Written on Your Skin

  His meaning registered, and her throat closed. Oh, this was far more than she’d imagined when she’d realized he was not going to draw the curtain. This was…beyond imagination. “I don’t take orders from you,” she said thickly.

  “I noticed,” he said. “You’re afraid to give an inch, which is why I’m sitting here, keeping my hands nicely to myself, despite this banquet laid out before me. Do it for yourself, Mina.” He paused. “Unless…unless, of course, you didn’t know that you’ve no need to depend on a man for your pleasure.”

  She felt pinned by his steady, hot regard. He purred the words, as though he was inordinately pleased with her, but although his voice seemed to cast some sort of sticky spell that kept her eyes glued to his, her hand would not move. To touch herself in front of him seemed beyond shameless.

  But shame was not meant to concern her, was it? She had no truck with that emotion. She cupped her hand over herself, feeling her own heat, the moisture that lingered from their encounter. She did it defiantly, lifting her chin, and he watched her do it. It was appalling; her cheeks stung; she could not have felt more exposed had he peeled her skin away, bit by bit, the way Italians did with their grapes over breakfast, neatly with a knife and fork.

  “Pretty picture,” he said softly. “But not quite purposive, is it?” He reached out, and his fingers settled over hers, closing in a warm, hard grip that sent a shock through her, although it was such an everyday sort of touch that it should have felt like nothing after the more intimate contact they’d made. He moved her hand, pushed it up her body, so her middle finger brushed against an exquisitely sensitive part of herself. Her strangled sound won his immediate attention. “Yes,” he said, “and now stroke.”

  He had shocked her. There was a piquant pleasure in startling a woman so determined to remain unmoved, and later he would savor the memory of her expression, the mounting flush on her cheeks and the sweet glimpse of her tongue between those parting lips. But at present, his awareness had contracted too tightly to allow for the contemplation of irrelevant victories. All that mattered was this: the unrealized promise of her flesh, her own stubborn refusal to pursue her pleasure, and his mounting conviction that another piece of her mask trembled by a string, ready to drop away if only he gave her a push.

  He took her hand by the wrist and directed her fingers.

  The feel of her heat and dampness stirred a growl in his chest. He bit down on the sound, focusing instead on her muffled breath. She was trying to hide her own noises. He guided her finger over her clitoris, feeling a moment of fierce satisfaction as her hips jerked slightly.

  But then she grew abruptly paler, and her teeth closed around her lower lip. She was fighting, by habit, a battle that he was not going to let her win. Her eyes fixed on his, their glassiness sharpening into resolve. He gritted his teeth and exhaled and very gently removed her hand, pressing it to the mattress by her thigh.

  Her shoulders slumped. Maybe it was relief that loosened her muscles, but her posture also spoke of disappointment. He did not flatter himself with the thought. She was a woman of passion, and her body, aroused, still trembled with need. She might tell herself that the need was purely physical, bearing no innate connection to him. Maybe that was even true. But not for long. How her need would be answered—he intended to have everything to do with that.

  “We’re done then,” she whispered.

  “Just about,” he said gently, and took her by the shoulder, his thumb pressing lightly over her collarbone, his fingers firm on her back. He lowered her—for now she did not resist at all—onto the pillows, where her hair tumbled outward in streamers of gold. She watched him a moment longer, but when he made no other move, she closed her eyes and sighed.

  He was briefly appreciative of the privacy. For to survey her in her fullness—to behold the blushing cream of her skin complemented only by the rose of her nipples and the light scattering of platinum between her legs—felt like being slammed against a wall: again and again his breath was knocked away. Such grand vistas, great waterfalls and scarlet sunrises and the perfection of a woman softer and sweeter than any ideal, demanded humbleness from the viewer, a sense of one’s smallness when compared to the vast range of wonders the world offered.

  But he did not feel humble. And there was the difference. She was some sort of miracle, yes, but it was not the world’s place to look upon her. She was his miracle, and his intentions felt avaricious, as carefully calculated as trigonometric equations. He bent down and in one swift move—he would not allow her to think now—pushed open her legs and laid his tongue to her slit.

  She gasped. He heard it dimly, but with the taste of her on his lips, it did not concern him overmuch. He took a long lick, and then another; her hips jerked and she tried to move away, but he caught her and forced her still, settling with intention on the one spot that would erode her resolve most quickly. Pussy, quim, cunt, box—earlier, he might have given her a great many synonyms, but now his mind was working with more euphemistic litanies. Honeypot, nectar, banquet, heaven, heart, paradise, mine. Had he offered these options before, she would have laughed and girded herself, but now if he chose to speak, which he would not because that would require removing his mouth, she would not have the breath left to mock him, for she was moaning, submitting to him very sweetly.

  Her flesh trembled; she bucked against him. But there was nothing of resistance in her movements. Her hands settled in his hair, grasping hard, twisting. He didn’t mind a little pain; he encouraged her by turning his head to bite, very gently, her inner thigh. His thumb claimed her clitoris and her voice broke on a long, low cry as he licked down to her opening, filling her with his tongue as he’d done earlier with his cock. She spoke his name, a breathy plea, and he moved upward to abrade her with short, steady laves, placing his fingers inside her, spreading them to fill her as her soft thighs closed over his cheeks.

