips curve; there was no harm in being pleased with herself, and anyway, it brought him up to her, his tongue into her mouth. Maybe he wanted to taste her smile; he himself tasted like ale, and dark hallways in times before she had learned to fear the darkness; she had gone running into it, in fact, full of plans and hopes that night, wanting him even when he had not wanted her back.

  It all seemed to twine together now, their limbs, his low moans, her own murmurs, this hunger inside her writhing and swelling as his hand stroked between her legs, past and present, Hong Kong, a country village. She touched his cock and squirmed until the head of it brushed against her wetness, a solidity her body craved. Lust, she thought, this was not simply desire but lust, almost too large for her body to contain. What matter if the lights were on or off when one felt this way? She thrust her hips, and caught him off guard; he said something low and too garbled to understand, and she felt the pressure of him, caught at her opening. She took him by his hard, muscled buttocks and pulled him in, thinking strange thoughts that made no sense. Anchor me. I have waited for this.

  His full width penetrated her slowly, little muscles in his face registering his effort to restrain himself. She knew a moment of burning discomfort, almost as sharp as the first time, when all she had felt the whole way through was pain. She had thought then that it was no wonder they called it a deflowering—flowers felt no pleasure when their heads were chopped off—but this time, a little revelation worked its way up from the place of their joining, and her body jerked once in the discovery of pleasure. Her thighs fell apart, then closed hard on his hips; he shut his eyes, lashes thick and finely arranged, orderly of course, falling somehow sweetly over his cheeks. Wrong to think, in this moment, that he looked as innocent as a boy. The body over hers was nothing boyish; her arms came around him and he was more solid, harder than anything she’d ever grasped, vibrating from the tension of his own private drama. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and tried to move with him. The rocking rhythm struck some nerve; a bead of sweat fell from his face, and it felt like a caress as it rolled down her shoulder. She was moving toward something, him pressing inside her so deep and with such intensity, again and again.

  But the mounting sweetness was too liquid and formless to be trusted. She found herself clenching against it—taken, suddenly, by some strange fear that if she submitted to it, she would shatter against him, a million little pieces she would never manage to retrieve. I don’t know you, she thought. This was the time for darkness, so they could be strangers. She realized with an unpleasant shock, almost of fear, that his eyes were open, resting on her face. Even now he was waiting for something from her. She did not like that. She would not give it to him. He whispered to her, “Come,” and she did not understand the request; what more could she give him than this? “Mina,” he said, but he had no right to demand anything of her; this act was done of her own accord.

  And perhaps he saw the answer in her face, for the deep kiss he gave her then seemed more complex and sober than the wild assault of a few seconds ago. His thrusts strengthened, as though he had grown tired of it and wanted to be done. She dug her nails into his back and waited, beginning now to notice how his hip bones ground into hers, more painful than she had realized, and how her own joints ached a little, and how she could feel the soreness already coming on and anticipate the way, afterward, she would feel loose and drained, as though she had given away something that she missed and wanted back and had gotten nothing in return for.

  He tore himself away from her and fell onto his stomach at her side, his breath coming in silent, fierce pants against her shoulder. Stupid, as she stared at the whitewashed ceiling, the giant crack running through it, the faint discolorations from a recent rain, to feel disappointment. She had set out to be wanton and seize the moment, and so she had. She had felt new things she’d never experienced with Henry; when Ashmore had taken her by the hair and reached between her legs, she had understood Cleopatra, and Jezebel and Eve.

  She started to sit up. His hand caught her arm. “We are not done,” he said softly.

  She yanked out of his grip and pushed at his lean hip until he rolled onto his side, coming up on his elbow. Taking pointed note of the damp patch on the sheets beneath him, she lifted her brow and said, “I think we are.”

  He showed his amusement openly. “Very knowledgeable, aren’t you?”

  Was he mocking her? “Maybe I am.” She reached for the sheet that had spilled to the floor, pulling it up over her breasts. He was still watching her. “What of it? Do you disapprove?”

  “Not at all,” he said easily. “But it seems to me that your education is incomplete. You didn’t climax, did you?”

  She looked away, up to the crack in the ceiling. Now that her body had cooled, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to feel foolish, and a little disoriented. It seemed as if she were waking from some performance she thought she had mastered, only to find the audience staring at her, bewildered, no applause. Ashmore looked slightly incredulous that she had thought she was doing well. Damn him for it.

  “My apologies if you weren’t pleased,” she said.

  “One could argue it has nothing to do with me, apart from the blow to my vanity.” He paused. “Or is that it? You think this has to do with what I want?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” And maybe she didn’t; as he continued to study her, she felt weirdly stubborn, and a little angry. She wanted to blame him for somethin
g. He seemed so determined to draw her out. But he’d already done so; she was naked, and he’d had his fun from her. He could look elsewhere if he needed additional entertainment.

  “Sit up,” he said.

  “You already had your view.”

  “Such a worldly woman, afraid to flash her tits at me?”

  She glared at him. “There’s your filthy mouth again.”

  He gave a shrug of one well-muscled shoulder. “I can get filthier.”

  “Don’t sound proud of it.”

  He began to smile. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it.” He reached out and yanked the sheet away, exposing her entirely. “Spread your legs, Mina.”

  A quiver stirred in her stomach. She couldn’t say whether it was the sound of her name, all done up in gold by his low, husky voice, or the command that made her hot. “Why? You’re done.”

  “You’re not.”

  Ah. He was going to try to impress her now. She held still as he touched her knee, nudging her legs apart. His survey was frank. “To be dirtier,” he said meditatively, “I could use several names to describe this sweet little slit of yours. Have you any particular preference?”

  She could feel a flush creeping down her throat. “No,” she managed. She knew no names for herself; Henry had only addressed his own bits. “I don’t care,” she added. “Whichever you like, if you must speak of it.”

  One brow lifted. “If I must speak of it.” He met her eyes. “Why not speak of it? You’re a sophisticate, not wholesome at all. Less jam than foie gras or caviar, no doubt, and much”—his lips curved—“to my delight. We’ve no need to dance around sensitive matters, then, do we. Touch yourself.”