Bronwyn Scott - One Night With The Major

She moved against him, kissing him again as if he’d already accepted her offer, her terms, and this time he gave over. His hands settled at her hips, holding her to him, his mouth opened to her, letting the kiss seduce him, draw him in to the fantasy until he became an active participant, kissing her back, with tongue and teeth at her ear, her neck, the caress of his mouth drawing heady sensations from her—sensations she had not expected. This was meant to be a job. She’d assumed it would be joyless. That was not the case.

The kiss was consuming. Pavia let the world shrink to encompass only this room, only this man, only this time as he took the kiss away from her, making it into his seduction at last, his hand in her hair, gathering it at the nape of her neck, his mouth insistent on hers, and her mouth answering with an insistent hunger of its own. Then they were both falling, to the bed, into the void of the night. Had he taken her down or had she pulled him? She didn’t know, she didn’t care. He was over her, her body warm as it stretched beneath him, all lush curves and slim lines against the hard muscle of him. The dusky peaks of her breasts arched up to brush his chest, teasing themselves into erectness. Her thighs cradled him, inviting him. This business of lovemaking was easier than she’d imagined, far easier than getting him up the stairs, and she knew she’d been lucky in her choice.

He was a deliberate lover, his body savouring the slow sheathing of itself in hers, making it clear this was not a fantasy to rush. He did not want to lose himself for just mere minutes, but for a night, for hours at a time. She gave a delicate moan beneath him at his first breaching, her body stirring in discomfort and then in accommodation. She arched against him in an untutored squirm that made him laugh, a warm, intimate chuckle. ‘Easy now, I know what you want. Be patient. I will take you there.’ His mouth hovered above hers, his hand pushing her hair back from her forehead in a gentle gesture as his hips began to move, and his body picked up an ancient rhythm of easement and surge.

She joined him in the intimate waltz, letting him set the pace, letting him drive them towards ecstasy’s cliffs as she lifted and fell with him. Her hands dug into his shoulders, her legs wrapped tight about him, holding him close, her body desperate for the promised fulfilment that hovered on the horizon they’d created. His exhalations suggested he was nearly there and she sensed that he was somehow with her and beyond her. When the pleasure took him, she was left alone, that same pleasure eluding her. But she could not complain as his chest heaved and his muscled arms trembled with his release. She had got what she’d come for.

It was done. Completely and most thoroughly. Not that she’d been any judge before, but she was now. Her nameless lover had comported himself well. She could have asked for nothing better. Pavia imagined this would become the measure against which any other lover would be compared. He would be measured against this golden-haired, broad-shouldered god of a man who lay sleeping beside her in post-coital exhaustion. She had chosen well. Maybe too well. Instead of leaping out of bed while he slept and running back to her inn a few streets away, she wanted to stay. She wanted to watch him sleep, wanted to trace the musculature of his chest with her finger, wanted to indulge her imagination in guessing his story. Who was he? What was he doing here? Where was he going? Answering those questions broke her rules. No names, no regrets, no tomorrows.

It was the novelty of him that tempted her to linger. She’d not thought a man could be so beautiful. She’d not expected to enjoy his body, seeing it, touching it. It was well muscled and smooth, his chest tanned and devoid of coarse hair, perhaps from campaigns spent sleeping out of doors and bathing in foreign rivers. Pavia let her imagination run wild, shamelessly romanticising the life of a soldier. Not just any soldier, an officer of some rank if she read his uniform aright. There’d been plenty of the East India Company men at their home in India, enough for her to know an officer’s uniform when she saw one.

She’d not been prepared either for the surge of emotion the act had raised. She’d expected a messy, painful interlude of grunts and thrusts until the deed was done. There had been discomfort, but nothing unbearable and nothing that had lasted once the initial shock had receded, replaced by something, if not breathtaking and heart-stopping, certainly pleasant in its own right. It had been different for him, however. For him, it had been breathtaking and heart-stopping. She’d seen it in his face as his release came over him like a wave. A nugget of irrational, womanly pride had formed in realisation that she’d been the cause of it. Whatever had haunted him in the taproom had been temporarily exorcised.

He stirred beside her, his blue eyes searching for her. Somewhere in the room, a log crackled and split in the fireplace. His arm reached for her, drawing her against his side, her head cushioned on the place where his shoulder met chest. This was one more thing she’d not counted on—this easy intimacy of lying naked with a man. She didn’t want to question it, didn’t want to over think it and become self-conscious.

‘I’ve been to India,’ he said in a voice made husky from sleep and waking. ‘It’s a beautiful place, wild, exotic. Not like here.’ His finger traced a slow, idle route over the curve 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.