One Night With The Major. Bronwyn Scott

of her hip, raising delicate goose pimples in its wake. ‘Where are you from? What part?’

      ‘Sohra.’ Telling him that much wouldn’t break her self-imposed rules of anonymity. ‘Do you know where that is?’ He probably didn’t. It was a remote principality.

      ‘Hmm. No,’ he replied drowsily. ‘I was stationed in Madras.’

      ‘Sohra is a long way from there. It’s up in the Khasi Hills in the north-east.’ She sighed, her own finger drawing a map of her uncle’s home on his chest. ‘We have green hills, cool breezes and waterfalls.’ She sighed. Just talking about Sohra brought its own kind of peace. ‘We have root bridges and mountains.’

      He chuckled, the sound rumbling his chest beneath her ear. ‘I am jealous. Madras was hot and steamy. A man could sweat through his uniform within minutes of putting it on and the streets smelled horribly.’

      She raised up on an elbow and gave him a teasing scold. ‘You just said India was beautiful. That description doesn’t sound beautiful.’

      ‘Oh, but it was. Once I got out of town, the jungle was splendid. The fruits, the animals, incredible.’ He laughed in his defence, then sobered. ‘It’s different than here. Everything here is so...tame... Do you miss it?’

      ‘Of course.’ She let him draw her back down, but not before the flicker of memory danced in his eyes. She probed it. ‘What are you missing? A place? A person?’ It struck her too late who that person might be. ‘A woman?’ A quick spike of jealousy stabbed at her. She didn’t want to think about this man with another woman. Tonight, she wanted him to belong solely to her. Yet it was another item unreckoned when she’d concocted this plan. It was supposed to have been simple: find a man, bed him and leave.

      He shook his head. ‘No woman. A military man isn’t very good at making or keeping commitments of that nature. His days are not his own. Nor his life. It could end at any time.’ He was warning her to remember what they’d agreed upon. She didn’t need the reminder. She’d been the one to set the rules. But it was more than a warning. He was hinting at something larger, something his soul wanted to share. She waited, letting the silence stretch about them. She sensed he wanted to talk, the desire was in him, if only he could find the words. She gave him time and at last the words came.

      ‘My friend was killed in battle, at a place called Balaclava, near Sevastopol. He was an officer in the cavalry, one of the best. I saw him go down. One moment he was waving his sword, rallying his troops, and the next he was gone.’ Three sentences was all she would get. Perhaps he, too, was caught in limbo between the freedom of whispering secrets to a stranger to whom those secrets would mean nothing and the need to keep those secrets hidden in order to protect himself. The less they knew of each other the better. It was the deal after all.

      ‘I am sorry.’ She said the simple words softly, meaning them.

      ‘Tonight is not for war.’ He reached for her, tasting her—her mouth, her neck, the pulse at its base, the swells of her breasts—with sweet, slow kisses as his mouth, his hands, moved down her body. He laved the indentation of her navel with his tongue, his hands at the span of her waist, and then his mouth was in the curls hiding her core, his breath warm against her dampness. ‘You’ve not had your pleasure yet.’ Sharp blue eyes looked up at her from their intimate position at her thighs, burning with cobalt desire, for her perhaps, or for smothering the past. It didn’t matter to her body which. Her pulse quickened in a way that had nothing to do with her quest tonight, and everything to do with this man staring up at her. ‘Permit me?’ She might have permitted him out of curiosity alone, but Pavia was well beyond that now. Her surrender was imminent. She was not only curious, but intrigued by this man. He’d become more than a means to an end. No one had warned her about that.

      The end was different now than when she’d begun. His wicked tongue licked at the seam of her in proof of that. The end was much more short term; the end was not a blocking of Wenderly’s unwanted suit, but something much more pleasurable, much more elusive—the goal was now this pleasure her soldier alluded to. He licked her again and she moaned. She wanted what he’d had. She’d seen his face—she wanted that, too, that sense of being swept away, of being beyond the physical realm. For a moment he’d been transported. Was it possible for her, too? His tongue found a hidden nub and she cried out her surprise, her enjoyment, the sensation sharper, stronger than before. ‘It’s all right to let go,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘You’re safe with me. Let the pleasure come,’ he coaxed. Her rational mind had no reason to believe him, but her body did. He’d done nothing but respect her since they’d come upstairs.

      His mouth took her again and she felt the option to choose slipping away. She would give over to pleasure whether she wished it or not. And she did, her hands fisting first in the linen of the bedsheets and then the thickness of his hair, holding him to her for fear he’d leave her before the pleasure was complete. She would not survive it if he did. She arched into him, once, twice more, sensation driving her to the brink of madness and then to breaking. She felt herself shatter against his mouth, her body shuddering its own completion. This was what he’d felt. This was how he’d felt. Now she knew. In the swirling kaleidoscope of completion, she felt omniscient, as if she was in possession of great knowledge, of great power, one of the world’s supreme mysteries made known to her alone.

      Her lover stretched along beside her, his eyes smoky, his face content. The act had given him pleasure as well. Pleasing her had been important to him. Would all lovers be this considerate? She yawned and he smiled. ‘Come and rest.’ Against her better judgement she did, nestling into ‘her’ spot at his shoulder. How quickly she’d become possessive of this stranger’s body. What could it hurt to lay in his arms an hour longer? It wasn’t as if she could sneak downstairs just yet without being noticed.

      * * *

      Pavia hadn’t meant to sleep. She hadn’t meant to linger after midnight. But when she woke, it was clear she’d done both. The window showed grey shadows of coming dawn and she knew a moment’s panic. She’d slept the night away! Beside her, her nameless lover slept unbothered, his sleeping countenance as handsome as it had been the night before. She had to hurry—hurry to get out of this room before he awoke, hurry to get back to the inn before her maid realised she was missing.

      Pavia slid out of bed, wincing at her sore muscles—another surprise. She hastily gathered her veils, quietly retrieving her jingly gold belt. She’d been counting on the darkness to make her less conspicuous walking back. Now that advantage was gone, too, yet another reason to hurry. A girl wearing nothing but veils walking through the morning streets was bound to stand out. She did not want to be remembered. The cloak she’d worn the night before had been left behind in the kitchen. She took a final look at the man in the bed and slipped out of the room, closing the door softly on her one adventure. In the dim hall, Pavia squared her shoulders, warding off a sense of melancholy as she left the room and its occupant behind.

      She ought to be pleased. Her quest had been irrevocably successful and now it was time to go forward into the future she’d chosen for herself; a future that would be somewhat uncertain at the outset and most definitely rocky. Her father would be furious once she announced she no longer met Wenderly’s marital criteria. That was a given. But what he would do was not as obvious. Would he banish her to the countryside? Force her into seclusion? Would he send her back to India and be done with her? She’d prefer the latter. Her uncle would take her in, she was sure of it. Perhaps her mother would come with her and they could both be free. She would hold on to that hope through the difficult times that would come first. If there was one certainty at the moment, it was this: things would likely get worse before they got better. But they would get better, Pavia reasoned, a little smile teasing her mouth as she walked. It was already better. She wasn’t going to marry Wenderly. She couldn’t. It was now impossible. She was completely and thoroughly ruined.

       Chapter Three

      For the first time in the months since Balaclava,