Bedazzled

mouth.

'Are you cold, India?' he asked her solicitously, drawing her finger from his mouth and kissing the palm of her hand ardently.

'Why do you taunt me, Deverall?' she whispered.

'I am attempting to make up for my crude behavior of last night,' he said innocently. 'I am trying to make love to you, India, but perhaps you preferred being thrown on your back and roughly fucked.' Leaning over, he nuzzled her ear. 'Do you like being taken that way?'

'No!' she managed to husk out as his tongue made circles in the shell of her ear.

'I imagine you thought I had no manners suitable for a lady's chamber,' he almost purred at her.

'Aye,' she quickly answered, 'I did!'

'Then let me prove otherwise to you, India,' he said, pressing her back into her pillows and kissing her, his lips warm and firm against her own.

To her surprise, the kiss was a tender one, but then it began to deepen, and his tongue was pushing into her mouth to meet with hers. She trembled. His mouth. The kisses he kissed her. Why did they touch a chord somewhere within her? She wanted to weep again.

He was startled to feel the wetness on her cheeks, the salty tears against his mouth. Why was she crying? He knew instinctively not to question her. Instead, he took her face between his two hands and kissed the tears from it, pretending he believed her emotions stemmed from his passion toward her. 'Do not weep, India,' he said. 'I will never be rough with you again,' he said. 'Would you prefer if I left you now?'

'I want to be a good wife to you,' she half sobbed. Ohh, God's blood, she was behaving like a perfect ninny!

He took her declaration to mean that he was to stay. He let his kisses move down her throat and across her chest. She murmured, and calmed. He kissed her breasts gently, and then he took a nipple into his mouth, suckling upon it, gently at first, and then harder.

Her fingers dug into his shoulder as his mouth worked her. She remembered once telling Caynan Reis that she wondered what manner of woman she was to enjoy his attentions so avidly when such pleasure should be reserved for a husband and wife. This man, his dark head lowered to her bosom, was her husband, yet he was making her feel like a perfect wanton. She did not truly know him, and yet his attentions were arousing her to a frenzy. She murmured, and caressed his hair.

Bitch, he thought. Wanton bitch! She responded to his attentions eagerly, although she struggled to hide her feelings. How quickly she had forgotten Caynan Reis. Now she murmured, and moaned with her rising arousal as he stroked and petted her. He could have killed her did he not love her so damned much. He began to kiss her again, his lips wandering across her torso. Her belly was sweetly rounded, and he licked the quivering flesh, causing her to cry out softly with her pleasure. She needed to be punished, he thought irrationally. Spreading her, he drew her slender legs with their silken thighs over his shoulders, and, sitting back upon his haunches, he drew her to him.

India shrieked her surprise as his mouth made contact with the most intimate part of her. He gripped her buttocks firmly in his two big hands, and his head buried itself in her sweetness, his lips mashing themselves against her nether lips, his tongue running up and down her slit before pushing through to find her pleasure place. Her head spun with her rising passion, and she panted like an animal. 'Deverall! Dev! Oh,God, my lord, you are killing me!' The first wave crashed into her. She could feel his teeth, gently, oh so very gently, nibbling on her flesh. She cried out, shuddering violently. The second wave raised her up. His flickering tongue teased, and teased, and teased at her sensitivity, and then plunged as deeply as it could into her sheath. 'Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!' she cried. Then he released her but a moment before pressing his body against hers and plunging into her. She screamed her pleasure as the third wave flung her down, and down, and down.

He thrust again and again into the hot, honied sheath welcoming him. There had never been a woman like India, and there would never be one like her no matter she was a lying and deceitful little bitch. He could feel himself swelling, then breaking, his love juices flooding her womb. He lifted his dark head a moment to kiss her lips, and saw that she was practically insensible with his passion. He brushed his mouth across hers, whispering softly, 'Je t'aime settlement, ma bijou! Settlement toi, India. Ma femme precieuse. Seulement toi!'

In her half-conscious state she heard his voice. 'Mon seigneur Caynan, she whispered, 'Je t'aime aussi. Ahh, retournez-moi! C'est un reve.' Then she fell into an exhausted sleep.

I love you also. Return to me. This is a dream. Her soft words slammed into him with violent force. What did she mean by such words? She had deserted him. Or had she? Both Baba Hassan and Azura had insisted India would not leave him willingly, yet he had thought otherwise. During most of her time with him she had been defiant, and eager to be free. When she had disappeared, he had assumed that she had been but feigning her love for him and run off with her cousin.

Why had he even thought such a thing? Because in his heart he had not trusted her. He had never trusted women since the time his stepmother had seduced him, and then laughingly rejected him when another lover took her fancy. She had made a man of him, MariElena told him, but he quickly realized she had done it in order to have a wedge to drive between him and his father. Worse, he was bitterly ashamed of having betrayed his sire. Then she had warned him mockingly that he must never trust a woman again. He had taken her advice to heart.

But suddenly he was beset by his own doubts that he might have been wrong about India. What if she had indeed been kidnapped by her cousin, the sea captain? What if she had not gone willingly, and been forced to return to her family in Scotland? He had renounced her as dey of El Sinut. If his rule had not been overthrown, and he returned to England, what would have become of her? The duke of Glenkirk would obviously have accepted any decent offer for her, believing he was doing the right thing by his stepdaughter. But what of their child? Had she had the baby, and what had become of it?

Deverall Leigh arose from the bed, and returned to his own bedchamber. He slipped his nightshirt over his long, lean body, and began pacing the room. How was he to reveal himself to India? How could he face her having believed her so unworthy of his trust? He knew India. She was going to be furious. Had she not once taken his own dagger to him in a rage? And this situation was much, much worse. He needed time to think. He would shut himself off from her for a few days and try to decide how to get himself out of this disastrous mess he had so easily gotten himself into thanks to his overweening pride.

***

India did not see her husband for several days. He sent word the following morning that he must ride out across his estates for the next few days. She was free to pursue her own interests. After the furious passion of the previous evening, India was relieved. This strange, intense man was a puzzle she needed time to solve. She began the task of replacing the servants, and having them trained by their predecessors, who were eager to now retire. Dover, who had been the majordomo, was full of advice and local information. He liked Diarmid, telling him he had worried about who would replace him.

'Ain't none here with the polish and snap as is needed in such a position,' he said. 'I followed poor old Rogers because I had been his assistant in London. After the earl was