  With a low keen, she broke for him. Her sheath contracted in hard spasms as he continued to kiss her, more softly now, working from her slit to the edge of her inner thigh, up the sloping plane of her stomach to the hot well of her navel, which contracted and shivered beneath the flick of his tongue.

  When the last quivers of her pleasure had subsided, he withdrew his fingers and pushed himself up by the elbow.

  Her blush had grown violent. Scarlet-faced, she stared at him. The tic at the corner of her mouth, the clenching of her fingers on the sheet, suggested an embarrassment of continental proportions. He smiled and lifted the fingers that had coaxed her pleasure, and licked the taste of her away.

  Her eyes dropped from his. She swallowed.

  Whatever she wanted to keep from him, he was not going to have it. He leaned forward and took it from her mouth with a kiss, his tongue luring open her lips. By the time he pulled back, her hands were clutching his shoulders.

  She did not want to let him break from the kiss. She was trying, she thought, to take back what he’d retrieved from her. But some shiver within her gave that the lie: she was not as strong as she thought, or maybe, just maybe, he was not the man she had assumed him to be. Her body still trembled with the aftermath of what he had done to her, so easily, without any cooperation from her but sheer, quivering curiosity. God above, Henry had never done anything like that!

  He pulled back, watching her, slightly breathless, his chest rising and falling in a rapid, shallow rhythm. She met his eyes and waited for him to do something. He was hard again, his cock straining toward his navel, but he did not move.

  Either he was generous beyond expectation, or he was devilishly calculating. She could not make up her mind.

  “I’m no boy,” he said. “I can master myself. No call for worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said quickly.

  “Yes, you are.” He paused. “You know, Mina, my interest in you is not idle. Does it help to know that?”

  She shifted uneasily, not daring to ask what he meant. “I don’t need help.”

  “All right
,” he said slowly. “Fair enough. And perhaps to the point. All this”—he gave a slight wave, to indicate the rumpled sheets, God above, she had felt so wanton—“only means what you make of it.”

  They would make nothing of it, of course. Why should he even raise the possibility? She cleared her throat, then managed a laugh. “Of course I know that. You think me more naïve than I am. And after this, even?”

  He shook his head. A lock of brown hair flopped over his eyes, and her fingers curled into her palms; they itched to brush it away for him. His skin tasted of salt and musk; she had forgotten to bite him, and she regretted it. “What I mean to say…” He hesitated again. “It’s not a matter of control, unless you want it to be. Unless we decide to make it so,” he added softly.

  Unless we decide. Her breath caught. He spoke as though this—the mussed sheets, the quilt clinging to the edge of the bed, his casual nakedness, the light pouring in, the tangle of hair scratching her nape, knotted from his hands—was not the aftermath of something finished and done, but a field of negotiation, a space for some new creation in which dignity and manly pride had no role. We can decide how it will be. Together, shaping something.

  She sat up, wondering why the idea should move her so, increasingly uncertain whether he’d even meant it that way. One could read a million meanings into a phrase; that was, after all, the reason the world loved poetry. Her liking for him had addled her.

  She smoothed her hands over the sheet, then plucked it back over her, making the movement as casual as she could. “I don’t know what you mean,” she decided.

  But perhaps she did. Certainly he seemed to think so. His slight smile told her as much. “Won’t you let yourself like me a little bit?”

  “I like you,” she said, then arched an ironic brow. “Obviously, I like you, Ashmore. What more proof do you require?”

  He studied her face for a long moment. “Drop the mask, then. Of your own volition.”

  She inhaled sharply. It was not so much the words that shocked her; of course he knew now that she had been playing roles with him. No, the electric surprise that flowed through her was all for the idea that he would think to ask such a thing from her. That he might think she would consider doing it for him.

  That she might want to.

  She pushed out the breath. “I am who I am.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

  No, she wanted to say. You don’t understand. I am whoever I wish to be, with you. You don’t get to decide. But her lips would not move. She thought of his scar, and could not bring herself to say it. He had been so honest with her. And the wonder he had wrought for her, at no gain to himself—

  All she could do was wait silently for his eyes to release her, and wonder at her own disappointment when he turned away to retrieve his clothes.

  By the time they went downstairs to sup, the episode in the bed might as well have been a dream. Phin watched, with amusement and then a touch of frustration, as she slipped back into her comfortable routine. She did it with deliberate thoroughness, rattling cheerfully to him over a hock of lamb about her make-believe dog, the perils of cats, how lovely his hair would look if he only used her tonics. And when they returned upstairs, she did not invite him to share the bed.

  He didn’t make the suggestion. He slept on the floor, or tried to; the soft sounds she made kept him awake. She had managed a composure today that impressed him; she had even tried to deny herself pleasure to preserve it. But asleep, with her lips parted as laxly as a child’s, her body retaliated for her discipline. Whimpers, wordless whispers, limbs tossing across the sheets—these small rebellions, he told himself, bespoke pleasant dreams. But the longer he listened, the more skeptical he became.

