“I wanted for so long to put the past behind me, that time when I imagined the world was made for adventure,” she whispered. “I have been trying to forget it for years. But, it’s strange. Sometimes those memories feel a great deal more like reality than now.”
“They are so vivid to you?”
“I daresay you have had such an exciting life since then you barely have any memory of that time at all. Except of course for the indecency of my shift.” She smiled uncertainly against his shoulder.
He cupped her hand in his palm and ran the pad of his thumb along each of her fingers.
“To shade the sun, you carried a yellow parasol with white lace.” He spoke softly just above her brow. “You wore your hair a great deal shorter, the ribbon of your bonnet tied to the side as though it constricted your throat to wear it otherwise. You spoke to merchants in the bazaar like you had known them your entire life, and they the same to you, despite your wretched Hindi. You laughed without inhibition. And you chewed on your nails.”
Tavy struggled to draw breath. “I used to do quite a few things I no longer do.”
“You still chew on your lip at times.”
“A gentleman would not mention that.”
“It makes this gentleman want to kiss you.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze flecked with firelight. The intensity of the black depths was not at all in company with his teasing tone.
“Shalabha,” he only said.
“Why did you call me that?” she whispered.
He turned onto his side, hand slipping to her hip.
“Because, grasshopper, you were all legs.”
“No.”
“Yes.” His fingertips traced a path up the inside of her calf and thigh, halting just shy of her tender crux, his palm warm. Tavy’s breathing stuttered. He had just made love to her, yet his slight caress ignited her desire again, this time languorous but still so strong.
“And here I thought it was because I fluttered about your flame.” She tried to sound amused, but her heart beat so hard he must feel it. “Shalabha, a moth, a plain insect unnoticed by everyone.”
“A beautiful girl,” he murmured, stroking. “Beautiful legs.”
“All legs. And elbows, and—”
He moved atop her, pressing her knees apart. “Legs that my hands ached to explore.” He reached beneath her knee and his fingertips dallied upon her skin, the barest touch licking across her like sunshine. “Legs I imagined myself between.” He drew her thigh alongside his hip, his smooth, hard arousal coming against her. “Legs I wanted wrapped around me.”
“You did?” she breathed. “Back then?”
“Yes. Cross your ankles.”
She did so, sighing a long breath of mingled pleasure then mounting anticipation. Ben kissed her throat and she dropped her head back, already feeling him inside her even as she anticipated it.
But these were lover’s words. She had been an awkward girl, the girl she often still felt like.
“I think I don’t believe you,” she said very quietly, so perhaps he would not hear it.
“I find that difficult to comprehend.” He shifted his hips, caressing intimately. A sound of want stole from her throat, and she twined her fingers in his satiny hair.
“I mean about then. I was not— I was different.”
The tip of his tongue traced her ear. “Before you desert the past, Octavia, know the truth of it,” he whispered against her skin. “I imagined this. Having you. You wanting me.”
She trembled, gripping his arms, and where he stroked her soft flesh she throbbed. She tilted her hips up to meet him more fully and he came into her in a fluid, possessing thrust. Her back arched, her body pleasured as he filled her so completely, stretching her and making her want everything. His palm circled her jaw and he bent his head and kissed her like he was drinking from her lips. She sighed, the past and present tangling together in her heart and body, doubts and certainty twisted so that one looked like the other.
“You might have had anyone you wanted,” she said upon a sigh.
“I wanted you.”
“I was no one.”
“You were beautiful. Your smile, your laughter, the words upon your tongue.” He made a sound deep in his chest as he stroked into her, his thrusts controlled, seducing, making her need him more with each slow invasion.
“Ben.”
“Your eyes and glance,” he murmured above her lips. “Your touch.”
“I never touched you. Not until—”
“You often did. You did not know that you did.” He kissed her, capturing her breaths as he moved in her, caressing her to a madness of helplessness, his body a masterpiece of giving that made her only want to give more until she was empty. He wrapped his hand around her hip and held her firmly to him, his voice deep and rough. “You were not afraid.”
Never. Enthralled, as he had accused her weeks ago. Intoxicated. Beyond infatuated. But not afraid.
She turned her cheek to the pillow, dragging her gaze away, reveling in his thrusts, pulling him in as the sweet ache built alongside the pain of wanting him more than she could endure.
“Perhaps I should have been,” she whispered, surrendering to him fully, finally, a sob of mingled relief and agony catching in her throat for the heart she was losing after so many years of holding onto it like life. But there was no life without him. She had known it then and nothing could change it. Not now. The moment she had met him—a na?ve, wide-eyed girl seeking adventure—it was too late.
He touched her face and turned her to him.
“No,” he said roughly. “You should have been mine.”
Tears stole along her cheeks as their bodies sought, dancing with the beauty of skin and sighs. He touched her deep, and everywhere, making her his again and again with each caress, each breath drawn as one. And when the violence of her need grew too great, he touched her anew, deeper yet, and she came apart, crying out in blind, wordless ecstasy, then again when he found his pleasure in her.
He brushed the moisture from her cheeks as he had that night in the garden in Madras, and again at Fellsbourne. But he did not ask why she wept now because he must already know—although she did not really, whether she wept from joy or sorrow. She had given her heart once, had it destroyed, and held hard onto the remaining pieces for years since. This second giving away was anguish.
She stared into the fire, her vision blurring.
“Do not hurt me again, Ben.” Her words were barely a whisper. “I think I would forget entirely how to be me.”
His arms came around her and he gathered her to him, lips pressed to her brow. Drawing back, he threaded his fingers through her hair and held her, his eyes lit with sparks from the flames full of wonder and longing.
“I will not. I could not.”
Her lungs compacted.
“I—” she choked out. “I am so in love with you.” Trembles shook her, of fear and fullness. “I have always been.”
His throat worked, his eyes a storm of darkness. But he did not speak. Tavy’s heart pounded, joined by an echo, a staccato rapping on the door.
“Milord?” The hushed voice came urgently from the other side of the panel. But in Tavy’s heart another voice spoke, cold and sharp, Aunt Imene telling him to take his hands off her. The expression in his eyes now was the same as then, warmth rapidly withdrawing into distance.
He drew a hard breath. “Blast.”