  He might have woken her, had his own intentions been less clear. But he knew better than to touch her. If he touched her once, he would touch her again. And he was starting to understand Mina Masters; like a book in a half-learned language, she yielded to him with increasing speed, although each new page suggested that the story would be longer and more complex than he’d expected. She had plans and strategies, and this afternoon had challenged her vision of how he might fit into them. He was glad of it. He had no intention of letting her incorporate him into her current narrative. To do so would give her the ending she’d already scripted. A week, and you will never see me again.

  Only a week ago, he might have hoped the same. But she had caught his interest now. She had caught more than his interest.

  And so he lay there listening with full attention to the symphony of her sleep: sighs, a murmur, and then the slide of her hand down the pillow, the starched sheets crackling as those pale, perfect limbs turned. She was a puzzle indeed, like a mountain range that resisted climbing, or a lake that seemed too deep at first to plumb. But he had spent years mastering difficult topographies. The process was arduous, requiring the painstaking collection of countless minutiae, their tentative assemblage into a larger picture, the willingness to disassemble them at the first sign of a flaw, to rearrange the pieces and begin again. But he was well fitted for the task; he was, after all, Stephen Granville’s son, and a good portion of his life to date had been spent trying to school an obsessive disposition into more useful pastimes than alcohol and cards. Sheldrake had been the first to show him a better use for his talents, and Ridland had shown him another, but now he found his own use. He turned his skills on her. And a picture began to emerge, in the long hours of darkness, that he gradually realized would not assemble properly unless he incorporated himself within it.

  It seemed to him, as he lay there, that Mina Masters’s map had overlapped with his more intimately and for longer than he’d realized. There was no other way to account for what he’d felt today when he touched her, the eerie sense of accordance, as though, pressed against her body, his own skin had finally begun to fit him. It put him in mind of a phenomenon he’d first read of as a boy, of how once in a very great age the magnetic poles reversed, the earth reorienting itself. The thought of such disorder had alarmed Phin when he was young; he had dreamed of compasses going wild, their arms flying askew. He wondered now, with fascination, if his own compass had not been disordered for much longer than he’d suspected.

  Certainly, the reversal had not begun when he’d opened that letter from Ridland. He thought back to the first moment in Hong Kong when he had wanted her and recoiled. That, perhaps, was when his poles had shifted. Missing the small signs, focused on other aims, he had reviled himself for wayward urges, mistaking them as signs of his own weakness. Had he realized then that she was well worth wanting, he might have found the courage to do what came to her so naturally: to look around a locked room, and see opportunities worth breaking windows for.

  He sat up, taking advantage of the moonlight slipping in through the thin curtains, refracting from the mirror to bathe her face in cool illumination. Could desire refract like light, becoming stronger for its bounce between past and present? For the longer he looked at her, all his missteps with her in Hong Kong, all the moments in which she had frustrated and confused him and riled his temper and incited his contempt and his wanting, seemed more and more momentous, until more recent events seemed inseparable from the earlier ones, coalescing in one seamless confluence of steadily mounting revelation. In his new view of her, he saw how far he had traveled, and how much he had changed, since he had dreamed of sweet, pretty girls like Miss Sheldrake.

  Why are you speaking to me like this? she had asked, and what he had realized in that moment, and known better than to say to her, was very simple indeed: I am speaking to you like this because I know you understand, and I do not know how you bear it so lightly.

  Mina Masters understood compulsion. But she did not recognize helplessness. She would like to know how to kill a man, but she did not feel ashamed by her desire because she trusted her judgment. Blood-thirst was a strange thing to admire in a woman, and maybe it spoke ill of him, according to conventional philosophies. But not according to the
philosophy by which she operated. I am my own, she’d said, and it was not a braggart’s claim; she meant it, and made no apologies for the measures she would take to defend her stake.

  No, his admiration of her was not mistaken. If anything, it was understated, or admiration was too pale a word for it. A less elegant gloss, then: when he looked at her, he felt covetous. She camouflaged herself so no one would look closely enough to see her. He sat in the darkness, and looked his fill.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In Providence, it all went wrong. Maybe she had known it would. That morning, when she woke in the little lavender-scented room and found herself alone, she should have been glad of the chance to breathe free of Ashmore’s regard. But all night she had dreamed, and when she sat up, rubbing her eyes, the perfect silence of the room and the radiance of the morning light sloping across the heavy oak furniture had stirred some echo of that foreign panic that had chased her through her sleep. She felt as if she had missed something in the night. She had let some crucial chance slip away but the world had taken no notice; the sun had gone ahead and risen anyway, into a cloudless sky.

  The panic made little sense, but she found herself performing her ablutions with unaccustomed speed, then running down the hall to the stairs in search of him. There were reasons to desire Ashmore’s company—good reasons, which had nothing to do with the way he had touched her. On her own, she could not handle Collins. He had better weapons, and practiced skills, and knowledge of this country. And he needed her as much as she required him. He had explained to her the tangle he found himself in; if she were to die, he would be counted the traitor. What had happened in the bed upstairs was only an extension of the trade between them; it should not unsettle her, or disrupt the balance between them.